category,text,group
Top/Features/Magazine,"Questions for: Jim Bakker
As an agnostic, I feel strange correcting Jim Bakker (Sunday: 'Questions for: Jim Bakker,' Nov. 9). He states, 'The Bible says money is the root of all evil.' Check again, Jimbo:
1 Timothy 6:10: 'For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows' (King James Version).
It's the love of money, not money itself. Big difference.
Herbert W. Miller  New York",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"A QUESTION FOR: Tim McCarver
Q: What's the most boring part of baseball? A: When the pitcher gets on base and they stop the game to bring him a jacket -- so the guy's arm won't get cold. That's boring. What does he need a jacket for? His arm's not going to get cold. Another boring part is the small talk a first baseman will make with a base runner. They'll ask: ""How ya hittin' 'em? How's the family?"" And they could care less. It's the ""Have a nice day"" syndrome. I hated it, and  [ Hall of Fame pitcher ]  Bob Gibson really hated it. One time, against the Expos, Bob got on and  [ first baseman ]  Ron Fairly told him, ""Hey, you're throwing well."" Fairly came up to bat a couple innings later and Gibson hit him square in the ribs. I think more players ought to retaliate like that.  SUNDAY, JULY 23, 1995",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"CHARLES MURRAY
Charles Murray knows he treads on nonpolitically correct ground when he writes of genes and intellect. Proof of his theories is hard to come by and anecdotal evidence is not science.
However, there is some history that might serve as a clinical trial to prove his thesis on a more scientific basis. He touched upon it when he paid the Israeli cellist the national compliment: ""In terms of I.Q., you guys are off the charts.""
In Eastern European shtetls, the brightest youngsters spent their years in the yeshivas and the most promising one was matched to the rich man's daughter as the best catch. This allowed him to spend his life in study and sire a dozen children who followed in his footsteps. Do this for 2,000 years and you have some clinical results.
While that was going on, the brightest Christian children were dedicated to the church and celibacy.
Mr. Murray, does this prove anything? HERMAN GROSS Great Neck, L.I.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"CHINESE ADOPTIONS
In titling Bruce Porter's article ""China's Market in Orphan Girls"" (April 11) and subtitling it ""China's Newest Export,"" you have done a serious disservice both to the Chinese Government and to families adopting in China.
As New Yorkers who have recently adopted in China, we can attest firsthand to the seriousness with which China and its officials take the adoption process. Even after extensive investigation in the United States, prospective parents are required to travel to China to be interviewed by a number of Chinese officials about such matters as their ability to educate and care for children they adopt.
What is more, the modest fees involved are donated to the local orphanage to assist in the care of children. In stark contrast to other countries and, indeed, to the United States, where lawyers and intermediaries routinely profit from adoption, China has made every attempt to create a thoughtful, sensitive and orderly process by which homeless children are placed in qualified, loving homes. Simply put, it is a process for which the Chinese deserve congratulation rather than implicit criticism.
The decision to allow Chinese children to be placed for adoption abroad was by all accounts an extremely difficult one for the Chinese Government. In fact, as we write, Beijing has temporarily stopped adoption while the rules and regulations governing it are reviewed once again. It would be extraordinarily unfortunate if The New York Times, an institution with a reputation for integrity, objectivity and socially responsible journalism, were to cause disruption of the adoption of children from China through the use of inaccurate and thoughtlessly provocative language. SUSAN CAUGHMAN, LAURIE HEINEMAN  Co-Chairwomen, Association of Families of Adopted Chinese Children
New York, N.Y.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"THE CONTRADICTIONS OF BOB DOLE
LEAD: I read with astonishment that Senator Dole whispered to me, during a House-Senate conference, that I should ignore his pronouncements on austerity and press for expansion of Medicaid coverage of prenatal care. No such conversation took place.
I read with astonishment that Senator Dole whispered to me, during a House-Senate conference, that I should ignore his pronouncements on austerity and press for expansion of Medicaid coverage of prenatal care. No such conversation took place.
Bob Dole did show sensitivity to the health-care needs of the poor in the conference. He is to be commended for that. But he agreed only after a strong case for the benefit had been made and savings to offset the costs found. His commitment to reduce the deficit required that.
Your article seemed to suggest that Bob Dole was double-dealing with his constituents and fellow senators by arguing for savings in public and spending in private. This simply wasn't the case.
Bob Dole and I are often on opposite sides of many issues. But in his dealings with me he has been straightforward.  HENRY A. WAXMAN  Chairman, Subcommitte on  Health and the Environment  House of Representatives  Washington  Mr. Tolchin Replies
Representative Waxman first told me, at a dinner party, of his conversation with Senator Dole about expanding Medicaid's prenatal-care program. I called him to ask permission to use this anecdote in the article, and he agreed. In subsequent conversations, Mr. Waxman and an aide provided details of the incident.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Fate of Baby Amy
LEAD: Amy's story touched me deeply, especially for the compassion with which she was allowed to live, and die.
Amy's story touched me deeply, especially for the compassion with which she was allowed to live, and die.
Our son was born dead, asphyxiated at term when the placenta separated too early in labor. He was resuscitated, but there the miracle of his life ended and the nightmare began. He remained without any function, virtually (but not legally) brain dead, maintained only by 'the best' aggressive medical and nursing care. We were never given any significant choice in his care; medical decisions followed their own protocols. Even though there was no possible treatment, we were forced to obtain a court order to restrain the hospital from reviving him each time he died. He finally did, for the last time, at 6 months, almost three years ago.
My sympathy for the family of Baby Amy is matched only by my anger that modern medical practice is rarely so humane.  KATHRYN S. MARCH  Ithaca, N.Y.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"NUMBER THEORY
In his discussion of ""the Number,"" John Tierney has hit a raw nerve and comes close to what really makes the rich different from you and me (The Big City: ""Number Theory,"" Nov. 19). You can be certain that if Bill Gates, Ronald Perelman, Michael Milken and Henry Kravis ever got together at a cocktail party, the one thing they would definitely not be discussing would be ""the Number.""
ROBERT J. YAES, M.D. Bronx",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"A Woman's Work
Many of my friends were shocked by your article, but I was not, having heard these horrible stories from Rwandan friends who survived the genocide, one of whom was held as a sex slave in Kigali and whose husband has since divorced her.
I am glad that so much space and thought was devoted to these events, which are so poorly understood worldwide, but it is a disservice to make it seem as if Pauline's participation was a gender aberration. Remember the two Rwandan nuns found guilty in Belgium of crimes against humanity? Women were part of the genocide, not commonly in perpetrating the violence but certainly in fomenting the killing (especially via radio), helping trap Tutsis and turning in Tutsis who were hiding.
Erin Martin  New York",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Ethicist
I loved the Ethicist's response (May 14) to Harvey Hauswirth of Provincetown, Mass., who asked if he was right to refuse the request of the 98-year-old woman who wanted to install a stairway lift in that Cape Cod cottage. 'That lift might be ugly, but some things are even uglier,' the Ethicist wrote, and then went on to talk about the sheer human beauty of kindness, compassion and generosity of spirit. It's worth noting that the ancient Greeks made no distinction between ethics and aesthetics. In other words, if an action looks good, it probably is good, legalities be damned.
Robert Blair Kaiser
Phoenix",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"QUESTIONS FOR THE COSMOS
LEAD: TO THE EDITOR: Congratulations to Prof. Robert Jahn of Princeton for having the courage to pursue his investigation of psychic phenomena ('Questions for the Cosmos,' by Steve Fishman, Nov. 26). That is exciting. But as one who has participated in informal experiments testing such things as telepathy and psychometry (with startling results) and as someone who has read widely in the literature, I would ask: How many times do we have to prove that ESP exists?
TO THE EDITOR: Congratulations to Prof. Robert Jahn of Princeton for having the courage to pursue his investigation of psychic phenomena ('Questions for the Cosmos,' by Steve Fishman, Nov. 26). That is exciting. But as one who has participated in informal experiments testing such things as telepathy and psychometry (with startling results) and as someone who has read widely in the literature, I would ask: How many times do we have to prove that ESP exists? And when are we going to spend more of our resources investigating how and why it happens? Those surely are the questions we should be asking.  GRACE E. HINRICHS  Canandaigua, N.Y",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"This Doesn't Add Up
The death knell for accounting is premature (The Way We Live Now, D.T. Max, Jan. 27). I teach a Saturday morning course in introductory accounting at Rutgers in Newark. Not a choice day or ideal time, right? But this semester the students signed up in record numbers, forcing the university to open an additional section of the course. Students recognize what D.T. Max may not. Finger-pointing aside, the Enron scandal portrays accounting as an intriguing, powerful and empowering discipline.
Gail Farrelly  Associate Professor  Rutgers University  Newark",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Way We Spend Now
I take exception to the subtext of David Brooks's article (Oct. 15) that the generation that survived the Depression 'are America's most conspicuous consumers.' Our generation listened to our parents' cautionary tales. We knew better than not to save for a rainy day. Those of us who could afford it sent our kids to college. Now that we have finished paying off those bills, we might have a little discretionary income, but Brooks calls us 'gray-haired hedonists.' Enough of this gray bashing. Less than 10 years ago we were told that our children would not be able to live as well as we have. Nonsense. We're not the generation building McMansions. We paid our dues.
Louise W. Demakis  Westport, Conn.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Ethicist
I commend the Ethicist for an apt response to the inquiry about the ethics of using a wheelchair to speed the way through airport security (March 25). However, it overlooks the fact that faking illness makes it harder for those who are disabled -- especially if the disability is not easily discerned -- to obtain necessary help.
I appear to be a healthy woman in her mid-20s. I am severely disabled by chronic pain and severe fatigue, both the legacy of cancer treatment, and depend on wheelchair assistance. I am thankful for the policy that any request for assistance is fulfilled and that this is done without question, sparing me rehashing sensitive information each time. Nevertheless, my youth and the invisibility of my illness often cause my requests for assistance to be met with skepticism. Exploiting one of the rare services that protects an individual's privacy, while offering a vital resource, threatens our already fragile credibility as people legitimately disabled, in need of aid.
Shari Goldman Gottlieb
Philadelphia",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Sophisticated Baby
Fleurville Mothership  Like many new entrepreneurs, Steve and Catherine Granville started out as dissatisfied consumers. The couple had a child, and they had a lot of things to buy, including a diaper bag. This, specifically, is where the dissatisfaction arose. Most of what they saw, Steve Granville maintains, was poor quality stuff, often tarted up with licensed images of cartoon characters and the like. It was as if the bags were meant to appeal to children. 'But who,' he asks, 'is buying the product?' The answer isn't just parents, but parents his age; he is 37, and his wife is 36. 'We're part of the generation that I would argue is the most sophisticated in terms of brand exposure and analysis,' he says.
So nearly three years ago they started their own brand, which is called Fleurville, and began selling diaper bags and other equipment for people like them. Their mainstay product, called the Mothership, costs about $155. In contrast, you can buy a Classic Pooh Diaper Bag/Backpack, featuring Winnie the Pooh, for $20 at Target and any number of other bags for $50 or so. Fleurville has sold about 30,000 Mothership bags so far, mostly through boutiques. It is available in 10 grown-up-oriented designs, including houndstooth, several colors of wide-wale corduroy and a flashy pink-stripe version that is probably the most popular.
It certainly makes sense that the modern parent wants to carry something that doesn't look, you know, childish. But those who choose the Mothership must be motivated by more than that, since they could have picked up Eddie Bauer's popular $35 Weekender, which is styled to look like something for gym clothes, not diapers. Apart from the fashion factor, the Mothership also sells functionality inspired by 'outdoor gear technology,' according to Granville. For example, the interior cloth is 420-denier nylon. (Which apparently means that it's very strong.) There's nonskid rubber in the shoulder strap, pockets and sleeves for bottles and cellphones, polyurethane triple-coating for waterproofing and so on. There are practical reasons for these features related to the 'human factors' of caring for a baby while on the move. 'It's not all buckles and bows and Mary Poppins,' Granville says. 'It's diarrhea and real nasty stuff.'
In any case, there's another element to the Mothership that may be particularly important in reaching a target audience that is 'sophisticated' about branding. While Fleurville has not bothered with advertising so far, the Granvilles did think very carefully -- obsessively even -- about the company name. 'We wanted the brand to be a bit amorphous,' Granville says. 'A cutesy baby-bag name would limit our market potential.' They hoped to evoke a destination or state of mind and wanted a name that was faintly European, he explains, so that perhaps a discerning consumer would think, 'Must be a big brand in Europe, but I haven't seen it here in the U.S.'
Once this was taken care of, the company, which is actually based in San Rafael, Calif., sent one of its bags to Jodie Foster, and Granville mentioned as much to a reporter for the syndicated celebrity-watching TV show 'Extra.' The producers did a segment on the bags, which led to calls from the publicists for Uma Thurman and Kate Winslet, among others. This was followed by coverage in magazines like InStyle and Us Weekly. 'It just sort of went from there,' Granville says. The obvious precedent here is the Bugaboo Frog stroller (a successful brand in Europe before it came to the United States), which costs more than $700 and has been linked to celebrity moms like Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow. The Bugaboo's rise has perhaps confirmed that although today's parents may be too clever for advertising, many of them will pay an enormous premium to own the same things that famous people have.
One retailer that sells Fleurville bags is the Pump Station, which includes a boutique for new or soon-to-be parents in Los Angeles. Corky Harvey, a co-founder, says its clientele is well off and smart and wants things that are 'functional as well as beautiful.' And does the store carry diaper bags with, say, famous cartoon characters on them? Harvey replies, emphatically, that it does not. The store sells only products that 'elevate motherhood' out of the context of tacky commercialism, she explains. 'Our mothers despise that stuff.'
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 7-24-05: CONSUMED E-mail: consumed@nytimes.com.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"ROBERT REDFORD'S 50'S, THEN AND NOW
I shuddered when I read in Wakefield's article that ""editorials suggested that the young Van Doren . . .  was making education popular."" Shows in which contestants regurgitate facts to win big bucks reinforce the popular belief that education is supposed to turn people into well-behaved but well-paid nerds. It's a shame that ""The Quiz Kids"" seems to have been legit; the cause of education would have benefited if that show had perished in a scandal the way that ""Twenty-One"" did. JAMES D. MCCAWLEY Chicago",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Tyranny Of Cool
It is not difficult to understand why clothing retailers would encourage adolescents to spend fortunes on their outfits. Nor is it hard to accept a teenager's tendency to be preoccupied with how she looks. But what is the role of the parents during these crucial years? Surely the parents need to do more than to 'remain ambivalent about how to respond.'
Karen Lynn  Princeton, N.J.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Unspeakable Conversations
The medical reality of the debate between Harriet McBryde Johnson and Peter Singer is more nebulous than the clear division of their views (Feb. 16). In this day, parents who don't want deformed children have them aborted. When deformed or seriously ill infants are born, parents want 'full support' for their child. Physicians are reluctant to step in to play God and deny the support. Then, once full support has started, it is easily expanded to include surgically placed feeding tubes for nutrition and tracheostomy tubes for chronic ventilator support. Having started, it is incredibly difficult to stop. At some point we see the devastation created by our advanced medical support and then the debate starts. We have allocated the resources to prevent these deaths, and indeed, there have been numerous (productive) lives saved by this approach. Many devastated children have also been saved. The cost of their care is the 'tax' we pay for living in the most advanced medical environment in the world.
Paul McCormick  Edina, Minn.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Way We Live Now Poll
I was overwhelmed by your special issue (May 7), with its remarkably positive, incisive look at what we think and how we feel at the start of the new millennium. We appear, on the whole, to retain belief in something bigger than ourselves.
Lorenzo Albacete's Lives column, 'Secrets of the Confessional,' was particularly effective, with its understanding of our universal need to be truthful when it pains us most. And to find humor even then.
Thank you for the reality check -- good medicine and a great deal to think about.
Barry Collodi
New York",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"HOPE SPRINGS NOCTURNAL
Regarding Mary Tannen's article (Style: ""Hope Springs Nocturnal,"" Nov. 5), it's interesting how time, ""the subtle thief of youth,"" has changed baby-boomer  vocabulary.
When I was young, ""free radicals"" could have been a youth-culture slogan calling for the liberation of the Chicago Seven, or a fitting description of young student protesters. Now the presence of free radicals means we're getting  old.
Perhaps those of us who once embraced the youth culture are facing the fact  that basing a culture on youth is like building a house on shifting sand. Culture lasts; youth does not. We can't erase that fact any more than we can erase our wrinkles.
CLARE HIGGINS Hastings, N.Y.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Beauty; The Shining
'Smooth finish."" ""High gloss shine."" ""Polished veneer."" If the modern hair vocabulary sounds like the menu from a car wash, there's a reason: the fast track to shine on your hair -- or your car -- is slick with silicon.
Like so many high-tech beauty breakthroughs, silicon -- derived from silica, or sand -- was first developed in the laboratories of American industry and found to have such glamorous applications as car polish, glue, caulking -- and, of course, breast implants. Silicon is a naturally shiny, inert, nonreactive substance, considered so nontoxic that silicon gel is a principal ingredient in Mylanta.
But how did this cross over to beauty? The logic was simple. What polishes your car could shine your hair, right? The funny thing is, that's true. But in the course of proving it, a product was developed that is so versatile some people stop just short of calling it a miracle.
By coating the outer layer of the hair shaft and sealing in moisture, silicon not only repairs your split ends, it acts as a conditioner. Once the hair shaft has been sealed, a smooth surface is created. Light is now reflected rather than diffused -- hence the shine -- and frizzy hair is considerably smoother and more manageable.
""It's like pulling molten glass across your hair,"" says Pat Peterson Rohde, a senior chemist for Aveda.
""It's clean, clear and cosmetically wonderful,"" according to John McCook, vice president of research and development for Elizabeth Arden, who is developing a silicon line for Oribe at Arden.
In 1987, Procter & Gamble used silicon to create Pert, a shampoo and conditioner in one. But even before that, Shiseido had marketed silicon in Japan (QT Cross Cuticle Coat), purely for its shine-inducing properties.
Since then, shine agents containing silicon have been outdistancing waxes, pomades, and gels. Shiseido and Zotos recently introduced Senscience, a joint line devoted to silicon hair products said to actually restore the hair shaft. All tend to be expensive -- Sebastian Laminates Surface Polisher is $17.50 for one ounce; Aveda's Purefume Brilliant Emollient is $19 for three ounces.
Since you only need to use a drop or two, silicon doesn't weigh hair down. Used correctly, you should appear as though you've been lightly laminated -- a highly desirable look when buffed and gleaming skin, glossy lips and hair like glass is the most up-to-date fashion finish. But sadly, if you overdo, you'll probably end up looking like an oil slick.
Most stylists agree that silicon is terrific at detangling frizzy hair, adding shine and defining curl. There's less consensus about the product's other virtues, however.
Jennifer Lawrence, a hair stylist and makeup artist at Louis Licari Color Group, mixes Zotos's Bain de Terre Recovery Complex with mousse or gel, which she says can make the hair dull or feel dry. Silicon, she says, ""gives it a shine you couldn't get with any other product alone. I use it before blow drying, and after. It protects the hair and makes it silky.""
Frederic Fekkai of the eponymous salon at Bergdorf Goodman says silicon products are terrific on curly hair, but ""I think it weighs down and flattens straight hair."" (For shine, Fekkai uses his grandmother's rinse of one tablespoon of white vinegar dissolved in a cup of water.)
Richard Stein, owner of the Richard Stein Salon, calls silicon products ""the emperor's new conditioner."" They trap dirt and oil, he says, and create a dirty appearance. Other stylists claim just the opposite, saying that silicon creates a clean, shiny illusion even when the hair isn't particularly healthy
or
clean.
So who's right? Maybe all, maybe none. ""The toughest part of this chemistry,"" explains McCook of Elizabeth Arden, ""is making it permanent but not too permanent. You want the material to bond to the hair, but you don't want it to last so long that it builds up.""
But beyond the qualitative difference in brands, there is the matter of application. Silicon is one of those beauty products that the user has to literally get a feel for. How much you use, and when you use it, depends on your hair and the product. Until you marry the two, it may be slippery going.
Correction:  April 25, 1993, Sunday
The Beauty column in The Times Magazine last Sunday misidentified a substance used in hair products. It is silicone, an organic silicon compound, not silicon.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"A Reporter's Odyssey In Unseen China
LEAD: If John F. Burns's stay in a Chinese prison was unpleasant, what about the grave consequences that faced his Chinese companion, Zhang Daxing ('A Reporter's Odyssey in Unseen China,' Feb. 8)? Mr. Zhang spent more than two months in jail, with his whereabouts kept from his family for much of that time.
If John F. Burns's stay in a Chinese prison was unpleasant, what about the grave consequences that faced his Chinese companion, Zhang Daxing ('A Reporter's Odyssey in Unseen China,' Feb. 8)? Mr. Zhang spent more than two months in jail, with his whereabouts kept from his family for much of that time.
It is true that Mr. Zhang made the trip of his own free will, but those of us in Beijing at the time, contemplating our own trips, knew better than to include Chinese nationals in our plans. The worst that could happen to us was deportation. A local Chinese person would face much sterner measures, possibly affecting the course of his life.
What bothers me most is that Mr. Burns's odyssey ends with his being escorted to the airport and handed a ticket to Hong Kong, but Mr. Zhang remained behind. Somehow the high drama of Mr. Burns's experience pales in comparison to the reality Mr. Zhang was left to face alone in China.  DAVID RICHTER  Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies  Washington",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"HOW SHORT IS TOO SHORT?
I am grateful to Barry Werth for making the point that short children ultimately are taking human growth hormone ""because there is H.G.H. to give them.""
It's not just Genentech. If we as a society didn't buy into this silliness about physical perfection, Genentech wouldn't have the lucrative market it does. MARY JOHNSON
Hortonville, N.Y.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Jonathan Lebed's Extracurricular Activities
You might have put a better photo of Jonathan on your cover so that this 'almost millionaire' could get a date to the prom.
Lisa Feder Eichenblatt  Maitland, Fla.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"TEACHING JOHNNY TO BE GOOD
Rosenblatt states that character education was a ""subject unheard of a generation ago."" On the contrary, in the 1960's and 70's there was intense interest in teaching values in school. One strong impetus came out of the human-potential movement and another out of Lawrence Kohlberg's work on the theory of moral development.
Interestingly, the public schools in 19th-century America adopted not only the rhetoric but the practice of character education. Using the famous McGuffey's Eclectic Readers, virtues were fostered, including thrift honesty, piety, punctuality and industry.
Yes, let's address the matter of values and character in the rearing of our young. But let's examine and learn from our long history with this issue. JOSEPH KIRSCHNER Evanston, Ill.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"WHO'S AFRAID OF LANI GUINIER?
Lani Guinier is concerned with two somewhat different aspects of minority representation (""Who's Afraid of Lani Guinier?"" Feb. 27). The first has to do with electoral politics. Here she has some useful things to say. The American system of winner-take-all elections does penalize a minority in an electoral district: a group may constitute a substantial minority in a large number of districts and yet be outvoted in all of them. The cumulative voting scheme she discusses (or a simpler system of proportional representation, of the type used in most other democratic nations) would allow minority viewpoints fairer representation in legislative bodies such as Congress.
But fairer representation of this sort need not help much with her second concern: whether minorities get a chance to implement their policy preferences. For example, European parliaments elected by proportional representation may have a broader range of opposition viewpoints than the American Congress, but minority parties do not necessarily become part of governing coalitions or play much of a role in policy making.
If Ms. Guinier wants to claim that certain concerns are of such fundamental importance that they, like freedom of religion or freedom of speech, ought to be protected from majority pressure, let her say so clearly and let her say why. If Ms. Guinier wants to move toward a political process in which consensus is more important and confrontation less important, let her explicitly set out a mechanism for convincing the majority that it is in its interest to accommodate the demands of the minority.
Ms. Guinier is dealing with very important questions of fairness in a divided political system. But if changes in rules of representation would allow minority viewpoints to be better articulated within legislative bodies, minority groups would not be guaranteed a sympathetic response. The political task of coalition-building is unlikely to be solved by tinkering with representation systems alone. DAVID G. LAWRENCE Associate Professor of Political Science Fordham University Bronx",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Third Wheel
Dorothy J. Farnan, b. 1919  Dorothy Farnan and her lifelong best friend, Mary Valentine, recent arrivals in New York, were drowning their troubles over coffee at the Waldorf Cafeteria on a dismal rainy November night in 1943 when whom should they see at a neighboring table but that charismatic pal from their student days at the University of Michigan, the sharp-tongued, prodigal Chester Kallman, effulgent as a golden-haired fallen angel. It was, Dorothy later wrote, the 'one event that changed the course of our lives.' When they approached Kallman, he responded warmly and invited them to come by the next evening for drinks. Before they realized what was happening, they had been admitted to his inner circle, made up mostly of gay men and revolving around Chester's radiant wit and the eccentric spin of his companion, W.H. Auden.
In 'Auden in Love,' the account (part memoir, part biography) of Chester and Wystan's relationship that she wrote after both men died, Farnan reveals that she never liked the celebrated poet. She found him 'rude and cold,' 'exasperating' and 'moody' and 'forbidding.' She resented his 'jealousy' and the way in which he 'usurped' Chester and bossed him around like 'a crotchety schoolmaster.' Nor, she felt, did Auden conceal his 'basic antagonism' to both Mary and herself. Indeed, Dorothy heard that Auden had once tried to conjure a curse on her. But the two women were not that easily deflected. Mary was smitten with Chester. And Dorothy, hopping up a generation, found herself so drawn to Chester's father, Edward -- a dentist with his son's wit, charm and penchant for (in his case, heterosexually oriented) philandery -- that she moved into his home and eventually married him. Inevitably, Mary was less successful. Indeed, when she revealed the nature of her affection to Chester, his friendship with both women cooled.
Even though she wrote a 253-page book about it, Farnan could never quite get to the bottom of the relationship between Kallman and his older, distinguished companion. She wasn't the only one baffled. An alcoholic with a self-destructive drive, Chester inflicted a great deal of pain on Auden -- although far more on himself. After the first couple of years, the sexual component of the partnership ended. Some of Auden's friends wondered why the famous poet remained devoted to Chester. Edward Mendelson, who is Auden's literary executor, says that Kallman's cleverness constituted part of his appeal. Largely unharnessed and unproductive, the torrent of Kallman's intelligence was nonetheless entrancing. 'I saw his wit,' Mendelson says. 'It was unbelievably quick. One mild example is, somebody referred to Klaus Mann' -- Thomas's son -- 'as the invisible Mann. Chester said, 'No, he's the subordinate Klaus.'' Hopeless with money and pathologically disorganized, Kallman never held a job and relied on Auden for financial support. Auden was fiscally prudent but practical only by comparison to Kallman.
A decade after Farnan's book appeared, Thekla Clark, a far closer friend of the couple, wrote her own memoir, 'Wystan and Chester.' 'It shows you the point of Chester,' Mendelson says. In it, Kallman's charm (at least until his sad final years) is evident. Written as a sort of rebuttal to Farnan's version, Clark's book is a delightful recollection that contains, buried inconspicuously, a bombshell. Clark recounts that, toward the end, she and her husband accompanied the middle-aged pair to a Vienna attorney's office, where Kallman and Auden drew up wills, each leaving his property to the other, with the financial rights to the literary estate passing upon the death of the survivor to Auden's two beloved nieces. Those wills have disappeared. 'Auden's intention was on record,' Mendelson says. 'It was just sloppiness.'
Auden died in September 1973, and Kallman survived him by only 15 months. Although aware of the missing wills, Auden's family was far too genteel to contemplate a lawsuit. The estate was inherited by Chester's elderly father, and after his death it went to his widow, Dorothy. Which is how this tall, formidable, chilly woman -- whose other distinction was having been the first female head of the English department of Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn -- came to be the sole beneficiary of the Auden estate. 'No one who is not a movie star would have to work for a living with the income from the estate,' Mendelson says. The annual fees these days are in the low six figures.
When Farnan died in October at the age of 84, much of her property went to the daughter of her late friend Mary Valentine. Ultimately, however, Farnan earmarked the income from the Auden corpus -- including such classic poems as 'Lullaby,' 'In Memory of W.B. Yeats,' 'Spain 1937,' 'Stop All the Clocks' and 'The Age of Anxiety' -- for four animal charities. She was inordinately fond of cats. 'Auden was a great cat lover, too,' says Chester's half-brother, William Kallman, 'so I guess he won't roll over too many times in his grave.'
THE LIVES THEY LIVED Arthur Lubow is a contributing writer for the magazine.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"An Impossible Occupation
Scott Anderson's fascinating article (May 12) succeeds in presenting the conflict in the Middle East in a way few other articles have. His time spent with the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces allows us to see some of the real challenges and paradoxes of this conflict. The soldiers in this intimate portrait, while not eager for war, operate with professionalism, caution and a strong awareness of the limits of military force.
By allowing their voices to be heard and their actions to be seen, the soldiers are replacing much of the distorting rhetoric that engulfs discussions of the conflict with the voices of those who are responsible for doing what they must do to stop terrorism. At the same time, they are also concerned with the long-term implications of their actions for peace between two peoples.
Adam Gregerman  New York",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"HAIR TODAY
LEAD: The fashion pendulum is swinging again. Last year, many young women combined formal gowns with loose, tousled - read messy - hair. This year, the favored style for evening is perfectly neat - precise buns, demure chignons and ladylike French twists.
The fashion pendulum is swinging again. Last year, many young women combined formal gowns with loose, tousled - read messy - hair. This year, the favored style for evening is perfectly neat - precise buns, demure chignons and ladylike French twists.
Of course, this style is open to interpretation. One woman might fold her hair into a French twist in back, while leaving the front puffy in an over-the-brow gathering.
Another may take the reverse approach: a high bun in back with bangs combed flat over the eyebrows. Perhaps the most elaborate version starts with a low ponytail, which is divided into small sections that are twisted, looped and pinned to form a bun. Ornaments can enhance the look, but usually the style itself is ample decoration.
This textured bun hit two designers' runways at last month's showing of the spring 1989 American collections. Zanya Gissler, a freelance hair stylist who designed the models' hair for the Michael Kors show, chose the twisted bun for its youthful pizazz. 'The way you twist it changes the style,' she says. 'It doesn't have to be precise, and a woman can do it herself.' Sergio Valente, who owns salons in New York and Rome, created twists that resembled small perfect roses for the Oscar de la Renta show.
While short haircuts are the rage in Paris, some women are not prepared to lop off their locks. But at first glance, the pulled-back styles look like short hair. They may well evolve to the chic rendition worn by Eleonor Scherrer, who parts her short hair on the side, lacquers it with gel and combs it neatly behind her ears.
BEAUTY",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Popular Constitutionalism
Now that it seems clear that Republicans will control the courts for the foreseeable future, canny liberals are beginning to wean themselves of the romantic idea that judges inevitably favor liberal values. And now these liberals have a rallying cry -- 'popular constitutionalism' -- which appears in the title of a book published this year by Larry Kramer, the new dean of Stanford Law School. In the early 90's, Kramer became interested in the idea that the public might do a better job of protecting its rights than the courts. He became convinced that the framers of the Constitution expected it to be interpreted not by unelected judges but by the people themselves -- through petitions, juries, voting and civil disobedience. Several years later, he was astonished to find the Supreme Court striking down laws one after the other and claiming to do so in the name of the founders' vision.
Kramer is not the only scholar who has rediscovered the virtues of popular constitutionalism: the movement has both liberal and conservative adherents. Rather than dividing left from right, his book has divided populists from antipopulists. The book was sharply criticized in The New York Times by Laurence Tribe of Harvard, an unapologetic antipopulist who implied that popular constitutionalism could lead to mob rule. Kramer notes that the same predictions, which he considers elitist and alarmist, have been made throughout American history. He argues in his book that progressive movements have typically been popular movements, with the anomalous exception of the Warren Court, which led progressives to embrace the naïve belief that they could achieve their goals through the courts rather than through politics. He considers the liberal embrace of judicial supremacy to be a 'shortsighted and dangerous strategy.'
Instead, Kramer says, liberals should resurrect political tools for controlling the courts that presidents from Jefferson to Lincoln embraced -- from Congressional filibusters of controversial nominees to efforts to strip the court of jurisdiction to hear controversial cases. Although these tools were used by conservatives to resist the civil rights movement, Kramer laments that they have been repudiated since the 60's by an unlikely alliance of antipopulists on both the left and right. 'From a historical perspective, it is a truly bizarre state of affairs,' he says.
JEFFREY ROSEN
THE 4TH ANNUAL: YEAR IN IDEAS",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"AND THEN THERE WAS FRANK
Representative Barney Frank criticizes the Human Rights Campaign's contribution to the National Republican Campaign Committee, calling it ""stupid""  and suggesting that this money will go to Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich and their anti-gay agenda (""And Then There Was Frank,"" by Claudia Dreifus, Feb. 4).
It is disappointing to see him mischaracterize the contribution.
The facts are these: Out of $1 million to be donated in the 1995 and '96 election cycle, the Human Rights Campaign made a single $5,000 contribution to the N.R.C.C., specifically to support Republicans who believe that lesbians and  gay men should not be discriminated against and who, like most Americans, want a strong response to the AIDS epidemic.
Though I am a committed supporter of the Democratic Party, freedom and equal  rights for lesbian and gay Americans are not questions of party affiliation and  should never be relegated to mere partisan concerns.
FRED P. HOCHBERG New York
Co-Chairman, Human Rights Campaign Public Policy Committee",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"WHEN MEN HIT WOMEN
Jan Hoffman's article ""When Men Hit Women"" (Feb. 16) hit me hard. In the end, it came down to the final paragraph: ""Ellen Pence's advice to women in battering relationships is simply this: Leave."" I was an abused wife for 10 years, until I finally got the courage to leave my husband last spring. While Pence's advice is entirely appropriate -- because men who abuse their women will not change -- it's never as easy as all that. For 10 years, I didn't even identify myself as a battered wife. I was desperately trying to fix something I believed in, my marriage, and to help someone I loved, my husband. In the early days, I cried to friends and they offered to come get me, but I always said no.
For 10 years, I lived in terror, worried that I would say or do something to set him off. At first I was devastated every time he got angry. After a few years, I stopped caring. I stopped feeling anything at all.
People think that battered wives are co-conspirators, that they participate in the abusive relationship and get something out of it. Believe me, they don't. They are trapped, under a spell. I wanted to wake up.
If you suspect someone is being abused, she probably is. Risk getting involved. Risk alienating her. She wants to be rescued. I know. No one wants to be abused. NAME WITHHELD
Fort Lee, N.J.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Ice Sturm
'What is it with hockey?' McGrath asks. As the father of a peewee goalie, I'll tell him. Hockey is a passionate game that requires commitment and character. It requires toughness, both mental and physical. McGrath asks why, in an age of parental effort to reduce risks, we would let our kids play such a rough and aggressive game. I would remind him of the men of Delta Force, on the ground in Somalia and now in Afghanistan, who routinely wear tricked-out hockey helmets. I would remind him of the citizen-athletes in Pennsylvania who prevented even more casualties on Sept. 11 thanks to their teamwork and commitment. I would remind him that life is risk.
David Castro  North Hollywood, Calif.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Imposing Values
All this talk about family values reminds me of my grandfather, the patriarch I happen to have known best. I come from a long line of middle-class Midwesterners with Southern roots. My cousins and I learned to ""ma'am"" and ""sir"" our elders early on; I don't think I actually said ""no"" to an adult until I was in my early 20's. My grandfather was a lifelong Republican.
I mention these particulars to pre-empt a credentials challenge on the part of those who have elected themselves the guardians of ""family values."" The thing is, my grandfather, while he came from a large and close-knit family and then sired another one, had no ""family values."" I remember him having only values.
My cousins and I were raised with precepts. One of these happened to be ""throw the bums out every eight years,"" but this essay isn't about politics, so I'll set that one aside. A favorite precept of my grandfather's, outside of election years, was ""actions speak louder than words."" We were often treated to this one when we tried to smile and sweet-talk our way out of the consequences of some misbehavior (like the time I was tossed water balloons out of the front windows of my grandparents' house as my grandmother was carrying groceries up the steps). In light of this precept, I wonder what my grandfather would say about the habit his party has got into these days of loudly claiming family values as their own when, over the past 12 years, they have presided over the largest shift of wealth to the rich since the 1920's.
As a man with five children who struggled through both the agricultural depression in the 20's and the Great Depression in the 30's, my grandfather clearly understood the stresses that this sort of wholesale destruction of the middle class and profound impoverishment of the working class bring to bear on ""family values,"" not to mention to families themselves. He knew that families do not hold together sheerly through an act of moral willpower, however they are exhorted to do so by those who live easier lives. I think he might have been suspicious.
My grandfather did not hold members of other families to different standards than the standards he held for our family. Once, after letting off a hitchhiker who then failed to thank him for the ride, he collared the ""youth,"" as they were then often called, dragged him back into the car and gave him the sort of lecture on manners that my cousins and I were frequently subject to. His values were social and expansive, not centered on distinguishing and separating our family from others less or more fortunate. While I do not know my grandfather's sentiments on abortion, I do know that George Bush's position -- that abortion, though regrettable, would be a choice for his granddaughter, even as he seeks to deny that option to others -- would have mystified if not incensed him.
My grandfather was a religious man with a beautiful baritone voice; he knew many hymns and attended church every Sunday. According to another of his precepts, often stated, that ""comparisons are odious,"" he did not compare his church with others and find the others wanting, nor did he ever discuss his religious views unless asked, much less impose them on anyone, inside the family or outside. He certainly would not have considered imposing them on countless strangers by political means.
My cousins and I often discuss whether my grandfather was a racist. Certainly, he was a man of his time and place -- he lived most of his life in that former slave state of Missouri and he died before the civil rights revolution had really taken hold. It was my grandmother, a Western Democrat from a Progressive family who, after school desegregation, welcomed without batting an eyelid the black child I brought home for lunch from second grade. My grandfather happened to be at work, but he was proud of the fact that his own father, a doctor, had readily cared for both the white and black populations of the small town they lived in.
And I often mull over another incident, related to me by my aunt after my grandfather's death. At the time, the family was living in an Illinois community with a dusk curfew for black people, not an uncommon civic measure in the 30's. It was summer, after supper, pouring rain, and my grandfather saw a young black man take shelter under a tree in the front yard. Without a word, he got up and went out into the rain. He asked the young man whether he had carfare to the next town over, which had no curfew. When the man admitted that he didn't, my grandfather pressed a coin into his hand and came into the house.
I have often asked myself what this incident means. My grandfather did not exert himself against the unfair law. His action could be viewed as condescending. But I have come to see it as thoughtful and humane. He did not feel so removed from that young black man that he could not see things from his point of view, and he did not wish him harm.
I can't help thinking that he would have strongly disapproved of the strategy of the Willie Horton ads, of phrases like ""welfare queen"" and of Pat Buchanan's call to ""take back
our
cities and take back
our
culture and take back
our
country."" Italics mine.
My grandfather didn't look to politicians to mimic how his family worked, and thereby give his family a stamp of approval. I doubt he cared how theirs worked. He knew and honored the difference between the private world of belief and the public world of action. He expected elected officials to do their jobs, and he expected the voters and the press to do
their
nearly impossible jobs of keeping the politicians either honestly performing the public business or out of office.
A worldly man, my grandfather might not have been surprised at the deeply cynical posturing of those self-proclaimed guardians of family values we see asserting their righteousness all over the media. But my grandfather had a terrific sense of humor, and I know he would have laughed and laughed at the idea of taking them as moral models.
HERS Jane Smiley won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for ""A Thousand Acres"" (Alfred A. Knopf).",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Running Free
Gerald Yutzy has a decision to make. Like other Amish teenagers, Gerald at 16 entered his rumspringa, a period of 'running around' without parental restrictions that typically lasts a few years, during which he has to choose whether or not to join the church. He got a job and indulged in Levi's, cigarettes and, often enough, sex, drugs and zippers. Eventually, 85 to 90 percent of Gerald's peers choose to enter the fold. But five years into freedom, Gerald still isn't sure which life he wants.
LIVES",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Our Journal
After the actress Lynn Redgrave learned she had breast cancer in December 2002, she chose to undergo surgery, followed by a half-year regimen of chemotherapy and radiation. She also asked her daughter Annabel Clark, then a photography student at Parsons School of Design, if she would photograph the course of treatment and recovery. It was an idea that had occurred to Annabel as well: while her mother documented the experience in her journal, she would take pictures of the healing process -- and in so doing, become part of that process, for both her mother and herself.
'Goodbye to a part of me. It's done its job -- it's been a good nurturer of my children.' . . . Time to say goodbye.
'Went to the service at the Congregational church. . . . By the end I feel peaceful and optimistic. . . . A way to be part of the community. A way to feel I am not alone in my worries. . . . Horrible upsetting phone calls regarding Annabel photographing at chemo, etc. Thank God that finally got cleared up. I cried so much. I realized how much her documenting this means to me.'
'I've done my exercises, but my scar tissue grips and grabs like a tight iron corset. I don't feel pretty. I feel a little sad. . . . I need to get my papers and records under control. . . . It's all about order, I've decided. The pleasure I get and the sense of my life in place, amidst the things that I can't control. . . . As I do things like fold my napkins into my linen closet. . . . Or leaving clean clothes in my closet. Logs stacked. Dishes clean. Garbage out. Cats fed. Their hallway neat. It all gives me the warmest satisfaction.'",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Year in Ideas
I found it intriguing that in the future, we may be able to listen to cell vibrations to determine if a cell is cancerous. It would be great for the body to vibrate and say, 'Everything is fine -- come back next year.'
Martin Blumberg  Woodbury, N.Y.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Infrared Pet Dry Room, The
In September, at the FCI Seoul International Dog Show, the Korean engineering company Daun ENG introduced what may be the most radical new dog product since the chew toy. The Infrared Pet Dry Room is, as its name suggests, a chamber into which you place a wet dog in order to dry him or her via infrared radiation. Because infrared rays penetrate the dermis, they warm and dry an animal more quickly than a blow-dryer does, and they do so without resulting in the kinds of skin rashes that blow-dryers often cause.
The downside of infrared rays, or at least of the Infrared Pet Dry Room, is that no matter how many times you are assured of its safety, it's hard not think that a dog stepping inside the machine will be roasted faster than a Ball Park frank. The other worry is that the experience of being locked inside a glowing red box might cause a dog some anxiety. But in a recent interview with Aving, an online product reviewer in Korea, Kim Sun Man, C.E.O. of Daun ENG, tried to put skeptics at ease. 'We actually had about 100 dogs tested and found some of them produced a secretion while being in the machine,' he said. 'But most of them stayed calm.'
Joel Lovell",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"On Language; Misrule of Thumb
'We had to go by rule of thumb,' said Louis Katz, vice president of the George Washington University, explaining some funding problems to The gw Hatchet, an independent student newspaper.
This seemingly innocent figure of speech drew fire from a female student, Jess Brinn, who wrote: 'For the unaware, in English vernacular, rule of thumb refers to an obvious solution of doing things the way they have always been done. However, the phrase originated in English common law, where a man was permitted to beat his wife as long as the rod he used was no bigger than the width of his thumb.' She excoriated the 'misogynistic connotations ... disrespectful to women and men alike,' and while assuming the university official intended no disrespect, noted, 'We should all know what we're saying and where the phrases we use come from.'
So we should. The president of G.W., Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, sends me the student paper and asks, 'Can this possibly be true?'
The irate student could point to a brouhaha that arose in 1782, when Francis Buller, an English judge, was said to have made a remark in public along those lines. He was promptly jumped on by several caricaturists, including the first great political caricaturist, James Gillray; on Nov. 27 of that year, he depicted a berobed judge with an armload of sticks saying: 'Who wants a cure for a nasty wife? Here's a nice Family Amusement for Winter Evenings.' Meanwhile a wife is shouting, 'Murder!' and a husband is shouting back: 'Murder, hey? It's Law you Bitch! It's not bigger than my Thumb!'
In his time, Gillray set the standard for satiric savagery, making today's cartoonists like Paul Conrad and Pat Oliphant appear as gentle as Charles Schulz. The pioneering Gillray drew drawings that drew blood, taking on even the feared journalistic vituperator William Cobbett; by the time the caricaturist died insane in 1815, he had forever saddled the eminent jurist, Buller, with the name 'Judge Thumb.'
Thus, the notion that rule of thumb has its roots in the subjugation of women has a history. But a u.c.l.a. professor of English, Henry Ansgar Kelly, in the September 1994 Journal of Legal Education, titles his lengthy scholarly investigation 'Rule of Thumb and the Folklaw [pun intended] of the Husband's Stick.' His conclusion about the origin of the phrase in wife-beating: 'Rule of thumb has received a bad rap.'
That's because its first appearance in print is cited in the o.e.d. as 1692, nearly a century before Gillray's 'Judge Thumb.' Sir William Hope, in 'The Compleat Fencing Master,' wrote, 'What he doth, he doth by rule of Thumb, and not by Art.' It was reported in 1721 in Kelly's Scottish Proverbs: 'No Rule so good as Rule of Thumb.' The meaning is 'a roughly practical method, or an assertion based on experience.'
Origin? Could be that carpenters used the width of their thumbs to approximate an inch, or that artists held up their thumbs to gain perspective on a distant object, or that gardeners used their green thumbs as guides to depth of seeding.
The idea that rule of thumb is derived from an early form of spousal abuse is in error. It's 'folk etymology,' amusing, even plausible with its first citation two centuries old, but inaccurate. (The gender-sensitive will not, however, denounce it sexistly as an old wives' tale.)
WANDERING WORDS
'When I use a word,' said Humpty-Dumpty, ' ...it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'
That is the voice of the hard-edged prescriptivist, in the quotation most often cited by those of us in the usage dodge to all of you semantic drifters who let meanings go fuzzy.
And yet years later, Lewis Carroll, author of the book in which the Mother Goose character Humpty-Dumpty makes that linguistic assertion, wrote, 'You know, words mean more than we mean to express when we use them.'
That takes the opposite view; descriptivists, like most lexicographers, hold that words have a range of meanings that change with the times, and can carry messages different from what the speakers choose them to mean.
I found that apparent conflict in Carroll's thinking about language in a recent article by Robert K. Merton, the great Columbia sociologist, now 85 and the proud father of this year's winner of the Nobel Prize in economics.
'Here is Humpty-Dumpty speaking for the would-be exactitude of scientific denotation,' writes Merton, 'intent on abolishing overtones and undertones with all their interpreted ambiguities. And there is his reflective creator speaking, many years later, of the shades of meaning to be found in humanistic connotation, with its often more evident variety of meanings we need not wittingly mean.'
Barnacles attach themselves to words, as crustaceans to ships' hulls, freighting a term with meaning beyond the ship itself. Merton found a resonation of Carroll's ambiguity in the works of Henry Adams: 'No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean,' wrote the historian Adams, 'for words are slippery and thought is viscous.'
Pity about the choice of the last word in that quotation; Adams meant 'adhesive, sticky,' still the dictionary definition, but most people now associate viscous with viscosity, having to do with the flow of oil in a cold engine. Besides, viscous looks like vicious. Better to have written 'words are slippery and thought is sticky.'
Why sticky and not tacky, which also means 'adhesive'? Because tacky has been barnacled by usage with another sense as 'low-class, unstylish, icky.' Not a word that means what I choose it to mean.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Introduction
Lisa Belkin's cover article drew graphic mail corroborating her report on people who have been driven from their homes by toxic mold. And others said that, rather than seeking a remedy in the courts, the focus should be on finding the cause (air-conditioning? humidity?) and a solution.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Silent Green
gdiapers
Jason and Kimberley Graham-Nye could have named their product the Eco-Diaper. After all, one of their chief motivations for selling a 'flushable diaper system' is to offer an alternative to disposable diapers, which contribute to landfills and take years to biodegrade. But instead they went with the name gDiapers, which doesn't mean anything.
Well, they would put it differently: they say that the 'g' could stand for 'green,' but it could also mean 'groovy.' The point is to leave things vague enough that a consumer might be drawn in by gDiapers' fashionably bright colors, comfort or perhaps just the novelty factor, and then learn that, 'P.S., they save the planet,' Jason suggests. While saving the planet seems like sort of too big a deal to reduce to a postscript, the Graham-Nyes figure too much emphasis on the ecofactor would restrict their product's appeal to what they call 'dark green' consumers. GDiapers were introduced in the U.S. just six months ago in a handful of green-friendly stores like the New Seasons Market in Portland, Ore., but after a successful test run at Whole Foods outlets on the West Coast, that chain will soon distribute the product nationally.
GDiapers are positioned as a third option for parents facing the familiar cloth-or-disposable choice. A $25 starter set comes with two pairs of washable 'pants' (in 'groovy' red, orange, blue or green) and 10 removable liners; when a liner is soiled, it's flushed down the toilet. A refill pack of 32 flushable liners costs $14, roughly the same as 40 Huggies. The Graham-Nyes did not invent the product: they found it at a baby-products expo in Australia, where it has been on the market since 1991 under the name Baby Weenees Eco Nappy Products. They loved the product and felt strongly that it could be successful in other parts of the world -- provided it was given a different image, with more broad appeal. So they bought the rights to market and sell it outside of Australia and New Zealand.
Although greenness seems trendier than ever, its limitations as a selling point are the subject of a recent article in the journal Environment, titled 'Avoiding Green Marketing Myopia.' The authors (Jacquelyn Ottman, Edwin Stafford and Cathy Hartman) argue that many ecofriendly products fail precisely because the companies that make them put too much emphasis on the whole save-the-planet thing. To reach the mainstream, they say, such products need the attributes any product needs: cost effectiveness, convenience, status and so on. The article's marquee example is a light bulb that flopped when it was positioned as Earth-friendly but took off when it was reintroduced as a money-saver. In an interview, Stafford and Hartman pointed to the Prius, which enjoys a whopping price premium for reasons that probably have as much to do with status as with saving the planet.
Status is now the most familiar selling tactic for many greenish products, and it is clearly the factor that the Graham-Nyes hope to introduce into the convenience-versus-ethics predicament of the diaper buyer; in fact, they specifically say they want to be 'the Toyota Prius of diapers.' GDiapers are more work than disposables, and while the company says the product complies with various official guidelines that make them safely flushable, there's also a bit on their site about how to handle the 'icky' toilet-clog possibility. Still, for parents who find cloth diapers an unacceptable hassle, they provide a new way to obtain the status (or smugness) of avoiding disposables.
The Graham-Nyes have encouraged gDiapers zealots to spread the word about the product through a 'Pioneers' program. And from these core, early consumers they have picked up a fresh perspective. Dads, it turns out, have a 'different response' to gDiapers, Jason says. 'What they love is that there's no garbage.' Soiled disposable diapers are often stuffed into a device that crushes them down by the score, where they sit until they're eventually hauled out with the trash. Stafford, a marketing professor and a father himself, says he can imagine bragging to other parents about finding a way to avoid disposables on garbage night. 'The nonsmell factor' doesn't sound sexy, he says, but it's definitely a concept that even the most eco-indifferent parent can understand. And those, of course, are the parents the Graham-Nyes want most of all.
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 7-23-06: CONSUMED",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"In the Face of Death
I agree that Jeremy Gross's childhood was terrible, but I found it disturbing that his lawyer was allowed to use it to manipulate the emotions of the jury. By the end of the trial, the jury regarded Gross as much a victim as the person he killed. Maybe I'm being unsympathetic, but I think there is something truly wrong with that.
Kira Glassman  New York",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Way We Live Now: 4-22-01: The Ethicist; Help-Wanted Help
I am a recruiter for a temp agency. Many companies that use us practice nationality-, sex-, age- or race-based discrimination. I can cooperate, making me personally guilty and legally liable. I can dispatch applicants solely on ability, knowing they are not welcome. Or I can cease to deal with such clients, forfeiting revenue. Is there a positive alternative to simply leaving the industry? -- Anonymous, N.C.
What you describe is not only unethical; it is criminal. 'This has been illegal since July 1965,' says Daniel Pollitt, the Kenan Professor of Law Emeritus at the University of North Carolina. 'Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids most of this. Age and disability discrimination were added later.'
While it is difficult for a single individual to resist such pervasive iniquity, passive acceptance is not an honorable option. Fortunately, there is the positive solution you seek: call the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency charged with enforcing Title VII. And, Pollitt adds, the E.E.O.C. is conveniently located: 'They've got offices in Charlotte and in Raleigh.'
I am an attractive female, almost 30, attending college, and I like one of my professors. He is in my age range and is single but says it is not ethical to date students. I understand that and have offered to drop his class. So what gives? Could this just be his way of saying, 'Hey, I am not interested'? -- J.W., Fresno, Calif.
Many colleges have rules governing this situation. If you violate them, you can get the object of your affections into serious trouble, and there's nothing seductive about that. Such codes are designed to protect students from sexual harassment, always a risk when there is a power imbalance in a couple -- for example, when one gives grades to the other. So first learn what the rules are. If your school forbids relationships only between a professor and a current student, then wait until next semester to pursue this fellow. Consider him an investment in your sexual future.
Love is notorious for disregarding any rules that try to govern it, and it is true that more than one student-teacher intrigue has evolved into a happy (or not so happy) marriage. However, if Professor Dreamboat declines to date you, it doesn't matter if he's guided by his head or his heart (if those are the relevant body parts): you're out of luck either way.
My well-fed and well-cared-for cat is an inveterate 'mouser.' She often returns from hunting with a live mouse and then begins her play ritual -- throwing it in the air and catching it, swatting it around, etc. Eventually, she eats it whole. Should I intervene and save the mouse such cruel suffering, or should I let nature take its course? -- Jeffrey Adler, Salem, N.Y.
Much that is natural is entirely dreadful -- smallpox comes immediately to mind -- and so we persistently seek to thwart nature's most painful manifestations. That's pretty much what civilization is all about. You ought not passively tolerate cruelty to animals, even a mouse, just because it's practiced by a cat. Would you let your cat rob a bank and rough up the patrons? (You know, if it were a superintelligent cat that could write a robbery note and hold a gun?) You should intervene not to reform the cat but to protect the mouse from suffering.
Incidentally, if your cat is so well fed from eating canned food in your kitchen, she is not exactly in a state of nature as I (and all those animal shows on public TV) understand it.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Fear and Laptops On the Campaign Trail
I love the way the mainstream press finds itself scratching its collective head, wondering if political blogs are a 'good' thing. Get over it.
If not for the bloggers, stories you guys refuse to tell would drop into the memory hole forever.
Don't be bitter because they're doing your job.
Delia Coleman  Chicago",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Fear Itself
I read Krugman's lucid and comprehensive analysis right through to the end. While I still don't know what's going to happen in the next months or years, I now understand the factors that influence the economy.
Diana Quick  Brooklyn",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"THE TRIALS OF BOB PACKWOOD
Guilty of what? Bob Packwood may be guilty of suffering from a mood disorder that often accompanies intellectual brilliance. In Trip Gabriel's exposition, the Senator exhibits mood swings, ranging from almost total loss of self-esteem to campaign work of manic proportions to amorous outbursts.
Mood-swing problems, known also as bipolar affective disorder, have a good prognosis, without loss of intellectual capacity. The stresses of Packwood's political life alone might account for a latent tendency to this sort of depression.  GEORGE B. JOHNSON, M.D. Fairfield, Conn.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Odds of That
Lisa Belkin's article on probability is one of the best I've seen. Those who go to Atlantic City or Las Vegas in hopes of winning big should read it. Maybe their life savings could be protected. It is too bad a course of simple probability isn't taught in grade school.
William J. Garner  Yardley, Pa.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The World According to Powell
It is always difficult to critique a man you respect, but having served in combat as a marine, both in Vietnam and the gulf war, I have sadly reached this conclusion with regard to Secretary Powell: good man, timid general; linear-thinking company man, always with a company plan. And, the crazy paradox of it all: if Paul Wolfowitz had worn the general's stars and Powell the statesmen's suit during the gulf war and beyond, we just may have precluded the Sept. 11 debacle. Great wartime leadership takes more than being the world's most popular man. When we need George Patton, we get Ike.
Joseph A. Conforti  South Easton, Mass.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Sunday May 26, 1996: WAR IS HELL (crossed out) FUN;Tanked Up
Beating plowshares into swords, a farmer in Collingbourne Ducis, England, has turned his wheat fields into a training ground for novice tank drivers. The half-day course at the Tank Driving Center at Highland Park (it costs L95, about $145) teaches weekend warriors to handle a 750-horsepower, 55-ton Chieftain tank over 20 acres of hills, curves and craters. Chris Vincent purchased the first of his 20 tanks at a post-cold-war tag sale in 1993. ""We just went out one day and  bought one for riding around the farm,"" he says. ""After word spread, people we hadn't seen in years began dropping by. Soon it became apparent that we had a business on our hands, so we advertised and received a tremendous response.""
One recent Sunday at the center, 70 miles west of London, Michael Dukakis imitators included a bespectacled grandmother, couples on dates and a former military sniper, who proudly recounted his successful kills. (No accidental tank kills here; guns have been deactivated.)
The school intends to expand its theater of operations. A cafe will replace a horse stable, and a barn may one day house a souvenir shop. There are even plans to restore an armored personnel carrier and outfit it with a dual steering system like those used by driving schools. ""It'll be a family tank,"" says John Curtis, an instructor, ""great for kids who can't reach the pedals.""",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"A Friend For All Seasons
MY FRIENDS HAVE GIRLFRIENDS from day camp, from second grade, from nursery school. I, on the other hand, have Harry. We have known each other for 30 years. He is my oldest friend.
I do not have old girlfriends -- although I wish I did, just as I wish I were two inches taller or marginally less moody, more of a regular gal. But I inherited from my mother a tendency to take everything personally, and from my father, a dogged ambition; the combination made for a cut-and-run adolescence.
Which is not to say I was an outcast. Just that I was in a hurry, wary of becoming comfortable.
This made Harry the perfect pal. He defied category -- interested equally in  magic tricks, poetry and alcohol. He was mysterious without any of the flirty baggage that made other boys so complicated. Harry told me he would be dead before 40, like the other men in his family. He did not have time for the usual  teen-age rituals.
We were sarcastic and restless. And we were comfortably mismatched, which may be the key to our longevity. He still remembers the ""lunch from another planet""  that my mother served when he dropped by one summer afternoon -- cold borscht with sour cream, an unremarkable meal in our Jewish home. I found his quiet, dark, fatherless house -- I cannot recall his mother's feet making any sound as  they hit the floor -- a comforting escape from my combustible family.
We went for endless bicycle rides along Lake Michigan. I appeared in one of Harry's poems (""damned deodand of bike and Jewess""), which I immediately tucked  into my wallet, and subsequent wallets, for years. While I cannot lay my hands on it right now, I know it is in this house somewhere.
When I picked the wrong college, Harry, a sophomore at a men's school nearby, showed up for a big football weekend so I would have a date for the scheduled festivities. And he believed that I might become a writer -- no big deal today,  maybe, but a minority opinion at the dawn of the women's movement.
He is the only person with whom I have been falling-down drunk -- six whisky  sours, The Orange Bar, Syracuse, 1968. I may be the only person who knows he used to have a manual typewriter at his bedside so he could record his dreams the instant he woke up. I liked to listen to his dreams. I led such a matter-of-fact existence -- Rice Krispies, matching kilts and knee socks. Harry  was my escape.
At this point in the narrative my husband likes to smirk. He thinks this is all polite euphemism. He refers to Harry as ""my wife's high-school boyfriend.""
Yes and no. We dated a little during Harry's senior year, and the summer after he graduated. And there was a fervid interlude when we were both in college, long nights of sexual brinkmanship in a deserted fraternity house. He said please, I said no. I changed my mind and he held back. We were never lovers.
This is where the story usually ends. People don't know how to be friends with someone who never wanted them or doesn't want them anymore. But Harry and I were lucky. Somehow we understood that this was not rejection. It was fumbling,  of the late-teen-age, presexual revolution variety. Nothing personal; a rehearsal for later life.
We escaped with our affections intact -- but three years later, we had a disagreement on a topic neither of us remembers and retreated to opposite sides  of the country.
The annual transcontinental phone calls began in the mid-70's. Steadfast as ever, Harry would call late at night with a grocery list of questions, and we would talk until we caught up. I called him once, when an abrasive first marriage made me wonder whether I had ever been a decent person; Harry was the only one with a historical perspective. He showed up in Los Angeles in 1978 in a rumpled summer suit and with a swollen jaw, the result of emergency dental work. When he came back in 1985 we were both better off: I had a second sweet husband and a new book; he had a computer software company and a businessman's dark-blue suit.
Then, in 1990, he and his new wife stopped by on their way to see a doctor in San Diego. Harry had made it to just past 40, but barely. He had already undergone open-heart surgery; he had pills, he was on a no-fat diet, but still his arteries threatened to close up.
It had been 20 years since I kissed him, and we never had the kind of wonderfully sloppy physical relationship that women have so easily with each other. But I wanted to do something. Harry once extracted me from a vitriolic family picnic, and then sat with me while I sobbed about the great injustice of  being born. Now I listened to him crack wise about the coronary Roto-Rooter -- and I did not know what to do to rescue him.
So I handed him our then-infant daughter. I was one of those loopy late Moms  who believe our children personify nothing less than hope, promise and magic. Maybe Sarah's invincibility would rub off on Harry. Given the careful vocabulary of our friendship, it was all I could think of to offer.
Go head, sneer. Six years later, Harry has just become a father himself. We allow ourselves a sweet joke here: perhaps some day Sarah and young William will meet and fall in love. We like, now, to talk about the passage of time -- Harry, who always thought he had too little of it, and me, still eternally in a hurry.
Our friendship exists at more of an emotional distance than I imagine it would have been between old women friends. We visit the past for entertainment and its charm -- but never long enough to make judgments about what we did or did not do. The important thing at this point is to maintain, because there is much at stake: Harry has known me longer than any other woman in his life (except his mom), and I have known him longer than any man except my dad.
My husband has a friend named Harry who lives down the street and is our daughter's godfather, and recently Sarah wanted to figure out how to distinguish one Harry from the other. Calling them new Harry and old Harry seemed wrong, since they both have been our friends for decades. We settled on ""our Harry,"" for her godfather, and ""my Harry,"" for my friend.
He, however, calls Sarah's godfather ""the other Harry,"" wishing to assert his pre-eminence in the field.
That's O.K. with me.
HERS Karen Stabiner is writing a book on the war againstbreast cancer. She lives in Santa Monica, Calif.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"ADVENTURES OF A REPUBLICAN REVOLUTIONARY
It's very easy nowadays to tell whether your feature story will cast a positive or negative light on its subject. The reader need only look at the cover photo. When you disapprove (as with Mark Neumann's politics), it will be an extreme and repellent close-up -- eyes, nose and mouth only, with every pore, hair follicle and furrow in sharp focus. The reader's natural reaction is physically to push him (and his politics) away.
EDWARD SARAYDAR  London, Ontario
EDITORS' NOTE: Neumann defeated his Democratic opponent, Lydia Spottswood, by 1,988 votes in the First Congressional District in Wisconsin.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Disability Gulag
It takes Harriet McBryde Johnson (Nov. 23), who can't get out of bed by herself, to tell us what sovereign creatures we are: that the soul, mind and spirit define a human being.
Annie Gottlieb  New York",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Design 2002
You needn't pay $500 for interestingly worn-out jeans. Just visit any poor nation -- Haiti, for example -- and you'll see laboring men on every street in splendid examples. No doubt they'd gladly exchange theirs for a new pair, all for around $20. Sure, a trip to Haiti will cost you, but you'll get a bonus: a sense of how obscene it is to pay $500 so you can play at being one of the world's working poor.
The Rev. Joan A. Shelton  Washington",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"What a College Education Buys
How important is college to Americans? Put it this way: When Philip Zelikow, the State Department counselor who worked often on Israel-Palestine issues, resigned in November, he cited 'some truly riveting obligations to college bursars.' That's how important college is -- it's more important than peace in the Middle East.
The Democrats' promise last fall to make college more affordable for the middle class was a no-lose gambit. It pleased everybody. When the new majority voted in January to halve the interest rate on federally guaranteed student loans, 124 Republicans joined them. 'I just think that we need more of our kids going to school,' said Representative Roscoe Bartlett, a Maryland Republican. But given that 45 percent of U.S. high-school graduates already enroll in four-year colleges, how dire can this 'need' be?
Certain influential Americans have begun to reassert the old wisdom that a college education is one of those things, like sky diving and liverwurst, that are both superb and not for everybody. Not long ago, the conservative social scientist Charles Murray wrote a three-part series in The Wall Street Journal in which he attacked the central assumption behind President George Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative. The idea that 'educators already know how to educate everyone and that they just need to try harder' is a costly wrong impression, he wrote. Not all schoolchildren have the intellectual capacity to reach 'basic achievement' levels. In college, similar limitations apply. The number of Americans with the brains to master the most challenging college classes, Murray argued, is probably closer to 15 percent than to 45.
Of course, part of the reason Americans think everyone should go to college is for its noneducational uses. Anyone can benefit from them. Colleges are the country's most effective marriage brokers. They are also -- assuming you don't study too hard -- a means of redistributing four years' worth of leisure time from the sad stub-end of life to the prime of it. (Just as youth shouldn't be wasted on the young, retirement shouldn't be wasted on the old.)
But the price of college long ago outstripped the value of these goods. The most trustworthy indicator that an American college education is something worthwhile is that parents nationwide -- and even worldwide -- are eager to pay up to $180,000 to get one for their children. This is a new development. A quarter-century ago, even the top Ivy League schools were a bargain at $10,000 a year, but they received fewer applications than they do now. Presumably, college is steadily more expensive because its benefits are steadily more visible. In 1979, according to the economists Frank Levy and Richard Murnane, a 30-year-old college graduate earned 17 percent more than a 30-year-old high-school grad. Now the gap is over 50 percent.
These numbers don't tell us much about how people get educated at a typical American college offers. You can go to college to get civilized (in the sense that your thoughts about your triumphs and losses at the age of 55 will be colored and deepened by an encounter with Horace or Yeats at the age of 19). Or you can go there to get qualified (in the sense that Salomon Brothers will snap you up, once it sees your B.A. in economics from M.I.T.). Most often, parents must think they are paying for the latter product. Great though Yeats may be, 40-some-odd thousand seems a steep price to pay for his acquaintance. The timeless questions that college provokes -- like 'What the hell are you going to do with a degree in English?' -- must get shouted across dinner tables with increasing vehemence as college costs rise inexorably.
But the education kids are rewarded for may not be the same education their parents think they are paying for. Economists would say that a college degree is partly a 'signaling' device -- it shows not that its holder has learned something but rather that he is the kind of person who could learn something. Colleges sort as much as they teach. Even when they don't increase a worker's productivity, they help employers find the most productive workers, and a generic kind of productivity can be demonstrated as effectively in medieval-history as in accounting classes.
Moreover, if you're not planning on becoming, say, a doctor, the benefits of diligent study can be overstated. In recent decades, the biggest rewards have gone to those whose intelligence is deployable in new directions on short notice, not to those who are locked into a single marketable skill, however thoroughly learned and accredited. Most of the employees who built up, say, Google in its early stages could never have been trained to do so, because neither the company nor the idea of it existed when they were getting their educations. Under such circumstances, it's best not to specialize too much. Something like the old ideal of a 'liberal education' has had a funny kind of resurgence, minus the steeping in Western culture. It is hard to tell whether this success vindicates liberal education's defenders (who say it 'teaches you how to think') or its detractors (who say it camouflages a social elite as a meritocratic one).
Maybe college cannot become much more accessible. The return on college degrees must eventually fall as more people get them, and probably not everyone wants one. In France, people often refer to their education as a 'formation.' The word implies that an increase in your specialized capabilities is bought at a price in flexibility and breadth of knowledge. In most times and places, this bitter trade-off is worth it. But for the past few years at least, the particular advantage of an American degree has been that it doesn't qualify you to do anything in particular.
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 2-25-07 Christopher Caldwell is a contributing writer for the magazine.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Packing It In
Like a lot of things, it started with the kids. But these days, the urban backpack army has no enlistment restrictions, age or otherwise, and the recruits, like the packs they carry, come in all sizes and shapes. For the metropolitan portage, briefcases and handbags are the flagging totes of tradition; backpacks are for the ergonomically correct. Some people select packs for haute fashion rather than high transport, while others remain true to the trail-breaking originals. Whichever, the veterans do know how to turn their backs on people in the elevator without committing battery. But what inquiring minds really want to know is, What's in there anyway?
Crystal, 10, fifth grader Pack: 12 pounds
Binder Homework Two text books Work sheets Folders Assignment book Spiral notebook ""Island of the Blu Dolphins,"" a novel ""A Wind in the Door"" (""my personal book"") Reinforcements Pens Keys $1 A handful of change
John, 28, third-year associate at law firm Pack: 8 pounds
Snoopy birthday card from mother Antonio Carlos Jobim CD Fake Oakley sunglasses missing a lens The missing lens Two Chapsticks Contact lens moisture drops Two Loews Theater mints Two boxes of matches, one from coffee shop called Limbo and one from cigar store, Nat Sherman The New York Times Workout clothes Paul Mitchell leave-in conditioner Purpose Dual Treatment lotion The New York Review of Books ""A History of the Jews"" paperback Two tokens 86~ in change Rolled-up striped tie Design for birthday card for ex-girlfriend ""Void if Detached"" stub Saks receipt Loose pumpkin seeds One dirty athletic sock Car voucher
Robert, 74, actor Pack: 4 pounds
Pictures and resumes Aspirin Two pairs of glasses ""Lew Hunter's Screenwriting"" paperback Pens Sticks of Extra gum Asthma inhaler Ziploc bag containing toothbrush, toothpaste, earplugs, wash-ups, nail clippers
Raime, 13 eighth grader Pack: 18 pounds (""usually about 25"") Empty royal blue insulated lunch bag Two French books Algebra book Latin book Big spiral notebook with Nirvana sticker Accordion folder with ""Vegetarians Taste Better"" sticker ""Night,"" a memoir by Elie Wiesel Stolen ""Disordre"" baseball cap Wite-Out dots Calculator Latin flash cards ""Sergio and odair Assad Guitars"" CD (on loan) ""Type to Learn"" diskette Bus-pass holder without bus pass Chapstick
Taryn, 18, ballet dancer Pack: 10 pounds
Warm-up clothes Pair of jazz shoes Two pairs of pointe shoes Oxblood Cambridge organizer Aleve pain reliever Cassettes Walkman Earphones Sunglasses Lipstick Cinnamon dental floss and needle) (""for sewing my pointe shoes"") Plenty-pack of Extra peppermint gum One crystal (""my birthstone"")
Abigail, 21, sales associate Pack: 6 pounds
Empty Tupperware sandwich holder Pint-size bottle of Evian Folder Cosmolitan magazine House keys Car keys Lotion Pens Saline solution Three packs of gum One pack of Marlboro Lights Napkins blue lighter Lord & Taylor ID pin
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1995: BAGGAGE CLAIMS",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Breaking Glass
he morning of my wedding, my father gave me a piece of unexpected advice. 'When you step on the glass,' he said, 'why don't you imagine that all the doubts and fears of childhood are inside and that you're smashing them too?'
He was referring to one of the more mysterious customs at a Jewish wedding, in which the bridegroom stamps on a glass, marking the end of the ceremony. I liked my father's suggestion, though I was so afraid that the wineglass, wrapped in a white handkerchief, would shoot out unbroken (as I had once seen happen) that I forgot everything in my pulverizing zeal. But I was touched by his words, particularly because breaking the glass had already assumed a symbolic place in my mind -- though one connected not to my own childhood but to his.
I was married on Nov. 10, the anniversary of Kristallnacht. The German name, which means 'the night of broken glass,' is too euphoniously euphemistic to describe accurately what really happened in 1938, beginning on the night of Nov. 9 and running into the next day. Mobs, urged on by the Nazi Government, ran amok throughout Germany and Austria, murdering, looting, smashing Jewish shop windows and burning synagogues. Thirty thousand Jews were arrested -- including my grandfather, my father's father.
My father was 14, and Kristallnacht shattered his world. One month later he left Vienna on a children's transport, finding refuge first in Scotland and later in the United States. He never saw his parents again. Strange, then, that I chose the anniversary of this terrible day for my wedding five years ago.
I cannot claim this was strictly by design. I'd wanted to get married in winter and my wife-to-be had inched the date forward until we settled on Nov. 10. It was my father who pointed out the eerie accident. He did not ask me to change the date, but we easily could have. We had planned a small wedding in my parents' house. But after initial discomfort the coincidence had a distinct, if perverse, appeal.
More than 50 years had passed since the pogrom of 1938. The world could not be counted on to remember forever -- hadn't I myself forgotten the date? Here was a way to graft my father's story onto my own. Soon the year 2000, with its obliterating zeros, would roll the terrible events of the 20th century deeper into the past. My wedding would at least guarantee a kind of private commemoration. I would lash a piece of history to my back and carry it with me into the future.
But by mingling Kristallnacht with my own wedding, was I preserving it or erasing it further? Perhaps I did not wish to mark the date so much as unmark it -- a typical childhood fantasy. I wanted to make whole my father's broken past, to offer up my own wedding as the joyful answer to tragic times.
Both impulses, of course, are equally grandiose and impossibly naive. My own life can never contain or summarize the suffering of earlier generations, any more than it can answer or redeem those losses. My father understood this when he spoke to me on the morning of my wedding. For all he knew of the world, he could still have for me a father's wish -- that I would banish the fears of childhood, even though the fears of his childhood were fully founded in real events. Every generation is born innocent, and if that is bad for history, it is nevertheless necessary for life.
And yet how can I stop trying to connect myself in some way to the past? Which brings me back to my wedding and the ritual of the broken glass, which forms the final moment of the traditional Jewish ceremony. There are several explanations for this practice. The one I like is that it is a reminder of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem -- an event that happened some 1,900 years ago -- and in a larger sense, a reminder that the world itself is broken and imperfect. Smashing the glass recalls this fact and introduces a fleeting note of sadness into an otherwise festive occasion.
It is in this spirit that I celebrate my wedding anniversary today. I think about my grandparents who were murdered and their son -- my father -- who escaped to America and married my mother. I think about my own lucky American life and joyful marriage and how little, and how much, separates the past from the present, sorrow from celebration. I hear my father's kind advice, the cheerful cries of friends and family and the distant echo of breaking glass.
LIVES  Jonathan Rosen is associate editor of the Forward. His first novel, 'Eve's Apple,' will be published in the spring.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Way We Live Now: Questions for Genndy Tartakovsky; The Big Draw
Q: 'Dexter's Laboratory,' your first series, was an almost instant hit. For those who don't know him, or just think they do, who is he?
Dexter is a dork. He's part of everybody: the little kid who just wants to do science but who's frustrated. It's what everybody deals with. That's what makes it funny. If you have a character who wins all the time -- well, if you have a character that loses and wins, it makes him more alive. Bugs Bunny, for example, didn't always win.
Dexter speaks with a Russian accent.
He considers himself a very serious scientist, and all well-known scientists have accents.
Come on. He's an outsider who speaks Russian-inflected English with a Russian accent. Your family emigrated from Moscow when you were 9. Isn't Dexter your Mini-Me?
Definitely that was a big part of my childhood: wanting to fit. As an immigrant, you talk funny, you look funny, you smell funny. I wanted to do nothing but fit in and talk English and sit with everybody else. The one thing about Dexter, if he doesn't fit in, he'll start his own club. He's not afraid to be an outsider. He's much more confident.
So, O.K., an upgraded fantasy version of your boyhood self. And it's hard not to notice that Samurai Jack, the character in your new series, looks an awful lot like you as an adult.
Someone else told me that. I definitely don't think he looks like me. But as an artist, sometimes you can't help yourself. If you're a tall guy, everything is lengthy. If you're short and fat, you draw things that are squat.
What's the secret to reaching kids? How do you avoid condescending to them?
One of the things I hate about TV, and TV for kids, is that it talks down to them. If you go back in animation history and look at Bugs Bunny, for example, they were made for adults and were shown before theatrical movies. They were still cartoons, so they had to be childlike, to a degree: slapsticky, Three Stooges, physical humor. A good cartoon is always good on two or three levels: surface physical comedy, some intellectual stuff -- like Warner Brothers cartoons' pop-culture jokes, gas-rationing jokes during the war -- and then the overall character appeal.
Funny you mentioned Bugs Bunny. Your approach to storytelling is so far from the typical Saturday morning fare. It's practically deconstructed. How did you conceive that approach?
Animation has repeated itself for the past 40 years. The technical side has improved, but not the storytelling. Usually you tell stories A to B to C. 'Samurai' is not an animated show like you would normally watch on TV. We tell the stories from a different perspective -- backward, very nonlinear. It treats it more seriously as an art form. I'm not trying to sell the 'Samurai Jack' action figure.
You would say no to marketing?
There might be a 'Samurai Jack' action figure. Those things will happen; it's not the intent.
With 'The Simpsons' and all its spinoffs, countless animated feature films, a cartoon network . . . is this a particularly fertile moment for animation? Or does it just seem like that?
Animation used to be the dregs of the industry. Now the idea of the creator-driven cartoon is becoming more accepted. It didn't happen right away. Now with Cartoon Network and even Nickelodeon, they're letting the creators make the cartoon and fulfilling the animator's vision. Dexter is my joke, and here I am telling it, and if people like it it's because we made it that way.
You admit that you love television. Many educated people would think that's sacrilegious.
When I came to America and I saw how much different programming there was, it was like candy: there's 'Wonder Woman,' 'Dukes of Hazard.' And I was a 'Three's Company' fanatic. In Russia, there's only the news; here TV's a culture. I just got hooked, and that made me learn English much faster. There are things out there beyond PBS that are smart. You have to give it a chance. If you're snooty, you're snooty. When I grew up, if I had a free moment, I watched TV. And I turned out fine.
Thelma Adams",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"YEARNING FOR AN IRON HAND
LEAD: There is no mention in the article of the embarrassing fact (embarrasing for Russian nationalists, no doubt) that Russia acquired the lion's share of its Jewish minority through brutal conquests at the expense of Poland in the late 18th century. If these Russian 'patriots' really cared about Mother
There is no mention in the article of the embarrassing fact (embarrasing for Russian nationalists, no doubt) that Russia acquired the lion's share of its Jewish minority through brutal conquests at the expense of Poland in the late 18th century. If these Russian 'patriots' really cared about Mother Russia, they would take a critical stand against their beloved czars, who provoked and fought one war after another to expand their frontiers far beyond any defensive purposes and who cruelly subjugated conquered peoples, whose descendants, not surprisingly, were flocking to the revolutionary parties by the beginning of the 20th century.
FREDERICK GABRIELSEN
Livingston, N.J.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Interview with a Vampirette
On Valentine's Day, most lovers share nothing stronger than heart-shaped mints and Champagne. Within the so-called Gothic Death Rock scene, a fringe group known as 'practicing vampires' express their love by drinking each other's blood. Dwelling in the urban U.S., numbering in the hundreds, these vampires often communicate in underground magazines like Blue Blood, published in Atlanta. Some believe that blood-drinking insures immortality, but most admit - wistfully - that vampirism is more of a life style. What's involved? From her velvet-draped apartment in San Francisco, Danielle Willis, a pale, attractive 30-year-old, shared the details.
At age 10, overwhelmed by a fear of death, Willis began wishing she were a vampire. After spending her adolescence hoping that a fanged creature would fly through her window, she took matters into her own hands in her early 20's. Now she sleeps by day, works at night (she writes Gothic fiction) and drinks blood. Four years ago, she and her boyfriend sealed their commitment by having a dentist cap their incisors with 'permanent fangs' made of procelain.
In practice, though, Willis prefers syringes to draw the 'coppery'-tasting beverage, which she sometimes drinks a cup at a time, gaining a mild psychological rush from the act. 'The human mouth is filthy,' she says. 'Needles provide the minimum mess and the maximum outtake.' She finds blood-drinking far from repulsive - to her it's the ultimate expression of intimacy. 'It's saying that you trust a person enough to take a body fluid that's potentially lethal into your system.' To guard against H.I.V., she limits donors to very close friends who have regular tests.
As for the surrounding rituals, which are sometimes vaguely Satanic, Willis keeps it simple. 'I extract the blood and drink it on the spot. Or I'll put it in a little vial and wrap it up in red velvet.' She has a tiny leather-bound journal, filled with Gothic drawings, prose entries and blood droppings. 'Sometimes I'll create little keepsakes from the blood. Or use it later in magic rituals.' She shrugs apologetically. 'It's really not that exciting.'
Sunday, February 9, 1997: SUBCULTURES",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"MY PARENTS' BUST-UP, AND MINE
In ""My Parents' Bust-Up, and Mine"" (Oct. 8), Walter Kirn uses honesty as a bludgeon. At 14, 19 and 21, my children have never told me how they feel about my recent divorce, after 25 years of an uneasy marriage. I have no idea what they think. I suspect they feel just as Kirn does, often on the edge, coping better some days than others. Just as I do. MICHAEL LITTLER New York",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"THE BODY POLITIC
I must respond with bewilderment to Susanna Moore's essay 'The Body Politic' (Style, Oct. 6). What is she saying? That we cannot be interested in the accomplishments of the First Lady but instead look to her to fulfill the 1950's sex-limited role as national paper doll?
In answer to the question Moore raises of trust in fashion, I think that Mrs. Clinton presents the image (hang on to your trust-o-meters) of the vibrant, beautiful and unabashedly intelligent woman she obviously is.
LAURA DAUPHINE  New York",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Makeup Artist
I read Dana Tierney's beautiful story of her mother, 'The Makeup Artist,' over and over (Lives, July 26). What a woman, the mother! What a writer, the daughter! Thank you for publishing her article.
Mary Jean Tully  Armonk, N.Y.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Nicolas Hulot
Nicolas Hulot, a longtime star of French television, is the host of 'Ushuaia,' a series focusing on daredevil adventure exploits now being broadcast on CNBC.
Q: Your show is ridiculously popular in France. What's the attraction?
A: I am an accessible hero -- I am only a 70-kilo person, I am not a movie hero. The French laugh with me; they cry with me; they get scared with me; they share my emotions. Not to just walk on the ground, but to fly, dive and go under the earth, that should be the goal of everybody!
Q: You've skied barefoot while being towed by a helicopter and scuba-dived near molten lava as it spills into the ocean. Are you worried that others will get hurt if they attempt similar feats?
A: Yes! For years I have been telling people not to do things just for the risk. That is not my way. I always say, 'Spend time to learn.' Don't do things only for vanity, because if you go to the vanity school then you are stupide and you will die. But if you go to the humility school, you will survive.  SUNDAY: FEBRUARY 15, 1998: QUESTIONS FOR",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Not Funnies
As a librarian for young-adult books at a large public library, I see the impact that graphic novels have on my teenage patrons. They have ignited an interest in reading among kids who may never have thought to pick up a book for the simple pleasure of recreational reading.
Graphic fiction and manga are justifiably among the most popular choices of teenagers, and to those who see them as 'merely comics,' may I suggest that they visit their local library and take another look.
Sisalee M. Hecht  Harrington Park, N.J.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Style;   VREELAND'S TOUCHES
LEAD: If, as the art historian Mario Praz wrote, 'the surroundings become a museum of the soul,' then a glimpse at Diana Vreeland's Park Avenue apartment is a reflection of the style and personality of one of this century's legendary taste makers. It wasn't a big apartment - life centered on a well-proportioned living room and small dining area - but it exuded bigness.
If, as the art historian Mario Praz wrote, 'the surroundings become a museum of the soul,' then a glimpse at Diana Vreeland's Park Avenue apartment is a reflection of the style and personality of one of this century's legendary taste makers. It wasn't a big apartment - life centered on a well-proportioned living room and small dining area - but it exuded bigness. Many of the pieces that made it that way will be auctioned at an estate sale at Sotheby's on April 19.
Vreeland, the legendary fashion editor who died last year, was not a timid person about anything, including color. 'I like almost every color,' she wrote in 'D.V.,' her memoir. But red was her favorite. 'It makes all other colors beautiful. I can't imagine becoming bored with red - it would be like becoming bored with the person you love.' When she told her friend and decorator Billy Baldwin that she wanted her living room to 'be a garden, but a garden in hell,' he scoured fabric houses both here and abroad until he found a red Persian chintz at Colefax & Fowler in London. 'It made sense that Mrs. Vreeland loved red,' says Katell le Bourhis, associate curator for special projects at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Vreeland's researcher for many years. 'Red is passion, it's fire, it's blood. And she was a deeply passionate person. It was as though she were part Latin. She loved dancing, especially the tango. She loved nights with no end.'
Yet her home was almost Victorian in it's careful clutter. Every corner was filled with a quirky collection of objects, souvenirs of Vreeland's life: horn snuffboxes from Scotland, giant seashells, photographs of friends like Marella Agnelli, a pair of Christian Berard portraits of Vreeland, a Dufy watercolor of a Venetian canal, Staffordshire dogs, a myriad of needlepoint pillows, bronze fish and Venetian blackamoors. 'Diana was enormously visual about decoration,' recalls Kenneth Jay Lane, the jewelry designer:. 'She could fiddle with objects for hours until they were just the way she wanted them.'
And then nothing changed. The apartment remained the same for more than three decades. 'She wanted it to seem as though hers was a home of leisure - the flowers, pillows, scents, objects - but in fact everything was obsessively organized,' le Bourhis says. Everything was arranged with a place and purpose, right down to the yellow pad, green pen and freshly sharpened pencils, placed as though they were a still life by her telephone. Her Georgian cigarette case was always refilled with the same number of cigarettes and could always be found in the same place. Her stacks of books were always arranged in a specific order. 'In another life, she must have been in the army,' le Bourhis observes. 'It was imperative she had a set frame, something to hold on to so she could let her imagination run free.'
Another constant in her home was an array of interesting scents. Candles or incense were always burning. And she adored flowers. According to her longtime friend C. Z. Guest, Vreeland always had an arrangement of whatever flowers happened to be in bloom. 'There were wonderful lilies and hyacinths and poppies and anemones,' Guest says. 'Every season, I'd send her orchids from my greenhouse in Palm Beach.'
'Everything was arranged with great taste,' says Kitty D'Alessio, vice-chairman of Chanel. 'Nothing was overdone and nothing was ever old-fashioned. Diana stepped into the future faster than anyone I knew.'
While at first glance her apartment gave the appearance of great luxury, there was little of real value. It was, in fact, filled with an assortment of curios of special significance only to their owner. Unlike today, when taste is too often associated with money, Vreeland can be seen as a classic example of true style. 'Lack of funds can work to one's advantage,' Lane points out. 'Diana could make do on her great imagination.' The fashion designer Bill Blass remembers that Vreeland's apartment had 'a great stamp of her personality because she had so much confidence.' As a result, her home became a place where interesting people loved to gather. 'Going there to dinner was an event - you never knew who you would see,' says Blass.
'All the famous people of the 50's, 60's and 70's passed through her doors, from Greta Garbo and Cecil Beaton to Mick Jagger and Andy Warhol,' adds Guest. 'Everyone in New York wanted an invitation. Her style of entertaining was always simple. Whether she was serving a banquet or a hot dog, it would always be terrific. There was an air of sophistication about everything. For example, she always served coffee in black demitasse cups. I'd never seen black demitasse cups before.'
Many liken her home to Coco Chanel's in its strength and unique character. 'It was really Diana's own stage set,' says D'Alessio. 'After she died, I went back. The lights had gone out. Something was missing.'",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"RAGE IN A TENURED POSITION
I enjoyed your article, but was a bit perplexed by the final paragraph that describes Heilbrun as mysteriously alone in her study, ""not entirely willingly."" It adds a tone of sadness and defeat to what I read as a strong and sensible next step for a successful female scholar in Heilbrun's not-at-all-mysterious position at Columbia: Leave! With lots of publicity about the reason.  SUSAN SCHAEFER DAVIS
Haverford, Pa.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"IS HUMANITY SUICIDAL?
Edward O. Wilson argues that we must save other species, not for their own sake, but so ""they can be understood and employed in the fullest sense for human benefit"" (""Is Humanity Suicidal?"" May 30). What is needed, instead, is to see human beings merely as one part of the whole earth system and probably as that part whose job is to bring about healing, where previously we have caused destruction and degradation. ELEANOR RAE Ridgefield, Conn.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"AMONG THE BELIEVERS
Rosenbaum did an excellent job of explaining the many dimensions of the Elvis phenomenon, but erred when he referred to the Penitentes as a ""sect of American Indian converts to Christianity."" The Penitentes were Spanish-speaking members of a brotherhood who were recruited into the New Mexico wilderness in the belief that discipline and hardship would enhance their potential as pioneers. The Penitentes were not American Indians. JOHN R. THOMAS State College, Pa.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Designs for the Next Millennium; Antenna design
Reflecting both Eastern and Western traditions, the entry proposed by this design firm transcends the rational. It turns to the ancient Japanese idea of a 'dream pillow' to explore the mysteries of cultural receptivity. In an era that is increasingly driven by the exchange of information, much depends on the ability to distinguish meaning from noise.
The designers propose carving a chaise longue, with pillow, from a granite outcropping in Central Park. HD-Rosetta disks, safely microengraved with data, would be buried inside. The mystical premise is that when people in the future rest their heads on the stone pillow, they will absorb the wisdom of the ages. If, perchance, extrasensory perception should fail, rationality, in the form of the disks, would still be available.
Herbert Muschamp is the architecture critic of The New York Times.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Big Girls Don't Cry
More than half the women in America wear at least a size 12 dress. Guess how many want to look like a street urchin? Enough with the waif. Too many grown-ups with full breasts, ample hips, large shoulders and baggage-free self-images are tired of the implication that the only way they could be in fashion is wrapped in the shroud of Turin. Less is not necessarily more, though in truth, more should usually wear less. Beaded epaulets, dropped waists and garish prints are not the way to a lovelier silhouette in any size. Large women are flattered by the unemcumbered lines, monochromatic layers, easy fit and minimal jewelry currently in style. In fact, no matter what the arbiters say there are clothes out there for you. In these lean times, fashion could profit from a little largess.  FASHION",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"PICKY, PICKY, PICKY
John Tierney's essay ""Picky, Picky, Picky"" (The Big City, Feb. 12) was droll and perceptive, but fell short of explaining why we develop the phenomenon that he calls the ""Flaw-O-Matic."" I believe it is because by rejecting someone quickly we avoid the possibility of being rejected ourselves.  JOSEPH BULGATZ New York",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"THE JOYS OF VICTIMHOOD
LEAD: I found Joseph Epstein's article a little disappointing. Lots of mental-health research has showed that the mistreatment of children leads to lasting emotional damage, including feelings of worthlessness, helplessness and anger - i.e., the perception of oneself as a victim, even decades after the abuse has stopped.
I found Joseph Epstein's article a little disappointing. Lots of mental-health research has showed that the mistreatment of children leads to lasting emotional damage, including feelings of worthlessness, helplessness and anger - i.e., the perception of oneself as a victim, even decades after the abuse has stopped.
Mr. Epstein's article would have been a more thoughtful one if, besides writing about his (and many other people's) impatience with those who perceive themselves as victims, he had also considered the origins of their distorted self-perceptions. ELIZABETH MORGAN, M.D.  Washington",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Pictures; The Face
The movies feed us all kinds of dreams and illusions, but the most democratic, and also the cruelest, may be the fantasy that those vivid projected shadows we see on the screen are people just like us. There are, of course, movie stars whose charisma amounts to a kind of distilled ordinariness -- the nice guy, the girl next door, Jimmy Stewart, Meg Ryan, Kevin Costner, Doris Day. But there is another, rarer breed whose beauty is almost too unearthly to be sexual, and who we could never in our wildest dreams hope to be.
This distinction, obvious to any moviegoer, arises from a number of ineffabilities having to do with talent and technique. But mostly it's a matter of cheekbones. Cinema, with its bright lights and character-establishing close-ups, infuses the ridges and declivities of the human face with expressive power. Good bone structure confers a kind of immortality, as well as offering some immunity to the depredations of time, especially for women. Men grow thick and jowly, but even in their old age, stars like Gloria Swanson, Katharine Hepburn and Jeanne Moreau have managed to defy gravity.
The black-and-white era was the golden age of the cheekbone. The glories of Greta Garbo in close-up, those evocative shadows and hollows, will never be matched in Technicolor or digital video. The recent past offers Audrey Hepburn and Faye Dunaway, but ambitious screen actors tend nowadays to submerge their natural glow in the grit of naturalism. Today's stars are unquestionably good-looking, and have much better muscle definition than their predecessors, but fewer of them, especially male stars, have faces with the power to haunt.
Whatever else might be said about it, Lasse Hallstrom's new film, 'Chocolat,' brings together two contemporary icons of sorrowful, hollow-cheeked luminosity -- Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche. Depp, a gifted realist, has sometimes been betrayed by his good looks. In 'Donnie Brasco,' his performance as an undercover F.B.I. agent infiltrating the New York mafia stretched credibility, not because of flaws in his acting, which was characteristically meticulous, but because of the flawlessness of his face. In Julian Schnabel's new film, 'Before Night Falls,' Depp has a double cameo as a jailhouse drag queen and a sadistic prison guard, but even behind heavy eye shadow or a militaristic mustache, his essential Deppness shines through.
Juliette Binoche first came to the attention of American audiences in 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being.' Sharing the screen with Daniel Day-Lewis and Lena Olin, she looked downright moon-faced in comparison, but by 'The English Patient' a decade later, she held her own in an impressively concave cast that included Ralph Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas and Willem Dafoe. Whether she and Depp can find the emotional chemistry to carry this picture remains to be seen, but their matching dark eyes and melancholy airs suggests it will be hard to look away. And a glance at young Victoire Thivisol, who plays Binoche's daughter, suggests that, once her baby fat melts away, a new golden age of the cheekbone may yet be before us.
-- A.O. SCOTT",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Way We Live Now: 8-20-00: On Language; Iron Fist
'They wanted this iron fist to command them.' That was the statement of Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, about the need for discipline among the English troops sent to the Canadian frontier in the 1812 war with the United States. The victor over Napoleon at Waterloo became known as 'the Iron Duke.'
Iron is hard. An iron hand is rule that is rigid, stubborn, severe, even cruel; iron-fisted has an additional connotation of 'parsimonious, close-fisted, niggardly.'
Thus it was surprising to read in several articles that an iron fist was in control of the Republican convention in Philadelphia early this month. The attribution, though not in direct quotation of a full sentence, was to George W. Bush himself in the week before he became his party's nominee. In The New York Times, the prescient R.W. Apple Jr. wrote, 'If there are abortion rights supporters at the podium this week, for example, they will talk about something else, thanks to what Mr. Bush calls his 'iron fist' control of the proceedings.'
That's a curious phrase from a candidate who popularized the marriage of the adjective compassionate with the noun conservative. The decidedly noncompassionate phrase iron fist has not even the smooth qualifier that Thomas Carlyle reported in 1850 was used by the Iron Duke's defeated rival: 'Soft of speech and manner, yet with an inflexible rigour of command . . . iron hand in a velvet glove,' as Napoleon defined it.'
Strange that Bush should adopt that phrase; perhaps it was a slip under stress. Political figures from Austin are sensitive to the political meanings of words.
For example, Karl Rove (invariably described as 'Bush's chief strategist'; there is apparently nobody with the title 'deputy strategist') demonstrated a grasp of nuance in an interview on The New York Times/ABC News Webcast at the G.O.P. convention. His questioner had asked about the gap between the convention's 'moderate, inclusive message' of those chosen to speak and the notably conservative views of the delegates shown in polls.
'Let me correct,' Rove responded quickly. 'You said 'inclusive and moderate.' What we're saying is, it's 'inclusive and compassionately conservative.''
What was the chief strategist's chief strategy, while accepting the adjective inclusive, in going out of his way to reject the nearly synonymous adjective moderate?
Because that word, when used as a noun, causes political reverberations. From a conservative's point of view, a moderate is the liberal's way of avoiding the pejorative tag of liberal. From a liberal's point of view, moderate is not only self-applicable but also a friendly way of describing a Republican who is not a hard-core, reactionary, troglodyte kook.
The word's political sense was born in the Eisenhower administration. Minutes of the Nov. 4, 1954, cabinet meeting reported the president using the phrase 'a policy of moderation.' Adlai Stevenson, a year later, told a fund-raising audience: 'Moderation, yes! Stagnation, no!' At the same dinner, Averell Harriman, a potential opponent for the 1956 Democratic nomination, disagreed: 'There is no such word as moderation in the Democratic vocabulary.'
The conservative columnist William F. Buckley at that time wrote, 'I resist moderate because it is a base-stealing word for the benefit of G.O.P. liberals.' The Nelson Rockefeller wing of the party at first accepted it in the early 60's, but then supporters of Barry Goldwater used it in derision, to catch the centrist minority off the Republican political base. On July 14, 1963, Rockefeller denounced Goldwater 'extremists' for a philosophy 'wholly alien to the broad middle course that accommodates the mainstream of Republican principle.'
I recall dragging a large banner across the San Francisco Cow Palace floor at the 1964 convention that read 'Stay in the Mainstream!' But as Francis Bacon pointed out in 'On Faction,' written in 1597, 'a few who are stiff do tire out a great number that are more moderate.' The Goldwaterite true believers scorned the electoral mainstream and lost in a landslide; four years later, Nixon steered toward it and narrowly won.
In 1968, Nixon and his writers shied from the noun moderate, still inflammatory to 'real' Republicans, but embraced its euphemism mainstream. President Gerald Ford, after his 1976 defeat, called a meeting of the Republicans Ronald Reagan, John Connally and Nelson Rockefeller and used an older metaphor: 'The Republican tent is big enough to encompass the four individuals who are here today.' As the big tent was replaced by mainstream, both were supplanted by 'the politics of inclusion' in the 1980's.
That's why the iron-fisted Bush chief strategist Karl Rove accepted inclusive and rejected moderate. Gen. Colin Powell followed up with a convention speech hailing George W. Bush's 'passion for inclusion.'
In his acceptance speech to the G.O.P. convention in Philadelphia, Governor Bush repeated compassionate conservatism, defining it in a plain sentence: 'It is to put conservative values and conservative ideas into the thick of the fight for justice and opportunity.'
Where and when did the phrase (akin to Jack Kemp's bleeding-heart conservative) originate? In his recent book, 'Compassionate Conservatism,' Marvin Olasky, professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin (and the Bush adviser who suggested the phrase to the Bush campaign), provides a lead. Olasky suggests coinage by Vernon Jordan, then head of the National Urban League, who said on July 22, 1981, in criticism of the Reagan administration, 'I do challenge its failure to exhibit a compassionate conservatism.'
However, four months earlier -- on March 13, 1981 -- in an article by Judith Miller of The New York Times, Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, said: 'I'm a conservative, and proud of it, but I'm a compassionate conservative. I'm not some kind of ultra-right-wing maniac, despite some portrayals in the press.' That remains the current political sense of the phrase.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"On Language; With a Euro in Her Pouch...
No matter what the bankers tell you at the Frankfurt headquarters of the European Monetary Union, the euro is already in circulation.
Aboriginal Australians have long been familiar with the Westralian rock kangaroo, which they call the uroo, waroo or yuro. English-speaking residents of that continent spell it euro: 'Wallaby, euro and dingo tracks,' wrote I. L. Idriess in a 1933 novel, 'showed how popular this cool rock-hole was.'
Those creatures, with their powerful hindquarters and front-loaded method of carrying offspring in pouches, will have to share their name with the European supercurrency in a few years. Residents of 11 countries will soon be disdaining francs, marks, guilders, escudos and pesetas, instead insisting their common currency is as 'sound as a euro.'
The Germans wanted to call it the euromark. The mark was the name of a German, English and Scottish weight traceable to the year 886; in 1946, the Deutsche mark replaced the Reichsmark and became the symbol of German financial stability. But the French preferred the ecu, acronym for the European Currency Unit (and an old silver French coin, similar to the English crown).
Germans thought ecu sounded too much like Kuh, German for 'cow,' likely to lead to such wordplay as 'cash cow' and 'curdling the currency.' Bonn countered with the franken -- a Germanization of the French franc -- but that struck many as too close to Mary Shelley's Dr. Frankenstein, not to mention his monster. The monnet had its moment, honoring Jean Monnet, the European unionist, but that suggestion sounded too much like the English money, and the Brits were not even embracing the new currency.
'The Germans insist on euro,' wrote Nathaniel C. Nash of The New York Times from Brussels in November 1995, a name their Finance Minister, Theo Waigel, 'floated in September when the finance ministers last met.'
And so the coinage was coined.
MILLENNIUM BUG
When a batter fans, baseball scorers put down the symbol K, probably from the distinctive letter in strike.
Creators of G.O.P. bumper stickers in 1952 sought to encapsulate three issues against the Democrats: Korea (an unended war), Communism (soft on) and Corruption (the 'mess in Washington'). They came up with K1C2. (The notion of a quasi-chemical symbol as bumper sticker was used again in 1964 to denote the name of Goldwater: AuH2O.)
In the years since, K -- from kilo, Greek for chillioi, thousand,' or 10 to the third power -- has most often come to mean kilobyte, strings of binary digits expressed by 2 to the 10th power, or 1,024. My son the E-commercialist says that if my computer doesn't boast a memory of 48 megabytes -- that's 49,152 kilobytes -- I should forget about it.
O.K. (coined in 1839): here comes Y2K (coined in 1995).
'I plead guilty to journalistic incompetence,' writes the unduly self-flagellating financial columnist Robert J. Samuelson, 'for ignoring what may be one of the decade's big stories: the Year 2000 problem. Among technical types it is shortened to the Y2K problem.'
As we content providers are aware, the world as we know it is coming to an end at midnight on Dec. 31, 1999. At that moment, the Times Square ball drops; couples embrace; killjoy mathematicians insisting the new millennium does not begin for another year are drowned out in the clack of celebrants' noisemakers; the ghost of Guy Lombardo reappears to play 'Auld Lang Syne' (which drunken etymologists explain is Scottish for 'Old Long Since'); computers that have not been properly rejiggered assume with perfect binary logic that the Gay Nineties are over and that we're going into the year 1900 and that Diamond Jim Brady is canceling our credit cards. What a moment!
This column understands its scope: at the moment of earthly doom, for example, its subject will be the origin of doomsayer and the pronunciation of Armageddon. Therefore, I will leave the nerdy technical reasons for the breakdown of expiration dates to chat-room eschatologists. (It has to do with space-hungry programmers in the 1960's leaving the first two digits off the year, so that 1965 was written as 65, and now the computer can't find the 19 to turn it to 20.) We deal here only with the linguistic roots of Y2K.
On Feb. 26, 1995, James Coates wrote in The Chicago Tribune about what was being called the Year 2000 Holocaust and the millennium bug: 'Once the code that was compiled with the millennium bug written into it is decompiled, it must be fixed to allow four digits rather than two in what is called the date field.'
On Feb. 28, 1996, a Y2K bulletin board appeared on the Internet. Its existence was noted in the world of Old Establishment Media by The Wall Street Journal on July 26, 1996. Peter de Jager, co-author with Richard Burgeon of Managing 00,' helped popularize the term among the netties, as did Dan Rather of the broadcast network netties. They accepted the old-fashioned symbol of K as kilo, 1,000, not as 2 to the 10th power, or 1,024.
If you don't cotton to Y2K, and don't have the space for the year 2000, there's always the Roman numeral MM. A candy company that produces M&M's (named after Forrest Mars and Bruce Murrie) has seized on this idea to appoint itself 'the official candy of the New Millennium.' If you don't want your fingers sticky with chocolate as the electronic balloon falls, grab a handful of those millennium bugs.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Wiring the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy
Bai correctly captures the archaic infrastructure of the Democratic Party; however, he neglects to identify themes that can inspire voters. Until Democrats adopt policies that empower choices available to citizens and accelerate their upward mobility, voters will side with Republicans.
David Stoesz  Alexandria, Va",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Nuclear Nightmares
Thank you for balancing 'Nuclear Nightmares' with the centerfold of United States World Cup hotties ('The Boys of Soccer'). In a post-9/11 world where 'duck and cover' doesn't cut it, it's important to remember that there are life-affirming ways to achieve meltdown.
Stacia Friedman  Philadelphia",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Age of The Mediathon
Your article made me realize how the media circus has dominated my life. In 1949, when television was new, I remember Kathy Fiscus, a little girl who was stuck in a well. Her story was covered around the clock. I could never resist human drama. I think these stories serve as our Greek tragedies in a way.
Barbara Sheinkopf  Pasadena, Calif.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"JACK KEMP FACES REALITY
LEAD: There was a touch of sad irony in your article. As one read about Jack Kemp's efforts to deal with the startling increase in homelessness and the nation's drastic shortage of housing, the eye could not help but wander to the facing page and there linger over the listings of magnificent mansions and huge apartments (one of 11 pages of luxury homes and estates).
There was a touch of sad irony in your article. As one read about Jack Kemp's efforts to deal with the startling increase in homelessness and the nation's drastic shortage of housing, the eye could not help but wander to the facing page and there linger over the listings of magnificent mansions and huge apartments (one of 11 pages of luxury homes and estates).
No one (and certainly not Jack Kemp) is saying that the logical solution is to put the homeless into all those empty penthouses - there truly is no free lunch. But the juxtaposition (doubtless unintended) of that story and those glamorous ads once again illuminates the growing gap between the haves and the have-nothings in our society.  TONY SAVAGE  Bronx",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Courage of His Confections
If it's proof you need that restaurants are important, consider the elaborate and erudite cooking of Charlie Trotter, the 35-year-old chef and owner of Charlie Trotter's restaurant in Chicago.
Who but the master of his domain, laboring with a staff of 17 in a spotless, state-of-the-art kitchen, would dare to saute a single duck liver, balance it on a tower of wilted mustard greens and drizzle it with a teaspoon of beet juice?
I know of no other chef like Charlie Trotter. The complexity of his recipes pushes the outer limits of culinary sanity. But more often than not, they are ingenious and, as witnessed in the lavish book ""Charlie Trotter's,"" published last year by Ten Speed Press, invariably beautiful.
A native of Chicago's North Shore, Trotter majored in political science at the University of Wisconsin before kitchen stints in Chicago, San Francisco and Florida, and extensive eating in Europe. Along the way, he began catering elaborate dinner parties, the perfect forum in which to hone his culinary philosophy.
Trotter believes in serving a succession of small, ornate dishes (constructions really), each no more than a taste, one more complex than the next.  He'll stuff rabbit rillette, for example, into tiny columns of phyllo dough. Then he'll fry them, cut them like Vietnamese spring rolls and mount them like tiny rock pilings in a sea of oranges, black olives and reduced rabbit broth. His ""lasagna"" of braised turnips and rabbit is built like a shingled pagoda, floating on a sauce of sweet peas.
While Trotter's technique is indisputably French, butter and cream are not necessarily the cornerstones of his cooking. When Trotter layers scallops with pickled lamb's tongue, it's the truffled celery broth, not butter, that holds the dish together. Similarly, it's the simple tomato water in a dish of salmon, truffled artichokes and seared foie gras that mitigates all the richness.
It stands to reason that a squab salad with white truffle oil, pigs' feet, foie gras and 50-year-old balsamic vinegar is not exactly budget cooking. And don't expect his truffled lamb tartar with chanterelles and watercress oil to be a meal-in-a-minute. But for those cooks who yearn to straddle the line between cooking and fine art, Trotter's food is an inspiring blueprint.
The following recipes are some of Trotter's simpler ones adapted for home use. Each yields a portion the size of an appetizer and should therefore be increased if the cook wants to reap a meal from all the effort involved.
While poached salmon on lobster potatoes is a delicious dish, we suggest buying a duck-and-veal demi-glace from the source listed below rather than spend 12 hours making the 1/2 cup of veal glace that is called for.
As a fellow Midwesterner, I find it difficult not to applaud Trotter's patience and dedication to finesse. Also, as a fellow Midwesterner, I'm happy it's Trotter who's doing the cooking. Caramelized Salsify, Spatzle and Roasted Vegetable Broth The broth:  3 medium onions  2 carrots  1 rutabaga  2 parsnips  1 fennel bulb  2 tablespoons canola oil  1/2 teaspoon kosher salt  Freshly ground pepper to taste  3 sprigs fresh thyme The salsify:  4 stalks salsify, peeled and halved crosswise  1 quart milk  1 tablespoon unsalted butter  Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste The spatzle:  1/2 cup milk  3 eggs, lightly beaten  2 tablespoons coarse Dijon mustard  2 teaspoons kosher salt  1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper  2 cups plus 2 tablespoons flour  2 teaspoons unsalted butter.
1. For broth, preheat oven to 450 degrees. Peel and dice vegetables and place in a large roasting pan or 2 pans to avoid overcrowding. Toss with the oil. Roast until browned, stirring occasionally, about 45 minutes. Transfer to a large pot and add 4 cups of water. Place over medium heat and simmer until broth is reduced to 2 cups, about 30 minutes. Strain and stir in 1/2 teaspoon of salt, pepper and thyme. Set aside.
2. Place salsify and milk in a large pot over medium heat. Simmer until tender, about 30 minutes. Drain and rinse under cold water. Cut in half lengthwise and then across into 2-inch pieces. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the salsify and cook until it turns light brown, about 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
3. For spatzle, whisk together the milk, eggs, mustard, salt and pepper. Add flour and stir until smooth. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Place a one-sided grater with large holes over the pot and press the spatzle mixture through the holes, letting it drop into the pot. Cook until spatzle rises to the top, about 1 to 2 minutes. Drain.
4. To serve, reheat broth and salsify. Melt 2 teaspoons of butter in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add spatzle and toss until heated through. Divide salsify among 4 bowls and top with spatzle. Remove thyme from broth and ladle into the bowls. Serve immediately.
Yield: Four servings.  Quail With Grits, Apple and Celery Root The quail:  4 quails  1/4 cup plus 5 teaspoons olive oil  8 sprigs fresh thyme  1 small onion, peeled and diced  1 rib celery, diced  1 carrot, peeled and diced  1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste  Freshly ground pepper to taste The grits:  1 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter  1 shallot, peeled and finely chopped  1 clove garlic, peeled and minced  1/2 cup instant grits  1/2 cup diced celery root  1 small apple, peeled, cored and diced small  1 teaspoon kosher salt  Freshly ground pepper to taste.
1. Remove breasts from quails and place in a bowl with 1/4 cup oil and thyme. Chill for several hours. Separate legs and wings from carcasses. Heat 2 teaspoons oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add legs, wings and carcasses and brown, about 5 minutes. Add 1 teaspoon oil and onion, celery and carrot and saute until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Stir in 2 cups water and bring to a boil. Skim, reduce heat and simmer until reduced to 1 cup, about 20 minutes. Strain, discard solids and stir in 1/4 teaspoon salt and pepper. Set aside.
2. For grits, melt butter in a medium saucepan over low heat. Add shallot and garlic and cook until soft, about 3 minutes. Add 1 1/4 cups water and bring to a boil. Stir in grits, lower heat and cook, stirring often, until thick, about 5 minutes. Set aside.
3. Heat 2 teaspoons of oil in a medium nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add quail breasts skin side down and saute until golden brown and slightly pink in the center, about 1 minute per side. Remove from skillet, season with salt and pepper and keep warm. Add celery root and saute until tender, about 5 minutes. Add the apple and cook for 1 minute. Stir in grits, 1/2 cup quail broth, 1 teaspoon of salt and pepper.
4. Divide grits among 4 plates. Top with breasts and drizzle with broth. Serve immediately.
Yield: Four servings. Poached Salmon With Lobster Potatoes And Veal Glace  1/2 cup plus 6 tablespoons unsalted butter  1 head garlic, halved  1 onion, peeled and coarsely chopped  1 fennel bulb, coarsely chopped  1 leek, coarsely chopped  1 orange, coarsely chopped  1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded and coarsely chopped  2 cups chardonnay  4 bay leaves  Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste  1large Idaho potato, unpeeled  2 tablespoons creme fraiche or heavy cream  2/3 cup cooked, chopped lobster meat  2 tablespoons cooked diced bacon
2 teaspoons chopped Italian parsley  4 3-ounce skinless salmon fillets  1/2 cup veal glace or duck-and-veal demi-glace (see note)  2 teaspoons finely julienned tarragon.
1. Melt 1/2 cup of butter in a large pot over medium-low heat. Add garlic, onion, fennel, leek, orange and bell pepper and sweat until soft. Add wine, 3 cups of water and bay leaves and simmer for 20 minutes. Strain, discard the solids and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
2. Boil the potato until soft and pass through a food mill. While still hot, whisk in 6 tablespoons of butter, bit by bit, allowing each to melt before adding the next. Whisk in the creme fraiche, then fold in the lobster, bacon and parsley. Season with salt and pepper. Keep warm in a double boiler, for no more than 15 minutes.
3. Heat the broth to a simmer in a pan that will allow the salmon to be completely submerged. Poach until medium rare, about 3 minutes, turning once. Remove from broth and season lightly with salt and pepper. Heat the veal glace.
4. Place a large dollop of lobster potatoes in the center of each plate and top with salmon. Drizzle glace around potatoes and garnish salmon with tarragon. Serve immediately.
Yield: Four servings.
Note: Duck-and-veal demi-glace is available through mail order by calling (800)-DARTAGNAN. Roasted Tomatoes Stuffed With Couscous, Chanterelles And Pine Nuts  9 small ripe tomatoes  2 tablespoons olive oil  8 garlic cloves  8 sprigs thyme  8 sprigs tarragon, plus 1 teaspoon minced
8 bay leaves  8 basil leaves  1 cup cooked couscous  8 chanterelle mushrooms, quartered and sauteed  1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts  1 tablespoon peeled and finely diced cucumber  1 tablespoon corn kernels, sauteed  1 teaspoon chopped chives, plus 16 whole chives  1 teaspoon chopped mint.
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Peel tomatoes. Mince one tomato and set aside. Cut a 3/4-inch slice from the bottom of the others, reserving these pieces to serve as lids. Scoop out seeds and center flesh. Rub the insides with 1 tablespoon of olive oil; place a garlic clove, a sprig of thyme, a sprig of tarragon, a bay leaf and a basil leaf into each. Put the lids on and bake until they begin to soften, but still maintain their shape, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from oven and discard garlic and herbs.
2. In a double boiler, warm the couscous. Add the minced tomato, chanterelles, pine nuts, cucumber and corn and stir. Add 1 tablespoon of oil, the chopped chives, the minced tarragon and mint and stir. Spoon into the tomatoes, reheat in the oven and serve two to a plate garnished with whole chives.
Yield: Four servings.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Lives They Lived: 01-07-01: Barbara Cartland, b. 1901; She Spoke Volumes
Barbara Cartland was a romance novelist. She was the undisputed queen of the genre, the regent before whom all other pretenders must bow. In her 98 years on earth, Dame Barbara produced more than 700 romance novels. She wrote about only one topic: love. For instance, 'The Cave of Love,' 'The Devil in Love,' 'Love Is Innocent,' 'Love Is Dangerous,' 'Love Is a Maze' and even 'Love Is Contraband.'
I spent 1981 borrowing about a dozen Cartland novels a week from the local library. For me, her stories were a lifeline toward the impossible, the world as an enchanting adventure, despite my grim personal reality. (Namely, that I was in the sixth grade. Enough said.) She promised that the course of true love cannot be quelled by the forces of familial disapproval, societal prejudice, age difference or frank reality. If your love is destined, Dame Barbara decreed, then you shall find him. And she wasn't stingy with the adverbs either. As she wrote in 'Fire in the Blood,' 'All she knew was that she was close against him and he was kissing her wildly, passionately, demandingly and the world stood still.' Virginal girls were always swept off their feet by surprisingly muscular men in uniform, and there was no sex until marriage, and then it was 'all very wonderful and the moon beams.'
She churned out these novels at a feverish pace. She sold close to one billion volumes in her life. She never touched a typewriter but dictated the books to her secretaries, to the tune of 7,000 words a day. While she 'wrote,' she cuddled up with her Pekingese and her hot-water bottle. You could say that Dame Barbara wore cashmere blinders to the world. She passed her 98 years as much like a character in her novels as she could manage, dressing in pink and being chauffeured about in a white Rolls-Royce and falling in love with dukes. She did not concern herself with the unpleasantries of her century, like feminism (she felt it was 'bad manners' to cook breakfast for one's husband without wearing lipstick and a nice dress) or war (once suggesting that English tourists not cause a rude fuss in Germany by 'making loud asides about the Nazi regime'). She lived a long life, even outlasting her tragic step-granddaughter Diana, Princess of Wales. Sure, she got daffier as she aged. She once claimed to have known Winston Churchill back when he was a little boy, which would have been in the 1870's, but whatever -- the point was, she felt that she had known a better time, when 'if a man always said good morning and hello and what have you, people would say when he died that he was a great gentleman.'
Barbara Cartland's talent was not as a writer, heaven knows, but as a sincere advocate of those feathery ideals that most of us abandon in our youth. She managed to live through the ugliest century of world history as though she were an eternal 11-year-old girl, still convinced that virtue reigns supreme and that beauty is its own reward and that, in the end, love will always turn sorrow to happiness. Despite any cold evidence to the contrary, she believed all this. She believed it stubbornly.
Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of 'Stern Men,' a novel, and a writer at large for GQ.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Recycled Generation
Michael D. West may be forgiven for his efforts to portray cell-replacement therapies as a new fountain of youth. After all, as the man who heads Advanced Cell Technology, he has a business to promote. But Stephen S. Hall (Jan. 30) did a disservice in presenting human stem-cell research primarily in these terms. It is unfortunate that as this debate begins, your article distracts us from the real issues by representing stem-cell research as a quest for immortality.
Ronald M. Green  Eunice and Julian Cohen Professor  for the Study of Ethics and  Human Values  Dartmouth College  Hanover, N.H.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"After Life
Thank you, Joan Didion, for opening your heart so publicly. Ultimately, the goal of living with grief is not to put it behind us but to integrate it into the layers of a life long lived together. The healing is in the recollection of the details you note: the memory of a drive home from a friend's, the breath-catching question of 'could we have a different ending on Pacific time?'
Joan Axelrod
Montclair, N.J.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"No Heavy Lifting
LEAD: 'SAY IT AIN'T SO, JOE,' moaned the dismayed supporters of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic Presidential hopeful, in tones echoic of the fans of baseball's Shoeless Joe Jackson when it was discovered that their idol had faithlessly sold out to the gamblers in the 1919 World Series.
'SAY IT AIN'T SO, JOE,' moaned the dismayed supporters of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic Presidential hopeful, in tones echoic of the fans of baseball's Shoeless Joe Jackson when it was discovered that their idol had faithlessly sold out to the gamblers in the 1919 World Series.
The cause of the Biden followers' dismay was what members of the Judson Welliver Society, the organization of former White House speechwriters, call 'heavy lifting': borrowing at length and without attribution the rhythms, thought patterns and sometimes the words of another orator.
'Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?' asked the candidate in a rousing finale to a debate at the Iowa State Fair. 'Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? . . . Is it because they didn't work hard, my ancestors who worked in the coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for 4 hours?' These rhe-torical questions were an-swered with a ringing 'It's because they didn't have a platform upon which to stand.'
That was a killer-diller of a peroration, warming egalitarian hearts, until Maureen Dowd, a reporter for The New York Times, printed excerpts from a speech by Neil Kinnock, leader of Britain's Labor Party, made several months before:
'Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? . . . Was it because all our predecessors were thick? Was it because they were weak? Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football? Weak? . . . It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand.'
As an old hand at the speechwriting dodge, and a longtime specialist in its Thrilling Peroration Division, my first reaction was to wince at the formalistic upon which construction. Although it enabled the speaker to conclude with the strong word stand, the ostentatiously careful grammar conflicts with the common-man point; a more forceful conclusion would be 'no platform to stand on,' with spoken emphasis on stand.
Focused on this particular tree, however, I missed the forest of moral outrage that sprang up to deride the heavy lifter. 'I'm going back to Gary Hart,' said one embittered Democrat. 'At least he didn't steal that girl from some far-lefty in England.'
Maybe my familiarity with rhetorical borrowing has left me insensitive to the shock of recognition. I remember listening to John F. Kennedy's inaugural, with its stirring line 'In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course.' I had to admire the way writer Ted Sorensen evoked the rhythm of the line in the Lincoln first inaugural: 'In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.' (Kennedy subtly corrected Lincoln's redundancy of fellow-countrymen; that was especially astute.) What's wrong with such evocation? Winston Churchill, writing his ringing 1940 speech about defending his island by fighting on the beaches, in the streets, etc., recalled Georges Clemenceau's defiance in 1918: 'I shall fight in front of Paris, within Paris, behind Paris.' (Clemenceau, in turn, was paraphrasing Marshal Ferdinand Foch on Amiens.) That sort of boosting - a less pejorative term than lifting and certainly far from plagiarizing, rooted in the Latin for 'kidnapping' - is done all the time. Time for confession.
I always admired Franklin D. Roosevelt's use of the repeated I see construction, begun in his 1937 'I see one third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. . . .' Working with writers Samuel I. Rosenman and Robert E. Sherwood in 1940, F.D.R. collaborated on a speech that used I see to frame an inspiring vision: 'I see an America where factory workers are not discarded after they reach their prime. . . . I see an America whose rivers and valleys and lakes . . . are protected as the rightful heritage of all the people. . . . I see an America devoted to our freedom. . . .'
Working as a speechwriter for Richard Nixon in 1968, I thought: Why not lift it? Adlai Stevenson had already adapted the pattern to a series of paragraphs that began with I look forward to, which President Kennedy had lifted in 1963: 'I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint. . . . I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty. . . . And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.' Always a slam-bang format for a peroration.
So Richard Nixon told the Republican convention: 'I see a day when Americans are once again proud of their flag. . . . I see a day when the President of the United States is respected and his office is honored because it is worthy of respect and worthy of honor. . . . I see a day when our nation is at peace and the world is at peace and everyone on earth - those who hope, those who aspire, those who crave liberty - will look to America as the shining example of hopes realized and dreams achieved.'
After that speech, I felt a little pang of guilt - some spark of conscience had not been totally extinguished in the peroration dodge - and I called Judge Rosenman to fess up to using the I see construction he and Bobby Sherwood had written for Roosevelt.
'Check Robert Ingersoll about 10 years after the Civil War,' replied the man F.D.R. called 'Sammy the Rose.' With the help of the Library of Congress, I tracked down the speeches of the orator who coined the sobriquet 'The Plumed Knight' in the rousing nominating speech for candidate James Blaine. There was the source of F.D.R.'s I see's in an Ingersoll speech in 1876:
'I see our country filled with happy homes. . . . I see a world where thrones have crumbled. . . . I see a world where labor reaps its full reward. . . . I see a world without the beggar's outstretched palm . . . and, as I look, life lengthens, joy deepens, love canopies the earth; and over all, in the great dome, shines the eternal star of human hope.'
That is the sort of ending to a speech that Demosthenes would have considered a grabber. I never credited Sam Rosenman, and Rosenman never credited the guy who wrote it for Ingersoll; why should the Biden speechwriter give a public pat on the back to the hack who pounds away for Kinnock?
The answer is that times have changed; you can't get away with borrowing anything these days - not even an oratorical technique, much less a phrase or paragraph - unless you are willing to give the attribution. So my advice to candidates like Joe Biden is this: Do justly, love perorations and walk humbly with thy speechwriter. (I forget where I got that, but it has a nice ring to it.)  ON LANGUAGE",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Fit to Print
I disagree with the Ethicist's advice (July 10) to a printer that she had no obligation to provide editorial assistance to a customer whose copy was near-illiterate (and whose message she disagreed with). I worked as a printer in my youth and was taught that 'that's what the copy said' was never an excuse for letting errors go out the door. After all, we were proud of our traditions, skills and history.
Think Ben Franklin, not Kinko's.
William Tudor  Wilmington, Del.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"What Your Clothes Make of You
Fashion trends are about one thing: a collective yearning. A Calvin Klein senses the frustration of clutter in our lives and gives us minimalism. A Tom Ford feels our repressed sexuality and gives us raunch. We respond. A trend is born.
But clothes are about something else. Clothes, the ones that make their way into our closets as impulse buys, gifts or obligatory purchases for compulsory events, are about ourselves. If we bought Gucci leather trousers and a sheer shirt last season, it says we saw something of ourselves in those tarty trappings. But what we actually decide to put on our backs each day and venture out into the world in has nothing to do with trends or marketing. It has to do with who we want to show the world we are. Or who we want to convince ourselves we could be.
In the photographs on the next page, people were asked to contribute pictures of themselves when they felt at their personal best. And to a one, the images illustrate how feeling good in clothes has little to do with being fashionable. The clothes set the mood in each photo not because they fit a trend but because they fit the person, and who each one was at the moment the photo was snapped. So perhaps people aren't the slaves to trends that the fashion industry has so long depicted them as being; perhaps the trends are a slave to the individual, who uses them to say something about himself or herself in a particular point in his or her life.
Of course, as long as we have the clothes from our past in a closet, we can always revisit ourselves. When hooded sweaters, a trend from my teens in the 70's, came back into style two years ago, I bought one. Immediately, I felt regressed. Wearing it made me feel awkward and unconfident, all Farrah Fawcett hair and pimpled and chubby-cheeked. This time, the hooded sweater was cashmere, not cotton, but the price didn't remove the associations. I never wore it out of the house.
A closet is a sort of contemporary biography of your life, which is to say, part 'Dutch' and part 'Fortunate Son.' Were you really as wild as that fringed jacket lets on? Were you as conservative as that navy blazer suggests? Did you really ever feel that Greek letters on the rump of your sweat pants said everything that needed to be said about you? What about that Grateful Dead T-shirt? Or that Morgan Stanley baseball cap? No particular item or outfit can represent your complete self. If you are what you wear, then you are buffeted daily by compromises to your identity.
I have clothes for courage -- anything that feels punk or hip-hop or brash or too young for me to really get away with, like a Clash T-shirt and my ripped Levi's. Or my army pants decorated with studs. I have clothes that are camouflage -- in my case lean suits to be worn with Manolo Blahniks, a costume that reeks of authority in my role as style editor. I have boyfriend clothes: short skirts and tight sweaters that I so named before my boyfriend became my husband.
I would never wear my boyfriend clothes to a fashion party. I would never wear my fashion clothes on a romantic holiday with my husband. Clothes are really identifiers of each person as a performer in his own life. And a lot of what we wear has to do with who is going to be looking. Remember Miss Lonely Hearts in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rear Window'? She is rendered a pathetic character just by the knowledge that she would dress up in her 'boyfriend clothes' and then spend the night alone. Clothes without an audience are poignant reminders of how little we ever wear only for ourselves.
Of course, clothes are anything but a pure, clear form of communication. On pages spread throughout this issue are photos of people picked from the streets of New York City. Can you tell who they are from what they are wearing? A panel of experts, for the most part, couldn't. Each outfit reflects a personality, but the clothes also show what each person considers to be armor, clothes that confer power in a city that too often ignores the identities of its residents.
And the compromises you make because of what you own or what you can afford only complicate the picture. For instance, you would have been Calvin Klein minimalist today, but the impending lunch with your mother-in-law drove you toward Ungaro. You're a ripped-denim guy trapped in middle management worsted wool. You gained 10 pounds, or you would have been a Lycra-wrapped vixen instead of a smocked flowered chiffon hausfrau.
Very few occasions really allow you to be what you wear, fully and completely. Which is why those occasions -- the vacation to the place where no one knew you, the party where you could let your hair down, your childhood -- are always so dear to each of us. We dressed more completely for ourselves than at any other time.
One reason that clothing can stereotype us so inescapably is that even the most minute detail can signify an entire personality type. There's no need for Marcel Proust flourishes of prose. If the descriptive is as limited as 'ruffles,' the woman becomes immediately clear. In Peter Biskind's book 'Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,' a young Steven Spielberg is described as a guy with too many zippers on his pants. Which tells you something about Spielberg (or one aspect of Spielberg) that his entire film opus can't.
Anyone who has ever stood passively and been dressed by someone else -- her mother or lover or a stylist to the stars -- knows how quickly identity disappears. It was common in my parents' generation for wives to dress their husbands; maybe that contributed to the confusion about who our fathers really were.
Once, when I was being photographed for Vogue magazine, an editor put me in a bright red wool suit with a skirt that flared and a collarless boxy jacket. My own mother went through the issue five times and couldn't find me on the full page I occupied.
The clothes we select for ourselves are a better indicator of who we think we are than our faces or our bodies, which we didn't choose. Clothes are our one chance to right whatever physical wrongs God has imposed on us. They can be a mirror of what's inside, or a veneer of camouflage against a world that judges quickly on surfaces, or a map to display your aspirations. You are what you wear, but that turns out to be as complex as you are.
Amy M. Spindler is the style editor of the magazine.
Correction:  December 19, 1999, Sunday  A picture caption on Nov. 14 with an article about dressing and identity misstated the year of a photograph of the actress Gina Gershon taken when she was 5. It was 1970, not 1967.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Men Behaving Badly
As far as I understand the law, at least in California, if somebody threatens to harm me, it is assault, and if he actually touches me, it is assault and battery. If somebody in a workplace grabbed my genitals, he would get a warning. Any repetition would result in a criminal complaint.
Janet Rosen  San Francisco",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"A Reporter's Odyssey In Unseen China
LEAD: John Burns's exit escapade says more about the frustrations and bitterness of being a reporter in China than about China itself.
John Burns's exit escapade says more about the frustrations and bitterness of being a reporter in China than about China itself.
Academic specialists in China routinely move into Chinese institutions of learning for a year or more and do not suffer the kind of surveillance or restrictions that prominent reporters and diplomats do. Hope ahead lies in training programs such as the Hopkins-Nanjing Center, in which American graduate students, fluent in Chinese, can study the institutions and organizations of China before setting out to analyze current events there.  BARRY KEENAN  Department of History  Denison University  Granville, Ohio",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Meatballs Devour Worms!!
For the past six years NASA has been trying to wipe out the tubular red logo ('the worm') that has symbolized space exploration since 1975. The chief exterminator is Dan Goldin, NASA's administrator, who says that the original 1958 emblem ('the meatball') better commemorates the program's mission. But wasting the worm, which has adorned everything from welcome mats to wind tunnels, is taking longer than Goldin would like.
Keith Cowing, an ex-NASA payload manager who documents worm sightings on the NASA Watch Web site (http:// www.reston.com/nasa/watch. html), raps Goldin's subordinates for obsessively hiding the worm from the boss. A NASA spokesman protests, saying the agency is worming itself -- harmlessly -- over time (old letterhead will be used up, etc.): 'If someone decides they better go and eradicate this, that or the other thing, it's not because of Goldin.'
But an internal memo E-mailed to facility operations managers at the Goddard Space Flight Center on Dec. 9 and leaked to Cowing points to an unforgiving attitude about the parasitic logo. The memo asks the managers to 'remove or cover up' any remaining worms in advance of a visit by Goldin, who is fond of wearing a meatball lapel pin, because the creepy-crawly is one of his 'pet peeves.' 'This may seem somewhat trivial,' the memo says, 'but life is hard enough without making folks in high places mad.'
Goldin, for his part, denies that the meatball is an obsession or the worm a pet peeve, then adds, 'but if people think it is and it helps to stimulate positive change, I'm all for it.'
ON SUNDAY, JANUARY 10, 1999: LOST IN SPACE",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"How Can We Save The Next Victim?
Clearly, 'How Can We Save the Next Victim?' (By Lisa Belkin, June 15) needed to be written. It is an excellent analysis of all the factors that contribute to a medical horror. I would like to emphasize one more that ought not be disregarded. It is based on my own experiences as an emergency physician: namely, the importance of self-confidence combined with a willingness to confront and challenge those in so-called higher authority in any matter of doubt concerning the best treatment of a patient.
Both as a resident and as an attending, I have challenged the decisions of anesthesiologists, cardiothoracic surgeons, general surgeons, radiologists and anyone else I believed erred to the detriment of a patient.
So far I have made the right decisions. I know the odds are that a day may come when I may err. I have two hopes: that the error will not be catastrophic, and that a nurse, resident, pharmacist, orderly, dietitian or any other colleague will notice it and will unhesitatingly indicate it to me for the benefit of the patient.
Robert H. Meyer, M.D.  Bronx
Assistant Professor  Albert Einstein College of Medicine",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Way We Live Now: 2-6-00: Salient Facts: Armored S.U.V.'s; Gangsta on Board
According to law-enforcement officials, Puffy Combs -- the rapper recently charged with throwing a 9-millimeter handgun out the window of his speeding Lincoln Navigator -- had installed a secret trap door to hide a weapon. The problem? The trap door's security system was so elaborate that in the heat of the moment no one in the car could figure out how to get it open. According to a report in The New York Post, one witness told the grand jury that Combs yelled: 'Trap! Trap! Open the trap!' (Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges of illegal gun possession.) Police say that secret gun vaults are increasingly common among certain high-risk drivers. And for those who have enough money and know the right auto-body mechanic, they are just one of the many options available.
Trap Doors  First used by drug gangs, these discreet compartments can keep illegal contraband (or legitimate cargo, should the need arise) safe and out of sight. As long as you can open them, that is: law-enforcement officials in New York have discovered traps -- inside dashboards, behind back seats, in door panels and floorboards -- that pop open only when the operator turns on the heat while the radio is set to a certain station, or when he inserts a hairpin into connections in the doorjamb while stepping on the brakes. More high-tech versions involve a series of microswitches that must be flipped in sequence. A few years ago, a drug gang in Washington Heights had a whole fleet of nondescript sedans whose traps could be opened only by inserting fuses into the second and fourth slots on the right column of the fuse box and then activating the rear-window defroster. 'Five years ago,' one veteran New York City lawman said, 'these things were unusual. Now they're commonplace.' Then again, he added, 'to some degree that's a function that we know to look for them now.' Trap doors aren't actually illegal. Still, many alarm shops or auto detailers are leery of installing them. 'The police department frowns upon that kind of stuff,' said the owner of a custom shop in the Bronx. 'If you start putting it in they give you a hard time. People ask me for safes, and I won't do it, because it's just too much to have in my head.' Michael Trusio, a senior sales executive at Krystal Enterprises in Brea, Calif., agrees that it's business he'd rather not have. But, he added, 'we don't want to tell somebody no and then have someone come around and burn our plant down.'
Armor  Car armor, which can include bulletproof glass in the windows, ballistic steel in the doors and body and Kevlar shields for the floorboards and gas tank, was once used for skittish billionaires and presidential motorcades. Today, it's just another accessory for the nation's wealthiest drivers. But all that security doesn't come cheap. Outfitting the family Mercedes in this bulletproof material can cost $100,000. And for some, that's just the beginning. 'I can think of 10 or 12 families who have armored cars for everyone,' said Craig Fingold, the president of Beverly Hills Motoring, which has dubbed itself the Neiman Marcus of automotive accessories. Depending on the thickness, armor can add from 400 to 4,000 pounds to the weight of the car. Fingold said that a record mogul who had been threatened with death by a rapper had recently come in and had his Suburban outfitted with 4-inch metal -- enough to stop machine-gun fire. And Notorious B.I.G. stopped in to check out an armoring system but did not buy it. A few months later, he was shot to death in his Suburban.
The Works  Even drivers whose security concerns don't involve wielding or dodging heavy firepower have a number of self-defense toys to consider. Auto Taser ($200) delivers a powerful electric shock to anyone who lays an unwelcome hand on the steering wheel. Tiny video cameras ($800) that are installed with a clear view of the front seat can be useful for those who want evidence of police harassment; Fingold says they're especially popular with celebrities and sports figures. But for some wary drivers, the best defense is a good offense. Outfits like the Counter Spy Shops sell devices that spew oil, leaving a dangerous slick behind them ($1,300); they are reportedly popular in Russia, as are similar devices that spray a mist of oil on the windshield of the car behind ($1,300). Contraptions that scatter a large number of tacks in a car's wake -- first seen on countless Saturday-morning cartoons -- cost slightly more. (They start at $1,500.) Counter Spy claims it installed one for the Shah of Iran. Thankfully for the average American driver, however, most are available for export only. Finally, for those less afraid of fellow motorists than of airborne hazards, the smart choice is a tear-gas deterrent system that seals the car against unfiltered air ($5,000).",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Chelsea Under Wraps
Margaret Talbot (Dec. 3) seems concerned that the press has somehow given Chelsea Clinton a pass; after all, she's an adult now and making appearances with her mother, accompanying her parents on official foreign visits and so on. I am wondering what Talbot might ask Chelsea that might interest readers. Are there issues relating to education, social security or the economy where Chelsea might offer some new vision? Perhaps, but I doubt it. More likely, the questions would be rather embarrassing ones about her father's foibles, in which she played no part. That would be unfair and unseemly.
Of greater interest to readers is why the press gave Chelsea's mother a pass during Mrs. Clinton's long campaign for the Senate seat in New York. As a candidate for a major office, she traveled all over the state for some 18 months and never held a news conference where questions were freely asked and answered.
Delia McQuade Emmons  North Caldwell, N.J.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"My Dad's Workless Ethic
I was 11 when my father brought home a huge Texas Instruments calculator that cost nearly $150. It was 1972, and home calculators had just been invented; only scientists and millionaires had them. Dad had to have one, too.
Dad wasn't a millionaire. He didn't even seem to work at a regular job. My sister and I knew that he had been a nightlife writer -- our mother married him partly for the great table at the Copacabana -- and that he had written for Ernie Kovacs at NBC, but by the time we began spending weekend custody visits with him, his jobs were few and far between.
'Very early on, I never seemed to have money,' he tells me. 'But I wanted a lot of things. My tastes were patrician.'
'You could have done the Horatio Alger thing,' I say. 'You could have gone out and worked hard.'
There is a brief pause. 'To hell with that!' he says cheerfully.
When I was young, Dad lived mostly on a $60 unemployment check, sleeping at his mother's apartment in the city or on his boat on Long Island. I was told that I had agreed to pay for this boat myself, at age 3, with a savings bond given to me at birth. Dad doesn't remember that now, but he admits that it sounds like something he would think up and that his rules about money have always been unusual. If you want something, he thinks, you should . . . arrange it.
Other girls had fathers who came to school from their offices in suits, carrying briefcases containing paychecks. Beside them stood my father in jeans and cowboy boots, impatient to go buy a tin of caviar he couldn't afford.
What had he been doing all week?
'I had a great fantasy,' he would begin. 'I pick up this beautiful girl hitchhiking, and we really hit it off. It turns out her father is the sultan of Brunei. He's grateful. He gives me a million dollars.'
My father would furnish an imaginary mansion with a stainless-steel refrigerator full of smoked salmon. From there, his daydream mutated and grew and was never told the same way twice -- he was, after all, a writer. Spinning fantasy into reality was his job, we thought. It seemed like decent work.
My mother said she divorced my father because her own work ethic was set in concrete and his roamed loose in the ozone, inextricably linked to fate, an entity he referred to as They. Every once in a while, They rained money down on him, enough for a three-pound lobster or, hell, maybe a new car. Whatever he got was spent instantly on luxuries -- edible or with engines. Cocktail rings for short-lived girlfriends. Big loans to friends or strangers for worthless causes. People should never have to explain why they wanted money, he said. Money just wanted to be wanted. They would reward you if you kept that in mind. Dad did, and They did too.
My father met his two best friends nearly 70 years ago at summer camp. 'We used to go out in the woods together to blow things up and have long soulful conversations,' he remembers. 'We made this promise: if any one of us struck it good, he would take care of the others.'
His friends went West and ended up in oil exploration. Obeying the childhood vow, they made my father a small-percentage partner in some of the wells they drilled. The odds were slim, but the fantasizing was superb -- just like the sultan of Brunei, Dad was in the oil business! And guess what? One of those wells turned out to be the first in a massive oil field in Montana, and my dad entered the upper middle class. The friends considered it a fair trade. 'Your father,' one of them once told me, 'he's smart; he's funny; he can do crossword puzzles, you know?'
In his late 40's, Dad moved to Denver and became a columnist, a radio and TV commentator and what one local paper called a 'raconteur-about-town.' Naturally, these gigs pay almost nothing, unless you count local celebrity, which he does.
How do you balance a squandering father against a mother who insists that work is good for the soul? Which version of reality sounds better? I've worked all my adult life, but 40-hour-a-week office jobs always filled me with dread; I got out as soon as I could.
'Oh, yes, the dread,' my father says. 'I know all about it.'
Which isn't to say dread can't be defied. Two years ago, in response to being told he was too sick to drive, Dad bought a brand new Chevrolet Suburban. The new car is equipped with an industrial-strength winch. Why?
The answer to this question is so obvious: you never know what might happen to you once you have a winch, provided you shell out for a good one.
The best they make, my father would advise. Top of the line.
MEMOIRS Robin Chotzinoff is the author of 'People With Dirty Hands.'",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Lessons of Classroom 506
From the late 1970's into the 1990's, we were part of a tenacious team of parents who collaborated with our school system to design an inclusive education model for five children with significant disabilities. In 1997, these kids graduated with their friends (typically developing peers) from their local high school. Today, our daughter (who has Down syndrome) maintains her own apartment, takes public transportation to her receptionist job at the Y.M.C.A. and is a contributing and respected member of her community. How sad that after 25 years shaping inclusive education policy is still dependent on the parents who are most vocal and persistent. Our message to the Ellensons is, No matter how difficult the journey, stay the course.
Joan and Murray Smith  Montclair, N.J.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"After Neoconservatism
The articles by Francis Fukuyama, Nir Rosen and Dexter Filkins ('Strategy Tragedy?') made me reach for my copy of Paul Berman's March 23, 2003, Times Magazine article, 'The Philosopher of Islamic Terror,' about Sayyid Qutb. At the end of the article, Berman asks who in the West is going to speak up as the counterbalance to the deep philosophical ideas articulated by Qutb and being acted upon by Zarqawi and others. Political leaders, he reminds us, 'speak of United Nations resolutions, of unilateralism, of multilateralism, of weapons inspectors, of coercion and noncoercion' while concluding that 'This is no answer to the terrorists.' I'm still waiting for the hero of this war on Islamo-fascism to emerge.
Lawrence Appell
Scottsdale, Ariz.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"THE NEXT MILES DAVIS MAY BE ON THIS PAGE
FINDING A UNIVERSITY WITH A JAZZ PROGRAM MAY BE EASIER THAN EVER THESE days, but the surest route to jazz proficiency -- the old-fashioned apprenticeship -- is another matter. The big band, the archetypal jazz university, peaked long ago, and, with the deaths of Arthur Taylor and Art Blakey, there are ever fewer older band leaders willing to discover and mold young talent.
Betty Carter understands this. She studied at the Detroit Conservatory of Music as a teen-ager, but it was by singing with band leaders like Lionel Hampton that she really learned music -- how to write an arrangement, how to keep the piano player from ruining a perfectly nice tune by tacking flowery arpeggios onto the end.
Carter, now one of most formidable song stylists in jazz, also runs its most successful finishing school. Dozens of musicians have graduated from her trio -- most recently, a flock of excellent pianists including Cyrus Chestnut, Jacky Terrasson, Benny Green and Mulgrew Miller. But Carter can shuffle only so many players through her trio. So three years ago, she rounded up about 20 young musicians from across the country and brought them to New York for a week of composing and arranging, capped off by a weekend of concerts. She called the project Jazz Ahead and vowed to do it once a year, which gives her 12 months to scout the next generation by sifting through cassettes and trolling through clubs and festivals.
This year's ensemble, who performed at the Majestic Theater in Brooklyn under the aegis of the arts center 651, was typically extraordinary. The 21-year-old trumpeter Peven Everett played with such cool force that his colleagues fixated on him, even during rehearsals. Already, the Carter experience has worked for Everett -- he'll tour this summer with Buckshot LeFonque, Branford Marsalis's new band; and Karriem Riggins, a drummer who played the last two years with Jazz Ahead, has joined Roy Hargrove's band. By the evidence so far, Carter will repopulate the jazz scene as successfully with this large group as with her trio.
She is a cranky, loving teacher. During rehearsals, she routinely scolded the musicians to tighten up the pieces they had written and to purge their playing of cliches. Above all, she's after originality, both in composition and improvisation. Sometimes, it's the basics that need work. Jennifer Vincent, a 25-year-old bassist, was having trouble swinging on one tune; Carter came and stood beside her and, moving her own hands as if juggling, coaxed Vincent into the groove.
The concert the next night featured one solid composition after another, one startling solo after the next. When Peven Everett delivered a particularly fiery trumpet solo, Carter introduced him to the crowd as ""a veteran who will be flying off on his own soon."" She paused, mock bittersweet. ""But that's O.K. -- that's what this is for."" -- STEPHEN J. DUBNER",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"The Apartment
John Dillinger saved my life, 68 years after his death by firing squad in a federal ambush outside the Biograph Theater in Chicago. J. Edgar Hoover had designated Dillinger public enemy No. 1 and ordered him shot on sight after the gangster humiliated the pug-faced Hoover by calmly machine-gunning his way past the Feds outside Apartment 303 of Lincoln Court in St. Paul, Minn. These days, I'm living in that hideout.
Granted, my girlfriend's name is on the lease. And she's not particularly comfortable with my channeling an infamous previous tenant, who vacated via tommy gun without giving notice. 'The only reason you want to go out with me is so you can live in John Dillinger's apartment,' she told me once. But even Rachel can't deny the draw of a man who robbed more banks and stole more cash in a year than Jesse James did in 16. In 1934, moments after Dillinger was made a ghost outside the Biograph, onlookers dipped handkerchiefs into his blood for a memento of the leading antihero of the Great Depression.
Personally, I didn't even have a minor depression to explain why I needed to believe in Dillinger. In 1998, I was sandwiched by two bikes while in-line skating, fractured my leg in four spots, had orthopedic surgery, felt infectious osteomyelitis creep into my bones and spent the next half a year on my back. Anchored to my bed not by depression but by my quickly atrophying body, I gave up and lived on credit cards and cigarettes for two years. Luckily, I didn't end up, as warned, walking like Dustin Hoffman's Ratso Rizzo in 'Midnight Cowboy.' But unable to work, play or enjoy the comforts of kin for so long, I hid out from friends and family. 'It's like you just stopped,' said my last girlfriend; I numbly replied, 'You're right,' helped gather her belongings and held the door open.
It was the agreeable Midwestern thing to do, what we call Minnesota Nice. Now, having found Rachel, who doesn't mind a spiritless middle-aged slacker hanging around, I have become obsessed with the gangster who ate in the same room where we play Yahtzee. Dillinger, born and bred in Indiana, was a Midwestern robber; he even refused to take cash from farmers waiting to make deposits inside banks he knocked off.
Apartment 303 is much the same as it was that March morning when Dillinger and his moll, Evelyn (Billie) Frechette, were talking in the bedroom when the Feds knocked. One morning, I unhooked the chain and re-enacted the scene for Rachel. I used an unconvincing Fred Flintstone bellow for the G-man, a pathetic Betty Boop squeal for Billie and an imitation of Humphrey Bogart as Duke Mantee in 'The Petrified Forest' for Dillinger. It was a characterization Bogie based entirely on Dillinger, right down to the gangster's jutting elbows.
When the agent asked for Carl Hellman, Billie replied, 'Who?' She'd forgotten their aliases. Meanwhile, I had forgotten that I was wearing only my Bullwinkle boxer shorts. Outside, another sightseeing bus had stopped outside our living-room window. Dozens of tourists were watching my improvised skit. I tried to think what Dillinger would have done. Affecting his level-headedness, I remembered what he told Billie when she told him guns were waiting a few feet away: 'Grab some clothes . . . let's get out of here.' I repeated his line, dived headfirst across the floor like Pete Rose into home plate, slid into my jeans, then escaped down the back stairs.
Next day, I bought Rachel a red plastic tommy gun that shot water 40 feet. The point was to wait for a tour bus, then spray the grounds like the humane Dillinger, who shot high when he poked his machine gun out the apartment door.
His best lessons, however, came in a letter to his sister Audrey. 'I am sending Emmett my wooden gun and I want him to always keep it,' he wrote, referring to the pistol he'd carved, covered with shoe polish and used to force his way out of an 'escape proof' jail. It was Dillinger's most Houdini-like act, and he knew his friend would understand its sui generis magic. 'When you feel blue, all you have to do is look at the gun.'
He never lost hope even when half the country was looking to kill him. And here I had given up for good, as if my immovable body shriveling up was a portent of the inferno. He finished the letter wishfully: 'Give my love to all and I hope I can see you soon. . . . Lots of love from Johnnie.' Within days, Dillinger shot his way out our front door.
And by New Year's 2003, I was eating cake at an aunt's 80th birthday, chawing with family I'd avoided since the end of the previous millennium. 'Where have you been?' they all asked. I didn't answer; I just laughed, my elbows as high as Duke Mantee's. That day, I bought leftover holiday cards. 'Give my love to all and I hope I can see you soon, ' I wrote on each one. They are bound to the friends I disappeared from, though my girlfriend won't let me sign them 'Johnnie.'
LIVES Neal Karlen is the author, most recently, of 'Slouching Towards Fargo.'",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"
As a longtime guest of the Sun Spa hotel, I took umbrage at the possibility of being counted among the denizens of dance studios in Miami. The Spa has a full program of exercise, diet and nightly entertainment. A very small group of the female guests participate in an activity popular in our culture by having social interaction with dance instructors.
Anthropologists and psychiatrists maintain that dancing is a form of exercise.  How about grown men hitting a defenseless golf ball for four to five hours every weekend (which I do)! SAMUEL E. FRIEDMAN New York",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"THE NEXT HUNDRED YEARS
I was disappointed to find scant mention of sports in your issue devoted to 2096. As a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan, I was eager to find out if we have a chance of winning the World Series in the next 100 years.
JOCK HOFFMAN  Arlington, Mass.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"Introduction
Lisa Belkin's cover article on Fanconi anemia prompted mail urging prospective parents to get genetic testing. Responding to the flap over a historian's phony war stories, veterans said that those who served don't talk about it. And a request for an allergy-proof cake drew many recipes.",0
Top/Features/Magazine,"'C.S.I.' Myth, The
In popular detective shows like 'C.S.I.,' science almost always helps the cops nab the bad guy. But in the real world, two of the most respected tools of the crime-busting trade -- the polygraph machine and fingerprints -- are now being seriously questioned.
In October, the National Academy of Sciences released a study declaring that the polygraph machine is a woefully 'blunt instrument' that has failed to ever catch a spy. Spooks like the infamous Aldrich Ames, the study concluded, can easily fool the supposedly unfoolable machine. Smooth criminals can apparently train themselves to beat the polygraph machine -- which measures pulse and breathing rates, sweating and blood pressure -- by using Valium and obscure muscular acrobatics involving their sphincters.
Fingerprints were subjected to a similarly brutal interrogation this year. In January, Judge Louis H. Pollak of Philadelphia ruled in a murder case that the use of fingerprint evidence should be limited; in his view, there was not enough proof that the procedure is reliable. It was the first legal challenge to the infallibility of fingerprinting in nearly a century.
The problem with fingerprinting is not the theory underlying it -- the whorled patterns are unique and unchanging throughout life -- but the clumsiness with which it's applied. Crime scenes do not yield clean, crisp prints. Detectives typically cull what is called a 'partial latent print,' a smudged, bloody fragment that is often only 20 percent of the fingertip.
Consider a bitter fingerprint controversy in Britain involving Shirley McKie, a Scottish policewoman. McKie had been working on a murder case involving an elderly woman killed by her handyman. Detectives supposedly found a fingerprint belonging to McKie at the scene; McKie denied she was ever there. Later, two U.S. fingerprint experts corroborated her story. The culled print had been misread by British detectives. In the end, the matching of prints is an art rather than an exact science.
Pollak's ruling caused an immediate uproar. In response, the F.B.I. argued that it had never botched a fingerprint identification. (Indeed, a bloody fingerprint from a murderous robbery in Alabama helped capture the accused sniper John Lee Malvo.) Pollak ultimately reversed his decision in terms of allowing evidence, but still expressed deep concern that 'there have been at least a few instances in which fingerprint examiners, here and abroad, have made identifications that turned out to be erroneous.' Until the F.B.I.'s standards become universal, then, the formerly sacrosanct fingerprint, like the polygraph, will be seen with newly skeptical eyes.
Lawrence Osborne
THE YEAR IN IDEAS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Stylish Fish and Fans
LEAD:  1. Flashy Fish
1. Flashy Fish
Fish are in vogue, and not just for eating. This canvas tote bag by Zora of St. Thomas is the 'medium snapper' style with one zipper across the top and another across the mouth. It comes in red, yellow, blue or purple and costs $35. The bag is part of a collection of fish-inspired handbags and tote bags at the Seaport Museum Shops, 14 Fulton Street, at the South Street Seaport.  2. Summertime Breeze
If you spend your day in an office that is not near currents of fresh air, this desk fan is for you. Made of sturdy black plastic, it is thin and compact, measuring 5 inches by 4 inches by 3 3/4 inches. The base has five settings to adjust positions, and the whole thing can be folded flat when the fan is not in use. The fan costs $40 at Conran's in the Citicorp building, 160 East 54th Street.  3. Miniature Office The 'Factory' is a portable, easy-to-carry collection of miniature office accessories. Made in the style of a Swiss Army knife, it contains a stapler, a staple remover, tape, scissors, a carton opener and a magnifying lens. The tools are stainless steel, housed in a polyethylene case small enough to fit in a handbag or briefcase. There is a choice of colors - red, blue, white or black. The price is $32.95 at Sam Flax, 55 East 55th Street and 12 West 20th Street.  4. Ice to Go This ice bucket is ideal for outdoor entertaining or taking to a picnic. It is pink, with an aqua top and a yellow handle. The price is $10 at Weigh To Go, 592 Columbus Avenue, between 88th and 89th Streets.
DISCOVERIES",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Olestra vs. Bovine Hormone
To The Living Section:
There is a potentially harmful inconsistency in the Food and Drug Administration rulings on new food products. Procter & Gamble's new product olestra has been approved by the F.D.A. for use in certain snack foods, including potato chips, crackers and tortilla chips. But the products that use olestra will have to carry a warning about possible harmful gastrointestinal and nutritional side effects.
Yet, when Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone was approved by the F.D.A. to increase milk production in cows, no such product warning was required despite evidence that the hormone could affect the milk produced.
One would think that even the possibility of health hazards to infants and young children would be of paramount concern.
IAN ALTERMAN New York",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Wine Talk
KEAT'S ""season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,"" currently upon us, has turned out to be a siege of rain and mud for Bordeaux. It may mean that prices of the 1990 Bordeaux wines, as well as those of 1988 and 1989, both good years, will climb. Burgundy, too, was hit by rain, and prices there, always more volatile than those in Bordeaux, should also go up.
For serious collectors, these are serious matters; casual drinkers need not be concerned. There is plenty of good wine around at reasonable prices. What follows is a sampling of what can be found in shops at the lower end of the price scale. Any good store should have at least a few of them. Prices quoted are from shops in the New York area, but they can vary considerably.
First, news from the Beaujolais region is good. Sort of. The summer was generous to the grapes, with plenty of sun. But there was also rain, particularly early this month around harvest time. Georges Duboeuf, a major shipper, predicts that the Beaujolais nouveau, scheduled for release Nov. 17, will be delicious.
Red zinfandel, overshadowed for years by the simplistic ""white"" version, is back in fashion. Some moderately priced zinfandels worth trying are the Beringer Vineyards Napa Valley 1990, at $7; the Napa Ridge 1990, at $5; the 1992 Ravenswood Vintner's Blend, $7, and the 1988 Gallo, $5. Franciscan Vineyards' 1992 Oakville is worth its $10 price.
The Ravenswood could benefit from two or three years more age; the Gallo has already done so.
Even in an uncertain market, there are some inexpensive Bordeaux wines that always seem to be good. One is Chateau Larose-Trintaudon, from St. Laurent, just behind the more famous commune of Pauillac in the Medoc. Not a complex wine, it's a good buy at $8.50 for the great 1990 vintage.
The 1987 vintage in Bordeaux was not a great one; the wines were good but short-lived. Some are still around, and they may be at their best now. Look for Chateau Canon Moueix, from the commune of Fronsac, at about $12, or Chateau Hortvie, from St. Julien, $10. From the good 1989 vintage, Chateau Beau-Site, a St.-Estephe, is a find at $14.
Most merlots taste like cabernets with the tannins removed. Sometimes this is an asset, sometimes not. Fortant de France makes a respectable, soft but flavorful merlot from vineyards in the far south of France, in the region of Pays d'Oc. The 1993 is not bad at $6. Compare it with a 1993 Vendange merlot from California at $5. The Vendange is a bit lighter but does not want for flavor. Vendange is a second label of Sebastiani Vineyards.
Inexpensive pinot noir is a thing of the past. Well, almost. A 1992 Red Table Wine from Calera Vineyards in California is no match for one of the fine Calera single-vineyard pinot noirs, but it is 100 percent pinot noir, has decent pinot character and is a good buy at $11. Almost as good is a 1990 Burgogne rouge from Joseph Faiveley, a prominent Burgundy shipper, at $12.
From Italy comes an old favorite, the Chianti classico of the Castello di Gabbiano. The 1990, a fine vintage in Tuscany, is $8.50; the even richer 1988 Riserva, $13. The 1990 Chianti classico from Antinori is outstanding at $10. With Tuscany as with Bordeaux, it's worth seeking out the 1990 wines; the two following years were mediocre at best.
Good, inexpensive cabernets include Sebastiani's 1991 Sonoma at $9; Benziger's 1991 is also $9. Daniel Estate is the label the John Daniel Estate in the Napa Valley uses for the cabernet sauvignon that doesn't go into Dominus, the expensive wine made by Christian Moueix, who is best known for his Chateau Petrus in the Pomerol region of Bordeaux.
The Rioja region of Spain was largely developed by Bordeaux wine makers who went there after phylloxera destroyed most of their own vineyards in the late 19th century. The Reserve Rioja from Conde de Valdemar, at $8, and the Marques de Riscal Rioja, $9, both from 1989, are examples of what bargains Spanish wines can be.
Inexpensive whites are rarely as good as inexpensive reds. But there are a few; it's a question of seeking them out. Here are a few turned up by a diligent search.
Gavilan is the second label of the legendary Chalone Vineyard, which is located in the Gavilan mountains south of San Francisco. The 1992 Gavilan is almost Burgundian in its leanness. But it lacks neither freshness nor fruit. A buy at $10. Fetzer's Barrel Select Chardonnay is an old standby, always intense and rich.  The 1992 vintage is $10.
Georges Duboeuf may be the ""king of Beaujolais"" but his family comes from white wine country, the Macon region north of Beaujolais. With that in mind, try his Pouilly-Fuisse at $12, or his St.-Veran at $7.50, both from the 1993 vintage. Louis Jadot's 1992 Macon-Villages at $8 is excellent.
The Vieille Ferme is not an old farm as the name suggests but a large winery in the southern Rhone region owned by the Perrin Family of Chateau de Beaucastel in Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Vieille Ferme white, at $6, is robust enough to take the place of some light red wines.  TASTINGS  Domaine Carneros Taittinger Brut. Under $20.  Nowhere is the improvement in American sparkling wine more evident than in the case of Domaine Carneros, Taittinger Champagne's California cousin. The wine is elegant and light bodied, though perhaps not as delicate as the wine from the mother house in Reims, France. The California wine is made entirely from grapes from the Napa Valley's prestigious Carneros region. Gone completely are the rough edges that once were all too common in American sparklers. The bubbles in Domaine Carneros are small, and they linger almost until the glass is emptied. California's sparkling wines used to be looked down on by Champagne purists. Like other Champagne houses with branches in America, Taittinger refuses to call the domestic product Champagne. And properly so -- but it's mighty close.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Calendar: A Cruise, Shows and Talks
New York Modernism The Lighthouse, 111 East 59th Street; (212) 501-3013.
The architect Robert A. M. Stern will give a talk on the Modernist movement in New York on Wednesday at 6 P.M., as part of a lecture series on art and architecture in major world cities, sponsored by the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts.
The other programs will be about Stockholm (July 17), Berlin (July 24) and Paris (July 31). Reservations are required. The fee for each lecture is $35; students and those 65 and older, $25.
River Views Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; (212) 860-6321.
The annual architectural cruise sponsored by Cooper-Hewitt on the Hudson and  East Rivers, with commentary on New York's skyline by the urban historian Andrew Dolkart and jazz by the Pete Beller Quintet, is on July 17, from 7 to 10 P.M. No one younger than 10. Reservations are required. Tickets, $45; members and students, $35; those 10 to 16, $15.
Women in Arts and Crafts  Craftsman Farms, 2352 Route 10 West (two and a half miles west of Interstate 287), Parsippany, N.J.; (201) 540-1165.
An exhibition of more than 60 works by women who worked in the Arts and Crafts style from 1895 to 1920, including ceramics, jewelry, prints, textiles and metal objects, starts Sunday and continues through Oct. 6. Open Thursday, noon to 3 P.M. and Saturday and Sunday, 1 to 4 P.M. Admission is $4; those older than 60 and students, $3; those 11 and younger, no charge.
Garden Talks  Nassau County Museum of Art, 1 Museum Drive (off Northern Boulevard), Roslyn Harbor, L.I.; (516) 484-9338.
Marco Polo Stufano, director of horticulture at the Wave Hill Center in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, will lecture on the use of color and texture in  garden design, illustrated with pictures of gardens in North America, on Monday  at 10:30 A.M.
Penelope Maynard, a garden designer who is involved in the restoration of the gardens at Rockefeller University in Manhattan, will give a talk on using plants native to Africa in North American gardens on July 15 at 2 P.M.
Reservations are required for both programs. Fee, including a reception, is $15 (members, $12).
Frasconi's Books  Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street; (212) 838-6690.
""The Books of Antonio Frasconi: 50 Years,"" an exhibition of more than 60 books by Mr. Frasconi -- including books that he has written and books that he has illustrated by Pablo Neruda, Bertolt Brecht, Isaac Bashevis Singer and W. S. Merwin -- continues through July 31. Open Monday through Saturday, 10 A.M. to 5  P.M. No charge.
History Camp  Abigail Adams Smith Museum, 421 East 61st Street; (212) 838-6878.
A four-day neighborhood history camp offered by the museum for those 9 to 12  years old, with walking tours, museum visits, art projects and storytelling, runs from July 15 to 19, 8:30 A.M. to 3 P.M. Tuition, $75.
International Fashion  The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, Seventh Avenue at 27th Street; (212) 760-7760.
An exhibition of clothing by 50 fashion students from 28 countries continues  through July 31. The designs were chosen from 1,905 in a contest that encouraged students to incorporate their own cultural heritage as well as environmental awareness. Open Tuesday through Friday, noon to 8 P.M.; Saturday, 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. No charge.
80 Years of Interior Design  New York School of Interior Design, 170 East 70th Street; (212) 472-1500.
A show of drawings, photos, artifacts and models of interior designs by alumni and by designers who have taught at the school continues through Aug. 23. Open Monday through Friday, 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. No charge.
Fiber Artistry Textile Museum, 2320 S Street NW, Washington; (202) 667-0441.
A retrospective exhibition of more than 75 works by the fiber artist Diane Itter (1946-89) will be at the museum through Jan. 5. The artist's works, which  resemble paintings, are small-scale, hand-woven pieces of bright-color linen thread. Open Monday through Saturday, 10 A.M. to 5 P.M.; Sunday, 1 to 5 P.M. Suggested admission is $5.
Doorknobs and More  National Building Museum, 401 F Street NW, Washington; (202) 272-2448.
Prototypes of doorknobs, faucets, hinges, switch plates and coat hooks made of metal, glass, wood, porcelain and plastic are displayed in an exhibition examining the role of decoration in functional hardware. The show, which continues through Aug. 11, contains objects and drawings by 11 artists, architects and designers.
An exhibition of photographs, models, drawings and artifacts about three Japanese projects by Frank Lloyd Wright will be at the museum through Jan. 19. The buildings, Wright's only work outside the United States, are Yamamura House  (1924) in Osaka and, in Tokyo, the Monichikan building at Jiyu Gakuen School (1921-26) and the Imperial Hotel (1916-23). Open Monday through Saturday, 10 A.M. to 5 P.M.; Sunday, noon to 5 P.M. No charge.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"DETAILS THAT MAKE THE DIFFERENCE
LEAD: To get a new look, it is no longer necessary to renovate a room totally. Changing the NUTS AND BOLTS Can make all the difference. Replacing a door knob and hinges, for example, can completely transform a door. Similarly, adding architectural moldings to a blank wall can give a room texture, not to mention A TOUCH OF CLASS.
To get a new look, it is no longer necessary to renovate a room totally. Changing the NUTS AND BOLTS Can make all the difference. Replacing a door knob and hinges, for example, can completely transform a door. Similarly, adding architectural moldings to a blank wall can give a room texture, not to mention A TOUCH OF CLASS. This type of architectural detail need not be crafted from wood, either. Polyurethane moldings and wallpaper borders exist in an array of styles that imitate the grandest classical architecture. To transform a depressing bathroom into a chic space for BATHING BEAUTIES, try installing a new sink or faucet. Fortunately, manufacturers today offer cleverly designed details that include EVERYTHING AND THE KITCHEN SINK.
NUTS AND BOLTS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"All in the Family
There are many wonderful creations in this bedroom, beginning with its occupant, Sofia Rower, who will soon turn 3. Her parents, Maria Robledo, a photographer, and Holton Rower, an artist, who live in a Manhattan loft, brought the considerable talents of several generations to bear on the tiny space, which makes up in personality what it lacks in size. (It's about 9 by 11 feet.)
The gem of the room, besides Sofia, is the oak crib, which was lovingly handmade in Cambridge, Mass., 30 years ago by the little girl's great-uncle, Kenneth Rower. 'He built it for his kids,' says Holton Rower. 'Then it went to a friend of his. Then, when I had a child, he offered it to me.'
The crib, which can be taken apart, is made entirely of wood. 'When you pull the side up, little wood hands that are spring-loaded shoot out to lock it,' Rower explains. With an ample shelf for toys or linens, and two roomy storage drawers below it, the crib also converts into a bed when the sides are removed. 'It's so sturdy that we can climb in with Sofia and read to her,' Robledo says.
Above the crib is another legacy: a metal mobile given to Holton Rower by his grandfather, the artist Alexander Calder. The other objects have stories, too: the stuffed Humpty Dumpty was made by Sofia's grandmother, Mary Rower; the quilt is by her other grandmother, Letitia Robledo; the owl was sewn by a family friend, Sophia Murer, and the rabbit was hand-stitched by Sofia's father, who also spelled out his love in the acrylic painting on the wall.
As this issue went to press, Sofia was awaiting the arrival of a sibling. So who will get the crib? 'It's unpredictable,' Robledo says. One matter, however, Rower is sure of: 'This bed will last for 400 years.'",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Where to Find It; Vintage Phones Made New Again
LEAD: THERE, sitting among telephones shaped like petulant pink lips and brook trout and football helmets are the oldies: those heavy, black rotary-dial phones out of 1940's movies. All are for sale at the Phone Boutique in Manhattan. And for people who have just bought an antique phone at a flea market or found one in the attic, the shop specializes in fixing the dinosaurs of the communications age.
THERE, sitting among telephones shaped like petulant pink lips and brook trout and football helmets are the oldies: those heavy, black rotary-dial phones out of 1940's movies. All are for sale at the Phone Boutique in Manhattan. And for people who have just bought an antique phone at a flea market or found one in the attic, the shop specializes in fixing the dinosaurs of the communications age.
'We do complete restorations from scratch,' said Yash Jesrani, the owner of the shop. 'We buff them, clean them, paint them. We even have original parts about 80 percent of the time.'
Mr. Jesrani began collecting antique phones in the early 1970's. He travels around the world to buy them. He even buys them just for the parts.
People who love antique phones are very picky, he said. They insist on just the right clicking sounds when they dial. And, Mr Jesrani said, 'the ring is an important consideration.'
But, for many customers, the weight of the phone is the primary factor. The first thing they do when they walk into the shop is to pick up the handset. 'They want to feel the weight,' Mr. Jesrani said. 'They want the satisfaction.' On a rotary phone, the dial is usually the first part to malfunction, Mr. Jesrani said. 'Because of wear and tear,' he explained, 'it can misdial or dial too fast, and you'll get a number you weren't calling.'
'In most cases, we have to replace the cords,' Mr. Jesrani said, and he uses copies of the old cloth cords.
Cracked phones are the most difficult to repair. They can be bonded together with epoxy and painted, but 'you will see a hairline crack,' Mr. Jesrani said.
Old phones from the 1940's start at $69.95 and repairs at $75. A $10 deposit, applied to the cost of repairs, is required. Work takes one to two weeks if parts are available.
The Old Telephone Company in Sanford, N.C., began 21 years ago when Judy Marsh decided she wanted an antique candlestick telephone.
'You know how it is,' she said. 'One turns into 2. Two turns into 10, 10 into 20.'
Now the company, which is housed in a 1950's movie theater that Mrs. Marsh and her husband and business partner, Richard, recently restored, employs 10 people and takes in about 300 phones for repair each year. It also sells phones, ranging in price from $119 for a desk phone, circa 1937, to $1,800 for an ornate Ericsson Eiffel Tower telephone, dating to 1892 and made of brass, iron and ebony. One recent customer bought a 1950's coin-operated model 'so he could charge his children for using the phone,' Mrs. Marsh said.
The Marshes are purists when it comes to repairing antique telephones. They will fix the innards of phones made before 1900 but will not fiddle with their outward appearance. 'We won't do any cosmetic work on them because they are collectibles, and they need to be in the shape they are,' she said.
'What's nice about old phones is that it's cost-effective to fix them,' Mrs. Marsh said, because they are generally made of very durable materials like Bakelite.
The Chicago Old Telephone Company charges about $65 to restore a desk phone and $200 for restore a wooden wall-mounted phone. The work is guaranteed for one year.
Twenty-two years ago, Betty and Ari Chisim went into business fixing old phones, and they still do today from their storefront, the A & B Professional Hearing Aid Center in Flushing, Queens.
The company will fix phones dating from 1900. Mrs. Chisim said she and her husband can rewire old phones so that they can be used with today's modular jacks and so that they will meet Federal Communications Commission standards.
Repairs range from $15 to $200 and generally take two to four days. The Chisims make house calls ($25 to $50) for phones - the wall-mounted variety, for example - that are difficult to move.  HERE'S WHERE  PHONE BOUTIQUE 828 Lexington Avenue (63d Street), New York, N.Y. 10021; 212-319-9650. Hours: 10 A.M. to 6:30 P.M. Monday through Friday. Phones are accepted by mail, or they can be dropped off for repair at the shop's factory in Flushing, Queens, by appointment. Call 718-445-7222.  CHICAGO OLD TELEPHONE COMPANY 327 Carthage Street, Sanford, N.C. 27330; 800-843-1320. Hours: 8 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. Monday through Friday. Phones are accepted by mail; a free catalogue is available.  A & B PROFESSIONAL HEARING AID CENTER 141-04 Northern Boulevard, Flushing, N.Y. 11354; 718-353-3737. Hours: noon to 6 P.M. Monday through Friday and noon to 5 P.M. Saturday, or by appointment. Phones are accepted by mail.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Interior Design Firm Opens Its Attic
Sills Huniford interior design has opened its Harlem storage space to retail customers, who can make appointments to dig through the constantly changing inventory. The 2,500-square-foot space, called the Dwellings Vintage Warehouse, has furnishings and decorative objects like a 17-inch-high gold-plated Syrian table lamp, above, from the mid-20th century ($1,800); a set of four midcentury Mies van der Rohe cane and steel chairs ($4,800); and a safari-style side table with a leather top ($650). The warehouse is at 1916 Park Avenue (131st Street). Appointments: (212) 717-5753.
MARIANNE ROHRLICH  CURRENTS: WHO KNEW?",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Corrections
Pictures were credited erroneously in some copies last Thursday with an article about health-care institutions that reproduce small-town environments for people with memory loss. The pictures of Main Street and a brick archway and piano at the Waveny Care Center in New Canaan, Conn., were by Larry Lefever. Pictures of the Corumbene Nursing Home in Tasmania were by David Stephenson/Nest.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"IN TEXAS, THE TWAIN NOT ONLY MEET BUT MARRY
LEAD: It is 25 hot, dusty miles from Paducah to the ranch. The road winds past brakes of cedar and clumps of lowing Brahman cows, turns into caliche and ends at a small white house behind a picket fence. It is not the kind of place one expects to find a great-granddaughter of Baron Paul von Gontard of Berlin, one of the leading figures in the Daimler automobile company, and a great-great-granddaughter of Adolphus Busch, a co-founder of Anheuser
It is 25 hot, dusty miles from Paducah to the ranch. The road winds past brakes of cedar and clumps of lowing Brahman cows, turns into caliche and ends at a small white house behind a picket fence. It is not the kind of place one expects to find a great-granddaughter of Baron Paul von Gontard of Berlin, one of the leading figures in the Daimler automobile company, and a great-great-granddaughter of Adolphus Busch, a co-founder of Anheuser-Busch.
Yet the ebullient 33-year-old woman in a plain gray housedress who opens the creaky front door of the ranch house was once known as Eugenie von Gontard. She grew up in Greenwich, Conn., with all the perquisites of inherited wealth: polo, fox hunting, the best finishing schools, safaris to Africa.
Eight years ago she came to West Texas to sample ranch life and ended up marrying the cowboy next door, Jerry Bob Daniel, whose grandfather came west walking behind a covered wagon. Their marriage has bridged two cultures that could scarcely have been more different, rich versus humble, East versus West, urban versus rural.
Had things been otherwise, Eugenie Daniel might be living the life of a New York socialite: yacht clubs, charity balls, flashy parties, nannies. She has traded this for a remote Texas ranch, where the milk comes from the family cow, horses are used for work, shopping means a weekly expedition into town, the closest hospital is 30 grueling miles away and an exciting night out is dinner at Huey's Palace, the nearest Chinese restaurant, nearly 100 miles away in Vernon.
Both sides of Mrs. Daniel's family have their roots in St. Louis. Her father's father worked with August Busch Sr. in the family beer-brewing business. Her mother's family, the Williamses, had vast land holdings in Texas that date back more than a century. As a girl, Mrs. Daniel visited their ranch, the Pitchfork, west of Paducah. She earned her spurs there, showing skeptical cowboys that she could ride and brand cattle with the best of them.
'They were trying to see if they could run me off, but they couldn't,' she recalled. She then took a job as the 'mare person' at the Pitchfork, taking care of 70 broodmares, feeding and weaning their colts.
Her romance with Jerry Bob Daniel, whom she met at a community dance, came at first as an unpleasant surprise to both sets of parents. 'I don't blame her folks one bit,' Mr. Daniel said in his pleasant Texas lilt. At 28, he is a shy but intense man, with blue eyes framed by sharp, handsome features. 'I'm just a country boy. I'd never been out of the state before. To accept me, whacko, just like that, was a pretty hard thing to do.'
'Just like that' was precisely what they were asked to do. 'I asked for her hand in marriage in April of 1981,' Mr. Daniel said. 'We wanted to get married on July 4. They were pretty tough on me. Her father said there was no way you're going to marry my daughter in July. You're going to wait six months at the minimum, go through a test. We have to announce it.
'And I was walking down that road with him, and I said, 'I'll wait six months, but I'm telling you right now, I'm going to marry your daughter.' I meant it. I think he was surprised.' The parents, Adalbert von Gontard
Jr., a former vice president of the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company and of Metromedia, and his wife, Mamie, invited the young man to meet their friends in Greenwich. It was an ordeal he will never forget.
'I couldn't even imagine what it was like in Connecticut,' he said. 'I'd never even been on a big airplane.'
He was intimidated by the big party the von Gontards gave at their manicured Greenwich estate, in front of the stables.
'Her father got up and made this speech,' Mr. Daniel said. 'Then he says, 'My future son-in-law has a few words to say.' I don't even remember what I said. From that moment it was an uphill climb. I don't know when downhill started.'
This mortification was followed by a black-tie affair. 'I didn't even take a jacket,' Mr. Daniel said. 'It was awful - the most miserable feeling I ever had in my life.'
Mr. Daniel's parents, in Texas, were just as dubious about the impending union, but for different reasons. His father, Don, a cowboy with only a ninth-grade education, and his mother, Margaret, a kindergarten teacher, saw a flashy, high-flying girl from the East and doubted her intentions.
'They were afraid I was just playing with him, that I was just down here on a fling,' Mrs. Daniel said.
'They believe when you get married you should stay married.'
But the doubts of both families eventually were overcome. 'It took both parents a long time to understand both of us,' Mr. Daniel said.
'But there was a willingness to learn.'
The von Gontards are now regular visitors to the ranch, enjoying the quail hunting and horseback riding.
On Oct. 10, 1981, the couple were married in a colorful Western wedding at the Pitchfork Ranch. A dozen cowboys on gray horses rode behind the buggy carrying the betrothed, and a rodeo followed. The festivities, which lasted three days, were the talk of West Texas.
At first, Mrs. Daniel worked alongside her her husband, rising at 4 A.M. to fix breakfast, then working the cattle on horseback with the cowpokes, breaking away to fix lunch for the ranch hands, then heading out on the range again until dinner. 'I loved it -I'd rather be out there horsebacking,' she said.
Her life changed drastically with the birth of her children, Colton, now 3, and Rebecca Lee, 1. She is home most of the time, cooking and changing diapers, something her parents never had to do.
The house is typical of West Texas ranch life. The plain furniture might have been bought at a local discount store, and rodeo photographs hang on the wood-paneled walls of the small living room, which is cluttered with toys. The kitchen is nothing fancy: an electric range, a microwave oven, a refrigerator, simple wheat-colored cabinets, a double sink and a beige linoleum floor. Outside is a menagerie: pheasants, purebred greyhounds, chickens, horses, turkeys.
Mrs. Daniel said she has adjusted to the isolation, but adjusting has meant, among other things, learning cardiopulmonary resuscitation, keeping kits for snakebites and bee stings, and worrying that the children have no friends.
Does she miss anything from her former life? Swimming, she said, and fox hunting. Her mother and sister send their castoff clothes. 'Whatever's two years old is the hottest fashion out here,' she said.
Mr. Daniel has gone into partnership with his father and two brothers, Duane and Michael. Together they graze 3,000 to 4,000 head of cattle on 90,000 leased acres, stable 40 horses and grow 4,000 acres of wheat. It is endless toil, but the Daniels bought their stock and signed their leases three years ago when drought and sorry cattle prices had driven costs way down. Now that rains have come and prices are up, they are doing well.
Mr. Daniel also has his own fuel-supply business, selling to other ranchers and farmers.
'My grandparents built a brewery and a ranch,' Mrs. Daniel said.
'None of the other generations have done anything on their own, to say, 'I really did this.' Look at this land.
Back East, riding was always for pleasure. Here, my husband uses his horses for work, as a tool. It's very real.'
It is this quality that most impresses her husband, whose family understood that hard work was necessary for survival. 'Inheritance is wonderful, but I don't believe you should live off your grandfather's roots,' he said. 'That is the binding part of the marriage.'",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Calendar: Tours, Talk And Auction
Blossoming Brooklyn Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 1000 Washington Avenue, off Eastern Parkway; (718) 622-4433.
The garden's annual cherry blossom festival will be held on Saturday and Sunday from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M., with tours of the Japanese Hill-and-Pond Garden and the C. V. Starr Bonsai Museum, horticultural demonstrations and Japanese cultural events. Free with garden admission: $3; students and those 65 and older, $1.50.
The spring plant sale will take place on Wednesday, from 9 A.M. to 7 P.M., and next Thursday, from 9 A.M. to 3 P.M.
Artists on the Podium Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation; (212) 924-3895.
On Tuesday at 6:30 P.M., the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude will speak on  their work at Tishman Auditorium, 40 Washington Square South. Reservations are required. A dinner with the art'sts will follow. Tickets: lecture only, $25; students and those 55 and older, $15; lecture and dinner, $300.
Victorian Houses in Brooklyn  Flatbush Tompkins Church, East 19th Street and Dorchester Road; (718) 469-8990.
The Flatbush Development Corporation is sponsoring a self-guided tour of 12 houses on Sunday, from 1 to 6 P.M. Participants may walk or take shuttle buses.  Tickets, $20.
Exploring Philadelphia  Philadelphia Open House; (215) 928-1188.
Philadelphia Open House, a series of 30 self-guided walking tours and tours of gardens and country houses in addition to bus tours, starts today and continues through May 19. Tickets range from $20 to $80.
English Gardens in Town Bergdorf Goodman, Fifth Avenue at 57th Street, seventh floor.
Lady Pulbrook, a founder of Pulbrook & Gould, a leading society florist in London and a training ground for some of the world's most prominent floral designers, will be at Bergdorf Goodman on May 3 and 4 to sign her new book, ""Flowers for All Occasions.""",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Two Scientists Caught in Amber
'YOU need 300 objects to furnish an apartment, just for the record,' said Stuart Pivar, a scientist and art collector, in a grand tone reminiscent of Diana Vreeland. Ms. Vreeland was a close friend and taught him the effectiveness of pontification.
It can be safely guessed that Mr. Pivar has more than 300 objects in the duplex apartment he shares with Helen Matsos in a neo-Gothic building on West 67th Street in Manhattan. His belongings include figurative art and Renaissance furnishings, modern ceramics and an inherited piano.
Mr. Pivar, 72, has long been involved with the New York art scene. The son of an importer of velvet ribbons and an intensely style-conscious mother, he was a founder of the New York Academy of Art, then in the East Village and now on Franklin Street in TriBeCa, with Andy Warhol. (Mr. Pivar was invited to Warhol's Factory by a friend in the early 1970's, and he and Warhol soon became close friends and shopping companions.)
Made wealthy by the industrial companies he founded, Mr. Pivar bought his apartment in 1975 from an elderly woman who had lived there for 60 years. The apartment, including its contents -- chiefly 19th-century salon furniture and what he calls respectable Renaissance reproductions -- cost him $85,000. He then sold all the furniture, except the Steinway piano and theatrical costumes, at Sotheby's for nearly the same amount, in effect getting the apartment free.
'It is a good thing to identify yourself as a collector,' Mr. Pivar said. 'People will bring you things.'
Doormen, recognizing his acquisitive nature, have presented him with art left behind by other residents, including stacks of nude drawings by the American realist painter Leon Kroll (1884-1974, known for his depictions of the female form), who had once lived in the building. Mr. Pivar himself has added, among many other things, a set of twisted Solomonic columns -- the kind Bernini used at St. Peter's in Rome -- and a sculpture of a Greek goddess.
He has also amassed precious musical instruments including the 16th-century harpsichord in his study and a platinum flute, which he bought at auction in 1986 for $187,000, he said, after a bidding war with an investment banker, who wanted to buy it for his 12-year-old-daughter.
Warhol's diary entry that year for Oct. 18 recorded the moment: 'Stuart kept his paddle up and I could feel his whole body next to me shaking. When the hammer came down, Stuart was just in shock. Just in shock. He then consumed two double martinis and four hot chocolates.'
On the floor underneath the harpsichord is a surprising sight: a large number of familiar-looking bronze Rodins. Mr. Pivar refers to them, with a shrug, as his Rodin forest. As he puts it, 'Everyone has a Rodin.'
When he bought the apartment, he did make the previous owner one promise. No matter what, 'I was not allowed to tear down her beloved wallcovering of rose-gold silk brocade,' he said, 'and I wouldn't dream of committing such an act of cruelty.' He covers the shabby spots with paintings. 'It's an amazing background for art objects,' he said. 'I like the lightly anachronistic effect that it gives.'
He immediately began replacing her 19th-century furniture, however, with Renaissance, Gothic and Baroque pieces. 'Buying is easy,' he said. 'All you have to do is raise your hand, and if you hold it up long enough, everything is yours.'
Competition is relatively sparse for Renaissance furniture. 'Not everybody wants to live in a period space,' he said. Thus, he was able to buy a fresco attributed to Giulio Romano's studio for $12,000, whereas other things he has bought, including the flute and cookie jars from the Warhol collection, have attracted more heated competition.
And then there are the bones, many displayed against black velvet. Mr. Pivar, who is fascinated by anatomy, has a real human skeleton as well as artificial bones created at his instructions by a young artist. A menagerie of stuffed animals, also on the second floor, is further evidence of Mr. Pivar's fascination with the natural world.
Ms. Matsos, 39, is a biophysicist with a special expertise in looking for fossil life in Martian meteorites. She is a consulting researcher at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the editor in chief of Astrobiology Magazine, an Internet publication based at the Goddard Institute of Columbia University.
The Gothic and Renaissance pieces in the Pivar collection are relative newcomers compared with Martian fossils, and wholly to her taste. 'It is wonderful to know that people 500 years ago were creating such grandeur and beauty,' she said.
Growing up in an Art Deco apartment in New York City, Mr. Pivar was surrounded by furniture his mother had one day painted white, even the mahogany. He became a collector at 7. First it was an extensive collection of bugs. 'Today you can walk through Central Park without encountering a single bug,' he complained.
At summer camp in Kingston, N.Y., he traded bottle caps with other boys, manipulating the market by very sparingly trading his Pepsi caps, he remembers. When the price of a Pepsi bottle cap was high enough, he would sell. He was 8.
Mr. Pivar's early interest in insects and their metamorphosis eventually led him to focus on exploring human embryonic development. His scientific interests and his collecting habits are supported by a group of plastic mold companies he founded in 1959 under the name Chemtainer Industries. 'I don't work,' he said. 'These firms are on autopilot.'
On the second floor is a large collection of gem stones he inherited from Warhol. Until Warhol's death in 1987, he and Mr. Pivar went on almost daily shopping trips. 'He wasn't a very knowledgeable buyer,' Mr. Pivar said. 'And he'd ask me for my opinion, which he always ignored. Because my opinion was, 'Don't buy that junk.' He would buy it anyway.'
Mr. Pivar, who plays the piano and a 17th-century Italian cello, is fond of classical music, the three B's, meaning Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, and Mozart. He met Ms. Matsos 10 years ago, when a friend took her to his apartment for one of his frequent musical evenings.
A trained opera singer who has toured Europe and the United States, she believes that Baroque music works especially well in their opulent environment. But she and Mr. Pivar are just as likely to play blues and jazz on the long-resident Steinway, which is in the living room. 'There is nothing uglier in the whole world than the shape of a piano,' he said. 'Unfortunately I need it. But it is completely wrong for the room, and I apologize for it.'
And then the piano is hard to move. Much of his Gothic and Renaissance furniture is highly portable, chests and campaign chairs that fold up like modern beach chairs. His desk closes up and becomes a trunk: 'You can keep all your knickknacks in there,' he said. A huge table is put together cunningly in five pieces. 'It can be dismantled in seconds,' he said.
'Even the wooden walls that fit magically into one of the upstairs rooms come right off and flatten into a stack -- a mobile home,' he said, speaking of the Renaissance walls in his study. 'I could be out of here in 15 minutes, walls and all.'
But it seems clear he will stay and that he will continue to acquire. 'Every time I see an example of something that is better than what I own, I buy it,' he said. 'Otherwise for the rest of my life I have to live with the knowledge that someplace in the world something is floating around that is better than mine, and that's intolerable.'",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Yippies' Answer to Smoke-Filled Rooms
ON a crisp spring morning in the East Village, Dana Beal could envision a future for the Yippies, and it involved coffee and real estate. Mr. Beal, 56, has long white hair and a thick white mustache that give him the look of a character from a Civil War movie. A younger woman who gave her name as War Cry listened as he spoke. Real estate has been his continuing irritation; coffee, he hoped, might be his relief.
Since 1973 he has lived in a three-story brick building at 9 Bleecker Street that has functioned as an informal headquarters for some veterans of the Yippie movement, which now continues as a campaign to ease drug policies. But like many remnants of the neighborhood's scruffier past, Mr. Beal found himself on the short end of the real estate boom. Last May he lost his final legal motion to prevent his landlord from selling the building. What he would like, he said, is to set up a foundation to buy the building -- priced at about $1.5 million -- and turn it into a Yippie museum, supported in large part by a coffee bar and a bookstore. 'The Yippies are supposed to come back to New York in 2004,' Mr. Beal said. 'And this building might not be there for them.'
Though it is not the original Yippie outpost in New York -- that was on Union Square, where in the Vietnam era Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and others combined outrageous humor, theater and political protest -- Mr. Beal's building has a history. Yipster Times was published on the third floor. Aron Kay, known as Pieman for his preferred manner of greeting political figures, used to live in the basement.
From his prodigiously messy digs, Mr. Beal organizes a network of annual pot parades, successors to the Yippie smoke-ins. This year's parades, which are scheduled for Saturday, will include demonstrations in more than 200 cities around the world, he said.
On this morning the building was a hive of activity, as various people of college age weaved in and out among boxes of papers. There was a sparsely furnished lounge area on the ground floor and Mr. Beal's apartment and work space on the second. A man stirred groggily from a sleeping area known as the leopard skin loft above the lounge area. The third floor, where another longtime Yippie named Alice Torbush lives, was off limits. If the décor had a unifying motif, it was the marijuana leaf.
But on this weekday morning there was other business afoot. Encouraged by the turnouts at antiwar demonstrations earlier this year and provoked by the prospect of a Republican National Convention in New York next summer, a handful of Yippies and fellow travelers have lurched back toward the public rostrum, not as pranksters this time but as creatures of the college lecture circuit. Nine have formed a Yippie! Speakers Bureau, including Mr. Beal; Paul Krassner, the satirist and stand-up comedian; and Grace Slick, the singer in Jefferson Airplane. They are now soliciting dates for next fall, at fees ranging from several thousand dollars for those not so well known to $15,000 or more for Ms. Slick.
'This is the antiwar equivalent of a veterans' group,' said Mr. Krassner, 70, speaking from his home in Desert Hot Springs, Calif. 'And we don't get good health care either.'
Mr. Krassner, who coined the term Yippie, for Youth International Party, in 1967 and who founded the alternative magazine The Realist, added: 'It's strange to be 70 and still identify with a youth movement. But I'd rather identify with evolution than stagnation.'
At Mr. Beal's home, Michael Forman, who is organizing the bureau's Steal This Speaking Tour, described how the playing field for the Yippies' brand of mischief had changed.
'If we dropped dollar bills at the stock exchange now,' he said, 'it would be perceived as a terrorist act.'
Mr. Forman, 61, said he met Abbie Hoffman, one of the founding Yippies, on a freedom ride in the South in 1961, and remained in contact until Mr. Hoffman's death in 1989. He and Mr. Beal display a cantankerous comic rapport. 'I'm sorry the place is such a mess,' Mr. Beal said, as if suddenly noticing that it was the maid's day off.
'Oh, that's the funniest line in the interview,' Mr. Forman said.
He stressed that the speakers would now have to present themselves as wise elders, even if their wisdom mainly concerned matters of youth culture.
'We can't tell people to kill their parents,' he said, beginning a recitation of the Yippies' greatest hits. 'That was a mistake. We can't threaten to put acid in the reservoir. That was a mistake.
'We have to stay within the laws. America's got a different consciousness now.'
If this seems uncharacteristically conciliatory, coming from a group that once claimed to have levitated the Pentagon and ran a pig for president, consider another recent Yippie sighting. The giant reinsurance company Swiss Re has recently run ads, including one in this newspaper, built around a quotation from Jerry Rubin, who died in 1994. Once vilified by the corporate establishment, Yippie musings have now been turned into copy for the reinsurance business.
When he saw this bit of co-optation, Gustin L. Reichbach, 56, a former Yippie who is now a New York State Supreme Court justice in Brooklyn -- and a member of the Yippie! Speakers Bureau -- saw the turnabout not as a violation of Yippie principles but as a sign of victory.
'Imagine my astonishment,' Justice Reichbach wrote in an e-mail message, citing the ad as confirmation that the counterculture of the 1960's had shifted the boundaries of what is now considered mainstream. 'Changing the boundaries indeed!'
The Yippie! Speakers Bureau is itself a reprise of an idea Abbie Hoffman had for a Movement Speakers Bureau. For Ms. Slick, speaking from her home in Southern California, the tour is an idea that was best delayed. Now, she said, the speakers might know what they're talking about.
In her younger days, Ms. Slick once tried to take Mr. Hoffman as her date to a White House tea party, at which they planned to put LSD in Richard Nixon's tea. Though she had been invited to the event -- she attended the same small women's college as Patricia Nixon -- she and Mr. Hoffman were intercepted at the door.
Speaking of her own generation in its younger years, Ms. Slick said: 'Young people should be seen and not heard, because they're good-looking but not too bright. We're pretty bright now, but we're ugly.' She said she had no fixed expectations of the college circuit. 'I don't think we're trying to bring anything back,' she said. 'But you don't often get a chance to find out what 18-year-olds think. I think it'll be fascinating.'
It remains to be seen whether college campuses will embrace the graying veterans -- and by the same token, whether museumgoers will wish to linger over espresso in the epicenter of the smoke-in movement. Jack Hoffman, Abbie's younger brother, has his doubts. 'You've got to get some young celebrities,' said Mr. Hoffman, 63, who is a member of the speakers' bureau. 'To get the oldie-but-goodies out there is O.K., but we've got to appeal to the young people.'
Patrick Kroupa, 34, a former computer hacker who is also in the speakers' bureau, said students were closer to Yippie ideas than people thought. 'The counterculture didn't drop dead,' said Mr. Kroupa, who said he participated in various computer activities organized by the Yippies in the early 1980's. 'It just went online.'
This history, like much involving the Yippies, can be grounds for argument. During their lifetimes, Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Rubin argued vehemently with each other and with other Yippies, including Mr. Beal, who at one point helped lead a splinter group called the Zippies. Even now, Jack Hoffman says he has run afoul of Yippie faithful for talking about his brother's bouts with manic depression.
The building at 9 Bleecker Street, too, has a contested claim to historical significance. Some original Yippies argue that the group's important years, bracketed by the national conventions in 1968 and 1972, took place before Mr. Beal moved into the building.
Mr. Beal sees this argument as an attempt to preserve a limited version of counterculture history that denies the importance of later events. 'There's all this fighting about who controls the legacy of the name 'Yippie,' ' Mr. Beal said. 'It's like people in the black community fighting over the legacy of Martin Luther King.'
Mr. Beal said he has raised $110,000 toward purchase of the building, but has not yet formed the limited liability corporation that would actually buy it and lease it for use as a Yippie museum. Though his plans are vague, he perked up at the possibilities.
'We could bring out the Yipster Times again,' he said. 'We still have the equipment. All we need is an ad rep.'
Mr. Forman waited a beat. 'Stop looking at me,' he said.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"If Seen, Then Not Heard
LEAD: To The Living Section:
To The Living Section:
I've just read your article 'The New York Baby's Going Out Guide'  [ May 27 ]  and feel that a comment is in order. Although I enjoy being around children tremendously, I also think that those under the age of good behavior have a lot in common with cigarette smoke and transistor radios: there are places where they just don't belong. Why do some parents insist on taking children places where noise is inappropriate?  MARIAN R. NELSON  Manhattan",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Fuzzy Dice Decor: The Car Interior As Living Room
LEAD: ERIN MURPHY SCHNEEWEISS keeps two tiny teddy bears on the dashboard of her sporty white car: one wears a white dress with a veil; the other, a dinner jacket and top hat. 'Everyone sees them,' said Mrs. Schneeweiss, who lives in Midland Park, N.J., and drives a 1986 Pontiac Fiero. 'Everyone asks if I'm married, everyone says congratulations, and they bring back memories every time I look at them.
ERIN MURPHY SCHNEEWEISS keeps two tiny teddy bears on the dashboard of her sporty white car: one wears a white dress with a veil; the other, a dinner jacket and top hat. 'Everyone sees them,' said Mrs. Schneeweiss, who lives in Midland Park, N.J., and drives a 1986 Pontiac Fiero. 'Everyone asks if I'm married, everyone says congratulations, and they bring back memories every time I look at them. They're a very personal thing.'
If you are what you drive, as some car-conscious consumers maintain, then personalizing the passenger compartment can be as time-consuming and emotionally demanding as choosing between Chippendale and Louis XV. It certainly is as lucrative: automobile accessories have become a billion-dollar business. But in the tiny space of a car, a space already defined by fake wood on the dashboard and carpet made of fibers not found in nature, the result is usually more kitsch than elegance: fuzzy dice dangle from rear-view mirrors, and stuffed cats creep in on suction-cup feet.
For millions of drivers, these items add just the right touch by turning one interior space into a microcosm of another. 'We identify so closely with our automobiles that it makes sense to think of them as extensions of the home,' two British psychologists, Peter Marsh and Peter Collett, wrote in 'Driving Passion: The Psychology of the Car' (Faber & Faber, 1987).
Ever since the early auto makers put tops on their motorized buggies, the car has been a kind of portable room, with seats as plush as an easy chair, a windshield as big as a picture window and a dashboard that Dr. Michael Marsden maintains is 'a kind of mantelpiece on which we display objects of affection.'
To Dr. Marsden, a professor of popular culture at Bowling Green State University, the rear-view mirror serves as the automotive equivalent of the peg above the mantelpiece, from which Colonial families hung muskets or ancestral portraits.
Like what's hung on the walls of a home, the items that decorate a car, from decals in the windows to stuffed animals on the back seat, tell much about the likes and dislikes of the owner. 'Look at what you're proclaiming,' Dr. Marsden said. ' 'I went to this university; I like this cartoon character.' You are projecting yourself to the outside world. It's a remarkable kind of thing. People are using their automobiles as a giant billboard for their own particular tastes and their own particular values.'
Dangling from the rear-view mirror of Marika Guyton's Ford EXP is a little plastic hamburger in a bun; a Garfield, the comic-strip cat; a ballpoint pen, and a deodorizer. 'I like stuffed animals and hamburgers,' she said, 'and I like my car to smell nice.'
As in home furnishings, there are trends in automotive accessories. Particularly popular this year are stuffed animals anchored to windows, a marketing bonanza for the obese and obstreperous Garfield, poised to escape from thousands of cars at the sight of Odie, his canine nemesis.
One motorist, Clara Pugh, has a veritable zoo in her car: lions and tigers and bears, oh my, and even Minnie Mouse. 'It's a home away from home,' said Ms. Pugh, who helps manage a K Mart store in Paramus, N.J. 'I had stuffed animals in my bedroom, so having them in the car is a natural.'
Stuffed animals also appeal to drivers who love pets but wouldn't let them in their living rooms and know better than to leave live animals in closed cars.
One of last year's biggest sellers, yellow plastic signs, are seen less often this year. Whether this means that there are fewer 'babies on board' or 'mothers-in-law in trunk' is unclear. 'I want a sign that says, 'Yellow sign in trunk,' ' said one woman from New Jersey who declined to identify herself. 'I got tired of the sign fad real fast.' Now, she keeps a teddy bear on the dashboard.
But some motorists are not concerned with trendy items. Hanging from the rear-view mirror of Linda Brown's red 1967 Camaro is a white foxtail, the tassle from her graduation at Passaic Valley High School last June and a small bear. On the dashboard are Rodney, a bulldog she acquired at a Burger King, and stickers for her favorite heavy-metal bands - Anthrax, the Misfits and Fiendz.
'It's me,' said Ms. Brown, who works in a photo-finishing store in Clifton, N.J. 'Everyone sees me in the car and sees all the stuff, and they say, 'Yeah, that's her.' ' The car lacks only one thing. 'I've been looking for leopard seat covers for a year,' she said. When asked why leopard, she pulled out her leopard makeup case and said she also treasured her leopard sneakers.
Dr. Marsden, the Bowling Green professor, argues that animal mascots in cars are a throwback to the foxtails that drivers once hung from their radio antennas. After World War II, Dr. Marsden said, dashboards became larger and more shelflike, and what he calls 'the personal icons' came in from the cold, the rain and the dust.
This marked the beginning of the statue era and the heyday of religious objects. Dr. Marsden said one of his graduate school classmates tied a Christian statue and a voodoo doll to his rear-view mirror. 'I asked why both,' Dr. Marsden recalled. 'The answer was, 'When one quits, the other takes over.' '
One woman who lives in northern New Jersey said she would never drive without her religious medals, which were blessed by the Pope. 'No accidents,' she said when asked about them. 'They're a reminder to me to drive carefully.'
Not all statues and medals that bedeck cars are religious, of course. Lisa Livi, a clerk from Paterson, N.J., has a lucky bulldog in her Z-28 Camaro. 'If I take him out, I just know I'll get in an accident,' she said.
Americans' desire for personal icons has turned the automotive accessories business into a major industry that sells all the comforts of home. Executives at J. C. Whitney in Chicago, for example, claim that with 65,000 accessories in stock, it is one of the world's largest retailers of its kind. Among its catalogue offerings is a completely portable satellite dish and television receiver for $539.96.
Many customers prefer function over form: a plastic holder for sunglasses costs $3.59. But Whitney also stocks eight-ball gearshift knobs ($2.60) and large foot-shaped accelerators ($5.39), just the thing for Jolly Green Giants who want to put their pedals to the metal.
'People who buy these things want to make the car their own,' Dr. Marsden said. 'It's a way of personalizing technology and integrating it into your life. That object is no longer sitting out there, distant from you, if you personalize it as your machine with your stamp on it. That says you feel quite at home.'
The personality being projected, Dr. Marsden said, is generally a driver's image of himself or herself, not necessarily the truth. 'How else do you explain macho symbols and carnival objects?' he said.
It has always been possible to send messages on bumper stickers, but now it's possible to personalize those, too, using changeable stick-on letters and a frame that can be attached to the rear window. And then there are other approaches. Whitney, for example, sells a license-plate frame surrounded by lights for $17.96.
Frank Pepe, a Manhattan printer, preferred lights by themselves, so he bought a T-shaped light bar for the package shelf of his 1979 Lincoln Continental coupe. 'Hit the brakes, and it glitters,' he said. 'It gets people's attention.'",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Not Enough Snow for You? Talk to Your Father
THE snowmaking conditions were terrific at the Heaven house a few Sundays ago: it was 17 degrees and very dry, a felicitous temperature-to-humidity ratio that would hold well into the following week. Marshall Heaven, a cheerful 53-year-old real estate developer in a red ski parka, had had his two snow guns running since the previous Friday; the 15-foot Dr. Seussian heap of snow that occupies the Heavens' sloping backyard each year from late November to early April was looking particularly impressive.
Gabby, a 9-month-old cockapoo, was flopping about on and in it, her blond fur crusted with ice. Alexandra Heaven, 4 1/2, was bright pink in the face and just about to her limit; she had been sledding nonstop for two hours. Her mother, Mary Ann, 52, a former television reporter and producer who now works with her husband, scooped up both child and dog and hauled them inside for a warm-up.
For some, Valentine's Day is much too late in the year for their first snow. Since Nature can no longer keep to her early deadlines, men like Mr. Heaven (snowmaking, like barbecuing, is still a gendered hobby) are taking matters into their own hands, and creating their own seasons, at least when it comes to winter.
Snowmaking, since the mid-1960s the provenance of ski resorts and, more recently, some party planners, has gone domestic.
Companies like Snow Economics, a maker and inventor of resort-quality snow machines in Natick, Mass. -- from which Mr. Heaven bought his two Backyard Blizzard snowmakers a few years ago -- have been selling home snowmakers since 2000.
Snow at Home, a Cheshire, Conn., company run by Matt Pittman and Ken Jackie, has been shipping snowmakers for use in backyards from New Jersey to New Zealand for four years; sales are now 'in the hundreds,' Mr. Pittman said.
'We've hit every state but Hawaii,' he said last week.
Mr. Pittman, who was speaking by cellphone, was with a client near Morristown, N.J., helping to put the finishing touches on what was essentially the client's personal resort, he said: a 200-foot-long slope behind the house with a warming hut at its foot and two snow machines at its peak. The previous summer, trees had been cleared and water and power lines buried below the soil's frost line, ready to hook up to two of Mr. Pittman's machines. 'New Jersey is a big area for us,' Mr. Pittman said. 'There's no snow, and lots of disposable income.'
David Young, 38, who owns two Snow at Home machines, lives 15 minutes by car from Atlantic City; he has been making snow in his backyard for three years. Early last week he had two feet of snow; one day last week he took a personal day from his boat repair business to make snow all day, he said.
'It's hard to stop when the weather is right,' he said. 'You can set the guns up and go to sleep, but I like to go and mess with them. My neighbors are going to work at the casinos at 3 a.m. and I'm out there, too, messing with the guns. I just like being out in it. It's really hard to turn the guns off; it looks so good piling up.'
When real snow falls, Mr. Young said, 'my daughter thinks I made it.'
When you mix real snow with machine snow, Mr. Heaven said, the real stuff, which is lighter and fluffier, falls to the side and creates a cushion. 'It's great for when the kids are playing king of the mountain,' he said. 'They have this soft powder to fall in.'
Those who make snow are proud of their powder. They speak passionately about its stacking qualities (it is denser than snow that starts out in a cloud) and bandy about terms like nucleation and wet bulb temperature. Forums like snowguns.com, which has over 3,700 members, show a subculture as much into the process of snowmaking as the result of it. There are discussions about how to build your own rope tow and lengthy back-and-forths about the attributes of various snow wand nozzles.
Still, size matters to a snowmaker. Mr. Young dreams of a 'bigger vertical,' he said. 'Everyone who makes snow wants a larger hill.'
Mr. Heaven dreams of a commercial machine, an 18-nozzle gun that would make a hill like his in an hour, he said. 'It's a serious commitment,' he said, and it would require a concrete platform to mount the thing, which costs about $30,000. 'It's a whole different story,' he said, indicating that his wife was not yet on board with a system upgrade.
'It's his avocation,' Ms. Heaven said. 'And I indulge him in it, the same way he indulges me by letting me have a pink house.'
The Heavens' house, a late-19th-century carriage house they doubled the size of last year, is a pink-and-white gingerbread-style confection that cries out for the sort of frosty ground and tree cover Mr. Heaven's machines can make. Inside, there are pink Aubusson rugs and gilded walls; a ceiling fresco featuring many fat putti is in the works for the front hall; and a pair of Italian gilded angel wings sits in a wall niche made just for them.
'Mount Heaven was a no-brainer,' said Ms. Heaven, referring to her name for the snow hill her husband made, and pointing to the peak from her daughter's bedroom window upstairs. 'You've got a lot to work with when you have a name like ours.'
As global warming continues to wreak havoc with the weather, snowmakers impose a nostalgic order -- albeit one that does nothing to help the situation, since snowmaking runs on electricity (and water, of course, one and a half to six gallons a minute, depending on the size of the machine). Charles Santry, president of Snow Economics, said his Backyard Blizzard Sport machine, which has a 1.5 horsepower engine, can use up to 1,650 watts. A clothes dryer guzzles more power, but snowmaking is certainly not going to win any green awards.
In fact, snowmaking requires 'traditional' winter weather -- that is, temperatures well below freezing. And last year New York and Connecticut were two of the five states that posted their warmest Decembers on record.
Mount Heaven melted twice that month, Mr. Heaven said ruefully.
'I love the cold,' he said. 'I love winter.'
Indeed, Mr. Heaven loves all weather, whatever form it comes in. (In high school he wrote a weather column for the school newspaper called Heaven's Heaven.) He was happily monitoring this week's event.
'It's a complicated storm,' he said yesterday, reporting no melting whatsoever on Mount Heaven. 'But even if it rains, we won't suffer any snowpack loss. The mound is so dense it will just firm it up more.'
Mr. Heaven turned his guns on again yesterday afternoon. He was eager to make more snow.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Warnings on Toys Are Often Ignored, Causing Injuries
OVER the past few months, reports of defects in children's toys and equipment have left parents to wonder: Are the incidents an aberration, or a signal that the 90's nursery is unsafe?
Consider these recent warning signs:
* After dozens of Cabbage Patch Kids Snacktime dolls munched on the hair or fingers of children playing with them, Mattel pulled the line from stores.
* Playskool offered to replace parts of 280,000 highchairs because the plastic restraining bar tends to snap, causing at least 40 young children to topple to the floor.
* When the tiny wheel hubs on Tonka's Soft Walkin' toy vehicles began to separate from their axles, creating a potential choking hazard, Tonka recalled one million of the little cars and trucks.
Even so, in interviews over the past few weeks, the representatives of the Toy Manufacturers Association, consumer groups and government agencies agreed that most products are safer than ever because of tighter regulations and industry appreciation of the publicity value of safe toys.
The greatest danger lurking in today's nursery, they say, is lax supervision and indifference toward both the age-appropriateness of toys and the warning labels on products.
For example, some 121,000 children under 14 were taken to emergency rooms for toy-related injuries in 1995, according to the National Safe Kids Campaign, a nine-year-old program that aims to prevent childhood injuries. But most emergencies were caused by inappropriate behavior -- say, riding a tricycle so close to the curb that it tips over -- rather than by defective toys, said Dr. Heather Paul, executive director of Safe Kids in Washington.
Toys are subject to increasingly strict scrutiny, like the Consumer Product Safety Commission's 'use and abuse' test, which includes repeatedly dropping a toy four feet and tugging at small parts. If the toy breaks, it is not allowed in stores.
In addition, tighter Federal safety laws, like the 1995 Child Safety Protection Act, require retailers and manufacturers to report any hazard to the commission as soon as it surfaces, even if no injuries have occurred, or face a maximum $125 million penalty for violating product safety laws. But that threat is mostly unnecessary; the potential for bad publicity or lawsuits, industry observers say, prompts most companies to act on their own. (Imports, which account for 45 percent of the market, are inspected as they enter the country.)
Efforts are under way to develop global toy safety standards, said David A. Miller, president of the Toy Manufacturers of America in New York. To this end, two international conferences have been held.
But even the safest toys can be unsafe if family members and baby sitters do not act responsibly. Children must also be taught more about the dangers, experts say.
During a four-hour seminar on toy safety last month at the American International Toy Fair in New York, Ann Brown, chairwoman of the commission, told how her own granddaughter had refused to wear a bike helmet, saying it made her look foolish. Ms. Brown suggested that helmets be made more attractive.
But the main concern of toy makers and industry observers is that parents do not read the warning labels, although they agreed that some blame lies in the baffling charts or convoluted instructions that often accompany a product. So some manufacturers are working to eliminate assembly where possible.
Even when the warnings are legitimate, printed in big letters and clearly worded, 'parents don't bother to read them,' said Wendy Shindler, a trauma nurse who is the coordinator of the Queens chapter of the National Safe Kids Campaign.
Parents are also 'rushed,' said Karen DiCapua, director of the Connecticut chapter of Safe Kids. 'It's hard to get their attention.'
This is so, the commission said, even though warnings have been expanded to include the reasons a toy should not be bought: 'choking hazard,' 'sharp edges and points' or 'adult assembly required.'
Sometimes, Ms. DiCapua and Ms. Shindler said, misguided parents or grandparents dismiss age recommendations because they think their child is brighter than average, or will 'grow into it.' But a child's coordination or finger size may not have kept pace with intellectual development. So the child can become frustrated or hurt.
Consider the predicament of Melina Crews of Westport, Conn., who was surfing the shelves of her local Toys 'R' Us store one recent afternoon while trying to keep an eye on her two lively children, 4-year-old Mark and 7-year-old Stephanie.
'You are so busy monitoring the kids,' she said as she glanced back and forth to make sure she knew where they were, 'that you can't always stop to look at the labels.'
On top of that, she complained, the warnings 'aren't readily apparent.'  She pointed to the box of a pirate game she was holding, which had a warning label in a bottom corner that had almost disappeared from view: it was printed in the same shade of blue as the box. Further, she noted, the typeface on the age-appropriate label in another corner was less than a quarter-inch high.
An informal survey of that store also showed that the warning labels were printed in English only, with a single Spanish exception, leaving the growing number of foreign-speaking parents to fend for themselves.
In the end, Ms. Crews relied on her own judgment, peering through the cellophane wrapper and considering the tiny plastic pirate figures. It seemed safe enough. She decided to buy the game.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Safe Kids Campaign offer parents these suggestions for buying toys that will prevent child injuries:
* Check for sturdy construction, even when buying an expensive toy. Be sure eyes, buttons and ribbons are well attached.
* If a toy readily falls apart at home or seems dangerous, the Consumer Product Safety Commission can be alerted by calling (800) 638-2772.
* Strings, straps or cords should never be longer than seven inches.
* If a child is younger than 8, avoid electric toys with heating elements or sharp edges and points.
* Remind older children to keep toys like chemistry sets or makeup kits away from toddlers and babies.
* Inspect older toys regularly for jagged edges, broken parts or decorations that may have become loose.
And, they add, always take time to teach children how to use a toy safely.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Curents; Blossoms That Do The Tango
LEAD: MOST flowers turn their heads toward the sun. Rock'n Flowers would rather dance, and the livelier the music and the beat, the faster they wiggle and bob.
MOST flowers turn their heads toward the sun. Rock'n Flowers would rather dance, and the livelier the music and the beat, the faster they wiggle and bob.
Rock'n Flowers, which are equipped with electronic phonic sensors, were created by Isamu Kataoka, a designer at Takara Company Ltd., a Tokyo toy manufacturer. They were introduced in 1988 in Tokyo, where they have been very popular.
For children, Takara had been selling a dancing dog with a sensor, said Terry Terui, vice president of Takara's Manhattan office, and it wanted something similar for adults.
The answer was dancing plastic flowers wearing sunglasses and holding instruments. Rock'n Flowers, which are battery-operated, come one to a pot. They sell for $29.95 each at Bloomingdale's and other stores across the country.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"It's Time to Shrink The Big Software Box
AMERICANS are used to big boxes packed with cereal or cookies, but mostly with air. But it's a surprise to see the same packaging strategy from the computer industry, which constantly boasts of miracles of compression -- of laptops seven-tenths of an inch thin, multiple megabytes squeezed onto tiny disks and digital assistants the size of a Saltine.
So why does a program like Windows 98 (about $90), recorded on a single CD-ROM, arrive wrapped in a box that measures 8 inches by 10 inches by 2 inches and include a manual, a clutch of coupons and a  cardboard stiffener folded with origami cleverness?
The standard big software box is designed to let vendors build a bright wall of product to attract customers. Peter Janssen, former vice president of merchandising of Egghead Software, advises software companies 'to use the package as your ad.' The big box also discourages shoplifting and, packagers say, protects the disk from damage during shipping.
But John Ruston, an economic analyst for the Environmental Defense Fund, who led efforts against McDonald's clamshell hamburger package, says, 'Generally, most software is egregiously overpackaged.' Software packages, Mr. Ruston notes, use virgin paper instead of recycled. The fat manuals are often redundant, since the information is already on the disk. So why do the packages continue to be so big?
Mr. Ruston attributes the persistence of wasteful software packaging to industry inertia. 'This is the old outdated mentality of giving the customer value by providing a lot of stuff,' Mr. Ruston says.
It's the 'lot of stuff' that's the problem. One day not long ago, I heard a rumble behind my desk and realized that the Shaq-high stack of software boxes had toppled over. So much cardboard, so much air. What for? Haven't we been here before?
And not just with the McDonald's clamshell. Eight years ago, an organization called Ban the Box challenged the notion of the so-called long box, the 6-by-12-inch package that was devised to hold music CD's, which were then replacing albums. Peter Gabriel, Bonnie Raitt and U2 refused to have their music distributed in long boxes. As with computer disks, the complaint was that there was too much material surrounding the small kernel of product. Eventually, the long box was phased out.  Today, the jewel box shelters CD's, electronically tagged against shoplifting.
Thinking of the victory over the CD long box, New York Assemblywoman Susan John sent a letter two years ago to Bill Gates, requesting that Microsoft provide leadership in reducing software overpackaging. She pointed out that reduction would be both environmentally sound and would save Microsoft money. She never received a response.
Package designers at Microsoft claim, however, that their packages are getting smaller as their manuals get smaller. (The one valid excuse for bigger packages -- the multiple disks that used to be required for some programs -- is no longer valid; today, it is rare for a program to require several disks.)
Heidi Rothauser, a Microsoft spokeswoman, says that existing packaging is still needed for security and protection of the disks. But she said, 'We are working to reduce the size of packaging where possible.' And there is some progress: the company has abandoned the interior jewel case that holds the disk itself for programs like Windows 98.
Still, that's not enough. The New York Times asked Tibor Kalman of M & Company, a design firm, to create a dummy package for Microsoft Word, to show how it could be done. His alternative: a cardboard slipcase with a much smaller manual and standard CD-ROM inside.  The big software packages, he says,  are like the humongous portions of pasta some restaurants serve. 'It shows a disrespect for the intelligence of the audience,' he said.
Getting rid of the software big box may require the same strategy that defeated the CD long box: software hotshots, like the rock stars, could refuse to have their Mega-Destructacon game released in anything but a smaller, less-wasteful box.
PUBLIC EYE",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Home Improvement
LEAD: SO-CALLED flat roofs, which almost always slope slightly to facilitate drainage, should be inspected about twice a year. Routine maintenance and minor repairs usually can be done easily by amateurs, but widespread or major damage should be handled promptly by a licensed roofer.
SO-CALLED flat roofs, which almost always slope slightly to facilitate drainage, should be inspected about twice a year. Routine maintenance and minor repairs usually can be done easily by amateurs, but widespread or major damage should be handled promptly by a licensed roofer.
Most flat roofs on houses and commercial buildings are built up with several layers of roofing felt and either coal tar or asphalt. Both types may be covered with a layer of gravel or marble chips to protect the surface and reflect heat.
A roof that is not covered with chips may not be strong enough to support their weight; do not add chips without consulting a building inspector or roofing engineer.
Such roofs should be maintained by applying liquid roof coating every two or three years.
Roof coating seals and protects the layers and fills small surface cracks. It is available in five-gallon cans from hardware stores and home centers and is applied with a disposable push broom made for the purpose.
There are two types of roof coating: black and metallic. Although both contain asphalt, the black coating generally contains more and therefore has greater waterproofing ability. The metallic coating contains aluminum to reflect heat.
Apply roof coating during dry, warm weather. (During hot weather, when the roofing is soft, walking on it can cause damage.) Wear old clothes, shoes and gloves; you won't be able to clean them. To transport a container of coating to the roof, use a hoist, or have an assistant on the roof to take the container from you before you step off the ladder.
First, make any needed spot repairs (described in detail below), then sweep the roof free of loose material. Stir the coating thoroughly with a stick, then dip the broom, and begin spreading the material. Start at the point farthest from the ladder so you can coat the entire roof and still climb down.
Spread the coating about an eighth of an inch thick, or as specified by the manufacturer. For best results when applying aluminum roof coating, brush in one direction only, and use a minimum of strokes.
After finishing, dispose of the broom and soiled clothing. Tools and hard, smooth surfaces like gutters can usually be cleaned with mineral spirits. Any unused coating can be stored for up to three years if closed tightly and not allowed to freeze.
Do not rely on roof coating to stop leaks or repair damaged roofing. If the condition is severe, call a licensed roofer, but if the problem is small, like an isolated blister or area of torn roofing, most of the time you can fix it yourself.
If you find a blister in the roofing, first sweep loose material away from the area. Then, using a utility knife, slit the blister open along its length, one layer at a time.
If the interior of the blister is dry, the problem usually is not serious. To fix it, use a putty knife to apply roofing cement (a thick black compound resembling tar) into the blister on each side. Then press the area flat. Drive one-and-a-half-inch-long flat-head roofing nails into the material on each side of the slit at intervals of about an inch. The nails must pierce the roofing and enter the wood decking underneath.
Then spread a layer of roofing cement a quarter of an inch thick over the repair and about three inches beyond it on all sides. Cut a patch of 15-pound roofing felt to fit over the entire area. Fasten the patch with roofing nails spaced no more than three inches apart around the perimeter. Cover the patch and nailheads with additional cement.
Blisters that are wet inside indicate a leak. Squeeze as much moisture as possible from the roofing by standing on the spot, then prop the blister open with a small stick to permit complete drying. Once the area is dry, repair the blister as described above, but to prevent a recurrence, you must also locate and repair the source of the leak - usually torn roofing or parapet flashing, or cracks around roof openings.
To repair torn roofing, first sweep away any loose material. Then, using a straightedge and a utility knife, remove the tear by cutting a square or rectangle around it. On a built-up roof, cut only as deep as the damaged layer. Carefully pry out the cut section, and use it as the pattern for a patch by tracing its shape onto 15-pound roofing felt, or heavier felt thick enough to fill the opening.
Next, cut the patch. Spread roofing cement over the bottom of the opening and around the edges, then press the patch into place, making sure it adheres completely. Nail the patch around the perimeter using roofing nails spaced one to two inches apart.
Cover the patch with additional cement and a second patch that extends at least three inches beyond the first on all sides. Nail this patch to the roof, then cover it with a third layer of cement, followed by gravel or marble chips if appropriate.
To patch parapet flashing, first pry up the metal cap protecting the ridge. Apply roofing cement to the damaged area, then cover it with a layer of new flashing, extending three inches beyond the damage on all sides. Position the upper edge of the new flashing so that the reinstalled metal cap will cover it. Cement a larger piece of new flashing over the first, and reinstall the cap with more cement.
To repair cracked seams around vents, chimneys and other roof openings, apply roofing cement generously to the area.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"In Morning Game-Show Slot, ABC Turns to Practical Matters
LEAD: THE camera pans to wooden beams and a roaring fire. This is the setting for ABC's new late-morning television program 'Home.' The network calls it a 'how-to talk show' that will not be discussing life styles of the rich and famous but nitty-gritty subjects like home remodeling, bulk buying, fancy meals under $25, and a thousand uses for a glue gun.
THE camera pans to wooden beams and a roaring fire. This is the setting for ABC's new late-morning television program 'Home.' The network calls it a 'how-to talk show' that will not be discussing life styles of the rich and famous but nitty-gritty subjects like home remodeling, bulk buying, fancy meals under $25, and a thousand uses for a glue gun.
The setting may look laid-back and folksy, but 'Home,' a half-hour weekday program that had its premiere Monday at 11:30 A.M. Eastern time, is the product of 18 months of market research, and more time and money 'than any program in the network's daytime history,' said Mary Alice Dwyer-Dobbin, a vice president of daytime programming for ABC Entertainment.
The hosts are Sandy Hill, a former co-host of 'Good Morning America' and Robb Weller, who is a co-host of 'Entertainment This Week.' 'Home' is being produced by Woody Fraser, whose past credits include 'Good Morning America' and 'The Richard Simmons Show,' among others.
'Home' is moving into a time slot traditionally occupied by game shows, when 83 percent of the viewers are women, according to ABC's research. The concept for the program, Ms. Dwyer-Dobbin said, came out of discussions with small groups of women in New York; Dayton, Ohio, and Tulsa, Okla. This was followed by a national survey and what the network calls 'tell back' groups that used a viewer-reaction meter to measure potential interest. Pilot versions were then tested in 14 cable markets around the country.
'What emerged was a desire for a how-to show,' Ms. Dwyer-Dobbin said. 'The feedback was that women enjoyed being at home but wanted people to understand what it is they do as homemakers and appreciate them. There's a renewed feeling that it's all right to be at home, whether it's as a full-time homemaker or as a career woman deciding to have children and take a few years off.'
The program's subjects include health-care topics like breast self-examination and how to cook a salt-free dinner, as well as home improvement, like how to fix a leaky faucet or a faulty electrical socket. In the case of the socket, Ms. Dwyer-Dobbin noted, 'women have traditionally been conditioned to think that this requires an expensive person coming in to do the work.'
Many topics have come from potential viewers, according to Mr. Fraser, who has held 'idea exchange groups' around the country to discuss household hints, crafts, cooking, entertainment and remodeling.
In one continuing feature, for instance, 'Home' has bought a $167,000 two-bedroom house in need of improvement. It will be remodeled step by step on the air with advice from experts, including a real-estate agent, a contractor referral service and an interior decorator.
Kitty Bartholemew, the interior decorator, confided to viewers on the first program, 'My fingernails are just itching to take the linoleum off the hardwood floors.'
The program also features such examples of know-how as how to clean wooden furniture with a combination of mayonnaise and cigar ash, and how to bake a 63-egg cake.
'Home' is 'not upscale,' Mr. Fraser said. Rather, it is focused on 'the middle of the country.' It is also trying to be in touch with the times. 'Americans have always had so many choices, ' he said. 'Maybe people have decided they've tasted so much and everything is so expensive, that they're going to simplify life.'
Those involved with the program say inspiration came directly from potential viewers. But it also reflects a more general growth of interest in self-improvement, exemplified by videotapes and informational programs on cable television.
On public television, for instance, the half-hour program 'This Old House,' now in its ninth season, is the most popular half-hour program on the Public Broadcasting Service, according to WGBH in Boston, which produces the series. 'It feeds on the desire all of us have to improve our environment,' said Russell Morash, the executive producer and director. Mr. Morash noted that his program 'makes a deliberate attempt to attract male viewers.'
Viewers who tune in to 'Home' next week can learn about the ins and outs of post-office auctions, finding a mortgage, how knitting socks can be turned into a 'big business' and a profile of the recent International Housewares Exposition in Chicago. These are the types of subjects viewers wanted, according to ABC's research.
'The real question,' Ms. Dwyer-Dobbin said, 'is, are these women going to watch what they asked for?'",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Eating Well
THE soap opera continues.
The story so far: The Food and Drug Administration must come up with a new format for nutrition labeling, one that will, in the bureaucratese of a Government document, ""require the required information to be conveyed to the public in a manner which enables the public to readily observe and comprehend such information and to understand its relative significance in the context of a total daily diet.""
Or to put it in English, the new labels must provide enough information so that people can make food choices within the context of their daily diet. One way to do so is to provide some kind of reference -- a daily guide, also called ""daily values"" -- by which people can see how a particular food stacks up compared with the daily recommended amounts for fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrate, fiber and protein.
When we last looked at this issue, Michael Taylor, a deputy commissioner at the Food and Drug Adminstration, said the agency knew that no single format was ideal.
""What is still under discussion is the best way to provide the information in context,"" he said. ""So far, our thinking has been daily values, but there is a downside. The question is, how do you pick a number for fat and saturated fat? A single number is not the number for all consumers.""
Mr. Taylor and his boss, Dr. David Kessler, Commissioner of the F.D.A., and others are asking these questions: Which format will provide the best information and protect the most vulnerable people? How can the agency get the public, and not just special interest groups, to comment on the newest proposed formats?
On Monday, the Federal Register published the agency's findings so far on the proposed label formats, describing the drawbacks of each in mind-numbing detail. At the back of the document, however, several new formats were displayed. They are interesting for different reasons.
Of particular concern is the one suggested by the United States Department of Agriculture, which is opposed to listing a daily guide. The agency proposes a format, similar to the current label, that has several lines at the bottom with advice like ""eat a wide variety of foods"" and ""choose a diet low in fat (30 percent of calories or less)."" That advice is hardly specific enough to be of help.
Many of the foods regulated by the agency, like meat and poultry, would not look too good if their fat content was compared to the recommended daily intake. A large hamburger with cheese, for example, has about 34 grams of fat. For a woman, that would be more than half the amount of fat she should eat in one day.
The Agriculture Department appears to believe that repeating general information about dietary guidelines fulfills the requirement to provide enough information to help people make choices in the context of a daily diet. But lawyers at both the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration say the label does not fulfill the mission set out in the regulations.
F.D.A. officials were not willing to comment publicly this week about the Agriculture Department's proposed label, but it was clear that the agency preferred one with a daily guide, as opposed to one in which the consumer would have to calculate what percentage of calories in a food comes from fat. The Agriculture Department ""is hoping people won't do the calculations,"" one official said, adding: ""They're right. They won't.""
But two of the F.D.A.'s newest proposals for label formats, illustrated above, are quite helpful. They are alternatives to the plan of basing the daily values on a single caloric intake. One would provide separate daily values for women and men, based on daily diets of 2,000 and 2,500 calories, respectively. It would suggest, for example, that women eat less than 65 grams of fat a day, and men less than 80 grams.
The other alternative would offer a range of daily values based on diets of 1,600 to 2,800 calories. For someone on a 1,600-calorie diet, the fat level would be 53 grams; for someone eating 2,800 calories a day, fat could go as high as 93 grams. But nowhere on the label would it be clear that women belong in the 1,600-calorie range and men in the 2,800-calorie range.
Neither of these formats is perfect. For instance, as the number of calories one consumes a day rises, the fat component is not necessarily supposed to rise at the same rate. In other words, even though 93 grams of fat is 30 percent of 2,800 calories, 93 grams of fat is too much for anyone.
One other format proposal uses values pegged to a single diet. Earlier versions of this idea used a diet based on the average mean intake of 2,350 calories a day. The F.D.A. is now proposing to use 2,000 calories, closer to the daily figure for most women.
""All of the public health people said, overwhelmingly, that 2,350 was too high,"" Dr. Kessler said. ""Women are in the 1,900-to-2,200 range, so you can't have 2,350. It's misleading to women."" The agency believes that it is better to err on the side of fewer calories than more calories.
The Agriculture Department has told the F.D.A. that its second choice is a label similar to either of the F.D.A.'s latest proposals.
No matter what format is chosen in the fall, Dr. Kessler said he hoped the agency could get women to understand that the upper limit for their daily fat intake is 65 grams, and for men, 75 to 80 grams.
The Food and Drug Administration is eager to hear what the public thinks of the new format proposals. Comments may be submitted by Aug. 19 to: Dockets Management Branch, HFA 305, Food and Drug Administration, Room 1-23, 12420 Parklawn Drive, Rockville, Md. 20857.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Cherishing Landscapes as Living Art
IF a landscape is invisible to people, they won't notice when it changes. They may not even register the fact that the glade of tall elegant sycamores in  front of the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center has been replaced by big  fat stranded-looking pear trees.
Or that a playground in Central Park at West 67th Street, with its wooden ""Egyptian"" pyramid and undulating Noguchi-like forms, has lost much of its original spirit and only narrowly escaped demolition. Few people can remember when the tunnels through its cobblestone mounds were closed because parents were worried about homeless people sleeping there or syringes left around.
A playground at Public School 166, on 89th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues, was once shared by the community and the school. Designed by M. Paul Friedberg in 1967 with $195,000 from the Vincent Astor Foundation, its varied terrain featured stone pyramids with slides, craters covered with geodesic domes, tree houses and water jets spilling down an amphitheater to a wading pool like some kind of mini-Villa d'Este.
But it was closed to the neighborhood several years later -- because the Department of Parks and Recreation said it wasn't used enough to justify paying  for an attendant there. The water was turned off. The giant spider web -- vinyl  cables suspended from posts -- was taken out.  And now, it's scheduled to be flattened by early next year -- and replaced with modular play equipment that meets Federal guidelines for safety and accessibility to the handicapped.
The trees at Lincoln Center, and the neglect of these two 60's ""adventure"" playgrounds, are only a few examples of modern American landscapes that have fallen into disrepair because they have never been maintained in the spirit in which they were built. Many of their designers have been forgotten, because institutions don't have memories. And landscape architecture, unlike buildings,  is poorly documented.
These invisible landscapes are being taken up by a growing number of landscape architects around the country, who are organizing to protect their work, both as works of art and as vessels of cultural history.
The reasons for their neglect vary from budget cuts and fear of lawsuits over injuries to changes in esthetics, childhood-development theories, social problems, even to what kinds of trees should be planted. Not to mention the rules of modern architecture itself.
Modernist architects like Le Corbusier thought of buildings as objects, floating in a vast sea of space. ""The minute you do that, landscapes become negative space, the thing the objects are sitting on,"" said Peter Walker, a landscape architect in Berkeley, Calif., who has helped build about 200 landscapes around the world. ""That's why no one pays any attention to these spaces.""
The landscapes created after World War II were not only abstract and minimalist in their design, but also reflected an optimism about solving the world's problems.
""We had the idea that there was some connection between modern art and design and social uplift, that you could transform a society,"" Mr. Walker said. ""Everybody was very hopeful after the war. We were going to save the world.""
It was an era of urban renewal, and concern for public spaces -- plazas, vest-pocket parks and playgrounds where people of all classes could escape their cramped apartments and congregate.
But many of those ideas foundered on the social problems that new surroundings couldn't fix.
""Maybe 1 percent of my projects are still usable and recognizable,"" Mr. Walker said.
And the glade of sycamores at Lincoln Center -- designed in the early 60's by the eminent landscape architect Dan Kiley -- sculptured the air in a spatial pattern that echoed the strong horizontal and vertical planes of the surrounding architecture. The trees were densely planted, 4 to a 20-foot-square marble planter, in 3 feet of soil. They are atop a parking garage and offices, and Mr.  Kiley gave strict instructions for their maintenance.
""You have to feed the roots to sustain the trees under those conditions,"" said Mr. Kiley, who practices in Vermont. ""And root-prune to keep the roots from damaging the roof. And I also wanted them clipped on top every year, which makes an architectural shape out of it, and goes beautifully with the buildings.""
The trees were fertilized, and branches were pruned sporadically or when they were about to fall on people. But Mr. Kiley's instructions were never followed.  And in the late 1980's, when the trees became diseased and their roots damaged the membrane of the roof, no one at Lincoln Center remembered him.
""It didn't occur to us to talk to the designer,"" said Andre Mirabelli, the senior vice president of Lincoln Center, who has been there for 24 years.
Jerry A. Hastings, the director of operations, said, ""His name doesn't even show up in the archives.""
Mr. Kiley said the 1989 sparse installation of pear trees -- only one to a planter -- ""devastated the design.""
""I was trying to get a sense of the relationship of this architectural grove  of trees with the building itself,"" he said. ""And to give a wonderful kind of shady retreat. With one little tree in there, it just looks kind of silly.""
But few people protested. At least not until two years ago, when Armand LeGardeur, a young landscape architect in Robert A. M. Stern's architecture firm, walked by and realized that Mr. Kiley's design was being erased.
His observation resulted in a letter from Mr. Stern to Lincoln Center, a lobbying effort taken up by the local chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects, and finally, an invitation from Mr. Mirabelli to Mr. Kiley to come down and advise his staff on what to do about the sycamores that are failing in Damrosch Park, south of the Metropolitan Opera House.
But it would be too costly to replace the ornamental pears, Mr. Mirabelli said.
Mr. Stern voiced his outrage in an interview this week: ""It looks like a bunch of lollipops on sticks. It's ruined. I think it's a great loss. It's also  shocking that Kiley, who is not dead, but very much active, was not consulted.""
But that's what happens when a landscape is invisible.
""The Kiley design was changed inadvertently because it wasn't seen as something,"" said Mr. Walker, who has written a book with Melanie Simo called ""Invisible Gardens: The Search for Modernism in the American Landscape"" (M.I.T.  Press, 1994). ""Therefore, you could change it. Because it wasn't anything.""
The playgrounds of the 1960's went hand in hand in the world's love affair with abstract art -- as well as new ideas in how children learn. Built of curving concrete (the material of the day), mounded stone and wood, they suggested shapes like pyramids and volcanos. Children crawled through tunnels and climbed ladders to ""explode"" through at the top and zip down a metal slide into a soft bed of sand. There were sand to dig in, amphitheaters for storytelling, and water fountains that flowed into channels, where children could sail sticks and homemade boats.
""They were sanitized versions of the adventure playgrounds that were built in Denmark and England during the war,"" said Michael Gotkin, a landscape architect  and historian for the Central Park Conservancy.
He likes to show pictures of an English boy standing triumphantly atop a scrap-wood tower (approved as safe by a play supervisor), of other boys leaping  over a bonfire, of children building shacks out of old crates and rubber tires and getting dirty in the mud, doing, in other words, what children will do in a  vacant lot full of junk.
Some, like the playground in Central Park, at 67th Street, which was designed by Richard Dattner and finished in 1966 with $85,000 from the Lauder Foundation, even had a paid play leader, who supervised activities.
""But sometime in the 70's they stopped being able to pay for that person,"" Mr. Dattner said. About the same time, the tunnels were blocked off.
""Parents hate them,"" said Patricia McCobb, the senior landscape architect for the Central Park Conservancy. ""They hate the idea of a child getting lost and not being able to see them. Or of finding some rodent in there. Or getting dirty."" And parents are more eager to sue these days, she said.
So the tunnels won't be reopened. And much of the sand will be replaced with  soft safety surfacing. And the wooden pyramid, a key element in the Dattner design, may be replaced with a boat.
The reason for that sounds like one of those sticky donor issues.
""The Central Park Conservancy felt the pyramid was too steep in its present form,"" Mr. Dattner said. ""So I suggested making it lower, but they wanted something new. They have a donor, and he wants to make a new statement.""
But the Friedberg playground at P.S. 166, without prominent defenders, is scheduled for demolition.
And even though a school official, Judy Rohn, said there hadn't been a serious injury in 30 years, Community Board No. 7 has asked for a playground with regulation equipment for younger children, paid for by the city. The price  tag: $615,000.
Mr. Friedberg, says that he would have been glad to alter the playground but  that he was never seriously consulted.
He added: ""I think we are heading into a very conservative period that is almost reductivist in design, and politically. People are obsessed, rather than  concerned, about safety.""
""Should we close Central Park?"" he asked. ""Should we flatten our environment  so we can see in all directions?""
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Borrowing a Page (and Recipes) From Cooks in Hot Climates
THE cookbook publishers certainly got it right this time.  Food from steamy southern India, the sun-baked American Southwest, the torrid Arabian deserts and the entire Mediterranean basin from the Costa del Sol to North Africa might just whet the appetite when temperatures soar into the 90's.
Five new books explore some or all of the Mediterranean region; all were started two to five years ago as the health benefits of a diet based on olive oil began making headlines.
THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET COOKBOOK by Nancy Harmon Jenkins (Bantam, $27.95) roves the region, presenting flavorful dishes with lively introductions that add the romance of place. Cooks unfamiliar with the food of Lebanon, say, or Turkey, need not worry about arcane ingredients. Sumac, available in Middle Eastern stores and from spice emporiums, is about as esoteric as it get. Preparation is rarely complicated.
Vegetables and grains dominate the recipes: a potato gratin made with olive oil and broth, cauliflower baked with a ""veil"" of cheese, a Tunisian chickpea and vegetable stew and lentil and green olive salad.
A nutritional breakdown follows each recipe, revealing fat levels of more than 30 percent in some. Ms. Jenkins says that level is typical of the region and supposedly does not diminish the cholesterol-lowering effectiveness of the diet.
The book contains much of the information about olive oil and Mediterranean eating habits that was presented at a conference at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1993. The conference was co-sponsored by Oldways Preservation and Exchange Trust, a nonprofit educational group.  Ms. Jenkins helped found it, and it receives considerable financing from the International Olive Oil Council, a trade group. Ms. Jenkins's enthusiasm for olive oil is such that she insists ""butter is NEVER on the Mediterranean table.""
THE COOKING OF THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN by Paula Wolfert (HarperCollins, $30) is a result of five years of travel, testing and tasting, but it has no dietary agenda. Many of its 215 recipes are based on grains, vegetables and olive oil, so they fit the Mediterranean diet prescription. They are enhanced by Ms. Wolfert's alluring stories of the people responsible for the dishes she describes. On her odyssey, she pried culinary secrets from good cooks and then set about adapting them with as little compromise as possible.
The meticulous recipes bear careful reading and tending. Do not plan to whip up a Syrian dinner or a tasty Greek repast on short notice. This is food made mostly by women whose responsiblity is to care for the home and table. Muhammara, a Syrian red pepper spread with walnuts and pomegranates, starts with this advisory: ""For best results, make the recipe at least one day in advance.""
The ingredients in a number of recipes require careful trimming, soaking, marinating and such, but the results are worth it. Vegetarian kibbe is a relatively simple dish. Turkish mixed vegetables or kofte and eggplant with two sauces are irresistible and relatively uncomplicated. A superb Lebanese rice pilaf is cooked with a potato crust.
THE ARABIAN DELIGHTS by Anne Marie Weiss-Armush (Lowell House Global Gourmet, $25) covers some of the same territory. The author, an American who lived in Saudi Arabia for more than a decade, describes the highly perfumed food of the Arab world, the affinities that link the countries and the tastes that distinguish them. Where appropriate, she tells of variations that can change the personality of a dish like the savory ""Grandmother's potatoes"" from Syrian to Kuwaiti, Lebanese or Andalusian. She also offers linguistic asides to explain the names of dishes and ingredients.
Fish fillets with honey and raisins, some marinated grilled shrimp dishes and steamed zucchini with chermoula sauce are fine for summer.
FROM TAPAS TO MEZE by Joanne Weir (Crown, $27.50), takes a look at the little savory appetizers that are so popular throughout the Mediterranean world. It also offers soups, salads, risottos and enough vegetable dishes to make a meal.
The book is divided by country.  Though the recipes could be more precise, the author has a good palate and produces dishes that are well-seasoned. Spanish wilted greens with raisins, pine nuts and fried bread were excellent. But the shrimp and green onion pancakes were not as crispy as they should have been, and the recipe also made twice as many as the yield stated.
Moving to a narrower Mediterranean area is LULU'S PROVENCAL TABLE by Richard Olney (HarperCollins, $30) the loving story of Lulu Peyraud, an inspired cook who, with her husband, Lucien, owns Domaine Tempier in the French town of Bandol, near Marseilles. It is part biography, recorded by Mr. Olney, a neighbor and friend of the Peyrauds; part celebration of Provence, and part recipes that were caught in the market, in the kitchen as Lulu cooked and at the table as the appetite-whetting colors, aromas and flavors were laid out.
The sumptuously custardy apricot clafoutis, the sauteed artichokes and potatoes and the eggplant and tomato confit are invitingly straightforward. But the bouillabaisse goes on for more than a dozen pages, and some rabbit recipes are only for determined cooks. Adding to this book's appeal is its elegantly spare design.
Other fine books this season include ISMAIL MERCHANT'S PASSIONATE MEALS (Hyperion, $27.50). Years of living and working in Italy, England and America have tempered the tastes of Ismail Merchant, the Indian-born movie producer and director, who is indeed a passionate and inventive cook. He infuses Western dishes like spaghetti or turkey stuffing with Indian spices, sometimes only a touch of chili or extra pepper.
But when Mr. Merchant goes Indian, as in the fish curry, the braised eggplant or the sauteed okra, he does so with both spice barrels blazing. His Indian food is mighty hot, though it mellows as it simmers. And he never mentions the Mediterranean diet.
DAKSHIN: VEGETARIAN CUISINE OF SOUTH INDIA by Chandra Padmanabhan (Thorsons, $26) is more exotic by far, with lavish photography. It covers sambars (thick soups), rasams (thin soups), poriyals (dry curries), snacks like idli and dosai, plus salads, seasonings, chutneys and other dishes from a vibrant cuisine rarely experienced outside India.
But once the pantry is stocked with spices and grains, the rest is not very complicated. Many of the dishes take on a bit of crunch from the sizzled spices and lentils that are added in typical Indian fashion just before serving. And it is certainly worth including the fragrant tomato rasam in the summer repertory.
BOBBY FLAY'S BOLD AMERICAN FOOD by Bobby Flay with Jean Schwartz (Warner Books, $34.95) offers snappy Southwestern food from Mesa Grill, the Manhattan restaurant where Mr. Flay is chef. The recipes vary from delicious (chorizo and goat cheese quesadillas) to disastrous (soupy peach and blueberry cobbler with leaden topping that seems to lack leavening). The spicy mango glaze that does wonders for grilled tuna steaks can be prepared only with difficulty because the caramel hardens once it cools.
Mr. Flay's food often depends on salsas and relishes for its boldness. But frequently the yields for the condiment recipes do not match the amounts needed. The blue corn-fried chicken salad calls for three-quarters of a cup of cayenne buttermilk dressing, but the recipe for the dressing makes only half a cup.
Every now and again, a cookbook comes along that is certain to find a permanent place in the kitchen. Such is MARK PEEL AND NANCY SILVERTON AT HOME: TWO CHEFS COOK FOR FAMILY AND FRIENDS , in collaboration with Edon Waycott (Warner Books, $24.94). It is a collection of relatively uncomplicated recipes for mostly hearty, straightforward food. But experienced cooks should not dismiss this book out of hand.
Savvy touches elevate the home cook's technique. Like whipping the egg whites for a chocolate souffle cake with enough sugar to give them a meringue-like consistency, guaranteeing the success of a delectable cake. Or soaking a tenderloin of pork overnight in lightly salted water and spices before roasting to produce the most succulent results imaginable (although the roasting time, 30 minutes, could be a tad longer).
THE ART OF QUICK BREADS by Beth Hensperger (Chronicle Books, $29.95) is more than just a pretty book. Tender, buttery pecan coffee cake, lemon-poppy seed bread and chocolate shortcakes that beg for berries and cream are just a few of the fine recipes in a book filled with sun-drenched photographs. Most recipes are for sweets, but there are some savories, like cornbreads.
FISH: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO BUYING AND COOKING by Mark Bittman (Macmillan, $27.50) mirrors the encyclopedic, authoritative approach the author takes as executive editor of the magazine Cook's Illustrated.  The book has some 50 pages of sound and up-to-date basics on purchase and preparation, and it is organized fish by fish, with chapters and recipes on 72 varieties.
One recipe is for tuna steaks stuffed with arugula, ginger and mustard before grilling.
Still, ""complete"" is in the eye of the beholder. People in the Midwest who like whitefish and walleye will be disappointed. These fish are not included.
KITCHEN BOOKSHELF",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"PARENT & CHILD
WHEN Sharon Kimmich got married seven years ago, she looked forward to becoming close to her husband's two children. ""I thought they would be my children, the children that I'd never had,"" said Ms. Kimmich, who lives in Oakton, Va. Her stepchildren, now 16 and 18 years old, live with their mother and stepfather in Minnesota.
""I thought it would be like 'The Brady Bunch,' "" she said, ""but it never became that. We're not that close emotionally. I've resigned myself to thinking this is the best it's ever going to get.""
Although her conclusion may be wrong, her feelings toward her stepchildren are quite common. Many people are surprised by the negative feelings they have toward their stepchildren. Yet they seldom discuss these feelings, fearing that they reveal a failure on their part.
""Parents often have the unrealistic expectation that they should love their spouse's children from the very beginning,"" said Dr. James H. Bray, a clinical psychologist and an associate professor of family medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. ""That just isn't true. It takes time for a relationship to evolve.""
Studies show that the stepchild-stepparent relationship is profoundly affected by many factors that have little to do with the stepparent's personality or love of children. Also, some long-term friction between stepparents and stepchildren, especially at certain ages and in certain situations, is normal.
""Even 7 to 10 years after marriage, stepparents don't report as close a relationship with their stepchildren as biological parents have with their children,"" Dr. Bray said. ""The stronger the relationship the child has with the noncustodial parent, the weaker the relationship with the stepparent.""
Stressful relationships are especially common when stepparents join a family that has adolescents. There is an inherent conflict between the stage of the new marriage, in which the emphasis is often on family togetherness, and the developmental stage of the children, who are trying to assert their independence.
""Teen-agers aren't usually enthusiastic about forming new relationships with stepparents,"" said Dr. Emily B. Visher, a clinical psychologist in Lafayette, Calif., and a founder of the Step Family Association of America. ""One 16-year-old boy told me: 'Two parents are two too many. Who wants any more?' ""
She has found that although the bond between stepparents and teen-age stepchildren is often fragile, it often improves after those children leave home and are on their own for a few years. Other researchers have found similar patterns.
""One of the things that makes it hard for the relationship is that people often feel that they don't have a choice about whether to like each other,"" said Dr. Anne C. Bernstein, a clinical psychologist at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, Calif. ""Once you realize that it's not something that you're forced to feel, you often find some likable things about the other person.""
Another trigger for problems within stepfamilies is the different emotional styles of spouses and their children. One side of the family may be very expressive of their feelings and opinions. The other may be more stoic and keep their emotions to themselves.
""They have different and unfulfilled expectations of the others' responses,"" said Dr. Norman Epstein, an associate professor of family and community development at the University of Maryland in College Park.
Anger toward stepchildren is sometimes a reflection of hidden problems, Dr. Epstein said. For example, a stepfather may view a stepchild as spoiled, and blame his wife. But rather than show irritation toward his spouse, he directs it at the child. ""That's less threatening than treating it as an issue between the spouses,"" he said. Expect Some Tension, Not Instant Love
F you find it difficult to get along with your stepchildren, here are several suggestions:
Check whether your expectations are reasonable.
Remember that there is no such thing as instant love, and tension is to be expected. ""Realize that, in order to live together, you have to treat each other with courtesy,"" said Dr. James H. Bray, an associate professor of family medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. ""That should be a clear expectation. It has nothing to do with liking or loving someone else.""
Remember to treat each child as an individual.
Although it is often simpler to treat children as ""the kids,"" it can work against you if you spend time with your children only as a group, or always have your spouse along.
""You don't have to do everything together as a family,"" said Dr. Emily B. Visher, a clinical psychologist in Lafayette, Calif., and a founder of the Step Family Association of America. ""Have some one-on-one time with each stepchild. That's how you really form and build relationships.""
Don't assume that problems are due to the stepfamily relationship.
They may simply be a part of normal child development. Linking it to the stepfamily can lead to trouble. ""That often makes it worse because the stepparents take it personally, which makes them more angry and defensive,"" Dr. Bray said. ""This, in turn, makes the teen-ager more angry and defensive as well. It becomes a vicious cycle.""
Don't criticize your spouse about his or her children.
""That forces your spouse to choose between you,"" said Dr. Norman Epstein, an associate professor of family and community development at the University of Maryland in College Park.
Instead of simply saying that the children are inconsiderate, give specific behaviors that bother you, like how they leave their clothes all over the house.
""It's easier for the other parent to hear and act on that than respond to an attack on his or her personality,"" Dr. Epstein said.
If nothing seems to work, give yourself time to change your focus.
Remember that some stepfamily relationships get better once the children become young adults. ""If you don't like your stepchildren, and you've felt that way for several years, accept that and keep the focus of your energies on the marriage,"" Dr. Bray said. ""That's really the long-term relationship for you. But that doesn't mean you should ignore your stepchildren.""",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"PLACE SETTINGS -- Mix and Mismatch
There is an art to setting a table with mismatched china, in the British landed-gentry style, and Regina McMenamin knows it. She makes place settings in which the patterns -- with common themes like modern graphics, pink flowers, geisha girls or Blue Willow -- are different but resonant. She started her company, Let's Dish, in December in Manhattan. Ms. McMenamin, who is the advertising and promotions manager for the Four Seasons restaurant, says she haunts antiques shops and flea markets daily to add to her collection of 300 pieces. A five-piece setting starts at $90. Information: (212) 288-6958.
CURRENTS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"'Casserole' Cooked on Top of a Stove
CALLING a dish a casserole suggests that it is baked in the oven, but for meals that must be ready in 20 to 30 minutes, oven baking is not an option.
Today's sweet and hot rice ""casserole"" with chicken is done on top of the stove. The rice is cooked in one pot and then mixed with the ingredients and cooked for a couple of minutes to meld the tastes.
The amount of hot chili paste you use in this recipe should be determined by just how spicy you like your food.  Spicy Ginger Chicken and Rice Casserole  1 cup long grain rice  8 ounces skinless, boneless chicken breast  1 teaspoon canola oil  2 large cloves garlic  8 ounces whole red pepper or 7 ounces ready-cut julienned red pepper (1 1/2 cups)  3 stalks bok choy  2 tablespoons fresh or frozen ginger  2 to 3 teaspoons hot chili paste (with or without garlic)  2 tablespoons rice vinegar  2 tablespoons sweet sake or dry sherry  3/4 cup unsweetened pineapple juice  2 teaspoons reduced-sodium soy sauce  1/8 teaspoon salt  2 tablespoons scallions.
1. Combine rice with 2 cups of water and bring to boil. Reduce heat, and cook until rice is tender and liquid has been absorbed, 17 minutes total.
2. While the rice is cooking, wash, dry and cut chicken into narrow strips; heat nonstick pan large enough to hold all the ingredients over high heat.
3. Add oil to pan. Reduce heat to medium, and add chicken; brown on both sides.
4. Mince garlic; wash, trim and seed whole red pepper, and cut into julienned strips. Add garlic and pepper to chicken, and continue cooking.
5. Wash, trim and cut bok choy crosswise into narrow strips, and cut in half; add to pan, and cover. Cook over low heat.
6.  Grate ginger coarsely, and add to pan with chili paste, vinegar, sake or sherry, pineapple juice and soy sauce. Continue cooking until vegetables are crisp but tender.
7. Wash, trim and slice scallions.
8. When rice is cooked, stir it into the chicken and vegetables, and mix well. Season with salt, and cook a minute or two. Serve sprinkled with scallions.
Yield: 2 servings.
Approximate nutritional analysis per serving: 610 calories, 5 grams fat, 65 milligrams cholesterol, 445 milligrams sodium, 35 grams protein, 100 grams carbohydrate.  PLAIN AND SIMPLE",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"AT HOME WITH: Ed Feldman And Joe L'Erario; The Two Stooges Of Furniture Repair
Here is the secret: Ed Feldman and Joe L'Erario, known to their passionate if offbeat fans as television's Furniture Guys, in reality don't give a varnish about furniture.
""I tell people the apocryphal story of my rise to a low level of fame,"" Mr. Feldman says one rainy morning while seated at the 1950's kitchen table of his television partner.
""The devil came down and said, 'You want to do a TV show?' I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'You've got to fix furniture.' I said, 'O.K.' He said, 'On cable. Whoo hoo!' ""
""No, first he said on PBS,"" interjects Mr. L'Erario. ""Then he said cable.""
Mr. L'Erario and Mr. Feldman are the hosts of ""Furniture to Go,"" a low-budget, low-comedy home-improvement show that began in 1990 as ""Furniture on the Mend"" at the public television station in Philadelphia. The new half-hour show is now on six days a week on the Learning Channel: Monday through Friday, starting at 5:30 P.M., and twice on Saturday, at various times. The station also televises reruns of ""Furniture on the Mend.""
The program brackets repair tips with witticisms and comedy sketches in which the circular Mr. Feldman and the angular Mr. L'Erario lampoon everyone from John Steinbeck to Howard Stern.
The show has developed a loyal following, first among public television viewers and then among nesting baby boomers.
What separates ""Furniture to Go"" from the other home shows that crowd the Saturday afternoon airwaves is the concept. While ""This Old House"" demonstrates how to install a cathedral ceiling and ""Home Time"" shows how to lay a slate floor after work, ""Furniture to Go"" tackles projects most people might actually have a prayer of completing.
And while the hosts of all those other shows may have their charms, none can match the always useful, often clever, sometimes painfully bad banter of Ed and Joe.
""From Curly to Kierkegaard, we'll reference anything,"" Mr. Feldman says. ""We don't know who our audience is, so we just try everything we can think of.""
Each show begins with a short skit. In one, Joe and Ed run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art lugging a chaise longue between them while the theme from the ""Rocky"" films blares in the background.
In another, before going into how to repair a cabinet drawer, Joe patiently displays different tools to Ed and promises that one day they will have their own wood shop where they will use things like dovetails and rabbeted joints to build cabinets. Dressed in Depression-era clothes and looming over a kneeling Joe, Ed looks into the camera and pleads, in a takeoff on ""Of Mice and Men,"" ""Tell me about the rabbit, George.""
Mr. L'Erario (pronounced luh-RARE-ee-oh) now lives alone in a third-floor loft in the Old City section of Philadelphia. He is divorced and has a 9-year-old son, Zane. At 39, and with his hair in a ponytail, he says he looks better than he did 20 years ago when he drank too much and worked too little. His V-shaped upper body is testament to the hours he spends pumping iron.
The walls of his loft are crowded with his paintings and with framed photographs of his parents, both show-business veterans (his father was a tap dancer, his mother played steel guitar). On one wall is a photo of a young Jerry Lewis. A 32-inch television sits on a table.
But there is surprisingly little furniture. From the show Mr. L'Erario has scavenged a rosy faux marble table, two multicolor armchairs, an antique red desk and a few other assorted items. No gilded armoires. No ornately carved mantel pieces. No floor-denting antiques.
Mr. Feldman, who also lives alone, begs off showing his home, situated 15 minutes away in the Germantown section of the city. ""It's a mess,"" he says apologetically.
Mr. Feldman, also divorced, has a 13-year-old daughter, Amanda. At 41, he jokes about his girth, which he disguises by wearing big shirts and loose-fitting jackets. His riot of curly black hair, glasses and a thick mustache make him look like a cross between Harpo and Groucho Marx.
Mr. Feldman grew up in the Great Northeast section of the city; Mr. L'Erario in South Philadelphia. They met more than 15 years ago while working for a construction company.
""We tied steel, we poured concrete,"" Mr. Feldman says. ""It was no-brain work. What we did all day to entertain ourselves and the others on the crew was crack everybody up. We did entire ad-lib routines.""
Mr. L'Erario says, ""We talked like Jerry Lewis one day, the entire day, just to get on the nerves of the supervisor.""
Mr. Feldman adds, ""Later I drifted out of that job,""
""Yeah, yeah. He got fired.""
""Well, O.K.""
Mr. Feldman says he got into the furniture business when a friend who fixed furniture let him fill in while she was out with a broken ankle. After a year he opened his own shop.
Mr. L'Erario also opened his own shop, called Refinishing by Vincent. ""I thought it was better than Refinishing by Joe,"" he says.
Mr. Feldman's job entailed going to people's homes to repair department store furniture that had been damaged during delivery. It was excruciating work, he says.
""I'd lift a sofa to check the springs,"" Mr. Feldman says. ""There's a cucumber. 'I don't know how it got there.' Somebody says, 'There's a lump in my mattress.' I would reach underneath. 'Here's the pistol.' These are all true stories.""
At the same time Mr. Feldman began teaching furniture repair at a local community center. He discovered that people liked furniture, and that people thought he was funny.
""People were laughing as they learned,"" he says. ""Now there's a motto.""
He talked Mr. L'Erario into putting together a demonstration tape for WHYY, the PBS affiliate in Philadelphia. The show went national in 1992 under a co-production deal between WHYY and the Learning Channel. This year the Learning Channel became the sole producer.
The pair say they left public television primarily because of restrictions on earning money through endorsements and outside appearances. Money, Mr. Feldman says not once but several times, is very important to both of them.
""I don't consider myself mercenary,"" he says. ""I consider myself 41 years old with a daughter in private school and a mortgage.""
Between their Learning Channel paychecks, personal appearances and an advance from William Morrow & Company for their book, due for release this spring, based on their show, Ed and Joe no longer have to mend furniture. That's good, since neither one particularly likes furniture. Both grew up watching television and dreamed of appearing on the Johnny Carson ""Tonight"" show. Show-business fame and fortune was the end. Furniture, it turned out, is the means.
Fame has arrived, after a fashion. In April a film producer flew them to Los Angeles and gave them bit parts as themselves in a science-fiction movie, ""Double Dragon,"" due out Thanksgiving. While walking down a street in Los Angeles, they were recognized by one of the women who displays prizes on ""The Price Is Right."" It was a thrilling moment.
Back home in Philadelphia, Mr. Feldman and Mr. L'Erario can scarcely walk down the street without hearing, ""Yo, furniture guys!""
Fan mail pours in nationwide. One woman said they had the sexiest hands on television. Another has written Mr. L'Erario inviting him to North Carolina to attend a Chet Atkins concert. She is the only fan to send a photograph of herself.
""Most people send us pictures of their furniture,"" Mr. L'Erario says.
Now, the two dream of a network sitcom, based on their show and featuring a collection of crazy characters resembling their friends. If it sounds a little like ""Home Improvement,"" the popular ABC show in which the comedian Tim Allen plays the host of a home show, don't mention it. The guys would like nothing better than to enclose Tim Allen under a thick coat of varnish.
""The man makes more before the first commercial than we do all year,"" Mr. Feldman says. ""But never mind. We're next.""",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"CURRENTS<HEADLINEThe Lighthouse For Lighthouses
THE Maine lighthouse that stands tall and serene is a bold visual anchor in a new series of paintings by Jamie Wyeth (far left), on view at the James Graham & Sons gallery (1014 Madison Avenue, near 78th Street) through Dec. 21.
The show reflects Mr. Wyeth's affection for the 1857 lighthouse, in which he  lives, located on the 22-acre Southern Island, which he owns. Although its light was extinguished in 1934, the lighthouse and its adjoining clapboard building (left) were restored about 20 years ago by Mr. Wyeth's mother, Betsy.
Mr. Wyeth was asked to donate the proceeds from ""Iris at Sea,"" a $2,500 limited-edition print based on one of the paintings in the show, to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington and the Island Institute in Rockland, Me., a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the Maine coast  and revitalizing its historic lighthouses.
There are 300 signed and numbered prints in the edition, available from the Graham gallery, (212) 535-5767, or from the institute, (207) 594-9209.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Events: Benefit for a Florida Garden
A Benefit Lecture
Horticultural Society of New York, 128 West 58th Street; (212) 757-0915.
David Murbach, the manager of the gardens at Rockefeller Center, will give an illustrated lecture about the Fairchild Tropical Garden in Miami on Jan. 21 at 6:30 P.M. Proceeds will benefit the garden, which was damaged by Hurricane Andrew last year. Tickets are $30; reservations are required.  May Flowers
Planting Fields Arboretum, Planting Fields Road, Oyster Bay, L.I.; (516) 922-9200 or on weekends, (516) 922-9201.
The American Rhododendron Society will sponsor a talk, ""Gardens of England in May,"" by Dr. David Barnett, the arboretum's assistant director, at a meeting on Sunday at 2 P.M. Admission to the arboretum is $3 a car.  Garden Talks
Clark Botanic Garden, 193 I. U. Willets Road near Glen Cove Road, Albertson, L.I.; (516) 484-8600.
Garden programs in January include a tree identification class, which will take place on Saturday from 10 A.M. to noon at Caumsett State Park on West Neck Road in Lloyd Harbor, L.I. Participants should meet at the park; the class is free, but parking is $4.
Lectures offered at the botanic garden include landscaping with evergreens (Wednesday at 7 P.M.) and house plants (Jan. 22). Fees range from $6 to $8; reservations are required for all lectures.
A series of Sunday lectures will begin Jan. 24 with a talk on tree selection, planting and care. Future topics are herbs (Jan. 31), Fonthill Abbey in England (Feb. 7), pest control (Feb. 14) and the flora of Puerto Rico (Feb. 21). All programs will begin at 1:30 P.M. Tickets for each talk are $5.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"What's the Bowl Without the Brats?
FOR many Green Bay Packers fans, Super Bowl XXXI is a chance to have a brat party, which is not to be confused with a frat party. Both may well be punctuated by yelling, screaming and what the neighbors would consider immature behavior. But only a brat party is sure to have Wisconsin-made bratwurst, the distinctively spiced pork sausage.
This may explain why polystyrene coolers filled with brats (rhymes with 'cots') are being shipped to homesick Packers fans across the country this week. Bonnie Buchanan of Appleton, Wis., sent three shipments to help relatives in Vermont, Massachusetts and New York celebrate.
Robin Richter of Sheboygan, Wis., is shipping several dozen bratwursts to her brother in Minneapolis. Pat Kornely, a Green Bay native who now lives in Flagstaff, Ariz., has ordered about 40 pounds for a Super Bowl party.
It is gospel in Wisconsin that sausage made out of state is a pale imitation of real bratwurst, which was developed by 19th-century German immigrants, who substituted easy-to-find pork for veal in a traditional German weisswurst.
'Bratwursts are very closely identified with Wisconsin culture and with Green Bay Packers culture,' said Dan Alesch, a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Green Bay, who has studied the sociology of the Packers franchise. 'Because bratwursts are made here -- and so hard to find anywhere else -- they've become a kind of symbol.'
If not a necessity. 'For a big game, you've got to have brats,' Greg Sauter of Canton, N.Y., said, explaining his willingness to spend about $45 for overnight delivery of six pounds of brats, which he ordered through the Internet.
Like many other fans, Mr. Sauter and Mr. Kornely are turning for their supply to Sheboygan, which promotes itself as 'the bratwurst capital of the world.' Although some Wisconsin bratwurst makers sell their wares in supermarkets nationally, to the brat connoisseur only those sent from home will do.
Mr. Kornely gets his brats through a friend, who buys them at Miesfeld's Triangle Market, where Chuck Miesfeld still uses his grandfather's 56-year-old recipe (the secret, Mr. Miesfeld said, is in the spices).
Small markets like Miesfeld's, which are not federally inspected, cannot legally ship sausage. But anyone who goes into the specialty meat store can carry a just-purchased package of sausage to the post office, which is what Mr. Kornely's friend did for him last week.
That is not the only solution. Some sausage makers, like Eddie Jacobs of Jacobs Meat Market in Appleton, offer to send out-of-state customers his spice blend and the natural sausage casings for a kind of do-it-yourself brat kit.
Brats are traditionally grilled and, if not eaten immediately, kept warm in a mixture of heated beer, butter and onions. They are served on a hard roll. Toppings can include coarse ground mustard, sliced onions, pickles and ketchup. There is disagreement about whether or not sauerkraut is an acceptable topping, and lettuce, tomatoes and mayonnaise are to be avoided. At least, that is the word from the Sheboygan Chamber of Commerce. There is universal agreement, however, that brats should be served two at a time (hence the phrase 'double brat').
When the Packers are playing at home, the tailgate parties start early, and the smoky haze from grilling brats hangs over the parking lot. Packer fans who hope to recreate this experience at the Super Bowl should stay home. A spokesman for the Louisiana Superdome said that open fires are not allowed in the parking garage there.
Correction:  January 25, 1997, Saturday
A picture in The Living Section on Wednesday with an article about bratwurst was published in error. It showed summer sausage.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Chairs on the Wall
CHARLES EAMES'S molded plywood DCW Side Chair (circa 1946), an anonymous 19th-century American steer-horn and leather chair, and Daniel Mack's 1991 ""Rugbeater Chair,"" an Adirondack-style chair whose back is made from two rugbeaters, are among the 25 chairs and 18 drawings in ""Designs for Seating,"" at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum at 2 East 91st Street in Manhattan. They are on view through Aug. 30.
Most of the chairs are arranged on a floor-to-ceiling ""chair wall."" The juxtaposition of an 18th-century Swiss folk chair, an 1830's English Gothic Revival design and Robert Venturi's 1984 ""Chippendale"" chair, all made of pierced or cutout wood, show how designs span centuries and cultures.
A drawing (detail at left) of designs for side chairs, done in 1805, depicts neo-classical motifs; recent drawings by Dakota Jackson, the New York designer, show the evolution of his vik-ter chair.
CURRENTS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Applauding New York, Softly
LEAD: AN opulent dessert wine made by the Great Western Winery in the Finger Lakes region of New York State won the Governor's Cup for the second consecutive time in this year's statewide wine competition.
AN opulent dessert wine made by the Great Western Winery in the Finger Lakes region of New York State won the Governor's Cup for the second consecutive time in this year's statewide wine competition.
Although the winning winery did not change, the contest did - significantly. The competition, called the New York Wine Classic in 1986 and 1987, when it ran for a day, was renamed the Wine and Food Classic and expanded to two days this year. The object was to pair the winning wines with 25 dishes devised by New York State restaurants.
James Trezise, the president of the New York Wine and Grape Foundation, the contest's sponsor, said economic necessity had given birth to the changed format. Nationally, the wine industry is under pressure from anti-alcohol forces. 'Today, wine has to be understood as a food, and its future is with food,' he said.
The 30 judges examined 212 wines, then tasted the winning wines with small portions of food. Dry whites, for example, were sampled with a seafood stew in an autumn-squash broth, made from a recipe submitted by the Bridge Cafe. Dry reds were served with sauteed Long Island duck breast with corn relish; that recipe was from the '21' Club. Both restaurants are in New York City.
While Great Western's gold-colored 1987 ice wine took honors as 'best of competition,' New York's premium wine industry, which is based more and more on European vinifera grapes, did not do well in the contest. The principal reasons were the rainy '87 harvest and wine makers' inexperience in dealing with problems that bad weather poses for European vinifera grapes.
The judges, who gathered at Keens Chop House in New York City, found no wines worthy of a platinum medal (symbolizing 'extraordinary' wine). The sole gold medal ('outstanding') was won by Great Western's ambrosial ice wine, made from the Vidal blanc grape, a French-American hybrid. Eight wines won silver medals ('superior') and 61 took bronze medals ('above average').
The nine highest-rated wines were all whites. The judges - restaurateurs, retailers, wholesalers, consumers and wine writers - were asked to vote for their three favorites.
Second place went to the sweet '87 late-harvest riesling made by the Bridgehampton Winery (it sells for $11.99). Third went to the '87 chardonnay made by Palmer Vineyards ($11.99). Both are on Long Island.
The other top wines, all silver medalists, were ranked thus: 4.A sweet '87 vignoles from the Rolling Vineyards Farm Winery, Finger Lakes ($5 for a half bottle). 5.A sweet '87 riesling, Hermann J. Wiemer Vineyard, Finger Lakes ($18). 6.An off-dry '87 seyval blanc, Widmer's Wine Cellars, Finger Lakes ($4.99; rated as a 'best buy'). 7.An '87 chardonnay from Peconic Bay Vineyards, Long Island ($10.99). 8.A near-dry '87 seyval blanc ('Centennial Reserve'), Widmer's ($6.99). 9.An '87 seyval blanc, Hunt Country Vineyards, Finger Lakes ($4.99).
In 1987, the outcome was sunnier: judges tasted 251 wines and awarded 3 platinum medals, 26 golds, 33 silvers and 18 bronzes.
Since the contest is intended to provide a profile of wines from the state's five wine districts, the results looked like bad news at first for the Wine and Grape Foundation, a promotion and research organization.
Many judges seemed depressed at the outset, because relatively few wines shone. But by the time the wines made it to the luncheon table, their mood improved noticeably. 'These wines are showing beautifully with food,' said Jon Newmark, who owns Orange Plaza Wines and Spirits in Middletown, N.Y. 'Some might have earned platinum medals.'
'Make no mistake, there are some good buys' among the 1988 bronze medal winners, said William Moffett, who organized the contest. He is the publisher of Vineyard and Winery Management magazine in Watkins Glen, N.Y.
Great Western, established in 1860, is United States Bonded Winery No. 1. It produced about 100 cases of 24 half-bottles of its ice wine, which contains a lofty 19 percent residual sugar. Some Vidal blanc grapes were left on the vines until the morning of Dec. 7, 1987, and some until Jan. 5, 1988. On those two mornings, when the temperatures were below 18 degrees Fahrenheit, they were handpicked frozen. When pressed, the shriveled berries exuded small quantities of densely concentrated, nectarlike juice.
Many judges agreed privately that the outcome of the contest might not tell the whole story of the '87 vintage. The reason is that only 42 of the state's 89 wineries entered. Those that stayed out - some of the best -gave various reasons, said Mr. Trezise, the president of the Wine and Grape Foundation. He said Willy Frank, the proprietor of the Finger Lakes winery named for his father, Dr. Konstantin Frank, a vinifera pioneer, ran out of wine.
One obstacle for small vintners was the entry fee of $75 a bottle (up from last year's $50), which was intended partly to defray the $20,000 cost of the contest and, Mr. Trezise said, partly to make 'vintners be more selective about the wines they entered.'",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Better Pay That Fare; Someone's Watching
It will cost a subway fare to see the completed 'Oculus' in its final resting spot, inside the turnstiles of the sprawling Park Place station of the IRT line in Manhattan, where 300 mosaic eyes, like the one below, already dot the walls.
From Monday through Jan. 19, there will be no charge to watch the final 20-by-40-foot mosaic panel take shape on the floor of the World Financial Center's Winter Garden. The work, left, with Rinaldo Piras, a Roman mosaicist, will depict the world's continents and New York City in 800,000 glass and stone tesserae.
Andrew Ginzel and Kristin Jones, from New York, are collaborating with Mr. Piras on the project. 'It speaks to the diversity of New York,' the artists say. At the Winter Garden, the pieces will be put in cement before the 'Oculus' panel goes down into the subway.
LINDA LEE
CURRENTS: IN THE SUBWAYS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"60-MINUTE GOURMET
LEAD: IF I gave lessons to novice cooks, one of the first subjects might be 'variations on a theme' -that is, how to alter the flavor of a dish by adding an herb or a spice or by changing the cooking technique.
IF I gave lessons to novice cooks, one of the first subjects might be 'variations on a theme' -that is, how to alter the flavor of a dish by adding an herb or a spice or by changing the cooking technique.
I thought of this recently when I was asked to prepare an old family standby, chicken Pojarski. It is made with ground chicken (an alternative is veal) blended with cream and bread crumbs. The dish is said to have been created in old Russia by a tavern keeper named Pojarski. Originally made of chopped game or a blend of game and beef, it is, in effect, a version of hamburger.
When I prepared the dish I added a trace of ground cumin, a minor change that made a major transformation in taste. I served the dish with a butter sauce flavored with fresh chopped chives. The original recipe does not call for a sauce.
A first-rate accompaniment is rice with a Mexican flavor. The rice is cooked in broth with briefly cooked and cubed sweet peppers and corn fresh from the cob. It is flavored, if desired, with a tiny amount of saffron threads. This side dish requires only 17 minutes to cook. A watercress salad is good with the meal.  CHICKEN BURGERS WITH CHIVE SAUCE  4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, about 1 pound  1 1/2 cups fine fresh bread crumbs
1/2 cup fresh or canned chicken broth
1/4 cup heavy cream  2 tablespoons finely grated onion
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
Salt to taste if desired
Freshly ground pepper to taste  2 tablespoons corn, peanut or vegetable oil  4 tablespoons butter  2 tablespoons finely chopped chives.
1. Cut chicken into 1-inch cubes.
2. Put cubes in a food processor or an electric blender and blend thoroughly. Scrape chicken into a mixing bowl and add 1/2 cup bread crumbs, 1/4 cup chicken broth, cream, cumin, salt and pepper. Use fingers to blend well.
3. Spoon remaining cup of bread crumbs onto a flat surface. Divide chicken mixture into four portions; shape each into a ball and roll ball in bread crumbs. Flatten each ball into a round patty about 3/4 inch thick.
4. Heat oil in a nonstick skillet. Add patties and cook over medium-low heat about 5 minutes or until nicely browned on one side. Turn patties and cook about 5 minutes. Transfer to a warm platter.
5. Heat 2 tablespoons butter in small saucepan and add remaining broth. Bring to boil, stirring with wire whisk, and cook until reduced by half. Gradually add remaining 2 tablespoons butter, stirring with whisk.
6. Stir in chives and pour sauce over the burgers.
Yield: 4 servings.  RICE WITH PEPPERS AND CORN
1 tablespoon butter
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 cup diced sweet red pepper
1/4 teaspoon stem saffron, optional  1 cup rice
Salt to taste if desired
Freshly ground pepper to taste  1 1/2 cups fresh or canned chicken broth  1 medium-size ear of corn, shucked.
1. Heat butter in a saucepan and add onion, sweet pepper and saffron.
2. Add rice, salt, pepper and broth and bring to boil. Cover and cook 15 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, cut and scrape kernels from ear of corn. There should be about 3/4 cup. Stir corn into the rice mixture and cover. Cook about 2 minutes longer and serve.
Yield: 4 servings.  WATERCRESS SALAD  2 bunches unblemished watercress  1 tablespoon Dijon-style mustard  2 tablespoons red-wine vinegar
Salt to taste if desired
Freshly ground pepper to taste  6 tablespoons corn, peanut or vegetable oil  2 tablespoons coarsely chopped red onion  1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley.
1. Trim off and discard tough ends of watercress. Rinse watercress and drain well. Pat or spin dry.
2. Put mustard, vinegar, salt and pepper in a salad bowl. Blend with a wire whisk. Add oil, beating with whisk.
3. Add watercress and chopped onion. Sprinkle with parsley, toss and serve.
Yield: 4 servings.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"RESOURCES
A selective list of where to find the architects, designers and products in this issue.
PAGE 24  Chairs and clothing available at:  Koos Van den Akker  1283 Madison Avenue  New York, N.Y. 10128  (212) 722-9855
A-POC products  available at:  TriBeCa Issey Miyake  119 Hudson Street  New York, N.Y. 10013  (212) 226-0100
PAGES 64-71  Vladimir Kagan Design Group  P.O. Box 286434  New York, N.Y. 10128  www.vladimirkagan.com  (212) 289-0031
Erica Wilson Needle Works  717 Madison Avenue  New York, N.Y. 10021  (212) 832-7290  (800) 973-7422
PAGES 74-78  Mike Latham  (1999)Project  184 Kent Avenue  No. 341  Brooklyn, N.Y. 11211  www.the1999project.com  PAGES 80-84  Ganna Walska Lotusland  695 Ashley Road  Santa Barbara, Calif. 93108  www.lotusland.org  (805) 969-9990  The garden is open mid-February to mid-November. Tours are by telephone reservation, and must be made Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to noon.
PAGES 92-97  Michael Wolfson, Architect  15 Cardinal Mansions  Carlisle Place  London SW1P 1EY England  011 44 207 630 9377  Miami office: (305) 490-2581
Nicolas Guedroitz,  Russian Furniture Gallery  24 Pimlico Road  London SW1W 8LJ England  guedroitz@russianfurniture.co.uk  011 44 207 730 3111
PAGES 98-102  Linda Oldham  lloldham@earthlink.net",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Nutrition Doesn't Sell
LEAD: To The Living Section:
To The Living Section:
Marian Burros's article 'What Americans Really Eat: Nutrition Can Wait'  [ Jan. 6 ]  just confirmed what a lot of shoppers already know, just by observation. Since grocery stores are in business to make a profit it can be no accident that the greater part of the floor space of most grocery stores is devoted to soft drinks, cookies, cakes, snacks, baked goods, beer, sweetened cereals and, in the frozen food sections, to ice creams, ice cream specialties and frozen baked goods. If Americans ate differently, the floor spaces of most grocery stores would reflect this.
One also notices that the most accessible first-floor space of every department store is devoted heavily to cosmetics. But that's another survey.  BARBARA GORDON, New York, N.Y.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Victorian Etchings
RICHARD AND CAROLE SMYTH, antiques dealers, first discovered pyrography, a Victorian decorating technique, at the Brimfield, Mass., antiques shows 20 years ago. The couple, who are English, have collected more than 500 pieces decorated by early 20th-century hobbyists who burned designs into wood furniture, boxes, wall plaques and mirrors.
The Smyths have written a book about pyrography called ""The Burning Passion,"" which is available for $22.95 including shipping (New York State residents must add 8.5 percent sales tax) from Carole Smyth Antiques, P.O. Box 2068, Huntington, N.Y. 11743; (516) 673-8666.
The rack for ladies hair ribbons, part of which is shown above right, is $125; the smoking set right, is $295.  CURRENTS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Reading Up on Childhood Disabilities
""WHEN you have a child who is born with Down syndrome, after the initial shock, you want information,"" Steve Riggio said recently. ""You want to know how to raise the child. You want books on Down syndrome.""
Mr. Riggio, the executive vice president of Barnes & Noble Bookstores Inc., spoke from personal experience.  His daughter Melissa was born three years ago with Down syndrome. Despite his company's connections to the publishing industry, Mr. Riggio had great difficulty finding books about her chromosome disorder.
The search for literature that began with Melissa's birth has led to an effort by Barnes & Noble to provide more books about childhood disabilities. The company recently added a Children With Special Needs Collection to the shelves of its 715 B. Dalton and 41 Barnes & Noble bookstores nationwide.
The collection, made up of more than four dozen titles, includes books about disabilities like autism, cerebral palsy, dyslexia and speech and hearing impairments. There are also books on health care and educational and recreational opportunities for disabled children.
Most of the books were written for adults and have not been widely circulated until now, Mr. Riggio said.
""Many of these books are published by small presses and are hard to track down,"" he said. ""Some can be found only in a handful of libraries.""
George Greller, the buyer for Barnes & Noble's family and child-care division, said, ""We are trying to offer as much breadth as possible, to cover as many disabilities as possible. The books are primarily for parents and professionals who work with disabled children, but there are also some for siblings that parents can read to children.""
Among the titles are ""Children With Epilepsy: A Parent's Guide,"" edited by Helen Reisner (Woodbine House Inc., 1988), ""Susan's Story: An Autobiographical Account of My Struggle With Dyslexia"" by Susan Hampshire (St. Martin's Press, 1982) and ""Your Hyperactive Child: A Parent's Guide to Coping With Attention Deficit Disorder"" by Barbara Ingersoll (Doubleday, 1988).
For children, the collection includes ""Shelley: The Hyperactive Turtle"" by Deborah M. Moss (Woodbine House Inc., 1989).
Mr. Riggio said he hoped that Barnes & Noble's effort would lead to the publication of more books about childhood disabilities.
""We want to encourage publishers,"" he said. ""We want to get out the word that our company is behind these books. If publishers know there is a home for them in our stores, that they won't be relegated to a few shelves in libraries, they are more likely to publish them.""
The potential audience for books on childhood disabilities is significant.  According to the Paul H. Brookes Company, which specializes in publishing books in the field, 5 percent of children in the United States, or more than 3 million, have a developmental or physical disability.
The Children With Special Needs Collection can be found on the top shelves in the Family and Child Care sections at B. Dalton and Barnes & Noble stores. Later this month the stores will provide a brochure that explains the collection and invites customers to suggest additional titles.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Seattle to Soviet Georgia: Salmon With Less Salt
LEAD: Hospitality takes on new, and overwhelming, dimensions when the purveyors of good will are Government officials and food professionals here in the Republic of Georgia, and its recipients are three chefs from the United States.
Hospitality takes on new, and overwhelming, dimensions when the purveyors of good will are Government officials and food professionals here in the Republic of Georgia, and its recipients are three chefs from the United States.
'It's kind of like being with your mother,' said Caprial Pence, the 24-year-old chef at Fuller's restaurant in the Seattle Sheraton. 'They want you to be happy, but their way.'
The Georgian way with hospitality under normal circumstances is legendary. And this visit is anything but normal. The three - Mrs. Pence and her assistants, Diana Nowlis, 28, and Laura Dewell, 27 - are the first American chefs to be invited to the Soviet Union as guests of the Republic of Georgia. In a two-week exchange program arranged by Gosteleradio, the Government-run radio and television agency in Georgia, the chefs are preparing the best of the foods of the Pacific Northwest before they return to Seattle on Saturday.
Soon after their arrival in Tbilisi on May 16, following a whirlwind day of cooking in Moscow, the chefs were asked about their reception in Georgia. It isn't that they haven't appreciated the nonstop gifts and flowers, they said. It isn't that they haven't enjoyed the tours to museums, monuments and churches, the visits to the opera and ballet, the local nightclubs, the meetings with Georgian trade and communications officials, and the unending succession of snacks, meals and tastings. It's just that all this hospitality has turned their lives into a phantasmagoria of culture, food and wine, from 8:30 in the morning to midnight.
Last Sunday's bus excursion to eastern Georgia and the wine-growing region around the city of Telavi was typical. The three-hour tour was interrupted at 1 o'clock by a meal - the chefs' Georgian hosts called it a snack - that included heaping plates of 19 savory appetizers, including khachapuri (bread stuffed with cheese), pickled acacia flowers, beet greens, cheeses, tomatoes, cucumbers, tarragon, pickled garlic and the superb Georgian bread known as puri. At 7, the chefs sat down to an even more elaborate feast, which featured 24 dishes and at least as many toasts. That meal lasted three hours.
Feelings of good will have been further tested by the Georgians' inability to understand that their guests are used to lifting pots, ordering supplies and operating on their own. There has been a polite but constant tug-of-war between the Georgians and the Americans over the proper role of the hosts and that of young women in a professional kitchen. The women often lose.
After only a few days, they gave up even trying to carry their own briefcases. That task, along with any other toting, lifting and moving of people and equipment, has been taken on by one of their hosts, Tengiz Chigvinadze, the chef at a restaurant here called Darial.
There has also been a genteel clash of culinary cultures. In the kitchen, as on the road, the Georgians are not just eager to help; they insist on it. But again, they do it their way: stirring dishes that should not be stirred, removing foods from the heat before they are cooked or returning them to the stove when they think the food is underdone.
Then there is the matter of seasonings: Georgians love salt, pepper and other spices. The American chefs avoid salt, so the Georgian chefs slip it into food when their guests aren't looking.
One Georgian chef was captivated by Ms. Nowlis and acted like a 13-year-old schoolboy, she said, sabotaging her work as only a teen-ager showing off would. She finally discovered a language he understood: making a fist, she 'threatened to punch him in the nose,' she said. He backed off.
All this help, Mrs. Pence said, has made cooking for 90 people over the past week 'like cooking for 400.'
Still, the meals the Americans have produced have been the equal of their work at Fuller's, one of the finest restaurants in the Pacific Northwest. It was there, last February, that the chairman of Gosteleradio-Georgia, Armas Saneblidze, was so impressed with his meal that he invited the chefs to visit the Soviet Union and demonstrate Pacific Northwest cooking in Moscow and Tbilisi. A group of Georgian chefs are to visit Seattle in the fall.
Mr. Saneblidze was in Seattle because his network will sponsor a film about the city, to be shown in the Soviet Union as a prelude to the Goodwill Games, an Olympics-style international sports competition to be held in Seattle in 1990.
The menus served in Tbilisi have been based on what the chefs brought from Seattle - salmon, oysters, cheese, wild greens, edible flowers, wine - and on what they obtained from the high-quality private-enterprise markets in Tbilisi. Now, the markets are brimming with spring fruits and vegetables. One night, the women made a tarragon-walnut pesto for the salmon; another night, a tarragon-aioli sauce. Tiny new potatoes were combined with apple puree and thyme at one dinner; another evening, potatoes were tossed with cooked beet greens.
There was only one near disaster. No matter what Mrs. Pence tried, she could not remove her tart shells from their baking forms. She eventually abandoned the effort and prepared a dessert of strawberries with two sauces, one of pureed berries and berry preserves and another of sour cream and oranges.
The guests at each of the dinners were especially taken with the salmon. The only salmon served here is salted, like lox. In fact, Georgy Gongadze, the maitre d'hotel at the Palace of New Rituals, where one meal was cooked, told the chefs the salmon needed more salt and pepper.
Karlo Ketsbya, the catering manager of the restaurant, took a more up-to-date view: 'I would like to emphasize that I liked best the idea of not having salt in the salmon, because natural is best.'
The meals were otherwise met with universal acclaim and eaten with gusto. In fact, Tsilosoni Autandil, the republic's First Deputy Minister of Trade, said that if the Georgian chefs' visit to Seattle is equally successful, he is 'ready to discuss opening a Georgian restaurant in America and an American restaurant in Georgia.'
For her part, Ms. Dewell said: 'It's nice that people see cooks as a viable force for peace and friendship. When we first heard about the trip, we thought we'd spend a lot of time in the kitchen and meeting chefs. I never expected the attention we are getting.'",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"WINE TALK
LEAD: THESE days, restaurants and rented halls in Manhattan bring to mind caravan stops along the ancient Silk Route between China and the West. The modern nomadic traders are vintners and their representatives, with visions of holiday sales dancing in their heads.
THESE days, restaurants and rented halls in Manhattan bring to mind caravan stops along the ancient Silk Route between China and the West. The modern nomadic traders are vintners and their representatives, with visions of holiday sales dancing in their heads.
Their arrival is heralded weeks in advance by invitations to tastings. Once here, they unpack case upon case of bottles on premises hired by distributors, foreign-government trade offices and wine societies. Then retailers, restaurateurs, consumers and writers carry out ritualistic rounds of day-in, day-out tastings.
In recent weeks, I have been sniffing, swirling, sampling and mostly spitting out scores of wines (only a Goliath dares to swallow). The tasting notes have slowly piled up the way sawed logs do on a Vermont back porch as winter draws near.
As the wine examiners make their circuit, they sample three categories of wines: simple ones for pleasurable daily drinking, more sophisticated ones for entertainment and special ones for long-term maturation in cellars.
Merchants suggest buying these wines by the case. I do not recommend the practice, 10 percent discount or not. Sure, it's easy and comfortable to find a wine you like and then stick with it. But that's boring. If you don't like adventure and risk, Cherry Coke offers an easy way out. It's cheaper, it's a swell drink, but it harbors no surprises, no delights.
After all, wine, a living object (unless pasteurized), is as varied as life itself. That is why I rarely return to old favorites, even at the cost of missing them at their peak.
Years ago, when I was an undergraduate at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., the poet John Ciardi warned us against winding up with 'an armored and concluded mind.' Applied to wine, his words encourage restless exploration of new varietals, new brands, new blends, new vintages and new styles.
So let us ramble through a few wines that were new to me and that are well worth buying.
A brut nonvintage Champagne made by Delamotte Pere & Fils is increasingly visible in New York City wine stores. The brut, and other Champagnes in the Delamotte line, are imported by a New Jersey company (Speciality Spirits Ltd. in Princeton), and it sells in Manhattan for $21.99. It is light, simple, toasty and has tantalizing tiny bubbles.
I especially liked an '85 Vouvray, Cuvee du Centenaire, from the Loire shipping firm of Monmousseau. It is a blanc de blancs made of 100 percent chenin blanc grapes and sells for $7.20 at the standard 50 percent retail markup (but seek out discounts). The wine elegantly balances sweetness and acidity, as West German rieslings do.
Look, too, for the stylish Vouvrays of Marc Bredif, which is owned by Baron Patrick de Ladoucette, a leading Loire shipper of Chablis. The easy-drinking '85 Vouvray has a honeyed bouquet and tangy, off-dry flavor ($9.21). The creamy '84 has a congenial citric bite ($6.99). These are imported by the International Vintage Wine Company, Hartford.
For an agreeable aperitif, serve the '86 Arneis Blange, a white made by Ceretto, an outstanding winery in Italy's Piedmont district ($14.99). It is slightly tart and tickles the palate with a little fizz.
As a pre-dinner wine, the '87 fume blanc, a white from Penfolds, an Australian winery, is a good value for $5.99. It has a lightly grassy aroma and is full of young vitality. Penfolds' '85 Koonunga Hill, a shiraz-cabernet sauvignon blend, is a velvety, grapey quaffing red well worth $6.99.
Oddly, I had not caught up with the fine wines made by Rutherford Hill in California, except for a spritzy full-bodied gewurztraminer relished some years ago in Maine. A serious oversight. The other day, I sampled Rutherford Hill Napa Valley merlots and cabernet sauvignons made from 1978 through 1983 and found these reds almost uniformly savory.
Some are still on the market and are drinking very well. The '83 merlot, light in body, is subtle and complex and needs perhaps two more years of bottle age to show off its best qualities ($10.99). The '82 cabernet, whose bouquet exudes loads of fruit, offers a luxurious flavor ($11.56).
Jerry Luper, one of California's top wine makers, joined Rutherford Hill two years ago. The high quality of its merlots was defined by his predecessor, Phillip Baxter, who is now the wine maker for Domaine Michel, a new, promising Sonoma County winery. Given Mr. Luper's record, Rutherford Hill's merlots surely will continue to rank with some of my favorites - those made by Clos du Bois in Sonoma and by Duckhorn Vineyards in Napa.
The classiness of Clos du Bois comes through in its '85 Calcaire Vineyard chardonnay ($19.99), which is buttery, supple, a touch spicy and nicely oaked. The winery's generously flavored '82 Proprietor's Reserve cabernet sauvignon ($21) is showing very well.
Clos du Bois, incidentally, scored a coup when British Airways recently selected two of its wines - the freshly fruity '86 Calcaire Vineyard chardonnay and the smooth, flavorsome '82 Briarcrest cabernet sauvignon - to serve to first-class passengers worldwide. (Both will be available in New York City in December.) The contract is the first major one with an American winery, an airline spokesman said.
One of the better, easy-drinking merlots I encountered was the '85 from Vichon Winery in the Napa Valley ($15). The '84 merlot from Sanford Winery in Santa Barbara County, Calif., is sweet and lip-smacking good - what the French call a 'serious wine' ($13.95). The '84 merlot from Clos du Val, in Napa, was attractively sweet and mouth-filling ($15.75).
The '86 pinot blanc made by Edgar Schaller et Fils, an Alsace vintner, is ravishing (about $6). Its effusively pear- and peachlike bouquet carries through into its fruity flavor. It is masterly, perfectly balanced and alive with youthful verve, and is expected fairly soon at Quality House, 2 Park Avenue near 32d Street. The importer is Robert Kacher Selections of Washington.
Lar de Barros's tinto reserva '83, a red wine from Estremadura, Spain, is a light, sweet, grapey refresher - a country red that washes down simple fare and brings a smile of satisfaction. It is $6.99 and is imported by Middleton White, Cold Spring Harbor, L.I.
If you want to spend next to nothing, lay out merely $2.56 for the R. H. Phillips Vineyard Night Harvest nonvintage cabernet sauvignon, from California's central valley, and $3.99 for the River Oaks Vineyards' nonvintage premium red wine, from California's north coast. Both, highly drinkable, were finalists in a 'best of the bargains' competition for wines $4 and under sponsored by the International Wine Center, a Manhattan wine school.
The House of Mommessin, one of the large negociant (shipping) companies in Burgundy, is deservedly well-known for its Beaujolais, and soon its '87 nouveau will be here. However, when the chairman, Didier Mommessin, passed through town recently, his mind was on his premium red Burgundies from the excellent 1985 vintage.
The young-fruit flavors of his '85 Cote de Beaune Villages, especially the cherry, were overwhelming ($14.39). The '85 Beaune Les Bressandes, a Premier Cru, is loaded with fruit, especially raspberries, and has a huge potential that long cellaring will realize ($22.50). The opulent Corton exudes the perfume of new raspberries, and the texture is meaty ($25). All three are winners. The importer is William Grant & Sons.
As for dessert wines, two words describe Cockburn's '83 vintage Port ($30): rich, generous. It is distributed by Frederick Wildman & Sons. Still in its infancy, this Port may live on until the last syllable of recorded time, or later.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"FOOD NOTES
LEAD:  Irradiation Debate
Irradiation Debate
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group, will sponsor a debate on food irradiation at the Washington Plaza Hotel in Washington on Oct. 21. The all-day forum will examine the advantages and disadvantages of irradiation as a method of preserving food.
Participants will include members of the House as well as representatives of the health professions and environmental and research institutes. Judith Randal, the health columnist for Newsday, and Cass Peterson, the environmental reporter for The Washington Post, will participate, with Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest as moderator.
Registration is $140 for private individuals or companies; $80 for Government or university employees, and $40 for students or those from nonprofit organizations. A 25 percent discount is offered for registering before Sept. 30. To register or obtain more information write to Claire Suen, Center for Science in the Public Interest, 1501 16th Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20036; 202-332-9110.  Sardinian Specialties
Bloomingdale's latest geographic extravaganza, which opened last week, is called 'Mediterranean Odyssey.' The focus is on France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Morocco, Turkey and Israel, in everything from clothes to crafts.
But in the food department, it seems to be business as usual because these countries are routinely represented, especially France and Italy with their olive oils, cheeses and preserves. The region given the most exposure for its food in this new promotion is Sardinia, a case of the tail wagging the dog, but quite an interesting taste all the same.
In the bakery, for example, there are close to 100 different breads, sweets and pastries from the seven countries. Among the foods imported from Sardinia are cookies laced with honey and nuts, sesame seed and honey korikeddos, and honey-almond sugattos, all for $12.50 a pound. Carta Musica bread, a tasty, giant parchmentlike round, is $5, and is so fragile that it must either be carefully broken before wrapping or eaten on the spot.
Plump canned Sardinian sardines are $2 for 4 ounces. Assorted dry pastas, also from Sardinia, include tricolored gnocchetti, at $4 a pound.
For those with esoteric recipes, there is dried grated bottarga, the roe of gray mullet, at $30 for 3.5 ounces. Deliciously tangy Sardinian sheep-milk cheeses are $6.50 a pound, and there is an excellent French sheep-milk cheese from the Pyrenees for $13.99 a pound.
Mediterranean specialties are also featured at the prepared food counter.  A Grand Tasting
After five years in San Francisco the Wine Experience - a weekend of tastings, lectures and dinners organized by the Wine Spectator, a biweekly wine publication - will be held in New York. In the future it will alternate between the two coasts.
This year's event will be held at the Marriott Marquis Hotel at Broadway and 45th Street from Oct. 30 through Nov. 1. Tickets are available for the grand tastings, identical events held Oct. 30 and 31 from 7 to 10 P.M., when more than 125 wines from around the world can be sampled. Admission to either tasting is $125. For tickets or information write to the Wine Spectator, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10016; 212-684-4224.  Culinary Folklore
Jewish food customs and traditions are examined in several articles in a special issue of The Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review, published in time for the beginning of the Jewish New Year. Articles in the 40-page illustrated journal include information about food customs in contemporary Jewish communities, traditions in food based on interviews with immigrants and the history of Jewish charity cookbooks in the United States and Canada.
The journal also reports on the relationship between food and Jewish culture. To order the issue, send $7 and $1 for postage to Dr. Shalom Staub, Jewish Folklore and Ethnology Review, 212 Montrose Street, Harrisburg, Pa. 17110.  'State of Freshness'
The office of Governor Cuomo has declared October to be 'State of Freshness' month in New York. And the budget for the program that certifies the quality of potatoes, eggs, onions and apples produced in the state - called the 'Seal of Quality' - has been increased from $500,000 to $1.3 million for next year.
The seal of quality assures consumers that the products meet certain standards of size, uniformity, texture and soundness. Random inspections are conducted at the time of shipping and when the products reach the stores in order to qualify for the seal of quality.
Twenty supermarket chains that represent 80 percent of the retailers in the state, including the D'Agostino chain in the city, are cooperating with the program and will carry products with the seal of quality.  A Tradition Reworked
A felicitous encounter between Old World Jewish and trendy American took place over Labor Day weekend on the barbecue grill at the home of Leslie Newman, a screenwriter.
Mrs. Newman grilled slices of stuffed derma, a Jewish specialty that is also called kishka. It is made of beef sausage casing filled with fat, vegetables, spices and matzoh meal, and is usually fried or baked. It is certainly never served with peppery salsa - until now.
The grilling released some of the fat and imparted to the crusty slices a deliciously smokey flavor. Mrs. Newman's favorite source for stuffed derma is Fine & Schapiro, 138 West 72d Street.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Stars' High-Flying Contractor
""EXCUSE me,"" said the lady behind the two-way radio. ""Are you waiting for the Navajo?""
The Navajo in question was not of the Window Rock, Ariz., variety but rather the Navajo Chieftain eight-seater with the blue plush seats owned and operated by Ben (""I'll Be There in a Heartbeat"") Krupinski, ace East Hampton pilot and Contractor to the Stars.
On this Tuesday morning, the blue-eyed, radiant-cheeked Mr. Krupinski is wearing Patagonia and a sea-foam green headset that connects him to air-traffic control.
It is 9:39 A.M. Altitude: 3,500 feet. Visibility: 12 miles. Goodbye, dreaded La Guardia runways. Farewell, belt of thick brown smog cinching Manhattan's waist.
High in the sky, the Long Island Expressway looks like the 1939 General Motors Futurama. Like faces on the Michael Jackson video, shopping malls and parking lots are mutating into green fields and golf courses.
We are entering Krupinskiland: sprawling houses with attitude that look as if they are sprawled out on lounge chairs with a masseuse and a pina colada.
10:40 A.M. East Hampton airport on Long Island, altitude zero. The Navajo Chieftain, one of Mr. Krupinski's ""tools"" -- he loves to fly, he hates waiting -- is off to Newport News, Va., to pick up some hardware with Dave Stinchi, the co-pilot. Ann Kalla, the architect whom Mr. Krupinski fetched at the airport and with whom he is currently working, is off to a building site in Martha Stewart's Chevy Suburban, one of many famous, exacting clients who doesn't ruffle Mr. Krupinski. Mr. Krupinksi himself is driving his gray Ford pickup with the words ""Ben Krupinski Builder"" emblazoned in red.
""Unit 1 to base,"" he is saying, talking into the radio that connects him to his office and a flotilla of 11 vehicles. They are driven by plumbers, electricians, carpenters and other highly skilled artisans beloved both for their precision and for not backing into the Jack Russell terriers in the driveway.
It is springtime in the Hamptons, when crossings and holes -- Hamptonese for streets -- are clogged with swat teams like Mr. Krupinski's. ""Traffic! Traffic already!"" he mutters. Memorial Day is rapidly approaching -- the Day of Reckoning for the legions of blue-clad elves with buzz saws who toil anonymously on rich peoples' summer houses.
All around, in the front yards of houses with names like ""Chez Gustave"" and ""Briar Patch,"" signs of spring are found in piles of sod, tipsy trees held up by cables and tight clumps of the fabled Hamptons boxwood wrapped in burlap. Driveways-of-choice are crammed with construction-crew vehicles, the air rife with Neil Diamond and Heavy Metal. The forsythia are blooming. So are the telltale green signs that say ""Ben Krupinski Builder.""
At around 11:15, Mr. Krupinski pulls into a driveway that is artfully disguised to look like a dead end. Six men are perched on the slanting rooftop of a house, repairing a skylight. Those pesky weathered shingles again.
Wood can twist and warp. Not so lead-coated copper railing. ""This is perfection!"" Mr. Krupinski said admiringly, coddling a piece of it as if it were a baby chick.
Among those who hire Mr. Krupinski to sink swimming pools and build houses, his sense of perfection is extraordinary. ""Extraordinary!"" said Ms. Stewart, perhaps the country's most formidable perfectionist. Mr. Krupinski recently restored her 24-room house in East Hampton and devised an elaborate hidden kitchen-exhaust system. He has also shuttled Ms. Stewart, along with her sinks, back and forth from the Hamptons to her home in Connecticut.
He is the man behind the curtain, as deft at sanding the splintered edges of clients' egos as he is at sanding a piece of mahogany. ""It takes talent,"" said Jerry Della Femina, the advertising executive, another client-turned-friend with whom Mr. Krupinski shares red wine and Beefeaters at Gordon's in Amagansett. ""In East Hampton, Ben's the star,"" Mr. Della Femina added. ""You walk into a restaurant and everyone's looking up and saying, 'It's Ben! It's Ben Krupinski!' ""
Rugged and handsome, the 45-yewar-old, 6-foot 1-inch Mr. Krupinski cuts a striking figure, his strides as long as girders as he bounds out of his pickup. By noon, he has arrived at his largest project, the verdant, multimillion-dollar pondside estate of a young, you-won't-mention-his-name-will-you, mass communications magnate.
Lavishly restored by the architect Peter Marino, the place reeks of instant old money, and status and privilege plumped up like a seat cushion.
In the master bathroom, Mr. Krupinski doesn't notice the sea urchin skeletons placed oh-so-prettily on bars of soap. ""Brass fittings,"" he said, pointing proudly to the shower stalls. He heads into another room. ""See how the dormers break out perfectly?""
Outside, he inspects the curve of a template for a teak rail and a band of workers crouched around the pool who are painstakingly bleaching the wooden fence because the owner ""doesn't like the teak look.""
He gazes at the sunken tennis court, built with retaining walls to ""keep the profile low."" ""Nineteen months,"" he said. ""It really becomes a part of you. You live it and breathe it and sleep it. When it's all over, it's a piece of your life taken away, too.""
Around the Hamptons, Mr. Krupinski, modest and caring in the manner of a doctor making house calls, is known as an industrious young man who has sweated for his airplane, his house in Palm Beach and his 42-foot fishing boat, the Bonnie K, named for his wife Bonnie Bistrian Krupinski. As a young man, said Virginia Briggs, the president of the East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society, ""Benny always gave a lot of himself."" As a child, he used to show up on peoples' doorsteps selling candy bars and delivering newspapers.
He typically worked until 11 at night at his father's grocery store, ""because that's when we closed,"" which may account for his seven-day workweek, without lunch.
As a young boy, Benny built model airplanes, not the fancy kinds but the ones with ""the Queen Bee motors flown on a piece of string."" He got a job with a title company, quit because ""it felt like a prison"" and then went to work for the Bistrian Sand and Gravel Company, his wife's family business. He started his own in 1980.
His first big-shot client was Adrienne Vittadini, the fashion designer. At rarefied social gatherings, Mr. Krupinski and his wife are sought-after guests. ""Real estate is the No. 1 talk at parties,"" observes Michael Braverman, a real-estate agent, ""so it's good to have a reference person.""
Part of Mr. Krupinski's appeal is his down-to-earth manner, a novelty for many clients. His willingness to fix his clients' leaky faucets on Sunday morning and shuttle them to J.F.K. to make the Concorde also may have something to do with it.
An uncompleted construction project at Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley's chateau-by-the-sea was rescued by Mr. Krupinski. On the seat of his pickup is a notepad with lists, including ""Things to Do at the Brinkleys"" (Christies' parents' house down the road). At the Brinkleys, he discusses a marble fireplace surround; the house is filled with blowups of Sports Illustrated and other magazine covers displaying their flawless daughter.
He checks in at the Joels', where Mr. Joel reiterates a famous observation that honesty is a lonely word: he compares most contractors to the woman who yells ""I'll be ready in five minutes"" when she knows better.
The relationship between a client and a contractor can be a lifelong deal. ""You can watch 'This Old House' all you want to, but it's not going to tell you what to expect,"" the bestubbled Mr. Joel is saying. ""There was good word of mouth on Ben,"" he said. ""This is a small town. People wag tongues.""
Mr. Krupinski won't wag his. He will not divulge the name of the very-famous architect he will no longer work with. ""You need personal communication with an architect or client,"" he is saying, heading toward the office, appropriately located on Toilsome Lane. ""It's a little bit like a marriage. It's no fun if you're not willing to bend. Hello hello hello? Unit 1 to base.""
At the base, manned by Chris Hupalowski, his assistant, photographs of his wife and 26-year-old daughter Laura are joined by those of sun-tanned clients aboard the Bonnie K and houses that look like Architectural Digest come to life.
Here is one now, situated next to Calvin's house on a spit of road where the ""No Trespassing: Private Property"" and ""24-hour patrol"" signs are sprouting up like dandelions.
Here is another, where a front door abuts a hedge. 'I love a door and a hedge situation!"" he said. ""Boom! It'll be fabulous.""
Not much ruffles Ben Krupinski. ""I've never been envious,"" he said, inspecting a shingle-style tower he is building on the beach. The most difficult part of the job, he added, is ""satisfying yourself.""
""If I can please me, I can please anybody,"" he said.
His notepad says: ""Talk to Johnsons re: fireplace stucco. Ackermans: Debris removal.""
At 4:25, Ann Kalla is waiting on the tarmac of the East Hampton airport, clutching her canvas tote bag and talking on her portable phone. By 5:10 -- ceiling 13,000 feet, temperature 55 -- Mr. Krupinski is circling three times over Glen Cove in rush hour.
How is flying a plane like being a contractor? ""No similarities"" Mr. Krupinski reports from the cockpit. But both require precision and thinking ahead. In flying, ""it's a good job if you get to walk away from it,"" he is explaining, and perhaps the same can be said of contracting.
Now the Navajo Chieftain has come to a stop at the Butler Aviation parking ramp. ""Bye-bye Ben,"" Ms. Kalla says. ""Thanks for the ride.""
Mr. Krupinski doesn't say goodbye. He says, ""What about the marble?""  AT WORK WITH BEN KRUPINSKI",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"From Pre-Columbian to Post-Tourist
ROBERT F. NICHOLS, a gallery owner in Santa Fe, N.M., said the large storage or water jar at left was made about 1880 ""before the railroads came to the Southwest, bringing tourists who bought pottery that resulted in a change of decorative styles.""
This Zuni Pueblo jar and about 150 other pieces are included in the fourth annual show and sale of Indian pottery of the American Southwest at Kelter/Malce, an antiques shop at 361 Bleecker Street (Charles Street) in Greenwich Village. The show will run from Feb. 1 to 16.
The show includes ""prehistoric"" pottery (from the 9th to the 12th centuries), ""historic"" pottery (from 1800 to 1950) and contemporary pottery. ""Some people only collect one kind,"" said Jolie Kelter, an owner of the New York gallery, which will be decorated like a trading post for the event.
Prices will range from $40 for a new piece to $18,000 for the jar shown at left. ""You can't buy an old pot for $100,"" Ms. Kelter said, ""but that would be enough to get quite a nice contemporary one.""
""Many of the contemporray pieces are signed,"" she continued, ""and many are bought directly from the potter, so that we know who made them. What is most fascinating is how one kind of pot influenced another over time and generations.""
CURRENTS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"QUILLWORK, CABINETRY
LEAD:  Gift of Double Woman: Quillwork of the Lakota, Museum of the American Indian, 155th Street at Broadway; 212-283-2420.
Gift of Double Woman: Quillwork of the Lakota, Museum of the American Indian, 155th Street at Broadway; 212-283-2420.
A display of decorative quillwork (dyed porcupine needles) in geometric designs done by contemporary Lakota Sioux women will be on view Tuesday through December. Hours: 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Tuesday through Saturday, 1 to 5 P.M. Sunday. Closed holidays. Adults $2; elderly and students $1.  Duncan Phyfe and His Contemporaries, 1800-1840, Museum of the City of New York, Fifth Avenue at 103d Street; 212-534-1672.
An exhibit of crafted furniture features a tool chest of stained wood by the cabinetmaker Duncan Phyfe. Through Aug. 23. Hours: 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Tuesday to Saturday, 1 to 5 P.M. Sunday and holidays. Donation suggested.  Herb and Flower Workshop, Horticultural Society of New York, 128 West 58th Street; 212-233-2926.
Saturday from 10 A.M. to noon, urban gardeners can learn about planting and preserving herbs. Creating wreaths and potpourri from dried flowers will be demonstrated. Free.  Garden Design Lecture, Horticultural Society of New York, 128 West 58th Street; 212-757-0915.
Next Wednesday at 7 P.M. a slide presentation of garden designs will be delivered by Peter Loewer, a botanical artist. A garden designed for people with physical handicaps will be featured. Advance registration; $5.  Birds of Pelham, Pelham Bay Park Environmental Center, Section 2, Orchard Beach, Bronx; 212-885-2140.
Urban Park Rangers will offer a 90-minute introduction to bird watching at 10 A.M. Sunday, including the use of binoculars and field guides. All ages. Free.  Sunset Stroll on Staten Island, Urban Park Rangers; 212-816-5466.
A two-hour tour of Silver Lake Park, a 19th-century resort, will be conducted by the rangers Sunday at 7:30 P.M. Meet at Park Drive off Forest Avenue, Silver Lake Park. Free.  Patterned Clays, Show of Hands Craft Cooperative, 531 Amsterdam Avenue (86th Street); 212-787-1174.
Earthenware by Barbara Cahn features bowls and platters of colored clay. On view through June 28. Hours: noon to 7 P.M. Monday through Wednesday; 11 A.M. to 6 P.M. Thursday through Sunday.
CALENDAR",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Opens Wide And Says 'Don't Touch'
The humble trash can becomes a cheap form of entertainment with the Touchless, whose lid flies open automatically, settling back down silently three seconds later. Simply wave your eggshells in front of its sensor or -- if you are a dog -- stand within six inches and bark. The can, made of stainless steel and able to hold 13 gallons, means no more stamping on foot-operated versions, and no need to touch -- unless you want to change the bag or the lid's four D-size batteries. Scheduled to arrive at Target stores in June, the can is $99 at itouchless.com or (800) 660-7978.
DEBORAH BALDWIN  CURRENTS: TRASH",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Close to Home
LEAD: WE went to the animal hospital, my daughter and I, with the cat wrapped up in an old yellow comforter. 'It's all right,' the cabdriver said when we choked up trying to give directions. 'I know how you feel.'
WE went to the animal hospital, my daughter and I, with the cat wrapped up in an old yellow comforter. 'It's all right,' the cabdriver said when we choked up trying to give directions. 'I know how you feel.'
'I had a calico. Beautiful cat. Had just one litter. My wife and I, we mated her with a pure white Persian. You should have seen those kittens! Five of them. One was black with a white star on the forehead, and another was white with a black star on the forehead. Two of the others were tigers, and the fifth was a calico just like her mother. She had them under my bed. Wouldn't you know? And when I was lying on it she used to show them to me, put them right down on my belly. I was the only one she showed them to. Sixteen years I had her. Fourteen years you've had yours? She had kittens? I bet you've given her a good life. Oh, I miss my calico - Mish Mosh I named her because of the colors - but I had to face reality. You've always got to face reality.'
When we got out of the cab he yelled after us: 'Remember! A good life.'
It's funny, the things one worries about. We didn't want to put the cat in her carrier because she hates it at the best of times, and this was the worst of times. It was cold out besides. So we settled on the old yellow comforter because when I first saw this cat, it was draped over her head. My daughter was in seventh grade, the comforter was on her bed, and a scared kitten just separated from her mother was peering out from underneath it. But would the vet think us neglectful, to carry a cat in so curious a wrapping? Would the people in the waiting room? We wanted everyone to think well of us because we wanted desperately to think well of ourselves. We kept telling one another that we'd been good and faithful keepers, but words like 'maybe' and 'should we have' and 'if we had' cobwebbed our conversation. Maybe it was wrong to wind the cat in a comforter so big it all but trailed on the ground. We were silly to fret. In the waiting room we saw cats swaddled in baby blankets and crocheted afghans, and a small dog shawled in white mohair and sitting peacefully in its own little bed which, in turn, was sitting on its owner's lap. A big golden collie waddled by, swishing its tail, and made us smile. A Lhasa apso promenaded past, so fast and furious on its stubby little legs I was reminded of that famous Italian Futurist painting of a dog walking. And then our name was called and I was reminded of why we were there. I wasn't very articulate talking to the vet. I was crying too hard.
I never cry now, except when Heathcliff says to Cathy, 'How can I live without my heart? How can I live without my soul?' and when the bird twitters on the windowsill in 'Little Women' and Beth gives up the ghost. Then my eyes get wet and I thank God that I am watching this film alone. I forbade myself tears years ago, at first out of vanity. When I cry my eyes are red and swollen for hours afterward. No, worse. My face is swollen for hours afterward.
There is a second reason, arrived when I got out of college. Women were reputed to weep on the job. Not this woman. No way I was going to let somebody know I'd been gotten at; no way I was going to give somebody that satisfaction.
There is a third reason. I grew up in a household that honors self-control. And then there is the fourth and most important reason: I became a mother. When I cried during their childhood, and I did sometimes, my daughters were frightened. Where is safety, where is strength if even a parent weeps?
But now I wept, not caring if my face grew red or if the doctor thought me silly or if my daughter thought me weak. And as I did I realized that if pets permit us to love unreservedly, they also permit us to sorrow unreservedly. One winter night a long time ago, I sat in a kitchen with the person I loved most in the world while a pot of water bubbled on a stove. In it was the syringe he was sterilizing for the morphine injection that would give him a few painless hours. He wanted me to see him do it, he said, so that I'd know everything about his disease and know that he could, for a while longer, manage it himself. So that I'd know he wasn't afraid. When I started to cry he said, 'No, don't,' and I stopped. This was hard for him, telling me that he was going to die. My tears would make it harder.
That was the saddest night, but there have been other sad nights when tears would have distressed the patient. So what did I do? What everyone does. I traveled to some cold region in myself and stayed, doing what had to be done but fearful that while I was there my nerves would be frozen forever. This time, though, tears would not distress the patient.
We were sitting outside the examination room by now, my daughter as Niobe-like as I, watching the parade of pets. A terrier had a broken leg; a Yorkie was bustling about importantly; a white standard poodle was flaunting a big gauze bandage round her middle. Spayed, I suppose. Then, sooner than we wanted to see him, the vet came out, with X-Rays in his hand.
Suspicious, he said, but not positive. Still strong and active, he said. Antibiotics twice a day. Use hot compresses. Reprieve! Reality had been postponed.  We hadn't risked hope, yet here it was. The cat was on the examining table, skinny, unkempt and, as ever, trusting. We picked her up. We wrapped her in the old yellow comforter. And, lighter by a ton of tears, we took her home.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Though the Body's Still Warm, The Cold War Is Collectible
1991: The Cold War ends. A new collecting opportunity begins. History take note: Norman Brosterman, lone devotee of the Techno-Future, was there.
At the ""Modernism"" antiques show in Manhattan last fall, Mr. Brosterman showed the world the meaning of modernism, as defined by Norman Brosterman. While other dealers gloated over their Stickley and Art Nouveau, Mr. Brosterman showed up with paintings of enemy missiles zooming over Washington and mannequins in NASA helmets and spacesuits decked out for the space race.
""Courreges?"" a passer-by asked, looking at one of the silver suits.
""Grissom,"" Mr. Brosterman replied.
A 39-year-old Manhattan antiques dealer who lives on the Upper West Side and has a studio in NoHo, Mr. Brosterman was feeling a bit philosophical this week as he looked over his collection, which includes a bronze ray gun, a wooden model of a third-stage rocket and moody landscape paintings that forsake willows and waterfalls in favor of searchlights, missiles and mushroom clouds.
""There's something sweet about it,"" he mused. ""The cold war is already looking antique.""
If his sales at the ""Modernism"" show are any indication, Mr. Brosterman is either out of his mind or ahead of his time. But he is unwavering in his belief that the 20th century will be remembered not for uncomfortable furniture but for ""the big idea,"" or what he described as ""the great big dream of breaking away and leaving the planet at high speed.""
For him, the enduring imagery of the century is to be found in a pair of low-tech Project Gemini space gloves with light bulbs on the fingertips, and in eerie paintings of nuclear devastation and futuristic cities-of-tomorrow under the sea. Paintings by Alexander Leydenfrost, Ray Pioch, Chesley Bonestell and other artists who worked from the early 1900's through the 1960's and drew evocative renderings of the future for publications as diverse as Life and Mechanix Illustrated are more than pretty pictures to Mr. Brosterman.
""They are a way of reaching back into history and grabbing it,"" he said.
This little-known genre of art and design, which flourished among artists and designers long before much of it became reality, does not have a name. For now, Mr. Brosterman is calling it ""The Art and Design of the Techno-Future.""
The themes range from the Red Menace to the exploration of the solar system, but they share a celebration of technology and what Mr. Brosterman calls a gee-whiz vision of the future. In the paintings, the gee-whizness is often rendered in swooping, whooshing forms lighted from behind by mysterious sources.
Today, the hyperbolic imagery of the cold war seems particularly distant, glinting in the memory like a meteor in the sky.
""Missiles! Plutonium!"" Mr. Brosterman exclaimed with a hint of exaltation. ""So much anxiety! So much money!""
He called Chesley Bonestell, who rendered booster rockets for Wernher von Braun and specialized in astronomical art, the granddaddy of the genre. Among Mr. Bonestell's paintings, which often featured extrapolations of known rocket designs, was a 1948 illustration for Collier's magazine. It depicted an atomic bomb attack on New York City, with Queens already obliterated.
Mr. Brosterman is also fond of the artist Frank R. Paul. In Mr. Brosterman's living room, among Mission furniture that he considers trappings of his ""former life,"" is a drawing by Mr. Paul of two men in protective masks and suits trying to deactivate glowing orbs. The scene includes a third man, lying dead in the background, who apparently wasn't able to.
Some of these artists, coincidentally, will be included in the exhibition ""Blueprint for Space: Science Fiction to Science Fact,"" which opens on Jan. 14 at the I.B.M. Gallery in Manhattan.
Mr. Brosterman, who practiced architecture until the early 1980's, achieved a bit of fame several years ago for his extensive collection of architectural building blocks, which are now part of the permanent collection at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. He said he learned more about modern design from those toys than in architecture school.
Now a part-time sculptor, Mr. Brosterman stumbled onto the Techno-Future while attending antiques auctions and browsing at flea markets. ""The architect in me was always looking at drawings and technical things,"" he said.
Several years ago, he started noticing a type of modern art he had never seen before. ""I didn't know what it was, exactly,"" he said. ""It had a certain take on the 20th century, but it wasn't a movement I had heard of.""
As is his wont, Mr. Brosterman began buying, selecting drawings, paintings and sculpture he deemed iconic. He would not divulge all his sources, but he has procured material from the artists themselves and from advertisements in the back of comic-book collector magazines.
Among his prized possessions are a pressurized right-hand Gemini spacesuit glove that is marked ""Size: Shepard""; spacesuits made for Gus Grissom and Edward White, and a Project Mercury helmet, which he said was bought from a dealer who bought it from a friend of an astronaut. The spacesuits are for sale for $20,000 apiece.
A while back, he got hold of a space meal, but sold it because there was no Tang.
Interestingly, the most commonly asked question at the ""Modernism"" show was not ""Why?"" but ""Where did you get this stuff?""
Which could bode well for Mr. Brosterman.
""As far as I'm concerned, this is the most compelling memorabilia from the 1960's you can find,"" he said of his astronaut objects. ""The idea of leaving the planet happened during our lifetime, which is remarkable. Twenty thousand years from now, when people look back on this era, what do you think they're going to remember? The Beatles?""",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Opening Antique Furniture's Locks
LEAD: JOSEPH BIUNNO has been restoring antique furniture for 17 years. But year after year, he noticed that furniture required more than just refinishing. Because keys were often lost, armoires and desks were either permanently locked or permanently open. So Mr. Biunno taught himself to be a locksmith. He even makes house calls.
JOSEPH BIUNNO has been restoring antique furniture for 17 years. But year after year, he noticed that furniture required more than just refinishing. Because keys were often lost, armoires and desks were either permanently locked or permanently open. So Mr. Biunno taught himself to be a locksmith. He even makes house calls.
'I have a whole little tool kit,' said Mr. Biunno, who is based in Manhattan. 'I will go into someone's house and pick the lock and make a key on the spot. If I can't, there's no charge.'
In a steel suitcase, Mr. Biunno carries key blanks, picks, miniature flashlights, a small drill, tiny screwdrivers and numerous antique keys. When trying to unlock a piece of furniture, he first tries an old key. 'Sometimes I get lucky,' he said.
If that doesn't work, he picks the lock. If that fails, he forces the lock open.
Mr. Biunno's specialty is making skeleton and barrel keys for antique furniture and doors. 'A lot of times locksmiths don't want to go near furniture because they don't want to damage an antique,' he said. 'I'm not afraid because I'm a furniture restorer.'
One client's 2-year-old lost the key to a Chippendale desk that housed her checkbook, car keys and important papers. Mr. Biunno opened it and made a replacement key.
Yet another customer inherited an Empire armoire and drop-leaf desk, which arrived from Europe locked, with no key in sight. Again, Mr. Biunno succeeded.
Most keys he makes are either steel or brass, or a combination. Steel is preferred for the barrel of the key, Mr. Biunno said, because it is stronger. But he can weld a decorative brass head, in one of many designs like a fleur-de-lis or a scallop shell, onto the steel barrel. He can supply keys plated in gold, chrome, platinum or silver to most styles of furniture, including Louis XV, Empire, Regency and Chippendale.
Original locks add value to an antique, Mr. Biunno said, so he always tries to restore an existing one rather than replace it. When a lock is beyond repair, he tries to replace it with one of the many antique ones he has collected over the years.
Mr. Biunno also replaces escutcheons and keyhole liners, which he said are 'notorious for being lost.'
Mr. Biunno charges $100 to $120 for house calls in Manhattan, which he makes on Saturdays; the price includes the cost of the key to make a lock operable. He will travel in the metropolitan region for an additional fee. If furniture is brought into the shop, the charge is usually around $30. Locks are also accepted by mail. Sal Schillizzi, a locksmith in Manhattan for 35 years, said a lot of English furniture is found without locks.
During World War II, he said, 'the English were told to hand in all the metal they had, and some people went overboard and took locks off furniture, not knowing they were ruining the piece of furniture by doing so.'
So Mr. Schillizzi's company, All-Over Locksmiths, makes replacement locks for several styles of antique furniture. Keys for locked furniture can also be made.
Replacement locks cost $15 and up for stock models and as much as $1,000 for a handmade solid-brass reproduction of a rim-surface lock. He charges $45 for a house call to open a locked piece. The key usually costs another $45. New keys start at $15 for pieces brought into the shop.
To save money, a customer might consider removing the lock and bringing it to the store for repairs. 'There's nothing to it,' Mr. Schillizzi said.
'We open locked furniture and fit keys,' said Leonard Geffner, president of Abbey Locksmiths on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The company even operates a 24-hour emergency service.
Furniture keys, he said, cannot be made by machine, but must be filed by hand. Because of the labor involved, even duplicate keys can be relatively expensive.
Duplicate barrel or skeleton keys usually range from $25 to $50. Prices can go as high as $150 for very ornate keys. If a house call is required to make a lock operable, an additional $45 to $150 is charged.  Here's Where
JOSEPH BIUNNO COMPANY 129 West 29th Street, 11th floor; 212-629-5636. Hours: Monday-Friday 8 A.M. to 6 P.M., Saturday 8 A.M. to noon. Call first for appointment.
ALL-OVER LOCKSMITHS 1189 Lexington Avenue, near 80th Street; 212-744-3400. Hours: Monday-Friday 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. and Saturday 9 A.M. to 3 P.M.
ABBEY LOCKSMITHS 1558 Second Avenue, at 81st Street; 212-535-2289. Hours: Monday-Friday 7 A.M. to 6 P.M. and Saturday 8 A.M. to 5 P.M.
WHERE TO FIND IT",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Going My Way, Birnam Wood?
That's no ordinary 2,908-ton landmark rolling across Minneapolis this week. It's 'the world's heaviest single building ever moved on rubber tires,' according to Artspace Projects Inc., a nonprofit real estate developer in Minnesota known for moving logistical mountains. (Yes, the Empire Theater on 42d Street in Manhattan was bigger, but it was moved on rails, and then only 170 feet.) Five bulldozers will spend the next couple of weeks pulling the Shubert Theater, above, a quarter-mile to a spot next to the Hennepin Center for the Arts, where it will house local performance groups.
Built in 1910 as a legitimate theater, the Shubert was the site of the premiere of 'Birth of a Nation' in 1915; it became a burlesque house, and eventually a multiplex cinema. Artspace, which consults nationwide, specializes in recycling landmarks for cultural uses (800-229-5715). International Chimney Corporation (800-828-1446) is doing the actual moving.
CURRENTS -- RECYCLING",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"A Chinese Tradition
LEAD: To The Living Section:
To The Living Section:
Apparently there are several ver sions as to the origin of butter sculp ture in China  [ 'In Butter Sculptures, Monks Honor Tradition,' Feb. 15 ] . While researching a book about Chi na, I read that the art began in 641 (quite a bit earlier than 1409 as writ ten in the article).
As reported in the November 1988 issue of 'Women in China,' a month ly Beijing publication, butter sculp ture was first created in ancient Chi na when Princess Wen Cheng married a Tibetan king. The princess brought with her a statue of Buddha. To show respect, a bouquet of butter flowers was placed in front of the statue, establishing the custom of but ter carving. At first the carvings were simple and crude, but with time they have become extraordinarily detailed. NINA SIMONDS  Salem, Mass.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"For the Most Unusual Bulbs, A Backup Plan to the Rescue
Company is about to arrive, and the light bulb in the front hall burns out, the one that is impossible to buy at the corner store. But with some advance planning, it is possible to be ready for lighting emergencies without having to go to a specialty shop. A Web site, Topbulb, offers more than 5,000 bulbs for indoor and outdoor lamps; most are shipped the day you order. And if you have new bulbs lying around that you cannot use, they will buy them, cash, or give you a credit toward the bulbs you need. Prices are discounted, and there is a closeout area on the site. Shipping for any order is $6.95. Topbulb is at www.topbulb.com or (800) 867-2852.
MARIANNE ROHRLICH
Secret sources and good deals can be sent to rohrlich@nytimes.com.
CURRENTS: WHO KNEW?",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"The Rise and Fall Of Norwegian Salmon
THANKS to cultivation, salmon has become one of the more widely available and popular fish. Statistics for total salmon consumption are not available, but in 1989 Americans ate an estimated 64 million pounds of fresh whole salmon, about two-thirds of it farm-raised. No farmed salmon were on the market before 1981.
The Norwegians have led the way. As a result of their aggressive marketing, demand for salmon of all kinds, including the wild Pacific catch, expanded in the United States. In the mid-1980's, before countries like Canada, Chile and the United States began cultivating Atlantic salmon, nearly 80 percent of all fresh salmon sold on the American market was Norwegian.
Now, many fish markets and restaurants refer to all the salmon they sell as ""Norwegian salmon."" For example, some chefs and retailers, when pressed, will say their salmon is Norwegian salmon ""raised in Canada."" In fact, Norwegian salmon is becoming the generic term for all cultivated Atlantic salmon.
But for nearly two years, despite what the menu or the clerk at the fish counter might say, no significant amount of whole fresh Norwegian salmon has been available in this country.
In April, the International Trade Commission of the Commerce Department imposed a duty of 18 to 34 percent on all imports of whole salmon from Norway. The action was a response to a complaint filed in February 1990 by a group of Maine salmon farmers, backed by a Canadian company; they asserted that Norwegians were ""dumping"" large quantities of salmon on the Canadian and American markets at prices below wholesale.
The complaint charged that the Norwegian industry was Government subsidized. Norwegian salmon farmers denied that, and the Norwegians are appealing the ruling.
The tariff, which averages 26 percent, has priced whole fresh Norwegian salmon out of the market. It is now available only frozen, smoked or dressed and pan-ready. Most whole fresh Atlantic salmon on the American market is now imported from Chile and Canada. In the view of some experts, those countries are likely to reap the biggest windfall from the ruling.
Atlantic salmon cultivated by American companies now amounts to less than 10 percent of the American market. Colin McLernon, chairman of Maine Pride Salmon, which raises salmon, said he was optimistic that the tariff will allow American producers to acquire a bigger share of the market.
Other countries, including Iceland, Scotland, Ireland and Denmark, have started exporting whole farmed salmon to the United States. The wholesale price for farmed Atlantic salmon is now $3.50 to $4 a pound, slightly more than what it was 18 months ago.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"A Bed No Child Will Be Able to Outgrow
Think of heirloom furnishings for children -- expensive pieces bought for one's progeny to love and lug through the years to adulthood -- as a mode of recycling for the trust-fund set. Discriminating tots can cut their collecting teeth on the Simon Horn cot, a convertible crib handmade in Devon, England, and recently imported to the United States. Its imposing silhouette, inspired by a Louis Philippe lit-bateau but built in accordance with Federal safety regulations, is sturdy enough to withstand the transformation from standard-size crib to bed to sofa (with the help of a few Simon Horn cushions to hide the slats). Harpers & Queen magazine declared the piece a must-have for chic nurseries. At $2,750, make that three heirlooms. Store locations: (205) 871-6222.  CURRENTS: CONVERTIBLE FURNITURE",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"When Inspiration Strikes
To The Home Section:
Although I am rapidly approaching my 80th birthday, I feel that I would be remiss if I did not write. I thoroughly enjoyed your article  [ ""Look Anywhere, and See Design,"" June 11 ] .
Helen Baier  [ the writer's wife ]  and I returned to Syracuse University last fall for the dedication of the new Delta Kappa Epsilon (Deke) Fraternity House. Among those present were Roy Simmons Sr., class of '25, and Charlie Brannock, class of '25  [ designer of the Brannock shoe-measuring device ] , both in their 90's.
After Roy cut the ribbon he once again told the story of having roomed with Brannock and how Charlie was always getting up in the middle of the night to work on some calculations. Finally, after Simmons complained about not being able to sleep, Brannock said, ""Simmie, I'm working on an invention and if it works I'll cut you in on the dividends."" Simmons went on to say, ""I saw Charlie recently and asked him where my dividend checks were, and he replied, 'Simmie they're in the mail.' "" That got a laugh from the brothers.
Since you may not have heard the story, I felt that it was worth retelling. ALBERT F. BAIER Bellpark, L.I.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"A Folk Art Defense Fund, Built of Paper
IN the two years since the Golden Venture ran aground off Queens, more than half of its Chinese refugee passengers have been held at various prisons and detainment centers, awaiting official settlement of their appeals for political asylum. They are incarcerated, yes, but not daunted.
To raise money for their legal defense, the refugees at the York County Prison in York, Pa., have been making picturesque, often operatically ornate folded-paper art -- pagodas, mythical beasts, baskets and exotic fruits like the pineapple below -- from old magazines.
Nearly 100 of the pieces will be exhibited at the Frank J. Miele Gallery from Sept. 12 through Nov. 11.
""Aside from the human-interest story, the pieces should appeal to people on a visceral level,"" Mr. Miele said. ""They are incredibly beautiful."" Most of the works will be priced between $135 and $450. The gallery is at 1262 Madison Avenue (90th Street), (212) 876-5775.  CURRENTS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"60-Minute Gourmet
LEAD: CALF'S liver, which is one of my favorite, budget-priced meats, turns up in countless fine preparations in cuisines of the world. Among the classic French recipes are calf's liver Lyonnaise, which involves sauteeing slices of liver with onions, or a l'Anglaise, made by combining it with onions, bacon and lemon juice.
CALF'S liver, which is one of my favorite, budget-priced meats, turns up in countless fine preparations in cuisines of the world. Among the classic French recipes are calf's liver Lyonnaise, which involves sauteeing slices of liver with onions, or a l'Anglaise, made by combining it with onions, bacon and lemon juice.
From my native region, there is calf's liver a la Bourguignonne, in which slices of liver are sauteed in hot butter and the pan is deglazed with red wine and veal stock. A Venetian classic is fegato alla veneziana, liver with sliced onions, sage and black pepper.
When shopping for calf's liver, look for meat that is light pink and without blemishes. Kosher brands usually offer excellent quality.
The recipe below is similar to the Venetian version but with Cognac and chopped parsley.
I like the sweetness of the Cognac with the assertively flavored liver. Total cooking time for the liver is about six minutes. Don't brown the onions too much or the sauce will take on a bitter flavor.
At this time of year a salad of tart arugula, plum tomatoes and chopped red onions makes a good accompaniment. Parmesan cheese bread, with some garlic for good measure, is always welcome for sopping up the sauce.
Calf's Liver With Sage
4 slices calf's liver, about 1 1/4 pounds
1/4 cup instant flour for dredging
1 tablespoon olive oil
3/4 cup finely chopped onions
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh sage or 1 tablespoon dried
2 tablespoons Cognac
2 tablespoons chopped parsley.
1.Remove any tough arteries from the liver. Slice it into very fine julienne strips. Dredge lightly in the flour, shaking off the excess.
2.Heat the olive oil in a small nonstick skillet and add the onions. Toss and stir. Add salt and pepper. Cover and cook 10 minutes over medium heat without browning. The onions should be quite soft.
3.Heat the vegetable oil in a nonstick skillet large enough to hold the liver pieces in one layer. Add the liver, sprinkle with salt and pepper and cook over high heat 2 to 3 minutes, shaking the skillet and tossing the strips so they cook on all sides. Drain the liver in a colander.
4.Heat the butter in the same skillet and, when it is bubbling and hot, add the liver and onions. Sprinkle with sage and cook, stirring, over high heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Sprinkle with Cognac and ignite it. Sprinkle with parsley and serve immediately over Parmesan cheese bread (see recipe).
Yield: 4 servings.
Arugula and Tomato Salad
1/2 pound arugula leaves
3 ripe plum tomatoes, sliced
1 cup coarsely chopped red onion
1/2 cup finely chopped Italian parsley
2 tablespoons red-wine vinegar
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
4 tablespoons olive oil.
1.Pick over the arugula leaves and discard any tough stems. Rinse and drain the leaves well. Pat them dry. Place the arugula, tomatoes, onion and parsley in a salad bowl.
2.Place the vinegar in a small bowl. Add salt and pepper. Start beating while gradually adding the oil. Pour the sauce over the salad, toss and blend well.
Yield: 4 servings.
Parmesan Cheese Bread
1 large crusty loaf French or
2 tablespoons olive oil
Y cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon finely minced garlic.
1.Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
2.Split the loaf lengthwise. Brush the split sides with an equal quantity of oil. Sprinkle with cheese and garlic.
3.Arrange the halves on a baking dish. Place in oven until golden brown.
Yield: 4 servings.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"The Remix; Last Licks
Real frozen custard -- creamy, dense and so smooth that premium ice cream seems bland and grainy in comparison -- is almost impossible to taste in New York, even though it rose to fame on the Coney Island boardwalk in the 1920's. But Wisconsin is called the Dairy State for a reason, and anyone visiting Madison must go to Michael's Frozen Custard, where dozens of flavors, from butter pecan to mint chip, are dished out at four locations, old-timey shacks in converted gas stations. Madisonians are partial to the sundaes with hot fudge, caramel and toasted, salted pecans, but purists order the vanilla. Fresh tasting, with the heady, eggy perfume of homemade tapioca pudding, it gets its signature pale yellow hue from egg yolks. Michael Dix, 45, who started the business in 1986 with frozen-custard machines from the 1940's, loves the color so much that he had a bedroom painted to match. Now, on a hot summer day, he serves up to 750 gallons (mail order is available from www.ilovemichaels.com). During a short trip two summers ago, I limited myself to a baby cup the first day. By the second I'd upgraded to a medium, which looked as though it might easily be a full pint. And on the last day of my trip, I disgraced myself by insisting on stopping at Michael's one more time on the way to the airport. I missed my flight.
JESSICA LUSTIG",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Cupcakes With a Spare Aesthetic
There's barely a gaudy sprinkle in sight at Sprinkles Cupcakes, a bakery just opened in Beverly Hills by two former investment bankers, Charles and Candace Nelson. The idea was to create a shop in the spirit of the Magnolia Bakery in New York, Mr. Nelson said, but 'without doilies and a retro feel.' Andrea Lenardin Madden, an Austrian-born Los Angeles architect, designed the shop, where a glass-topped display case, below, shows off the pared-down, fondant-dotted cupcakes. White oak cabinetry, bottom, and the shop's packaging echo each other. Sprinkles Cupcakes, 9635 Little Santa Monica Boulevard, Beverly Hills; (310)274-8765.
CURRENTS: LOS ANGELES -- STOREFRONTS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Wines in Vogue
LEAD: To The Living Section:
To The Living Section:
I read with amusement the article 'Infatuation With Things Australian Now Turns to Notable Wines'  [ Feb. 8 ] , recalling Eric Idle of Monty Py thon and his routine on Australian table wines (with quips about such wines as Sydney syrup, which 'can rank with the world's best sugary wines'). Irony aside, articles like these are powerful reinforcements for my Weltanschauung, by providing yet an other example of how things (beards, suspenders and, apparently, even wines) can go in and out of style for no apparent reason (least of all any 'objective' criteria like taste, looks, etc.). BEN KATZ  New Havenblk",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Western Wind Across Urban Plains
LEAD: BY the time Thomas Molesworth opened the Shoshone Furniture Company in 1931, the myth of the American cowboy was laced into the American mindset.
BY the time Thomas Molesworth opened the Shoshone Furniture Company in 1931, the myth of the American cowboy was laced into the American mindset.
Paul Fees, senior curator of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., said the romance with the West in the 1930's was heightened by dude ranches, pulp periodicals and, of course, Hollywood. 'One of the reasons the dude ranch movies were so popular,' he said, 'was because they offered a chance for Eastern women to mix with smooth-talking cowboys.'
Today, Wild West nostalgia is sweeping across the urban plains, a phenomenon that would no doubt amuse Augustus McCrae, the irreverent 'wore-out old ranger' of Larry McMurtry's novel 'Lonesome Dove.'
In New York, for instance, a miniature Cody has sprung up on Hudson Street between Charles and West 10th Streets in Greenwich Village. Last year, Sherry Delamarter, a native of Waco, Tex., opened the Cowgirl Hall of Fame, a restaurant displaying photographs of Vera McGinnis, the first woman to wear pants in a rodeo.
Across the street at Whiskey Dust, Mervin Bendewald sells cowboy boots and bolo ties made from rattlesnake skins. He has been joined recently by Cece and Bob Phillips, who are from Fort Worth and who have opened a nearby store called Dusty Trails. Their establishment specializes in out-of-print song and comic books, and Western souvenirs like rusty horse shoes, which sell for $4.50 apiece.
'We have Little Italy,' Mr. Phillips reasons. 'Why not a Cowtown?'
Two of New York's most passionate buckaroos are Robert Heide and John Gilman, authors of 'Box-Office Buckaroos: The Cowboy Hero from the Wild West Show to the Silver Screen,' just released in paperback by Abbeville Press ($19.95). The book, which depicts Roy Rogers and Trigger flashlights, Lone Ranger posters, revolving Hopalong Cassidy 'mood lamps' and other campy collectibles, is their tribute to the 'lone individuality' of the radio and cinema cowboy.
Their Greenwich Village apartment is a two-room repository of mass-produced images from Hollywood, filled within an inch of its life with artifacts of American consumer culture, from life-size Roy Rogers posters to Hoppy lunch boxes. Mr. Heide and Mr. Gilman, who pursue cowboy collectibles with the fervor of a thirsty horse seeking water, are definitely in the vanguard. The two said they were stunned recently at a flea market to see a Gene Autry lunch box selling for $625.
Such prices are not unknown at Cadillac Jack, a furniture store in Los Angeles specializing in the cowboy look now in vogue among Don Henley, Daryl Hannah and other contemporary Western idols. Don Colclough (a k a Jack) does a brisk business in mass-produced furniture from the 1930's and 40's that bears little resemblance to that ofMolesworth.
Here, chairs and sofas come with horse heads stitched into chartreuse vinyl, with split wagon-wheel sides and, occasionally, even wooden shotgun arms. This was cowboy furniture for family and rumpus rooms in all those ranch houses of the suburban frontier.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Bridge
The climax of the tournament year for players in the New York area is the Winter Regional Championships of the Greater New York Bridge Association, beginning today at the Sheraton New York Hotel, Seventh Avenue at 53d Street in Manhattan.
These events are scheduled:
Today, Charity Pairs 1:30 P.M.; Stratified Open Pairs and Stratified Women's Pairs 1:30 P.M. and 7:30 P.M.; Bracketed Knockout Teams 7:30 P.M. and continues.
Tomorrow, Flighted Pairs and Senior Pairs 10:30 A.M. and 2:30 P.M.
Saturday, Swiss Teams (qualifying), Senior Pairs and Stratified Pairs 2 P.M. and 8 P.M.; Magic Show midnight.
Sunday, Swiss Teams (final), Senior Swiss Teams and Flighted Swiss Teams noon and 7 P.M.; Annual Meeting 6:30 P.M.
Stratified games throughout for players with fewer than 100 master points.
If you have a successful partnership in one area, there is a good case for extending it to another. Mel Colchamiro of Merrick, L.I., and Janet Schiff of Port Washington, L.I., were married a month ago after winning four regional titles together in 1993. One of the victories was in October in the Swiss Teams in Kiamesha Lake, N.Y., where they defended well on the diagramed deal.
The one-club opening was strong and artificial, and the one-heart response was negative, equivalent to one diamond in most such systems. South eventually landed in two no-trump, and the spade nine was led to the king. Colchamiro as East now made a crucial shift to the heart nine, attacking South's line of communication to dummy's clubs.
South won with dummy's queen and worked on clubs. East held up his ace for one round, and then cashed the heart ace and led the diamond queen. The declarer had no way to make more than seven tricks. He could take two diamond winners and surrender a diamond to East, but that player could cash the spade ace and lead another. South could finesse, but had to lose a sixth trick, either in spades or in diamonds.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"11,000 Buyers Look Forward to School
LEAD: For young people on vacation, the annual blitz of back-to-school sales is a rude reminder that the endless summer always ends too soon. But the hubbub of 1,000 merchants at a recent trade show reflected another reality - that the back-to-school market thrives year round.
For young people on vacation, the annual blitz of back-to-school sales is a rude reminder that the endless summer always ends too soon. But the hubbub of 1,000 merchants at a recent trade show reflected another reality - that the back-to-school market thrives year round.
The vendors packed the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan last weekend to present the latest styles and technology in notebooks, three-ring binders, markers and pencils. Aimed at drugstores, supermarkets and discount retail chains, the National Back to School Merchandise Show is the only trade show devoted to school supplies.
More than 11,000 buyers from stores around the nation strolled past hundreds of displays, said a spokesman for the show, Steve Davis.
He said the dominant feature of this year's show was brilliant color, splashed on everything from notebooks to knapsacks. 'Turquoise and pink are especially popular,' Mr. Davis said.  Gitano, a clothing manufacturer, offered a flamboyant illustration of this with a line of neon-colored backpacks and tote bags. 'We like to think we're a little more stylish than our competitors,' said Abe Dweck, a salesman for the company.
The competitive spirit was also evident among lunch-box vendors. The Clik! case, a lunch box introduced last year, features a cooler that stores a can of soda or a juice container. 'This has become very popular among kids since the thermos is going out of style,' said Larry Futterman, a salesman for the manufacturer of the lunch box, Outer Circle Products.
Two aisles away, a representative of Thermos was unruffled by such a statement. 'Parents like to send their kids to school with milk,' said Cathy Gill. 'I don't think you can put milk in a square box, so I don't think we have anything to fear.'
Serious social issues rarely intrude on the world of back-to-school marketing, but a line of folders created by Jeremy and Susan Wilcox of Louisville, Ky., was a striking exception. 'Yes to life, no to drugs' is written in bold letters across the front cover of each folder, against a backdrop of bright colors and flashy graphic design.
'We were trying to develop a hip image to go with the anti-drug message,' said Mrs. Wilcox, the president of New World Folders Inc. 'We wanted kids to feel that drugs are not just Mom and Dad's issue.'
While most vendors sold merchandise intended to make the pedagogic process more efficient or just more fun, a few offered products that actually stand in for the teacher.
A former high school math teacher, John J. Hall, offers a series of tapes that teach basic arithmetic to children.
Mr. Hall said the cassettes could be used to supplement courses or help students make up for missed schoolwork.
And if math lessons at home are not enough, Frank Norris, an expert in subliminal communication, pitched a line of cassette tapes that he said could help children learn by channeling positive statements about study habits into their subconscious.
Students are told, 'Testing situations are fun and enjoyable' and 'I have great abilities' on a tape that masks the statements under the sound of ocean waves.
'The kids can even listen to this while they're sleeping, so the learning process never stops,' said Mr. Norris, in a comment sure to make thousands of reluctant young scholars blanch.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"GARDEN Q.&A.
Uninvited and Tenacious Guest
Q. A small area on our property has become infested with Fallopia japonica. My weed book says it is immune to herbicides, and it should be dug up. But roots kept breaking, and I'm afraid further digging would only make things worse. What else can I do?
A. Fallopia japonica is another name for Polygonum cuspidatum, commonly known as Japanese knotweed, false bamboo or, because it is so tenacious, other less printable things. Unless you deploy earth-moving machinery, expect to spend years fighting its remorseless advance.
But the knotweed battle can be won and, at least on the home garden level, without resorting to chemical warfare. (The plant is not immune to Glyphosate-based herbicides, but they are only partly effective.)
You do have to start by digging. Established stands have big underground rhizomes with vast stores of resprouting energy. You won't get anywhere if you do not get rid of them. Bits of root can make new plants, but the bits are small and weak compared with those powerful lumps.
After digging out the rhizomes, cover the area with heavy-duty landscape fabric and a thick layer of mulch. Shoots will still come through (knotweed can penetrate asphalt), and some will arise outside the mulched zone. But there will be fewer of them. Cut them off as soon as possible.
Keep cutting -- over and over, spring through fall. Eventually, roots deprived of above-ground growth will be starved into extinction.
Dividing Strawberries
Q. Two years ago this spring, I planted a strawberry jar with alpine strawberries. Most of them survived their first winter, but a few died, so I had to buy replacements. If it happens again this year, can I just divide the plants I have?
A. As long as the plants are large and healthy, they can be divided. And they will probably be all the better for the experience. Wait until they show signs of growth in early spring, then dig them up. Do not worry if loose dirt falls from the roots, but do not try to clean them off.
Look closely at the crown of a plant, right where it emerges from the soil. You will see that it is a bundle of growing points. Lay it on its side and use a sharp knife to cut it into two or three pieces, each with a couple of growing points and a good supply of roots.
Replant the pieces at the same depth, and water them well, using tepid water mixed with seaweed extract or other transplant fertilizer (following the instructions on the label). Keep the jar in the shade for a few days, so the pieces have a chance to recover.
That should take care of things for this season, but three years is the limit on potting soil. Plan to fill the jars with a new batch in spring 2005.
By then you may want some new plants, too. Sources for alpine strawberries (Fragaria vesca) include the Raintree Nursery, (360) 496-6400 or www.raintreenursery.com, and Bluestone Perennials, (800) 852-5243 or www.bluestoneperennials.com.
Garden Q & A",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"WINE TALK
LEAD: TO finance some of the wines we'll look at today, bring what is in your wallet; to finance the others, bring a Rockefeller. Our tour d'horizon takes us through what I think are the first wines made by Greeks that do not taste of retsina (resin), through chardonnays under $10 and then to the wines of La Romanee, a crown jewel among Burgundy's vineyards.
TO finance some of the wines we'll look at today, bring what is in your wallet; to finance the others, bring a Rockefeller. Our tour d'horizon takes us through what I think are the first wines made by Greeks that do not taste of retsina (resin), through chardonnays under $10 and then to the wines of La Romanee, a crown jewel among Burgundy's vineyards.
First, meet the Lolonis Winery. It is Greek - more precisely, Greek American - and its 275 acres lie in the Redwood Valley of Mendocino County in northern California. This 10,000-case boutique makes whites that will appeal to wine mavens who, like Odysseus, are eternally questing for novelty.
Until recently, when Maureen Lolonis, an owner, dropped by to chat, I had never heard of the winery, but as she spoke the name rang a bell. Fetzer Vineyards, a Mendocino neighbor, valued grapes it bought from Lolonis so highly that from 1962 to 1983 one of its zinfandels carried 'Lolonis Vineyards' on the label.
What makes Lolonis's grapes so desirable? Mrs. Lolonis gave several reasons. The microclimate and soil conditions of the vineyards are exceptional. Very old vines make fine wines, and Lolonis's oldest vines (zinfandel) date to the 20's. The French chardonnay and sauvignon blanc vines that the University of California at Davis planted experimentally in the late 40's are the proper clones for the soil. And the yields are kept low to heighten flavor.
The winery's co-owners include the Lolonis brothers, Nickios, Ulysses and Mrs. Lolonis's husband, Petros. For years, the family has sold grapes to other wineries. The customers, Mrs. Lolonis said, have included Simi, Kendall-Jackson, David Bruce and Parducci, all premium-wine producers.
One day the Homeric dawn came. The brothers asked themselves, 'Why don't we make our own wines?' Good thinking, fellows. (They left out the resin, or pine sap, that in Greece caters to a traditional national taste.) The winery's first vintage, chardonnay, was in 1982; this fall, it will make its first zinfandel and cabernet sauvignon. Three Lolonis wines are available from Attiki, a Hempstead, L.I., distributor. The '85 fume blanc ($7.67) is delicate, round and slightly oaky. The '84 chardonnay ($15) is fruity, agreeably austere but a degree or so too woody. The unusual, big-flavored, nectarlike '83 late-harvest sauvignon blanc, a dessert wine, ($9.58 a half bottle) captures the essential grassiness of the grape and goes down the throat dry.  Judging for Oneself
In a search for the best chardonnays under $10 in New York area, the International Wine Center plowed through 184 domestic and imported bottles solicited from importers, distributors and wineries.
The center, a Manhattan wine school, said six people - staff members and wine writers - tasted the wines blind. Some of the 20 winners indeed were head-of-the-class values, but others were disappointing.
My own recent tasting suggested that only a surprising 15 of the 20 bottles, 75 percent, seemed acceptable. Why? After all, so many chardonnays jostle for scarce space that wine-store shelves resemble a Wall Street alley at rush hour. Here's why: Unanimity in scoring is rare, especially because chardonnay styles vary and judges' preferences vary even more.
Nonetheless, the competition provided a dual service for consumers. First, it offered a compass of sorts for buying. Second, the drop-off in quality of five bottles warns against treating platinum, gold, silver and bronze medals cascading out of summer fairs as the word from Olympus. Besides, the qualifications of judges at those fairs might at best be unknown and at worst dubious.
Vintners understandably trumpet medals and ribbons. Quality and advertising aside, how else can their wares draw attention? But wine judging - indeed, all wine experience -is highly subjective.
Ultimately, your own palate - not an 'expert' panel's roman-candle burst of adjectives, not a critic's market-heating scores of 89 and 96 points - is the sole trustworthy judge of a wine's interest and worth.
How do you learn what's good? Wine books furnish a tasting vocabulary, define standards and identify famous vineyards, vintners and vintages, but that's all. Wine classes offer the palate useful introductory and 'graduate' training. In the end, there is no substitute for pulling corks for a long time. It's as simple, and potentially expensive, as all that.
Trend-hunters might unearth a lode of implications in the International Wine Center's statistics.
The 98 California entries represented 53 percent of the total field, yet only 12 finished in the money. Of Australia's 13 contestants, there were a disproportionate 6 winners. Paris might break diplomatic relations with Washington: Only 1 among the 40 French entries crossed the finish line.
Here are my favorites, in order of preference and priced at the standard 50 percent markup (some might be sold at discount):
'85 Ventana Vineyards, gold stripe selection, Monterey County, Calif. ($9.99); '84 Estrella River Winery, Paso Robles, Calif. ($9.99); '86 Lindemans, Padthaway, Australia ($9.99); '86 George Duboeuf St.-Veran 'Coupe Dailly,' Burgundy ($8.50); '85 Fetzer barrel select, California ($9.43), and Rouge Homme, Coonawarra, Australia $9.99).
Also, '85 Callaway 'Calla-Lees,' Temecula, Calif. ($9.25); '86 Lindemans, Bin 65, Victorian, Australia ($5.99); '85 Chateau Reynella, McLaren Vale, Australia ($6.49); Domaine du Soleil, McDowell Valley Vineyards, north coast, California ($6.75); '86 Krondorf, Barossa Valley, Australia ($8.75); '86 Raymond, California ($8.50); '85 Kendall-Jackson vintners' reserve, California ($10); '85 Corbett Canyon, select, central coast, California ($9.75), and '84 Guenoc, north coast, California ($9.49).  In the Stellar Ranks
The other day, I expected to find an armored van outside the International Wine Center while Awacs aircraft circled overhead and French Foreign Legionnaires frisked me, searching for clandestine corkscrews.
Upstairs, the objects of this imagined security awaited a public tasting: the '79 La Romanee ($110 a bottle), the '82 ($170), the '83 ($190), the '78 (no price was given - perhaps mankind cannot invent one - and besides, the wine is gone from the market) and the '76 ($200).
The world is not exactly overflowing with La Romanee. In its biggest year in this decade, this Burgundy vineyard yielded 550 cases. Only 2.1 acres in size, La Romanee, in the commune of Vosne-Romanee, is France's smallest vineyard with an appellation controlee (controlled place name).
The vineyard is owned by the Abbe Juste Liger-Belair, who, the literature of Burgundy reports with apparent glee, on occasion has celebrated mass with La Romanee as the sacramental wine (sparingly).
The centuries-old La Romanee - a grand cru, or great growth - lies a few feet uphill from the 4.5-acre Romanee-Conti, a far more famous vineyard whose reds are among the most expensive anywhere. La Romanee wines are made and exported by Bouchard Pere et Fils, a negociant (shipper).
The word 'elegant' was invented to describe the wines. Although different vintages, like prisms, shift the focus of La Romanee's highlights, a remarkable concentration of flavor abides. The bouquet tends to be smoky, the flavor has cherrylike grace notes, the texture is velvety and the aftertaste lingers. Most vintages take at least a decade to mature.
If you find a bottle, carry it home as you would a van Gogh from an auction.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Children's Art 101
WHILE artists frequently recapture their childhoods on canvas, children have had a tougher time making sense of adult artistic expression. Now, they (and parents who slept through Art Appreciation 101) will have some help from a variety of new books. ""A Weekend With Winslow Homer"" (Rizzoli, $19.95) by Ann Keay Beneduce is part of a series exploring the painter's point of view. ""What Makes a Bruegel a Bruegel?"" (Metropolitan Museum of Art and Viking, $8.95 at the museum; $9.95 elsewhere) by Richard Muhlberger explores the artist's best works. There are also books on artists like van Gogh and Monet. And Leslie Sills, an artist and teacher, has filled a gender void with ""Visions: Stories About Women Artists"" (Albert Whitman & Company, $18.95). Mary Cassatt and Betye Saar are featured.
""First Impressions: Michelangelo"" (Abrams, $19.95) by Richard McLanathan is from a series of biographies on artists.
CURRENTS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"A Light for a Dark or Stormy Night
Whether you went through the blackout in the Northeast, live where winter storms frequently knock out the power, or just need to find your way to the baby's room, the Guardian lantern may be helpful. It recharges while hanging from a glowing blue plug that acts as a night light. When the Guardian is removed it turns on automatically and stays on for five hours on a full charge. It also turns on if the power fails. The Guardian is six inches high and gives as much light as a candle; $39 from Vessel, (877) 805-1801 or www.vesselinc.com for store locations.
MARIANNE ROHRLICH
CURRENTS: ILLUMINATION",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Close To Home;In Dance of Friendship, Waltzes Get Harder to Come By
MY 5-year-old daughter, Rebecca, found a new friend last spring, in the last  few weeks of preschool. Evidence of her feelings first emerged as she sat absorbed at her small table, turning out letters to her classmates on construction paper. She painstakingly copied from her class list the names that  she had come to cherish: Maggie, Jeremy, Allegra, Max, Camille -- children she has known for half of her sweet, short life. Though the lettering was crude and sometimes backward, the feelings were forthright and true: ""DEAR MAGGIE, I LOVE YOU. REBECCA R.""
Among the letters was a growing pile for one boy.
Why so many for Max?"" I asked.
""Because his name is short,"" was her sensible reply.
The next morning at school, she headed directly to the table where Max was drawing dinosaurs. The smile they shared was so genuine and full of affection that I felt my own heart swell.
I remember what it was like to rush headlong into friendship as a child. I wish it were that simple to make a friend as an adult.
I first moved to New York with my boxes of books and spindly houseplants because I had friends here, and they had friends. We dropped in on one another,  toasted new jobs, went to movies, shared summerhouses. It was pre-""Seinfeld,"" but Seinfeldian nonetheless. But one by one, then two by two, most of them left  the city, seeking space, safety, trees. They remain friends, but the dailiness, the closeness that comes when lives intertwine, slips away.
Finding new friends is not so easy. As Christina Ricci says to Bill Pullman,  who played her father in the movie ""Casper,"" a ""guy your age is more likely to become a bank hostage than to make new friends.""
In a romance between mates, the markers are clear: a date, a kiss, family introductions, living together, joint Christmas cards, marriage. If the sequence fails to progress, you move on. But the signposts that a friendship is developing are less clear. Work, spouses, money and pasts all tangle the connection. We become Charlie Browns, wary of rejection but still harboring the  flicker of hope that makes us run at that football. If the person holding it doesn't yank it away, if the foot connects, maybe the ball will soar and a friendship will grow.
My friend Sarah, whom I've known for half my life, has a job now that brings  her to New York every few weeks. I keep a set of sheets for her, and unfold the  living room couch when she comes. We get takeout, don nightgowns early, catch up on life and play goofy games with Rebecca and her 3-year-old sister, Julia. We call and miss Sarah's own two girls, home in Annapolis. Stu, the lone male in our apartment, is easy with Sarah, who came with the marriage. Still, the girl vibes soon prove too much, and he retreats to the bedroom.
Sarah and I met in college. I was a shy, awkward East Coast girl who read a lot and played field hockey. She blew into our dorm, late for freshman orientation, no parents in tow, from exotic St. Louis. She sang, drank bourbon and spoke French. I adored her immediately.
Our lives have crisscrossed over 20 years and thousands of miles. When I moved to a strange city, she hitched a ride across several states to make sure I wouldn't spend my 19th birthday alone. After she moved across the country, I flew out to greet her first child.
""I have a new friend,"" Sarah confided a few months ago. She told me about Blair, a woman she met at church and who, like Sarah, thrives on rambling conversation and potluck suppers. Wistfulness is not a word that describes Sarah, but there was a trace of it in her voice. ""I hope it works out,"" Sarah said. I hope for her that it does, too, but with a wistfulness of my own -- that Sarah's family and mine live too far apart to have those suppers together.
Being a parent adds more steps to the dance of friendship.
""Hello, this is Jan, Rebecca's mom?"" I identify myself tentatively over the phone to a mother who could become a friend. Like me, she works, and like me she's older than many of the other mothers. It takes months before we drop the suffix, longer still before we're comfortable enough to call without a child-related reason. We go to a play together. She and her husband invite Stu and me for dinner, without the kids. The relief and delight of liking, and being liked back, is euphoric. We have more in common than just our children.
Will we worry together about our parents as they get older? Will we survive our daughters' adolescence together? Can I count on her, as I do on Sarah and a  few cherished others?
Rebecca likes to make signs. One on the door of the tiny room she shares with her sister reads OPEN . When she and her classmates graduated from preschool last spring, they looked puzzled to see tears in their parents' eyes. I ache to  think that the dailiness of their lives together has already begun to fade. But  they have practiced opening their hearts, and reminded me how it's done.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Stepping Into the Ring and Stepping Into Character
NOW and then, you make a decision that changes your life. You marry, get divorced, change jobs, take up boxing.
Boxing?
It seemed an absurd decision for a myopic, middle-aged man with no physical  grace. It was also one of the best.
Let's be honest. I did not do it to get in shape. I already was in decent shape, what with jogging and occasional weight lifting. I don't smoke, my cholesterol count is good, and my worst habit is drinking beverages that bring
on silly laughter.
What drew me to boxing, which at its worst can be so shabby and brutal? Someone once said that boxing is ""the sport to which all other sports aspire."" If all games are mock forms of combat, one could argue that boxing is the closest to the real thing. And is there another that demands such a blend of speed, strength, grace, endurance and courage?
Or perhaps there is a larger truth here, one which I will face later.
Two years ago, when I began to confide to friends that I was thinking of trying the sport, I was met with incredulous looks. ""Aren't you afraid of getting hurt?"" someone asked.
""No,"" I said. ""I expect to get hurt.""
I decided to try the Kingsway Boxing and Fitness Center at 40th Street and Eighth Avenue. It was close to my office (the gym has since moved to 28th Street and Fifth Avenue), and my research told me the people there would be no-nonsense. It is run by Michael Olajide Sr., a former fighter, whose son Michael Jr. lost a super-middleweight title fight to Thomas Hearns in 1990.
One day I walked in and saw a slender, unassuming young man who worked there. I told him what I wanted and he didn't laugh. I changed into workout togs and presented myself to him. He took me over to the wall-length mirror and drew two  chalk lines on the floor.
""Put your left foot here and your right foot there,"" he said.
That was the beginning. For the next hour, I practiced moving forward and backward in what seemed an unnatural, crab-like motion, trying to keep my weight evenly balanced and flicking out my left arm in what was supposed to be a jab.
I could keep my weight balanced, off and on. I could shoot my jab out straight (though I couldn't imagine hurting anyone with it) and bring my fist back smartly, so as not to leave my face unprotected. I could keep my hands high and my elbows fairly close together, so as to protect my midsection if I ever got in the ring.
But to do all those things together consistently was maddening, and to do them all in some kind of fluid motion, and quickly, while trying to hit an opponent and keep him from hitting me seemed inconceivable.
All around me there were real boxers. One of them was Tokunbo Olajide, the young man who had greeted me. He was another son of Michael Sr. Watching him work out, I realized he was slender only because his muscles were all cables and cords. He moved like a dancer, hit like a sledgehammer. He is one of the better  amateur boxers in the region.
Some of the men had necks like fire hydrants and backs like anvils, yet they  moved with a speed and grace that defied belief. Their fists struck the heavy bags with the sound of thunder. A few of them nodded, and a couple introduced themselves to me. They were friendly, which helped me get over my nervousness.
I went to the gym four or five times a week. The trainers had me hitting the  heavy bag while circling to my left, then throwing punches at pads they held in  front of them. I tried to hit the double-end bag, which bobs on a springlike cord stretched from floor to ceiling and which baffled me again and again, and the speed bag, which the real boxers could turn to a blur but which frustrated me no end. I skipped rope and did pushups, trying to get stronger.
Life in a boxing gym is timed by bells. For three minutes, the air is full of the sounds of fists slamming into leather, of jump ropes whirring in the air. A  bell sounds and there is a minute of near-silence, broken mainly by heavy breathing. The bell rings again, and the noise starts anew.
One day, while I was working on the heavy bag, a trainer said to me, ""You've  got a lot of stamina."" Progress.
Weeks, months went by. I bought a good pair of high-topped shoes and my own gloves. I saw that I was not the only one in the gym whose youth was behind him. I slimmed down, and my muscles tightened. I did more and more push-ups, reaching 30 or more at a time, doing 60, 70, 80 a day. People who had not seen me for a while said I looked much more fit.
I felt better about myself. Maybe that was part of the larger truth behind all this -- that I hoped by venturing into this world of canvas and leather to feel more manly. I knew I had paid my dues in sweat.
But not yet in blood. What I was doing so far was make-believe. I had yet to  get in the ring with someone. I confided to my bartender, who had been a serious boxer in his youth, that I hoped to spar sometime soon. ""I'm not too worried,"" I said. ""After all, I got my bell rung in high school football practice a couple of times.""
He looked at me skeptically and said: ""Ah, there's a difference. You get your bell rung in football and you go sit on the bench. You get your bell rung in boxing and you might get it rung again on the way down.""
He left me alone with my thoughts, the main one being: What in heaven's name  am I doing?
One day in the gym, a trainer told me to fetch my headgear and mouthpiece. Then he asked, ""Can you see without those glasses?"" ""I don't have to see very far,"" I replied.
Indeed not. That first day of sparring, all I saw were my opponents' fists coming at my face, landing more often than not. Most of my punches were swatted  away as if they were motes of dust. All that I thought I had learned about footwork, breathing evenly, keeping my chin down, seemed for naught. Each round  was an exhausting eternity.
Afterward, my face looked as if I had taken a bad fall. ""I didn't belong in the ring,"" I told a trainer.
He smiled. ""You've got a good strong jab,"" he said. ""You just have to throw it more often.""
Words have never meant more.
My confidence grew. My breathing improved. I could throw my jab with a lot more snap. Most important, my defense was better. And a good thing, I thought one day as I went against a man much younger and stronger. He landed some jabs on my headgear, but I caught him a few times, too. This is getting easier, I thought. All I have to do is circle to my left and keep my right hand. . . .
I can see it now in slow motion. His left arm comes straight out, locking at  full extension the instant his fist lands on my chin. Something goes ""click"" in  my head and my knees feel like jelly. I stay on my feet, barely, and finish the  round. Everything in boxing is hard, it seems.
The ring is no place for illusions, and I know there are men in my gym who could dispatch me in 10 seconds. (I steer clear of soft-spoken young men with crew cuts and tattoos; they're always tough.) I know that the supervised sparring I do is nothing like the deadly ballet that is high-stakes boxing. But  the blood that occasionally flows from my nose is as red as anyone else's.
I keep at it, knowing that the skill that would have helped me on the playground of my childhood is of no use now, except for conditioning.
Baloney. Here, finally, is the larger truth. To borrow from Joe Louis, I have been running from it, but I can no longer hide. I like feeling tougher -- all right, not as tough as Mike Tyson, but maybe tougher than some other office workers on the far side of 50. When I put on the gloves, swallow my fear, step into the ring and get hit, then come back for more, I feel alive. Anyone who wants to can laugh at that.
But let him try laughing through a mouthpiece.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"The Good Old Days
To The Living Section:
Male ineptitude with the carving knife is not necessarily a new phenomenon. In Willa Cather's novel ""A Lost Lady,"" which she wrote in 1923 and set in 19th-century Colorado, the heroine, Marian Forrester, complains: ""Nobody can carve now as men used to. But you can get them (ducks) apart, I suppose?"" ROBERT MCCORMICK  Staten Island, N.Y.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Adolfo Embraces 'Reality' for Fall
LEAD: LIKE most other designers, Adolfo has simmered down for fall. 'After the fun comes the reality,' he said Monday at the St. Regis Hotel. The reality, according to Adolfo, means chemises, dinner suits and trousers, with an emphasis on black.
LIKE most other designers, Adolfo has simmered down for fall. 'After the fun comes the reality,' he said Monday at the St. Regis Hotel. The reality, according to Adolfo, means chemises, dinner suits and trousers, with an emphasis on black.
These are some of the major fashion points of his fall collection, in which hemlines graze the knee and even chemises graze the body.
What he did not mention in an interview after his noon show was hats. For a decade, Adolfo, who started his career as a milliner, has hardly shown a hat with his clothes, but this time there were plenty. Mainly they were flower-pot shapes, but there were also nautical berets and rounded fur toques. Hats swathed in tulle accompanied evening clothes.
'Just for the show,' the designer said when asked about the hats, which were made by Eric Javits. 'I don't think the customers are ready for them yet.'
Some undoubtedly will be. The flower-pot hats looked especially pertinent in checks and plaids to match his suit jackets for day, and the tulle-draped styles contributed to the drama of black sequins and lace for evening. With these hats, Charles Nicholas created shoulder-length 1940's hairdos to complement the clothes.
Short jackets are Adolfo's favorite styles, in checks and plaids for day and in black silks for evening. The jackets function well with his shorter skirts, the designer believes.
The audience of longtime fans broke into applause for the ruffled silk print dresses draped to one side. With three rows of asymmetric ruffles and background colors of wine, black or green, these side-wrapped styles showed a lot of leg. Amusingly flirtatious, they did not make reality look too grim. Adolfo said they were ordered by many customers who stopped by his salon while the collection was being assembled.
The designer approved. 'I like print dresses for winter,' he said. 'There is nothing prettier under a fur coat. But the prints have to be dark.'
Adolfo's faithful seemed to agree that prints are in. Marife Hernandez wore Adolfo's red silk with white dots, Edna Morris an anemone pattern, Roberta Peters a dark blue floral, C. Z. Guest a muted plaid pattern and Jean Tailer one of the lozenge prints popular in red or green with white. Cecile Zilkha's puffed-sleeve red print dress was by Yves Saint Laurent. Stella Reichman and Livia Sylva were in black and white prints. Pat Mosbacher and Mildred Hilson chose solid-color knitted suits, but they were the exceptions.
Adolfo's prettiest evening suits had black lace boleros over warp print satin dresses in floral patterns. Organza blouses in pale shades were paired with black satin skirts with double flounces. Trousers appeared for both day and night. With knee-baring skirts the norm, Adolfo said women will find it convenient to wear trousers occasionally.
'They may not want to show so much leg all the time, so they can get trousers as well as a skirt to go with the same jacket,' he explained.
Black crepe or sequin-paved pants are worn with small jackets with lace sleeves and fringed epaulets. Some jackets are decorated with long-stemmed rose designs embroidered in bugle beads.
'I tried to make functional, easy-to-pack clothes that you can take with you to Paris, for instance, and wear immediately, without pressing,' the designer said.
As a replacement for last year's bubbles and poufs, the trim dinner suits were welcome, women in the audience agreed. 'I'm too big for the poufs, but the beaded jackets make sense,' said Mrs. Reichman. 'I'm going to get one.'",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"The Return of Swinging London
Austin Powers may have put the 'grrr' back in London's swinger scene, but it was the local design group called the Collaborators who came up with the Love Pod (above), a hanging conversation pit. The giant seat, which is about 8 feet in diameter, is lined with goose-down cushions covered in Gore-Tex. The designers said they 'wanted to create a space that is intimate without being intimidating.' The Love Pod is $1,700 plus shipping. Other models and information are at www.pod-life.com.
CURRENTS: LONDON SHOWS -- SEATING",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"The Practical Side Of Style
'TWO, three, four, five,' said Nolen Niu, counting the thousands on what will be the probable retail price for Zero, the lipstick-red lounge chair he showed at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York last weekend.
'My target market is the younger, upcoming, new generation -- the loft generation,' said Mr. Niu, a 31-year-old Los Angeles designer (nolen@nolenniu.com) who got his start with shoes and sunglasses, and is also working on a house for Joseph Hahn, the D.J. for the rap-rock band Linkin Park. 'They have a little bit more disposable income. They want to get something that individualizes their space.'
Mr. Niu, who was part of an exhibition of emerging talent sponsored by the fair and by the Bernhardt furniture company, typified a new attitude on display throughout the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York, where the fair was held from May 20 to 23. Like many other young designers there, he had clearly thought at least as hard about the financial side of his work as he had about the engineering or design. He has produced several chairs working with Los Angeles fabricators, but explained that the design was 'factory ready' if a manufacturer showed an interest. (None did at the Javits center, though several people expressed a desire to buy the chairs, Mr. Niu said.)
Certainly the fair did not offer the brave future of furnishings once promised by events like this. There was a surfeit of perfectly acceptable, reasonably affordable, stylish if not stimulating goods on the floor -- wares that seemed to please both the exhibitors (nearly 600 from 31 countries) and the more than 23,000 visitors.
Aside from a few idiosyncratic pieces -- sofas that seat up to 20 people, inflatable rec rooms, foam carpets that change color when exposed to heat -- what was notable was a new pragmatism among young designers more interested in finding a way to prosper in an increasingly competitive design market than in making a statement. Talk of reinventing life at home, a subject designers used to yammer your ears off about, has been replaced by conversations about how to find buyers for a $5,000 chair, or a manufacturer for a $50 lamp.
A piece that held pride of place at the fair, the 50-year-old rosewood lounge chair by Charles and Ray Eames (several versions of which marked the anniversary in a display at the Herman Miller booth) pointed up, in its iconic status, how significant this change in the contemporary furniture market has been. In 1956, when the Eameses designed their chair, it stood out easily from the mass of traditional pieces from which it was making a clean, clear break. Even more recent pieces, like Marc Newson's 1986 Lockheed Lounge, a prototype of which will be auctioned next month for a price that Sotheby's in New York estimates at more than $800,000, have managed to become cultural touchstones.
But if a latter-day equivalent were introduced today, it might go unnoticed in the teeming contemporary furniture market that comprises West Elm, Ikea, Todd Oldham for La-Z-Boy, Thomas O'Brien for Target, and companies like Kartell, which show in Milan as well as in New York. Then there are new faces like Mr. Niu, trying to turn design-school diplomas into careers.
Indeed, Mr. Niu and his colleagues are competing with the Eameses themselves, who are alive and well in the form of popular production pieces, along with scores of other midcentury designers, whose work is continually reissued for an enthusiastic new audience that doesn't distinguish between modern and contemporary.
Then, too, there is the difficulty of getting a design produced. Emeco, a company with a best-selling aluminum chair designed for the United States Navy in 1944, has worked with Philippe Starck, Frank Gehry and other design celebrities to produce new models of its chair. But it doesn't work with talented unknowns.
'The development cost of a new product can be $500,000 to $1 million,' said Daniel Fogelson, Emeco's vice president for sales and marketing, standing before a fleet of aluminum chairs at the fair. 'You can't risk it on kids.'
For those who have struck out on their own, like the Minneapolis design firm Blu Dot (bludot.com), the risks are acute. Blu Dot first appeared at the New York furniture fair in 1997, and has managed to succeed and return each year since largely on the basis of practicalities like efficient shipping and attractive pricing. Though it doesn't manufacture its own products, it designs them to anticipate ways in which manufacturing costs can be kept down, and the products themselves are easy to pack and ship.
'We're the only ones left standing,' said John Christakos, one of Blu Dot's three founders, of the designers who received major media attention in 1997, making a nervous joke.
But Mr. Fogelson of Emeco, whose 25-year experience in retailing design spans the history of the furniture fair, which started in 1989, said that he thought a new emphasis on professionalism was strengthening the hand of today's new designers.
'Young companies like Blu Dot look like real companies,' he said. 'And the kids showing here are aiming at that.' Mr. Fogelson added that, unlike the fresh-out-of-school hopefuls whose unproduceable art-student or craftlike output was once typical at the fair, 'They're aiming at a completely different level than they were 10 years ago.'
And Adrienne McNicholas, a consultant who works with designers on the business aspects of product development and introduction, said she sees the tide shifting among younger designers, from 'wanting to be a rock star to knowing they'll have a reliable, viable business.'
This focus on viability may have drained some of the creative spirit out of their work, but it has also contributed to what may be the most promising aspect of contemporary design right now, its widespread concern with accessibility, and with finding innovative ways to achieve it.
North South Project (northsouthproject.com), a Canadian exhibitor, produced elegant, affordable furniture by pairing manufacturers in developing countries, like Peter Mabeo, 35, and Otsile Mabeo, 30, in Botswana, with its designer, Patty Johnson, 46, in Toronto. The Mabeos, who are married, own their company. Ms. Johnson worked side by side with them, developing her designs more as a collaboration with the manufacturers than as a job to be outsourced to them. The Mabeos, in turn, were able to help the designer incorporate a higher level of craft and finish into the design.
New designers like Kouichi Okamoto, 27, who showed an accordion of paper that unfolds, like a party ornament, into a lamp base (kyouei-ltd.co.jp), or Michelle Butler, 32, of Isolyn, who creates magnetized felt flowers and panels as a kind of wallpaper you can play with, are doing what designers do best: using ordinary materials to create interesting products without extraordinary costs involved (isolyn.com).
Ideas are cheap. Matthew Kroeker, 29, designed Splinter, a funny and likable pair of teak chairs that share a jagged edge that can be interlocked to produce a bench, or pulled back apart. Mr. Kroeker called it 'a metaphor for a bad-marriage day.' Divorce as design; settee as quick settlement. Because of the cost of North American teak (Mr. Kroeker is based in Winnipeg, matthewkroeker.com), the chair, if produced, would likely cost more than $1,000. The prototype cost $1,800. But because the concept is strong, the designer is considering using other materials, including recycled plastics. As of yesterday, no one had made Mr. Kroeker any offers to pick up the design.
Shawn Sinyork, 34, and Eskil Tomozy, 37, of Emesu ('use me' backward; useme@emesu.com) in San Francisco, had a belt-leather beanbag lounge chair and ottoman with them -- a Birkenstock for the body and, with its suede good looks, an upscale update of a downscale favorite. Though they hope a retail price would be no more than $1,800, the prototype cost $3,000 to make. At the fair, Emesu said, it was approached by several manufacturers interested in producing the lounge.
Terhi Tuominen, a Finnish designer, brought Blackbird, a metal-mesh chair she showed in Milan, which has the simple unexpected silhouette of strong fashion. Blackbird is also structurally uncomplicated and would be easy to manufacture (terhi.tuominen@uiah.fi). Three Cornell University architecture students, Brian Carli, 30; Justine Cheng, 21; and Peter Klassen-Landis, 24, exhibited a little of the old-fashioned youthful fair spirit with their prototype of a plywood chaise that rises from the floor, where it is framed by the sheet of plywood from which it was cut, like a design being born before one's eyes. Asked where it would fit in the marketplace, Mr. Carli described it as a 'fairly high-end chair,' with a price of more than $2,000.
But first, of course, it has to be made sturdy enough to sit in.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Children's Clothes, Children's Psyches
IN the sea of parents and nannies waiting outside Public School 87 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan the other afternoon, Marilise Flusser was hard to overlook. She was the mother in the Mickey Mouse colors -- canary yellow clogs and matching sweatsuit under a tomato red raincoat lined in more canary yellow. The one-green-sock, one-red-sock mother. ""Kids love color,"" she said as girls and boys in bright parkas and backpacks began spilling out of the school door and onto the sidewalk.
Suddenly this stretch of West 78th Street between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues became a fashion runway with Ms. Flusser, a former children's fashion coordinator at Saks Fifth Avenue, doing curbside commentary.
A pair of 7-year-old girls danced by in hot hairdos. (""The '90s ponytail, looped or braided, with scrunchies at either end."") They were followed by Sam Kendig, 9, in significant spectacles. (""Great glasses: trendy round rims and turquoise frames."")
Tanya Tripi-Weiss, 11, peered out from under a red felt gaucho hat. (""A definite fifth-grade look."") Then came Mrs. Flusser's younger daughter, Piper, 8, in hot-pink leggings and an oversized parka that she had borrowed from her father, Alan Flusser, a men's wear designer. (""She loves her Dad's parka because it's roomy and warm and lined with flannel."")
A few children at P.S. 87 appear as models in Ms. Flusser's new book, ""Party Shoes to School and Baseball Caps to Bed"" (Simon and Schuster, $12). A 255-page guide to clothing for children from infancy through the second grade, the book is the first to grapple with what its author calls ""one of the great underground issues of parenting.""
Let Dr. Spock and company dispense advice on the picky eater, the problem sleeper, the sandbox bully. Ms. Flusser takes on the difficult dresser. Or underdresser, in the case of free spirits between 2 and 3 who romp naked in the living room when company comes.
Ms. Flusser had help from experts. The book, which brims with tips, observations and anecdotes, draws on interviews with more than 300 teachers, pediatricians, child psychologists, clothing manufacturers and, best of all, those veterans of wardrobe wars, parents.
For example, the mother of a kindergartener named Jeremy who refused to wear his new jeans for the first two weeks of school. Only his summer shorts would do. Was something wrong with the jeans? Or with Jeremy?
No. As it happened, Jeremy was embarrassed because he couldn't close the snap on the jeans by himself in the bathroom. ""I taught him an old trick I'd learned growing up in Kentucky,"" the mother said. ""Get your jeans shut by pressing your body against the wall and holding your thumb against the inside snap.""
The Flussers live a block from the school in a grand old building, the Apthorp. Their sprawling apartment is filled with English antiques, flea market finds and Victorian Christmas decorations and, in the kitchen, a frieze of empty soap and cereal boxes. Usually there is an assortment of visiting children.
Returning home from the school, Ms. Flusser found two other models from the book -- her nephews Willie Matthau, 6, and Read Flusser, 5 -- flying through the air on swings suspended from the tops of door frames.
Willie appears in a group photograph of small boys with hilarious hat fetishes. His mother, Suzanne Matthau, who is Ms. Flusser's twin, said Willie has at least 14 hats: ""a policeman, fireman, Mickey Mouse ears, even a Santa Claus hat with his name on it in sequins.""
Boys sometimes use hats to experiment with identity in the early years, Ms. Flusser said, adding that Willie, at 3 1/2, often wore two hats at a time. ""Parents should not be surprised if little boys love hats so much they want to sleep in them,"" she said, glancing at Willie, who has given up hats for comic-book-character T-shirts. ""So, it passes.""
At this point Ms. Flusser's older daughter, Skye, 11, arrived from school in a floral print dress by Betsey Johnson and ankle cowboy boots. (""Major footwear in junior high."")
It was Skye who taught Ms. Flusser that young children care nothing for fashion. Comfort, color, ease of dressing -- these are the factors that count when children choose clothes, along with individual temperament, self-expression and a desire for autonomy.
Children have a way of expressing this, Ms. Flusser said. It is called the temper tantrum. Skye had one on her third birthday. Instead of a fancy new party dress (""which probably was scratchy,"" her mother conceded) Skye wore the same T-shirt dress she had been living in for four months.
Ms. Flusser, who grew up in the Carlyle Hotel wearing white gloves, was scandalized. ""But after that my own attitudes about dressing my kids became more thoughtful,"" she said, looking over her tea cup. ""As good parents we'd all like to think that our little girl would tell us when the boys in the schoolyard tease her about her underpants. We'd like to think our little boy would tell us how sad he feels because the other kids are reading and he's still on picture books. But they can't always.""
Instead, she said, the little girl takes to wearing sweatpants under her dresses, even when visiting her grandparents in Florida. Her mother is mortified.
And the little boy, believing that sneakers are magic, nags his parents for a new style worn by boys who can read. His father thinks he's spoiled.
Life has changed, Ms. Flusser said, since the age of the ""trophy kid,"" the mid-1980's when mothers traded tips on where to buy the well-bred smocked dress or navy blazer. ""Today it's how to get the kids dressed and out of the house for day care,"" she said. ""There are more important things to fight about than clothes, like safety, manners and bedtime.""",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"The Search for Grandmother's Tree
LEAD: 'TINY white lights and red bows may be exquisite decorating,' said Geva Alder of Nashville, 'but they do not fill the soul.' What fills the soul? 'Screaming excess,' she replied. Christmas at the Alders is celebrated with hot-pink 1950's bubble lights with pink cords and sockets. Their tree, a rotating green cellophane beauty, is draped with pink icicles and crowned with a star of pink, aqua and lime green.
'TINY white lights and red bows may be exquisite decorating,' said Geva Alder of Nashville, 'but they do not fill the soul.' What fills the soul? 'Screaming excess,' she replied. Christmas at the Alders is celebrated with hot-pink 1950's bubble lights with pink cords and sockets. Their tree, a rotating green cellophane beauty, is draped with pink icicles and crowned with a star of pink, aqua and lime green. Among the cherished family Christmas ornaments are two whirly-spinners and a hot-pink Sputnik look-alike with projecting antennae.
'It was the fantastic fluorescent plastic period,' Mrs. Alder explained. Added her husband, Bill, with a touch of nostalgia: 'It reminds us of those garish times. There was a lot of relief and abandon, and those feelings extended to the Christmas tree.'
The Alders, whose house contains more than 1,000 Christmas books, hundreds of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer memorabilia, a homemade animated Nutcracker display and some 600 Christmas albums - including unforgettable greats like Jack Benny's Christmas Album and Brenda Lee's 'Rocking Around the Christmas Tree' - are members of the Golden Glow of Christmas Past, a 700-member self-described 'coalition of Christmas collectors and historians.'
'I suppose there are few hobbies that would make a lady happier,' Mr. Alder said, speaking of his wife. 'The reason I enjoy it is watching her light up.'
The Golden Glow newsletter features 'Noel Notes' written by 'our Elf staff.' At annual meetings, held in August, members of 'the Glow' - some of them 5- and 10-tree households at this time of year - drink eggnog and eat fruitcake. Amid displays of blinking lights, they exchange the latest intelligence on carbon filaments and where to find Moon Mullins, Thumbelina or Flapper Girl Christmas-tree ornaments.
Some members, like Gil Kaufman of Columbus, Ohio, have written books on their collections, like his 'History and Catalog of Electric Christmas Light Bulbs' (Christmas Antiques, 1980) now in its fourth printing.
Christmas is the season that turns even the shyest decorator into an artist, as trees become canvases and mantels are transformed into stage sets. For members of the Golden Glow, Christmas provides the excuse to unveil their most prized possessions.
In Arp, Tex., Bob Cook puts his collection of 300 antique Santas on display in his home until the end of January. A decorator and retired clothing designer, Mr. Cook used to fly home to Texas from New York as a young design student to decorate the family Christmas tree. 'Today,' Mr. Cook said, 'I have more Santas than I have space,' including two 30-inch-tall German Santas with nodding heads and a papier-mache Santa showing teeth, 'very unusual for a Santa.'
Jim Meadows of Dallas traces his passion to his childhood, when 'being a little kid during World War II, there were no new Christmas ornaments.' Mr. Meadows grew up with his grandmother's hand-me-down ornaments.
This year, he has decorated his tree thematically with 1930's lights and ornaments.
'Every one of us, especially people my age, is trying to re-create something from their childhood - a look, a feeling,' he said. 'This tree is everybody's fantasy of what their grandmother's tree would look like.'
Golden Glow was founded in 1980 by Jerry Ehernberger, 33 years old, who recently represented the club in Genoa, Italy, at the International Conference of Nativitists, a group devoted to the history of Nativity items.
Mr. Ehernberger's passion for Christmas decorations began as a kindergartner, when he brought a bubble light to class for show and tell. By the fourth grade he had accumulated enough light bulbs for a collection. In 1967 he wrote a story about his collection for The Electric Farmer, a publication for rural users of electric power.
The club began with six friends who shared Mr. Ehernberger's affection for Christmas lighting. Eventually, it expanded to include aficionados of Santas, ornaments, Christmas cards, postcards, beaded garlands, advertisements, light bulbs and bisque figurines of children covered with snow.
In his Chicago apartment, Mr. Ehernberger has devoted an entire room to a year-round Christmas Village display. Like many club members, his collection of 83 houses began innocently enough with the discovery of a village house from the 1920's at a Denver antiques store.
Today, his Yuletide Lilliput, with its quaint cardboard buildings with cellophane windows and mica specks, is Mr. Ehernberger's meditation room. 'I find it very tranquil,' he said. 'Even if it's 98 degrees, it tends to melt everyone back to their childhood when they see it.'
Most Christmas collectors are extremely serious about their collections and tend to be motivated by nostalgia, according to Phillip V. Snyder, a Golden Glow member and author of 'The Christmas Tree Book: The History of the Christmas Tree & Antique Christmas Tree Ornaments' (Penguin Books, 1983).
'Most people get into this crazy hobby either trying to create the tree of their youth or, in my case, their grandfather's tree,' he said.
To Mr. Snyder, Christmas trees with antique ornaments are a 'world in miniature where every object is interesting.' The ritual of unwrapping ornaments tucked away in tissue paper is 'like meeting an old friend you see only once a year,' he said.
According to Jolie Kelter of Kelter-Malce, a Manhattan antique shop that specializes in period Christmas ornaments, prices range from $3 for a simple glass ornament from the 1930's or 40's to $200 and up for Dresden ornaments, delicate embossed cardboard ornaments in fanciful shapes made in Germany between 1880 and 1910.
Period themes seem to be the most popular among club members. Jack and Marilyn Curtis of Minneapolis have decorated their tree and parlor entirely with Victorian ornaments, in keeping with the interior of their Queen Anne revival house.
In a nearby suburb, Dawayne and Marlene Novak, another Golden Glow couple, have transformed their house into a Christmas scene as sentimental as Jimmy Stewart's living room at the conclusion of the film 'It's a Wonderful Life.'
In addition to a 50's tree featuring 300 Paramount bubble lights - 'the Cadillac of bubble lights' Mr. Novak said - the couple have put together a 15-foot tree crowned with American flags. Mr. Novak has also created an exhibit of World War II Christmas paraphernalia, including a vintage store display with saluting Santas and a Santa advertisement for war bonds.
His favorite ornaments are a patriotic airship in blown glass painted red, white and blue, and a large die-cut angel holding an American flag. He gets a golden glow at the very thought of them. 'Wouldn't it be wonderful if ornaments could talk?' he said with a sigh.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"60-Minute Gourmet
ONE of the most popular beef dishes in restaurants is still steak au poivre, in which beef is coated liberally with cracked black pepper before it is cooked in a hot pan. The sauce is usually made with beef stock, shallots, red wine and maybe brandy. It is a compelling combination if the cook skillfully balances the hot peppers and the sweet elements.
Home cooks may not have time to go through all of that, especially on a busy weeknight, so the recipe below is offered as a quick and pleasing alternative. The beef is rubbed all over with cracked pepper, then placed in a marinade of red wine, olive oil, vinegar and seasonings. While the steak is marinating you can begin the side dish and make other preparations. At this time of year you may opt for broiling rather than grilling outside. Both methods yield delicious results.
Save the marinade, and use it to make a quick sauce. All you do is add a little chicken broth and tomato paste, and then reduce. A swirl of butter at the end adds smoothness and richness.
The perfect side dish is fluffy mashed potatoes, which are invariably best when done by hand with a potato masher or potato ricer. Carrots and onions have been added for extra color and flavor. You could substitute all kinds of mashed vegetables like turnips, celery, roasted sweet peppers, squash and fennel. Broiled Peppered Fillet of Beef
1 1/4 pounds center-cut fillet of beef, well trimmed  1/4 cup cracked black peppercorns  2 crushed garlic cloves  2 bay leaves  2 sprigs fresh rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried  1 cup dry red wine like Pinot Noir  1 tablespoon olive oil  1 tablespoon red wine vinegar  Salt to taste  1/2 cup chicken broth, fresh or canned  1 teaspoon tomato paste  2 tablespoons butter
1. Rub the fillet with the cracked black pepper. Place in a non-aluminum deep dish, and add the garlic cloves, bay leaves, rosemary, red wine, olive oil, vinegar and salt. Cover, and let stand for 30 minutes. Drain, pat dry, and reserve marinade.
2. Preheat the oven broiler to high, or prepare the charcoal.
3. If the fillet is to be cooked in an oven broiler place it on a rack about 3 inches from the heat source. Broil, turning and searing evenly all around, for about 12 to 15 minutes for rare. Cook longer for well done. Transfer to a warm platter and keep warm. If the fillet is to be cooked on a hot clean grill, place the fillet on the grill. Cook and sear all around evenly for about 12 to 15 minutes for rare.
4. Meanwhile transfer the marinade to a small saucepan and over high heat reduce by half. Add the chicken broth, tomato paste and any juices that may have accumulated around the fillet.
5. Reduce sauce by more than half, stir in butter and check seasoning.
6. Slice the meat into thin slices and serve with the sauce.
Yield: 4 servings  Approximate nutritional analysis per serving: 370 calories, 25 grams fat, 105 milligrams cholesterol, 225 milligrams sodium (before salting), 30 grams protein, 6 grams carbohydrate. Mashed Potatoes and Carrots
1 pound Russet or Yukon Gold potatoes  3/4 pound carrots, peeled and sliced, about 1/4 inch thick  1/2 cup sliced white onions  Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste  1 cup milk  2 tablespoons butter  1 pinch nutmeg, freshly grated  pinch ground cumin  2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley.
1. Peel potatoes, and rinse well. Cut lengthwise into large cubes.
2. Place the potatoes, sliced carrots and onions in a saucepan with water to cover and salt to taste. Bring to a boil and simmer for 12 to 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Drain.
3. Meanwhile heat the milk in a saucepan.
4. Place the potato mixture through a food mill or a potato ricer. Place into a saucepan, add the butter and mix well with a wooden spoon. Add the nutmeg, cumin and parsley. Add the milk, gradually stirring with a wooden spoon. Check for seasoning and keep warm.
Yield: 4 servings  Approximate nutritional analysis per serving: 210 calories, 8 grams fat, 25 milligrams cholesterol, 120 milligrams sodium (before salting), 5 grams protein, 30 grams carbohydrate.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"A Chair Imitating a Bubble, And a Sofa Imitating an Island
'Islands, virtual bubbles' is how Jean-Marie Massaud, right, described the furniture line for Cassina that he showed at Maison et Objet. 'The elements in the collection define space without closing it in,' he said. Mr. Massaud, 38, is an up-and-coming designer and architect in Paris. In addition to the new collection -- which includes the Auckland armchair (right, $4,185 in leather), modular sofas (the one below is $4,575) and two versions of a side table ($575 and $1,805) -- he is at work on a big TriBeCa residential project. Cassina, 155 East 56th Street, (212)245-2121 or www.cassinausa.com.
CURRENTS: PARIS DESIGN SHOW -- SEATING",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"In Praise Of Fragant Paulownia
LEAD: FOUR years ago, in the gift shop at Winterthur in Delaware, I bought a small potted seedling of Paulownia tomentosa, a tree native to China and named in honor of Anna Paulowna (1795-1865), a Dutch princess noted for her passion for botany. The tree was only one year old, and it had been pruned back to the ground to give it a root system capable of supporting the rapid growth that was sure to follow that summer.
FOUR years ago, in the gift shop at Winterthur in Delaware, I bought a small potted seedling of Paulownia tomentosa, a tree native to China and named in honor of Anna Paulowna (1795-1865), a Dutch princess noted for her passion for botany. The tree was only one year old, and it had been pruned back to the ground to give it a root system capable of supporting the rapid growth that was sure to follow that summer.
In September I grabbed an ax and headed for the tree, bent on its eradication. It had grown an alarming 12 feet in a single season, and its trunk was four inches in diameter; my wife, however, stayed my hand. She had seen the tree in bloom not only at Winterthur but also in nearby Longwood Gardens, where they grow in a long double allee. She dissuaded me from getting rid of our paulownia.
My doubts continued to grow, however. Someone told me that under the right conditions, paulownias are prodigious self-seeders, almost as successful in reproducing their kind as are catalpas and ailanthus, both rank and weedy trees. My own eyes told me that this tree was out of scale in our garden of modest size. The immense and very coarse leaves blacken at the slightest hint of frost in the autumn, falling immediately to the ground, where they can smother smaller plants still in bloom.
The tree has grown faster than my doubts about it. It now stands 35 feet tall, and its long branches, curiously tilted upward at their tips, cast a 20-foot circle of deep shade from the first unfolding of the leaves in late May until that blackening frost arrives.
I've learned to live with our paulownia and even to love it. Against the background of two white dogwoods nearby, its heavy clusters of pale purple flowers are a pleasant sight, if not exactly spectacular.
But my younger son, Michael, just gave me a lesson about the true merits of this tree. He lives with his wife in an apartment, and our garden provides them with cut flowers from March to October. He dropped by the house recently, but we have been in that lull between high spring and early summer when not much is blooming.
The paulownia, however, was at its peak. The lowest branches are out of reach now, but my son fetched a ladder and pruning sheers, and brought down half a dozen clusters of flowers. What was merely a pleasant sight at a distance turns out to be so lovely close up that I am ready to abandon all fear of overstatement or hyperbole. The blossoms of Paulownia tomentosa are more beautiful than those of any other tree I know.
Each cluster of blooms bears small and rounded buds at the top. Further down, they elongate into velvety, purple-blue tubes two inches long. Near the bottom of the cluster, the flowers look like elegant ballroom dresses of a century ago, pleated from the waist to half their length, then flaring out, as if ready to waltz. When fully open, their deep purple changes to pale lilac suffused with creamy yellow. The calyx enclosing bud or flower is also very beautiful, a light tan with the look and feel of suede.
Paulownia delights the nose as well as the eye. The fragrance is honeyed, with suggestions of lemon and apricot, and it is so pervasive that three spikes of flowers in a vase indoors sweeten the air a room or two away.
A final curious fact about paulownia is its attractiveness to an odd element of the criminal underworld, paulownia rustlers. Its wood is in huge demand in Japan, where it used is making ceremonial boxes for jewelry and other treasures. The tree as a result has become uncommon there and here a source of profit to thieves with chain saws and good connections to the international black market. Several trees were lost on Riverside Drive a few years back, and the population of paulownias at Winterthur, where I got my plant, has also been reduced by theft.
GARDENING",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"AT HOME WITH: Jeannine Oppewall; Thoroughbred Modern
FOR 10 years Jeannine Oppewall lived in a dark one-bedroom bungalow built here during World War II for aircraft workers at McDonnell Douglas. And, she said, for those 10 years, she never invited anyone over. Nor did she consider this behavior odd. Ms. Oppewall, who designed the sets for 'Seabiscuit,' was raised a Calvinist and accepted a certain level of austerity in life. 'Jeannine and I both came from a background where our churches looked like courtrooms,' said the director Paul Schrader, her former husband.
It was only three years ago, after she had received Academy Award nominations for the movies 'L.A. Confidential' and 'Pleasantville,' that she decided to tear the bungalow down and build a bigger place. But she had one requirement. 'I did not want my house to conflict with my furniture,' she said.
The furniture, bought when she was in her early 20's and worked for Charles and Ray Eames, is in vogue all over again, and her house was designed to complement it. A few weeks before the opening of 'Seabiscuit,' Ms. Oppewall, with her Dutch-girl haircut, was seated in an Eames chair at her Eames dining-room table, dressed in a black top, khaki pants and black thick-soled sandals.
One suspects that her closet would reveal a rainbow of colors from black to white and beige. She enunciates words so exactly you might think she was getting paid by the syllable.
'Nothing here was meant to be exotic,' she said, referring to her house, a simple, three-bedroom Neutra-inspired split-level that she designed with the help of Scott Prentice, an architect friend. It has lots of windows, pale walls and both cork and concrete floors. The grounds are landscaped with dusky-green plants (no flowers, please), and the backyard holds a vegetable garden and a studio full of research materials that Ms. Oppewall used on films like 'Catch Me if You Can,' 'Wonder Boys' and 'The Bridges of Madison County.'
Since 1981 ('Blow Out') Ms. Oppewall, who appears to be comfortably in her 50's, has given texture and realism to more than 30 films, moving from set decorator to art director to production designer. A production designer, she said, is responsible for everything an actor walks in front of, sits on, drives through or picks up. She oversees the finding of locations and the design and construction of sets and interiors, from curtains and carpets to chairs and lamps.
In one sense she operates as a detective, extrapolating from the dialogue in the script and then creating, in excruciating era-specific detail, everything around the characters, including the period-appropriate off-white color of the bandages on Seabiscuit's wounded leg. 'What I do for a living is not dissimilar from what an actor does,' Ms. Oppewall said. 'I have a different set of tools, but it's the same process. The reason that it's fun to design sets is that it allows you to try on personalities that you'd never otherwise experience.'
It seemed fair to ask Ms. Oppewall what she thinks someone looking at her house might deduce about the person who resides there. 'Someone might say the person who lives here is cold and hard,' she said evenly. 'And I do have a minimal personality. I am not warm and fuzzy. I need aesthetic stimulation, not physical comfort.'
She gestured toward one of her many hardwood chairs. 'Friends say, 'Jeannine, you sure have a big collection of uncomfortable furniture.' But they think that furniture is to flop on or bounce on or put your feet on, and that's not my feeling.'
Gary Ross, the director of both 'Pleasantville' and 'Seabiscuit,' sees Ms. Oppewall as a dichotomy. 'Jeannine doesn't suffer fools gladly, and she hasn't suffered me gladly when I've been a fool,' he said. 'She's fastidious, restrained and refined, and yet she has this impulsive side where she just takes off and chases butterflies.' (He means it literally: she is a world-traveled amateur lepidopterist.)
Ms. Oppewall was raised in Uxbridge, Mass.; her mother was from French-speaking Canada, and her father, who worked in a textile factory, was from the Netherlands. Ms. Oppewall set out to be the family intellectual. After she graduated from Calvin College, a liberal Christian school in Grand Rapids, Mich., she studied medieval history at Bryn Mawr. While there, in a class on the history of modern art, she saw Charles Eames's furniture for the first time and abandoned the 14th century for the 20th. 'I was so attracted by the contemporary feeling, the shapely sexy lines -- totally different from the Sears, Roebuck middle-class stuff I'd grown up with,' she said. 'I looked at it and said, 'This is me.' '
Master's degree in hand, she moved to Los Angeles with her husband, Mr. Schrader, whom she had met at Calvin College. He, fascinated by Eames films like 'Powers of 10,' was writing a magazine article about the Eameses and arranged a job interview for her. 'I was 22,' Ms. Oppewall said. She started by answering phones at the Eames studio in Venice, and in seven years she was helping design and organize Eames museum exhibits. Charles Eames 'saw something in me I didn't know was there,' she said. She was also able to buy Eames furniture at cost.
'One of the reasons I was so comfortable working with Charles Eames,' she said, 'was that Charles was comfortable working for the Herman Miller furniture company, and that company was owned by a bunch of people from the Christian Reformed Church whose philosophy is that less is more, simple is better and cleanliness is next to godliness, and that, as it applies to the design world, was very appealing.'
Mr. Schrader wrote 'Taxi Driver,' and eventually directed his first film, 'Hardcore,' in 1979, after they divorced. He gave Ms. Oppewall credit as a 'project consultant,' and her film career began. She has worked on films set in the present like 'The Big Easy' as well as films like 'Catch Me if You Can,' which covers the 1960's, and 'Seabiscuit,' which takes place in the 1930's. But she has never done production design that has allowed her to put an Eames chair in the frame.
Greg Hoblit, director of 'Primal Fear,' which she also designed, appreciates her flexibility. 'While she may prefer a world in which less is more,' he said, 'she can still create an opulent and gooey world that is appropriate for someone unlike her.'
She considers period films particularly difficult. Rather than put things in, she said, you spend a great deal of time taking things out -- air-conditioners, reflectors that run down the middle of the street, cars of the wrong vintage and satellite dishes.
Period movies also require research. For instance, part of 'Seabiscuit' is set in Tijuana during Prohibition. 'A Tijuana Historical Society didn't exactly exist back then,' she said. She and her staff had to consult vintage postcards.
So convincing are her sets that occasionally they supersede reality. At the Santa Anita racetrack, the owners liked her design for the tote board so much that they wanted to keep it. 'I have to explain, we do scenery,' she said. 'You don't want to be here six months from now, because it won't last that long.'
Even Hollywood stars sometimes forget that. For 'Seabiscuit,' she built the rustic Howard ranch in California out of fir planks in a style the crew labeled 'parkitecture.' When Jeff Bridges, who plays Charles Howard, Seabiscuit's owner, walked in and looked around, he told her, 'I want to buy the whole thing and ship it to my property in Montana.' She said, 'Come around the back.'
'Look at it,' she said. 'It's just a set. It's not meant to last.'
He did not care, but the set could not be disassembled. 'It was built as a one-time shot,' she said. 'Bring in the bulldozers.'
Ms. Oppewall typically works on a film project for nine months: nine months of 14-hour days examining every speck of visual nuance. When she comes home, she wants to be surrounded by unclutter. 'I had all these built-ins made so I could hide my clutter,' she said. 'I didn't want to see my radio or albums or DVD player or CD's. And I especially didn't want a giant Cyclops of a television dominating the room.'
From her upstairs windows she can look across the street to a public golf course, where she thinks it is a safe bet that she will 'always be able to see green leafy things.' For the woman who designed a movie meant to provide heart-pounding thrills on the racetrack, a big thrill at home is picking fresh green beans from her backyard garden and steaming them. 'I put in just a little, tiny, weeny amount of butter so you can hardly taste it,' she said. 'I like things pretty plain.'
The Rewards Of Vigilance
During the filming of 'Catch Me if You Can,' Jeannine Oppewall was trying to make a warehouse in Pomona, Calif., look like a print shop in northern France when she decided to break for lunch. And there, in a store window, was a rare cowhide-covered Eames chair, below, that she determined would do well in her own living room. 'I sped through the door, I knew right away what it was,' she said, adding that she got a good price (less than $1,000). Finding a prized chair at a Pomona store, Futures Collide (909-865-2705), was a reward for keeping her antennas out at all times. When in Los Angeles, Ms. Oppewall scouts Skank World (323-939-7858), Fat Chance (323-930-1960) and Modernica (323-933-0383). And when a midcentury piece needs, say, new upholstery, Ms. Oppewall turns to Hume Modern Furniture Restoration in Venice, Calif. (www.humemodern.com). For stained fiberglass chairs, she advises using fiberglass cleaner from a boat-supply store. Ms. Oppewall has reached a point where she passes on even the best stuff. 'If I came home with another piece, I don't know what I'd do with it,' she said. 'Hang it from the ceiling?'
JAMIE DIAMOND
At Home With Jeannine Oppewall",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"DRAMATIC TOUCH OF GLASS
LEAD: 'GLASS blocks can change the whole feeling of an apartment,' said Bernard Gold, co-owner of New York Builders Supply Corporation. 'They open up space and let light through, while still keeping privacy.'
'GLASS blocks can change the whole feeling of an apartment,' said Bernard Gold, co-owner of New York Builders Supply Corporation. 'They open up space and let light through, while still keeping privacy.'
Mr. Gold said that in the last few years the use of glass block in renovations and new building has grown tremendously. 'Architects are using it like crazy,' he said. 'It's pretty and takes basically no maintenance.'
The company carries three basic types of glass block: Vue, which is clear and allows the most amount of light through; Decora, which has wavy lines, and Argus, which has vertical and horizontal lines running through it and is the most opaque. The more light desired, the clearer the block. Other patterns of glass can also be special ordered. Blocks start at $5.50 each.
Glass blocks come in four basic sizes: 6 inches by 6 inches; 8 inches by 8 inches; 12 inches by 12 inches, and 4 inches by 8 inches. To replace a plaster wall with glass block, measure the height and width of the existing wall and, depending on the size of block you choose, you can determine how many you need.
Glass blocks are installed with mortar cement, which comes in gray or white. Homeowners can do it themselves, but Mr. Gold recommends hiring a professional because the blocks can be tricky to install. Because glass, unlike brick or concrete block, doesn't absorb the water in the mortar cement, the blocks can shift. Spacers, or glass-block connectors, make installation easier, Mr. Gold explained. 'They keep the distance between the joints even,' he said, 'and prevent the blocks from moving because of the lack of absorption.' These small white plastic gadgets cost about 50 cents each.
New York Builders Supply does not install glass blocks, but will recommend companies that do. Mr. Gold estimates the cost of installation at between $30 and $40 a square foot, including the price of the block. New York Builders Supply will deliver the blocks and the cement needed to install them.
Walls are not the only things made with glass blocks. Mr. Gold has seen bathtubs done in glass block, as well as showers, bookshelves, even a bed frame, lighted from underneath. 'You get a lot of drama with glass block,' Mr. Gold said. 'If used right, it can be very pretty.'
He added that glass block is a good insulator, and is useful for security because it is tough to break. New York Builders Supply is at 99 Jane Street (212-255-7752). The company also sells cinder block, cement, brick, plaster and sand.
Glass block can also be purchased from Artreks Construction Company, 211 East Fifth Street (212-228-8158) and from Supro Building Products, 48-16 70th Street, in Woodside, Queens (718-429-5110).
Keer Montague Associates - 217 Rochambeau Avenue, Providence, R.I. 02906 (401-273-0389) - is a glass studio that custom makes all types of glass, including glass block. A free brochure is available.
WHERE TO FIND IT",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Events: Architecture, Graphics, Glass, Crafts
Architecture and Design  Main waiting room, Grand Central Terminal, Park Avenue at 42d Street; (212)753-1722.
The Architectural League of New York is sponsoring two exhibitions from Tuesday through Feb. 15. Projects by the architect Zaha Hadid will be examined in a display of photographs, models, drawings and paintings. The second exhibition features designs for bicycles by students from the Southern California Institute of Architecture. Open Monday through Saturday, 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. No charge.
Graphic Designs  Gallery at the American Institute of Graphic Arts, 164 Fifth Avenue (21st Street); (212) 807-1990.
""Maximum Message, Minimum Means,"" an exhibition of 100 graphic designs for publications, signs, computer software, packaging and advertising, will be on display through Feb. 3. Open Monday through Friday, 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. No charge.  Works in Glass  Heller Gallery, 71 Greene Street (Spring Street); (212) 966-5948.
""Glass America 1995,"" a show of contemporary works by 40 artists including Sydney Cash, Judy Jensen and Michael Pavlik, continues through Jan. 29. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 A.M. to 6 P.M.; Sunday, noon to 5 P.M. No charge.  Folk Art Courses  Folk Art Institute of the Museum of American Folk Art, 61 West 62d Street; (212) 977-7170.
The institute will offer lecture courses, daylong craft workshops and two five-part classes on marbleizing (starts Jan. 26) and furniture decorating techniques (March 23).
The lectures, in five series, start Jan. 23 with American folk paintings. The others are sculpture (starts Jan. 24), understanding folk art (Jan. 25), the folk art market (Jan. 25) and American textiles (Jan. 26). Workshops include folk portraiture (Feb. 10) and introductory quilting (April 21).
The fee for each lecture series is $150; single talks, $20. The workshops cost $65, plus a materials fee in some cases. A complete schedule is available by calling.  Craft Classes  Brookfield Craft Center, junction of Routes 25 and 7, Brookfield, Conn.; (203) 775-4526.
A series of eight-week classes and two-day workshops starts Saturday. Among them are wheel-thrown ceramics (starting Tuesday) and handmade tiles (Jan. 28-29). Tuition is $110 to $310; most classes also have a materials fee. There is a 15 percent discount for registering two weeks in advance. A brochure is available by calling.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Beneath the Hoops, East Meditates With West
When the Ross School, a 5th- through 12th-grade private school, was founded in East Hampton, N.Y., in 1991, it became known for its curriculum of both Eastern and Western philosophies, and for sending its students abroad to study cultures firsthand. What the school lacked, however, was its own gymnasium. The $10 million Center for Well-Being, which includes a gymnasium and a cafe, was recently completed on the school's campus.
The center fuses East and West. When the 247 students enter the building, they smell bread baking -- one day Arabian flatbread, the next a French sourdough. There are plugs for laptops in the cafe, so students can hook up, and a meditation room with tatami mats, so they can chill out.
The gymnasium, at top, known as the Great Hall, offers basketball and volleyball courts on a bamboo floor with hand-stained blue, yellow and purple borders. The soaring space is acoustically designed for lectures, community meetings and concerts. In the Movement Room, above, students stretch, dance and do martial arts. (The four stone mosaics on the wall are inspired by Indian symbols; at its base are local grasses.) 'The building feels hand-crafted, and it was designed of sustainable materials,' said Richard Cook, the Manhattan architect who collaborated on the design with Courtney Ross Holst, the co-founder of the school. The building, open to the community, was paid for by Ms. Ross Holst's Ross Institute, which runs the school and four other educational programs. The exterior is ipe, a Brazilian hardwood grown for harvest. The building, which is at 18 Goodfriend Drive, also has a geothermal heating system. Reservations are required for tours.
CURRENTS: SCHOOL DESIGN Information on insider sources and good deals may be sent by e-mail to rohrlich@nytimes.com.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Bouley and Kitchen: Joined at the Hip
AFTER David Bouley closed his restaurant a year ago to plan a mini-empire in TriBeCa with the restaurateur Warner LeRoy, the culinary world waited for a glimpse. Here it is: Bouley International, to open next spring, will consist of two adjacent buildings of different heights, happily joined at the hip.
The larger, a seven-story Romanesque Revival building (once a wholesale grocery) at 36-38 Hudson Street, at Duane Street, will house a first-floor cafe, a second-floor formal (expensive) restaurant and a third floor for private parties. The fourth- and fifth-floor cooking school and library will be connected by a grand stairway to Mr. Bouley's home on the top two floors.
The four-story Greek Revival building next door (once a fish store) will house all the kitchens. But there is a 4-foot-10-inch difference between corresponding floors in the two buildings (shown at far left). How to make the interiors flow seamlessly? Like a souffle, the smaller building will rise.
'We are going to lift the facade of the small building,' said Lee Jablin, who, with his partner, Larry Harman, is the architect. The plan for aligning floors, approved by the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission in January (and shown at near left), calls for a masonry band between the first and second floors of the smaller building. The facade, braced in steel, will be lifted by hand-turned jacks this summer.
Currents",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"A Big Mouse Moves In
DIANA BURROUGHS sings M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E all the way to the bank.
She has rented out her family's 145-year-old Federal town house in Greenwich Village for a month to Mickey's handlers, who wanted a place they could turn into a show house selling celebrity curios and Mickey Mouse merchandise for charity. (And of course, to gather good will for Walt Disney products.)
But before Mickey could move in, Ms. Burroughs had to move out, along with her husband, Jason McCoy, who runs an art gallery on East 57th Street, and their three children, three dogs and cat, Gilbert.
The family is accustomed to tiptoeing around photographers and film crews who pay as much as $2,000 a day to use the high-ceilinged front parlor or the sunny garden as a backdrop. The McCoys -- who are known for informal dinner parties that have become regular art-world events after their gallery openings -- have rented the house for magazine advertisements for Macy's, for television commercials for products like Advil, for sections in a Victoria's Secret catalogue, even for scenes in the movie ""Jeffrey.""
This time was different. Mickey's minions at the public-relations agency for Disney Consumer Products specified that they were renting the house, the whole house and nothing but the house -- no parents or pets, and no children. The agency, Cairns & Company, said it paid $25,000 for the month, including a commission for Ms. Burroughs's rental agent. Disney offered to put the family up in a hotel, but the McCoys decided against the room-service life. ""We took the money"" for the accommodations, Ms. Burroughs said, ""but are staying with friends.""
With the family away, Cairns's decorators packed the family's clothes on a rack in the basement. Then they cast a critical eye on furniture and furnishings. ""The stuff of theirs we didn't like, we're taking out,"" said one decorator, Fred Anderson. ""They had an all-black sofa. We're bringing something in to brighten that room up.""
Indeed. Disney wanted walls that said Mickey without being mousy. That meant a fast paint job in cartoonish reds and blues. The decorators also wanted carpeting that did not look as if it had been laid when Annette Funicello was the star of ""The Mickey Mouse Club."" Which is, of course, almost any carpet in a house with two adults, three children, three dogs and a cat.
The carpet problem put Mr. Anderson and his partner, Douglas Hannant, under time pressure. ""We had to find carpet we could get in a week,"" Mr. Anderson said. ""And we had to go to the people who had done the carpet before, because the steps are uneven and some had to be double-padded.""
Under the lease, Ms. Burroughs will keep the carpet. She and the decorators agree that this is unusual; most of the time, any decorating work is removed and the house is returned to its original condition. This time, the decorators also had the library repainted a slightly brighter blue than before; that, too, will be left behind.
But Mr. Anderson and Mr. Hannant did not touch Ms. Burroughs's mint-green kitchen as they turned the house into a mix of Mickey, Ms. Burroughs and celebrities. The bedroom will have 10 paintings by Billy Dee Williams, but it is the McCoys' own bed that will be made up with Mickey Mouse sheets.
Ms. Burroughs does not get to keep the sheets: when the show is over, they will go to Housing Works, the show house beneficiary, which helps homeless people with AIDS. The show house will be seen by V.I.P.'s at a series of parties next week and by the public on Sept. 16. Admission will be $5; information, (212) 407-0745.
In the kitchen are celebrity items like Robin Leach's pasta maker and juicer. In a bathroom are feather boas donated by Ru Paul. Ms. Burroughs's garden now has Mickey Mouse sprinkler spigots, a Mickey Mouse sundial, Mickey Mouse topiary and non-Mickey hibiscus and impatiens that Mr. Anderson added. ""She doesn't want us messing up her root system,"" he said.
Ms. Burroughs said she had had no all-out calamities in previous rentals. ""Yes, furniture does get broken and things do get damaged,"" she added, ""but to date, people acknowledge it and you get it fixed.""
She was frank about her reason for renting out the house: to augment her income. She had just left the Jason McCoy Gallery, which she ran with her husband, who is a nephew of the artist Jackson Pollock, to become the director of programs for the nonprofit corporation that coordinates the Principal for a Day program for professionals and business people in the New York City public schools.
Ms. Burroughs was the first to admit that the house needed touching up. ""The housebreaking destroyed the carpet,"" she said. ""That's why I didn't think Disney would take the house. The carpets were unsightly and the walls . . . well, we've had the house for five years of wear and tear. Also, we have a Weimaraner who scratched down two of the doors.""
Mr. Hannant won't be meeting the dogs, who are staying with friends in Cooperstown, N.Y., or Gilbert the cat, whose temporary residence is on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts. This is just as well. ""I'm allergic to cats,"" he said.
As for the family, Ms. Burroughs and Mr. McCoy are camping out at a friend's loft with their daughter, Samantha Clare, 7. Their older son, Sanford, 13, is staying at another friend's apartment in Manhattan; Jackson, 10, is dividing his time between a third friend's apartment and the loft with his parents.
Back at the house, the idea was to repaint doors and moldings in their original colors. ""This was like detective work,"" said Kerry Trueman, whose crew did the painting. ""No one had an accurate record of what had gone on the walls. But these people have three kids and I don't know how many dogs. The condition of the walls below chair-rail height was uniformly disastrous. They needed a face lift and all we could do was a facial.""
She and a crew of four worked 12-hour days and made some unexpected discoveries. Matching the red in Mickey Mouse's shorts turned out to be as hard as getting a dollar out of Uncle Scrooge. ""Benjamin Moore has it, Carnival Red, but it only comes oil based and we weren't going to do oil,"" she said. She sent to Home Depot for some custom-mixed latex.
Then there was the difficulty of working around antiques and paintings like a geometric black and white canvas by John McLaughlin. ""The liaison for the owners said if it gets so much as a nick, it depreciates $100,000,"" Ms. Trueman said. ""I encouraged my workers to be very careful.""
Ms. Burroughs said that past make-overs for commercials and photo sessions had intrigued her children. ""They find it rather interesting to see how the house changes,"" she said. ""They like to see it happen, but they don't pay too much attention to it.""
But they will not see the Mickey transformation, unless they drop in to retrieve clothes from the basement. ""We,"" Ms. Burroughs said, ""have not been invited.""",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"FOOD NOTES
LEAD:  For Mom on Her Day Instead of sending last-minute flowers for Mother's Day, how about breakfast in bed?
For Mom on Her Day Instead of sending last-minute flowers for Mother's Day, how about breakfast in bed?
Orders received by the end of the day tomorrow at Ottomanelli's Bakery, 1523 York Avenue (80th Street), will be scheduled for delivery by 10:30 A.M. Sunday.
The gift, packed in a straw basket, will contain a pint of fresh orange juice, eight minature muffins, four miniature danish pastries, chocolate-dipped strawberries, fresh fruit and a lemon-blueberry tea loaf. The price is $30, including delivery in Manhattan. Telephone 212-517-4666.  The Breakfast in Bed assortment from the Ultimate Basket, 140 West 83d Street, includes Wolferman's blueberry muffins, Sarabeth's preserves, Dearborn apple-cinnamon wheat waffles and currant scones, all arranged on a wicker tray with a linen napkin for $60. Delivery or shipping is extra, and the tray can be sent anywhere in the United States.
Orders will be accepted through Friday, but if the gift has to be shipped overnight, charges can be as much as $40. Telephone 212-877-3291; American Express, Visa and Mastercard are accepted. Time for Lobster
Like apples, lobsters are sold all year, but they, too, have their season. Apples are best in the fall, and lobsters are at their peak now. As the weather warms, they are caught in local waters, and when they do not come from the holding pens used for the winter supply, the flesh is firmer.
The local catch of small lobsters, weighing about a pound, is now attractively priced. 'The small ones from the bays are the best buy,' said John Haessler, an owner of the Seafood Shop in Wainscott, L.I. 'We're selling them at five for $20.'
Perry Duryea 3d, the president of Perry B. Duryea & Son, a wholesaler in Montauk, L.I., said that his company is charging $3.75 to $4.50 a pound for small lobsters (the price depends on the size of the order).
Other prices for small lobsters: $5.99 a pound at Jordan's Lobster Dock, 3165 Harkness Avenue (Knapp Street) in Brooklyn; $4.50 a pound wholesale and $6.95 a pound retail at the Shell Lobster Company, 412 West 13th Street in Manhattan; $7.95 a pound at Citarella, 2135 Broadway (75th Street), and $5.95 a pound at the Lobster Place, 487 Amsterdam Avenue (83d Street). To Aid the Homeless
Taste of the Nation, a nationwide benefit to raise money to feed the hungry and homeless, will be held in 32 cities on May 17, when restaurants and wine distributors in each city will organize tasting parties.
The admission will vary from city to city. In Des Moines, for example, it's $10; in New York, it's $50, and in Dallas, it's $150 for a banquet.
The New York event will be at the Puck Building, 295 Lafayette Street (Houston Street), from 6:30 P.M. to 10 P.M., when chefs from over a dozen restaurants, including Melrose, Zarela's, Remi, China Grill, Tommy Tang's and Provence, will prepare their specialties. For reservations, telephone 212-614-0955.
Costs for organizing the event are being borne by Mastercard International, which means that the entire ticket price will go to food banks and shelters in this country and to international relief organizations like Oxfam. The national organizer, a group called Share Our Strength, hopes to raise raise $500,000. For nationwide information about the event, call 800-222-1767. A New Kind of A.&P.  The first A.&P. Food Bazaar is now open on 14th Street in the new Zeckendorf Towers office and apartment complex at Union Square. In layout, space, merchandise and graphics, the new store closely resembles the Food Emporium built last year at 68th Street and Broadway. That is by design, because the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, which owns both chains, had the same upper-income urban shopper in mind.
'Had there not been a Food Emporium nearby on Park Avenue South, we probably would have made this one a Food Emporium,' said Michael Rourke, A.&P.'s vice president of communications and corporate affairs.
In addition to the usual supermarket provisions, the new A.&P. store has a fresh fish department, a custom butcher counter and a bakery.
The store is unusually spacious for a city supermarket: 30,000 square feet, enough space for three typical Manhattan grocery stores.
'We're hoping this will be a prototype of our inner-city markets, just as the Futurestore has become our suburban model,' Mr. Rourke said. Futurestores, like the one in Allendale, N.J., have a minimum of 40,000 square feet and like the Food Bazaar, cater to an upper-income market.  BUY OF THE WEEK  BROCCOLI  Verdant bunches of broccoli with tight buds are in the markets for 79 to 89 cents each. If you use only the florets in a recipe, cook the stems until tender, then puree and freeze them to use in summer soups, hot or cold.  FOR A DERBY DAY BRUNCH  SATURDAY is Derby Day, the time to serve mint juleps, country ham and the traditional meat, poultry and game stew called burgoo. A splendid resource for people who want to prepare a classic Kentucky brunch is 'Kentucky Cooking' by Charles Patteson with Craig Emerson (Harper & Row, $19.95).
The book starts with a recipe for the juleps and goes on to explain country hams and burgoo. A number of desserts made with bourbon are included. The history and lore that surround many of the recipes add to the book's charm.
With the interest in regional American cooking continuing to grow, this volume, with such dishes as Gleating's potatoes, Huguenot torte and Kentucky funeral cake, is a worthwhile addition to the cookbook shelf. There is even a chapter of recipes from Kentucky's country inns.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Aalto Room May Be Shown the Door
AN architectural gem is in danger of becoming an architectural millstone. A suite of conference rooms designed in 1964 by Alvar Aalto could join the list of extinct legendary New York interiors, now that their owner has announced that it would like them removed from an office building near the United Nations. The interior is not protected by landmark status.
The Kaufmann Conference Center, as it is known, is one of only four existing works designed by Aalto in the United States, and the only one in New York. It represents 'one of the unique architectural treasures of New York City,' Kenneth Frampton, the architectural historian, said.
Aalto, the renowned Finnish architect with a humanistic bent, brought a love of natural materials and organic shapes to the rigid contours of the International style -- not to mention his immortal 1936 vase. The office space is named for Edgar J. Kaufmann, a professor of architecture and a patron of architecture and education who talked his parents into hiring Frank Lloyd Wright to design Fallingwater. In this case, Kaufmann believed that Manhattan deserved an Aalto.
He commissioned the conference rooms in 1961 on behalf of the Institute of International Education at 809 United Nations Plaza. The current owner, a Japanese nonprofit organization, wants to convert the Aalto space into offices.
A hastily assembled band of Aalto enthusiasts and friends of New York's modern legacies are on a quest to find guardian angels to come to the rescue. Dismantling the large portable elements of the room would be possible, but expensive and somewhat destructive. And finding a new home has proved elusive. Some supporters believe a way must be found to keep it in place; others just want it saved any way possible.
The 4,500-square-foot, three-room space with retractable walls offers a choice menu of Aalto's signatures. Visiting the space today, it looks so original that one experiences the shock of modernism's early impact. A white plaster ceiling still undulates as it rises up to a peak of 22 feet. Textured walls -- some made of cylindrical royal blue porcelain ribs, others of long, thin birch battens layered at intervals over ash paneling -- move in waves, too. The real eye-stopper, however, is a sculptural relief of curvaceous birch staves, shaped like hockey sticks and set deep into one corner, Aalto's poetic abstract of a Finnish forest.
Along one side, floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows provide a ringside view of the doings at the United Nations and along the East River, while an enormous screen of wooden louvers in a checkerboard pattern protects the space from glare. Aalto also made the gold-plated copper lighting fixtures, the sculptured bronze door pulls, the standing lamps with leather posts and Aalto-vaselike shades, the black leather and birch chairs and a portable bar and speaker's desk. His second wife, Elissa, assisted on the project and made the variegated brown rugs.
Despite their inimitable significance, such rooms, said Roger Lang of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, are 'very perishable, and very hard to save.' Tucked away on the top floor of a private office building, the Kaufmann Conference Center doesn't meet the legal criterion of public accessibility required for an interior space to be granted landmark status. There is another disadvantage. 'It's modern,' Mr. Lang said, 'and we're all trying to come to grips with preserving things that are hard for people to embrace because they belong to such recent history.'
The space appears to have been barely touched for 36 years. An old-fashioned pneumatic lever in a closet still raises an invisible track to transform the space from three to four conference rooms. Portability was an important theme of modernism, and Aalto designed the rooms to be movable. In fact, much of the components were made in Finland. There are even spare parts -- mostly bundles of birch battens and extra Arabia porcelain tiles -- in the basement, said Gil Robinov, the exclusive agent for the building's Japanese owners, the Foundation for the Support of the United Nations.
When the foundation bought the building in 1998, it converted it into a commercial condominium and sold several floors to foreign governments. Initially, it was unaware of the gem inside, Mr. Robinov said. But a constant trickle of architecture enthusiasts and students alerted the foundation to what it had. 'He's got a fan club, no question about it,' Mr. Robinov said about Aalto, adding that security makes it difficult to allow people free access to the space.
'We're very sympathetic to the plight of the followers of this architect,' he said. 'These rooms should be in a place where they are protected for posterity.' He also noted that because the place was private, 'whoever owns the building can do anything, including taking it out and putting it in the Dumpster.'
For the last five years, the Consulate General of Finland has been watching the space, even hiring Finnish experts to appraise its condition. Maija Lahteenmaki, the former consul general, took a special interest in the rooms, but her tour of duty in the United States recently ended.
She said that four months ago, she was 'informed by the new owners that they planned to convert it to office space because the market was so hot.' Ms. Lahteenmaki, with the help of Caroline Zaleski, a recent graduate of the Columbia School of Architecture's preservation program, solicited Frank Gehry, Robert Venturi, Tadao Ando and other prominent architects to write letters emphasizing the importance of preserving the interior. The owners responded by offering to donate all the portable elements to anyone who would pay the cost of removal.
The preservation and architectural community is not unanimous about what should be done. Some believe that if it cannot remain where it is, it should be dismantled and stored with the hope of reinstalling it at some future date. Others say that it should be removed to an institution that would use it and make it available to the public.
The Museum of Modern Art was an obvious place to turn. The museum's 1938 exhibition on Aalto's work was responsible for bringing him to international attention. (A retrospective in 1998 worked up a new generation of midcentury-modern fans.) This summer, the museum did investigate the possibility of incorporating the Kaufmann space into its new expansion plans, but concluded that it wouldn't fit, said Terence Riley, chief curator of architecture and design at the museum. More to the point, he added, 'Should museums be rescuing rooms from the garbage can and become witting assistants to dismantling rooms and removing them from their original place for the sake of acquisition?'
Because of the Kaufmann connection, Lynda Waggoner, Fallingwater's director, said she was approached to either reinstall the rooms in a barn on her site or to store all the elements. She said neither was a possibility. 'It's very urban in a way that wouldn't be appropriate to Fallingwater,' she said.
Other institutions, including the Guggenheim Museum and the United Nations, have been approached but have not responded.
It is estimated that it could cost $1 million to dismantle the room, Ms. Lahteenmaki said. The porcelain tiles that line the walls -- setting the tone of textural sensuality at the entrance -- would be especially expensive to take down and reinstall.
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has expressed an interest in incorporating the Aalto rooms into space undergoing renovation. 'But whatever we could do would never be as good as where it is,' said Aaron Betsky, the museum's curator of architecture, design and digital products, who spent his vacation touring Aalto works in Finland.
As Mr. Robinov handed over a sales brochure for condo space in the building featuring the Kaufmann room, he hastened to say that the building's owners were not going to throw the conference space out. 'We don't want a frenzy,' he said. 'It's safe here as far as we can see.' He added that he hoped that a solution would be found within six months. The raw space could sell for $75 to $80 a square foot.
Yesterday, Jennifer J. Raab, the chairwoman of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, met with Mr. Robinov and acquired a written agreement that the owners would do no work on the space for 90 days. During this time, the commission would not begin the process of designating it a landmark, she said.
'For a city as rich as this not to be able to save this interior is scandalous,' said Mr. Frampton, the architectural historian, who continues to call potential rescuers. Two weeks ago, Donald J. Trump was contacted by Mr. Robinov. 'It would be a nice amenity to his tenants,' said Diana Gaines, an associate of Mr. Robinov's, regarding Mr. Trump's condominium going up two blocks away.
She noted that although Mr. Trump appeared not to have heard of Aalto when they met to discuss the project, and has yet to visit the space, he quickly took up the proposal. 'I'm seriously considering it for Trump Royal Tower,' Mr. Trump said last week, adding that it could go into one of the 'super spa areas.' 'It's not going to be easy. It would have to be recreated.' Mr. Trump said he plans to make a decision by next month.
In the meantime, the Finnish Council maintains a watchful eye. The ultimate option, Ms. Lahteenmaki said, would be to take the rooms back to Finland. 'We're not going to stand by and see it destroyed,' she said.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"The Remix; Now Pouring | Rhum Agricole
Today's typical Chicago saloon has Old Style in the can, the Cubs on the tube and video poker in the corner. Weegee's Lounge, in the Logan Square neighborhood, has none of these. 'We like to think of ourselves as the kind of bar you would have found in Chicago in the '40s,' says Alex Huebner, who, with his wife, Lynne Marrs, opened Weegee's last June. This means jazz on the stereo and a cocktail repertory featuring classics like the Pink Squirrel, the grasshopper and the Knickerbocker. Huebner licensed the fabled crime-scene shutterbug's name thinking that Weegee would have found the still-gritty area stimulating. No doubt. 3659 W. Armitage Ave.; (773) 384-0707.
Jordon Mackay",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Currents; Design as Smooth as Skin
PAOLO CERMASI thinks the new LaPerla lingerie boutique that he designed suggests a romantic update of ""a grandmother's bedroom."" Hmmmm. Not unless Grandma is the model Jill Goodacre.
Mr. Cermasi, who brought to New York a crew that included Bolognese plasterers, gold-leaf artists, painters and stonemasons, was clearly inspired by the subject matter. The floor is made of off-white marble from Verona, as smooth as a bar of soap. A suspended display fixture is decorated with Murano glass pendants in eggplant shapes. The architect designed a partition wall of thick plaster that has a relief of a lace pattern. (It was flown to New York from Florence, numbered and crated like an archeological find.) Every wall in the 1,500-square-foot shop, at 777 Madison Avenue (66th Street), is curved and finished in creamy, soft stucco antico, a Venetian polished plaster technique that feels like, well, skin. ""Sometimes when I look at the drawings, I cannot help but think of a bottom,"" the architect said.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"FATHER AND SONS: A MOVIE DYNASTY
LEAD: KIRK DOUGLAS isn't at all sure he likes the idea of a tribute. 'Tributes make it sound like the end of the line, and you know how I feel about the end of the line,' he complained, shifting restlessly in his chair as if it were a straitjacket he wanted to burst out of and looking more like the undefeated wrestling champion he used to be than the septuagenarian he is now.
KIRK DOUGLAS isn't at all sure he likes the idea of a tribute. 'Tributes make it sound like the end of the line, and you know how I feel about the end of the line,' he complained, shifting restlessly in his chair as if it were a straitjacket he wanted to burst out of and looking more like the undefeated wrestling champion he used to be than the septuagenarian he is now.
Nor is he exactly wholehearted in his enthusiasm for the brand-new Kirk Douglas Scholarship Fund. 'Why am I participating in a scholarship for young people going into this profession?' he said. 'I'm always discouraging anybody from going into this profession.'
Nevertheless, on Monday Mr. Douglas will be guest of honor at a tribute by the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, which he attended nearly 50 years ago and which is now establishing a scholarship in his name. The program, at the Majestic Theater, will be hosted by Burt Lancaster, with whom Mr. Douglas has co-starred in movies that span 40 years - from 'I Walk Alone' in 1947 to their most recent collaboration, last year's 'Tough Guys.'
Not only will this tribute feature such other longtime colleagues as Anthony Quinn and Lauren Bacall (whom Mr. Douglas met at the academy when she was still Betty Perske and he was Izzy Demsky), it will also include Mr. Douglas's four sons, all of whom have followed in their father's redoubtable footsteps. As for Mr. Douglas - who works out with weights every day, still boasts a physique that enabled him to take off his shirt in 'Tough Guys' as he has in dozens of other movies over the years, and doesn't consider himself anywhere near the end of the line -he is just hoping that none of his sons choose that particular occasion to do their wickedly accurate Kirk Douglas imitations.
Many movie stars receive tributes. A few, like Mr. Douglas, have become as much institutions as actors, cultural icons who conjure up an entire era's worth of images. That famous cleft chin, those razor-sharp cheekbones and jutting jaw have personified Vikings and cowboys, lovers and fighters and characters who range from Vincent van Gogh to Spartacus. However, virtually no other star of Mr. Douglas's longevity and fame can claim to have spawned not only a filmography of more than 70 movies, excerpts from which will be shown at the tribute, but also a dynasty that includes at least one son who threatens to surpass even his father's success. Discouraged a Show-Business Life
Michael Douglas, the oldest, is not only a movie star but also the producer of such hits as 'Romancing the Stone' and 'Jewel of the Nile.' Joel, also a producer, is currently living in Nice, France, and working at a movie studio there. Both Michael and Joel are the products of Mr. Douglas's first marriage, to Diana Dill, an actress. By his second wife, Anne, there are two more sons, Peter - a screenwriter and producer and the director of 'A Tiger's Tail,' an upcoming movie starring Ann-Margret - and Eric, an actor who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Not that Mr. Douglas intended for any of them to emulate him. 'I discouraged all of my sons from ever going into any phase of the entertainment business,' he said in a recent interview at the Mayfair Regent Hotel. 'My theory is that if you can discourage someone from going into this business, they shouldn't be in it anyway. It's too painful, too full of rejection. And the rejection is personal: it's 'I don't like you.' So I discouraged all my kids.' He flashed a dazzling grin. 'You see how they listen to me. They've all ended up in it, and they're doing well. They're functioning.'
It is one of Kirk Douglas's favorite themes, one he drilled into his children over and over. 'Functioning: that's my key word,' he said, savoring the sound of it like some delicious morsel. 'My sons always tease me about it. Function! Be a carpenter, be a farmer - do something. They didn't have my advantages; I had the advantage of being born in abject poverty, which meant that I had nowhere to go but up. I've said to them that if my father had been Kirk Douglas, I don't know what I would have been. Maybe a gangster. But I didn't have anybody to compete with. If I'd ended up as the manager of a department store I would have thought I was doing pretty well.' 'I Never Lied to Them'
Mr. Douglas is the first to admit that he was hard on his boys, writing them stern letters and telling them exactly what he thought, no matter how harsh - like the first time Michael, then a college sophomore, invited his dad to see him perform in a school play. 'You were terrible,' his father announced afterward.
'Well, he was,' Mr. Douglas said. 'I never lied to them. The next time I saw him in a play, he was very good and I told him so. But having four sons from two families, I think very often I was harder on Michael and Joel, because I was spending split time with them. One of the ways a father can show he cares is by bawling the hell out of them. I thought, well, one day they'll remember I wasn't indifferent to them. I mean, I wasn't there with a whip, but I think I have a much warmer relationship with my kids now than I did then. I envy fathers who have that; I was never the kind of father who's leaning back with a pipe, smiling. I was always coming forward at them.' Tense as a panther, poised on the edge of his chair, he is hardly the picture of the genial, relaxed paterfamilias. 'I think there's a certain tension in me they must have felt,' he acknowledged. 'But with it all, they must have felt I cared.'
Making three or four pictures a year, Mr. Douglas was often away on location. 'Whenever we saw him, he had this tremendous need to father, so you'd get an intense dose of fatherhood - which didn't make for the most comfortable times,' said Michael Douglas in a telephone interview. 'He was tough, but it toughened us up, and maybe helped us survive.'
Years later, Kirk Douglas realized that the fierce energy he directed toward his boys represented an attempt to compensate for the fathering he himself missed. 'I was never close to my own father,' he said. 'I always wanted to be closer, and in many ways I would try to replay that with my own children - not very successfully, because the thrust was always my interpretation of a father-son relationship rather than what their needs were. I can see that now, in retrospect. And we're much closer now than we used to be; I think they understand me and my peccadilloes more, and I understand them more.' A Driven Man
At 70, Mr. Douglas likes to think he has mellowed, 'but not very much.' He readily describes himself as driven and, indeed, the ferocity he has always applied to his career seems hardly to have abated. 'I just got back from a week in Hawaii, and I was working on two projects while I was on vacation,' said Peter Douglas in a telephone interview. 'If he'd gone to Hawaii, he'd have been working on four projects. It is really important to lay back, and he's really bad at that. His work is his most fun time, but there's also an obsessive quality to it that's been passed on.'
The source of that drive is deeply rooted in the past. He has been Kirk Douglas for half a century, ever since a brief fling with the interim name of Izzy Demsky, but inside he is still Issur Danielovitch, the name his parents gave him.
'That's what it's all about,' Mr. Douglas said. 'That's the core, that early part of you. Issur is the only thing you have to offer. Kirk Douglas is a name, but Issur is the synthesis of everything that happened to me in my early life, that formed what I am as a human being and as an actor. Look at the difference between my background and my children's background - in one generation!' 'Continuity of Generations'
Recently Mr. Douglas, watching his firstborn son being interviewed on a television show, was moved when Michael began to talk about 'the continuity of generations.' Michael's enormous success notwithstanding, his father says he does not feel supplanted.
'On the contrary - I feel immortal,' he declared. 'That's what immortality is all about. I think sons fight their fathers, and are sometimes intimidated by their fathers, but the love of a father is the only kind of love in which one wants the son to surpass him. It's not that I'm such a nice guy. It's narcissistic. But narcissism is a nice word. Self-love is important. Maturity means falling in love with yourself, in the sense of understanding yourself and saying, 'hey - I'm not such a bad guy.' You change, and you have to come to grips with yourself - and make peace with yourself. I think the most elegant form of narcissism is your children. To me, the greatest triumph of this tribute is that all my sons are going to be there.'
His sons were, at that moment, scattered from California to St. Martin to the South of France. Mr. Douglas rolled his eyes and sighed in mock exasperation. 'Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get all my four sons together?' he said proudly.
The tribute begins at 8:30 P.M. at the Majestic Theater, Broadway and 44th Street. Tickets range from $25 to $500; a pre-tribute cocktail party is included with a $125 ticket, and there is a pre-tribute dinner for those with tickets for $300 or $500. Information: 614-0400 or 239-6200.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"From the Age When Traders Ruled the Seas
New shop owners have a rule of thumb: Open around Thanksgiving, and by Christmas you could reap 25 percent of the year's gross sales. Perhaps that's why four home stores chose this season to debut.
COLONIALISM is not a dirty word at Jamson Whyte, 47 Wooster Street (near Broome Street). John Erdos and Byron Jeong, the owners, specialize in carved teak furniture from Indonesia and India. There are plantation chairs, four-poster beds and armoires large enough to hold television sets.
A Chinese-style wedding bed (really more of a daybed), left, is 72 by 42 inches. It has an elaborately carved canopy, dates from the early 1900's and is $3,800.
So who is, or rather was, Jamson Whyte? He was a prominent 18th-century British trader who settled in Singapore, where Mr. Erdos and Mr. Jeong have second homes.
The tropical ambiance is also borrowed: Clodagh, the New Age interior designer, must have channeled an Indonesian spirit, painting walls a pale mustard and staining the cement floor bronze.
Currents",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Once Upon a Time, Only Kings Had Castles
AS you sit reading the newspaper in your armchair, with a scant day left to the millennium, consider this almost too obvious fact: You couldn't have done it a thousand years ago. The newspaper was there. Thanks to Julius Caesar, the Romans had posted news.
But the armchair wasn't, not until the 17th century, unless you happened to be king or queen. With the advent of digital design, the next millennium may remember this one as the Unvirtual Age. Every solution to every problem has been built and tested, sat on and sat in. Why then is the height of civilized comfort sitting sideways in a chair, your legs up and over the arm? Progress is a noble, if comic, idea when you draw a line of domestic achievements, as the House & Home section did, of the last thousand years. Why was the lawn mower, for instance, invented before toilet paper?
But home is not just the house. Francine du Plessix Gray, Janet McTeer and others share their experiences of rooms where spirit has resided, from a refugee tent in Albania to a velvet-walled library in Paris. And the future holds new keys. At NASA, they're nesting. They've hired architects, and they've found the place. They're working on views. The issue is still space.
WILLIAM L. HAMILTON",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"East, West And Design All Mingle
LEAD: THE growing influence of Eastern design on the West and Western design on the East is the subject of an exhibition, 'The Archeology of the Present: East Meets West in Design,' on view from Sunday through Feb. 3 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
THE growing influence of Eastern design on the West and Western design on the East is the subject of an exhibition, 'The Archeology of the Present: East Meets West in Design,' on view from Sunday through Feb. 3 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
On display will be 75 works by 42 artists, the winners of a competition sponsored by East Meets West Cultural International, a nonprofit corporation. 'The world is changing so rapidly that in 10 or 20 years, we might not be able to recognize where products were designed,' said Anneke van Waesberghe, East Meets West's president and founder.
Objects on view will include this frosted glass sake bottle and V. Lorenzo Porcelli's floor lamp with rice paper shade. The exhibition is free. Tours will run hourly from 11 A.M. to 3 P.M. daily. For information, call 212-245-2822. A catalogue is available for $35.
On Tuesday there will be a seminar on East-West design featuring William Grenwald, the former executive director of the American Crafts Museum. Reservations are available through 212-686-6070.
CURRENTS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Zucchini Penne, Via Shortcuts
In a perfect world, people who cook family meals like zucchini with penne would have time to make everything from scratch, including pepper basil sauce. They would manage to roast peppers instead of buying them already roasted.
But since so many people have to cook after work, prepared peppers must be purchased. With one warning: Buy peppers that have been preserved in water rather than vinegar. The vinegar overwhelms all the other seasonings, even if you rinse the peppers before using them.
For the salad of mixed greens, a few tomatoes have been suggested, not because New Jersey tomatoes -- the best -- are in season, because they are not, but because some of the newer varieties of tomatoes, grown hydroponically, also taste pretty good.
Recently, in the stores there were some small yellow ones on the stem, and they made a very nice addition to the mixed greens.
Unless the tomatoes are good, though, wait until summer.
Hot Zucchini and Pepper Basil Sauce With Penne
1 1/2 pounds zucchini and yellow squash  Nonstick pan spray  4 large roasted red peppers, packed in water  2 large cloves garlic  2 tablespoons capers  2 teaspoons anchovy paste
1/4 to  1/2 teaspoon hot-pepper flakes  8 ounces penne  1 teaspoon olive oil  A few sprigs basil, to yield  1/4 cup chopped  Freshly ground black pepper to taste.
1. Bring water to boil in a covered pot for penne.
2. Turn on broiler, and line the broiler pan with a double thickness of aluminum foil. Scrub and trim the zucchini and yellow squash, and slice  in half lengthwise. Arrange on the foil-lined broiler pan, cut side up, and spray with nonstick pan spray. Broil the squashes about 3 inches from the source of heat for about 15 minutes, until they are browned and softened.
3. Meanwhile, rinse the peppers and cut in fine julienne strips. Chop the garlic, rinse the capers and combine the garlic, capers, anchovy paste and hot pepper flakes.
4. Cook the penne according to package directions.
5. Heat a small nonstick skillet until it is hot. Reduce heat to medium high, and add the oil. Quickly saute the garlic mixture. Remove from heat, and stir in the julienned peppers.
6. Cut the squashes into thin strips, and add to the pepper mixture.
7. Wash, dry and cut the basil, and stir into pepper mixture. Season with pepper.
8. Drain the penne, and top with the sauce.
Yield: 2 servings.
Approximate nutritional analysis per serving: 660 calories, 7 grams fat, 4 milligrams cholesterol, 530 milligrams sodium, 30 grams protein, 130 grams carbohydrate.
Mixed Greens and Tomatoes With Raspberry Vinaigrette
2 ounces mixed greens, like mesclun  2 small tomatoes, if good and ripe; otherwise omit  1 teaspoon olive oil  2 teaspoons raspberry vinegar.
1. Wash the greens; drain and dry. Cut up the tomatoes, if using.
2. In serving bowl, whisk the oil and vinegar together.
3. Stir the greens and optional tomatoes into the dressing.
Yield: 2 servings.
Approximate nutritional analysis per serving: 190 calories, 5 grams fat, 0 milligrams cholesterol, 80 milligrams sodium, 12 grams protein, 30 grams carbohydrate.
Game Plan
Prepare pasta and sauce through Step 5.  Make the salad.  Finish the pasta and sauce.
PLAIN AND SIMPLE",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"New Creatures In the Garden
JULIE S. DERMANSKY, a SoHo sculptor, said that when she learned that her parents used her cut-steel totems to support ivy vines, ""the proverbial light bulb went off."" Ms. Dermansky's flower boxes and stakes topped with grinning fish, birds and the like can be finished in black or green or left ready-to-rust. Prices are from $140 for a four-foot stake to $550 for a six-and-a-half-foot trough. Telephone: (212) 334-5571.  CURRENTS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Because Time Won't Stand Still
Jonas Damon's latest creation, the Open Edition clock for Areaware, deconstructs the standard L.E.D. box into four separate modules, creating the illusion that one might actually have power over time. 'You can play around with the order of the digits,' said Mr. Damon, a Manhattan-based designer, 'and then time's completely out the window.'
It isn't the first time Mr. Damon, who worked with the British designer Tom Dixon before establishing his own office in 2001, has taken on the L.E.D. clock. He previously developed quirky timepieces for the home accessories companies Umbra and Habitat. The clock will be available next week for $85 at Moss, 146 Greene Street (Houston St.), (866) 888-6677, www.mossonline.com; www.areaware.com.
TIM McKEOUGH  CURRENTS: CLOCKS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Garden Q.&A.
Cut Lilacs That Last  Q.  I would like to cut some lilac branches for display inside the house, but I haven't had good luck getting them to last more than a day or two. I always smash the stems, but it doesn't seem to help. How can I have long-lasting lilac bouquets?  A.  Long lasting and lilacs don't go together, no matter what you do, but here's how to have them look good for a week or so.
Start by getting up early -- lilacs cut before the day warms last longest. Select trusses that are about half open, and use a very sharp pruner to cut just above a leaf node. Since next year's flowers will form on this year's terminal branches, try to leave as many of those as possible.
Cutting the highest flowers first will encourage a nice full shrub with lots of bloom down where you can enjoy it. Use a ladder if necessary.
Once back on terra firma, remove lower leaves from the stems. Fill a vase with warm water, and add commercial flower preservative. Hold stems under warm water, and recut at a 45-degree angle.
If the stems are thick and woody, slit the bases a couple of times. The smashing we grew up learning to do -- I can see my mother, hammer in hand -- is no longer recommended; badly crushed cells can't take up water.
Display the lilacs in a cool place, out of direct sun and away from the fruit bowl (the ethylene gas given off by apples, bananas, tomatoes and other fruits hastens the decay of flowers). If you have room in the refrigerator, store the bouquet in it each night when you go to bed.
Don't forget to keep an eye on the water level -- lilacs drink a lot -- and to change the water every other day, so decay bacteria won't build up.
Address questions to Garden Q.& A., The New York Times, 229 West 43d Street, New York 10036, or by E-mail to gardening@nytimes .com. Those of general interest will be published. Unpublished questions cannot be answered individually.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Not Your Plain Old Everyday Toaster
LEAD: SOMEDAY, toasters may be transparent, flexible or portable, judging from Black & Decker's 'Toast to the Future' contest, which was co-sponsored by the Kansas City chapter of the Industrial Designers Society of America. The winners were awarded prizes, ranging from $5,000 to $10,000, in Chicago on Jan.
SOMEDAY, toasters may be transparent, flexible or portable, judging from Black & Decker's 'Toast to the Future' contest, which was co-sponsored by the Kansas City chapter of the Industrial Designers Society of America. The winners were awarded prizes, ranging from $5,000 to $10,000, in Chicago on Jan. 14.
The first-prize winner, John Cupit, a 25-year-old senior at the Cleveland Institute of Art, designed a transparent toaster that stands vertically for toasting and horizontally for melting cheese.
Christopher Conley won second prize for his flexible 'toasting napkin' made of heat-conducting plastic. It is meant to be wrapped around a piece of bread and inserted into a stand that does the actual toasting. 'People used to wrap bread in a towel and put it into a coal-burning stove,' said Mr. Conley, 24, a second-year graduate student at the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. The napkin is powered by a thin gel-pack battery, the stand by regular household current.
Third prize went to Nicholas Dearden, an industrial designer who lives in Middlesbrough, England, for his collapsible portable toaster, powered by butane gas.
'Of all the designs, this one is produceable within a year,' said James Holcomb, the director of marketing for kitchen products at Black & Decker in Towson, Md. Not that he expects any of the winning designs to be produced. 'The intent of the contest was not to get a product manufactured but to stimulate interest and thinking in industrial design,' he said.
CURRENTS",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Nothing but the Best For a New Granola
Granola, the signature food of the 1960's, is finding new life in the 90's. And Debra Stark, the owner of the Natural Gourmet, a health-food store in Concord, Mass., is among those leading the change.
Unable to find a granola to suit her taste, Ms. Stark decided to make her own seven years ago. She ordered the finest organic ingredients she could find: oats, rye, wheat, barley, chocolate, dried fruits, several kinds of nuts -- including California almonds, her favorite -- and a special blend of Vermont maple syrup.
She began selling her creation in bulk and to local natural-food shops. The ingredients made the price steep: $4.99 a pound in bulk, $6.99 a pound in retail packages -- $1 more than other specialty organic granolas. 'I believe there are people out there willing to pay for something that tastes scrumptious,' she said.
Her latest receipts seem to indicate she was right. Ms. Stark, along with her sister-in-law, Mary Stark, created Stark Sisters Granola, whose products are now shipped around the world. The granola comes in five flavors: maple-almond, maple-chocolate-peanut, maple-raspberry-blueberry, maple-chocolate-berry and nutty-maple-molasses. In January 1995, the company shipped 500 pounds of granola; this January, it shipped 15,000 pounds.
Spins, a San Francisco-based marketing-information company, said that retail sales of cold cereals like granolas and mueslis sold in natural-foods stores will exceed $100 million in 1997, up 12 percent from 1996. Stark Sisters expects to have sales of more than $1 million this year, up from $500,000 last year.
The granola is available at the Natural Gourmet, 98 Commonwealth Avenue, Concord, Mass. 01742. Two-  or three-pound gift packs, for $13.95 or $19.95, plus shipping and handling, can be ordered from (800) 542-2898, or by fax from (508) 371-2930.
GLENN RIFKIN
At the Nation's Table: Concord, Mass.",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Currents;   Sheets as Decor (Don't Climb the Wall)
LEAD: DECORATING with sheets seems easy. Doing it is another story. 'For years we've seen rooms transformed with sheets in lots of decorating magazines, but we had no idea how to actually do it,' said Margaux King, a producer at ONTO, a video production company. She, a colleague, Erika Lindberg, and Kay Jones, an interior designer, created 'Weekend Bedroom Makeover With
DECORATING with sheets seems easy. Doing it is another story. 'For years we've seen rooms transformed with sheets in lots of decorating magazines, but we had no idea how to actually do it,' said Margaux King, a producer at ONTO, a video production company. She, a colleague, Erika Lindberg, and Kay Jones, an interior designer, created 'Weekend Bedroom Makeover With Sheets,' a 5-minute video on how to get those swags right.
The tape is $19.95 from ONTO, 49 West 46th Street, New York, N.Y. 10036; or call 1-800-421-ONTO. It is also for sale at Eldridge Textile Company, 277 Grand Street, New York, N.Y. 10002.
Correction:  July 20, 1990, Friday, Late Edition - Final
A report in the Currents column of The Home Section yesterday about a decorating videotape, 'Weekend Bedroom Makeover With Sheets,' misstated the running time. It is 45 minutes, not 5.  Section A; Page 3, Column 2; Metropolitan Desk",0
Top/Features/Home and Garden,"Prouvé, Everywhere
Jean Prouvé, the French industrial engineer, architect and designer who died in 1984, is, like Oscar Niemeyer, at the height of fashion today. Among the activities to honor the 100th anniversary of Mr. Prouvé's birth this year is a retrospective at the Pavillon de l'Arsenal, 21 Boulevard Morland, near the Bastille. It opens May 11 and runs to the end of August; the focus is on his architectural work, like the 1951 prototype for a house at a Paris salon, top. Exhibitions in Nancy, Mr. Prouvé's hometown, will open in July, and a show of his furniture will be on view starting July 7 at the gallery Jousse Entreprise. The 1954 Antony chair (above) was shown at a recent Prouvé exhibition in Hyères. And Vitra has announced that it will make licensed reproductions of Mr. Prouvé's furniture this fall, including the Standard, Antony and Cité chairs and a number of tables.
CURRENTS: PARIS -- DESIGN",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, an article and headline yesterday about a Federal judge's decision in the Oklahoma City bombing case misstated the scope of the ruling. Judge Richard P. Matsch ruled that statements made to Federal agents by one defendant, Terry L. Nichols, cannot be used as evidence against his co-defendant, Timothy J. McVeigh. But the judge denied a defense motion to bar the statements altogether, saying the prosecution may try to use Mr. Nichols's statements against himself.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
On Thursday, June 12, 2003, The Times published an Editors' Note stating that ten additional articles by Jayson Blair, who resigned on May 1 as a reporter, were found to include misrepresentations or possible borrowed passages. An accounting of those articles was published online at nytimes.com/corrections.html. This article was among those described. The description:
'Silicon Valley Investors Cool to Silicon Alley'
In this article about the struggles of Internet entrepreneurs in obtaining funds,Mr. Blair quoted Benjamin I. Goldhagen, founder and former chief executive of Redtop, as saying, 'The way races work, is that sometime along the way it's going to be painful. But you just have to say that it's O.K., it's painful, but you got to keep going to finish the race.' But this is nearly impossible.' Mr. Goldhagen said that he did not say 'But this is nearly impossible.'",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about the renovation of the Lyric and Apollo theaters on West 42d Street misspelled the surname of an architectural craftsman on the project in some editions. He is Jean-Francois Furieri, not Furier.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article in The Living Section on Wednesday about mail-order food for the holidays misstated the quantity of Benne Bits offered for $17.50, including shipping, by the Byrd Cookie Company. It is two seven-ounce tins, not three pounds.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article last Friday about Raymond Chretien, the principal United Nations negotiator in Central Africa, included an outdated reference to one requirement for Rhodes scholarships. In the 1960's, when Mr. Chretien turned down the prize, Rhodes scholars were required to be unmarried, but the restriction was dropped in 1995.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article yesterday about Ukraine's relationship with Russia and NATO misspelled the surname of the Russian Ambassador to Ukraine. He is Yuri Dubinin, not Dobrinin.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article yesterday about the Florida couple who said they taped a cellular transmission of a conversation involving Speaker Newt Gingrich referred incorrectly to Representative Karen L. Thurman of Florida, to whom the couple first took the tape. Ms. Thurman's office said she did not listen to the tape.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A brief report in the Company News column of Business Day yesterday about a deal between Patriot American Hospitality Inc. and the Doubletree Corporation misstated its terms. Patriot will spend as much as $200 million to buy hotels in the next two years, and Doubletree will manage them and take a 10 percent stake in each. Doubletree is not selling hotels to Patriot.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on Wednesday about American threats to mount a new military strike against Iraq misstated the scope of a restricted zone in southern Iraq in which Iraqi ground troops are prohibited from massing. That zone extends only up to the 32d parallel, and was not expanded northward to the 33d parallel last week along with the so-called no-flight zone, from which Iraqi military planes are barred.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A front-page article last Wednesday about Dr. Stanislaw R. Burzynski, who claims to have discovered a cure for cancer and other diseases, misstated a contention made in a Federal indictment charging him with introducing an unapproved drug into interstate commerce and other counts. The indictment said the gross income of Dr. Burzynski and an institute he runs was $40 million from  1988 to 1994; it did not say the amount was his gross income alone.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
The Movie Clock in Weekend yesterday misidentified the film scheduled this weekend for screen No. 1 at the Sony Lincoln Square Theater, Broadway and 68th Street, in Manhattan. At the times listed, the film will be ""Twister,"" not ""Mission Impossible.""",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A front-page chart yesterday about evidence of an explosive device on T.W.A. Flight 800 gave an incorrect date in some copies for the preliminary test on a wing fragment. It was in July, not August.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An obituary yesterday of Robert Bourassa, a former Premier of Quebec, misstated one of the provisions of a 1974 law he helped push through the Quebec legislature. The law, which made French the province's official language, did not ban the use of English on commercial signs; that ban was imposed in 1977, after Mr. Bourassa had been turned out of office by the separatist Parti Quebecois.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on Friday about the families of the crash victims from Trans World Airlines Flight 800 misstated the occupation of one victim, Judy Penzer. She was a muralist, not a neurologist.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A picture caption on Nov. 12 with a television review of 'Top Gun Over Moscow,' a 'Nova' program about tourist rentals of Russian jet fighters, included an incorrect identification provided by the series for the pilot shown. He was John Karasawa, an electronics specialist, not Jeff Ethell, an aviation writer.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A brief report in the special Outlook '97 section of Business Day yesterday about the difficulties faced by the tobacco industry last year referred incorrectly to a Florida man who won a $750,000 verdict against a cigarette company. He had been stricken with cancer five years before and had not died before the trial.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A chart on Feb. 8 with the Personal Health column, about nuts, misstated the allergenic risk of nut oils. Most nut oil refined in the United States is free of protein, the allergen in nuts, and therefore does not cause problems for people with nut allergies. But oil extracted by certain methods, like the cold-pressed process, may still contain protein and can indeed pose a risk. Information is available from the Food Allergy Network at www.foodallergy.org or  (703) 691-3179.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An obituary of the theater critic Walter Kerr on Thursday misidentified the first show he directed, early in his career. It was 'Touch and Go' in 1949, not the 1954 'King of Hearts.'",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article in Business Day yesterday about the merger of Chase Manhattan and Chemical Bank omitted the full name and affiliation of a company official who was quoted commenting on money order fees. He is John J. Stack, managing director of direct financial services at Chase Manhattan.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A caption on Saturday with the About New York column, about a former addict who has abandoned crack and assumed custody of his baby daughter, described the picture incompletely. It was taken in May 1991, when the child was just over 1 year old. She is now a healthy 3-year-old.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A listing on page 22 of the Travel section today, with a Frugal Traveler column about China, includes an outdated address for the China National Tourist Office. It is now at 350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 6413, New York, N.Y. 10118.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on Wednesday about Ross Perot's choice of Pat Choate as his Vice-Presidential running mate referred imprecisely to Mr. Perot's relationship with Electronic Data Systems. He sold the company in 1984 and has had no role in it since 1986.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A picture caption on Saturday about the Stand for Children Rally in Washington misidentified the participant standing next to Representative Cynthia A. McKinney. She was Joan King, a member of the Women's Action for New Directions, a nonprofit group seeking reductions in military spending, not Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A picture caption in the Evening Hours column in the Styles pages last Sunday with a report about the National Book Foundation's awards dinner misstated the surname of the husband of the fiction winner, Andrea Barrett. He is Barry M. Goldstein, not Barrett.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A map in Science Times yesterday with an article about archeologists' excavation of the Philistine city of Ekron misidentified the body of water northeast of Arabia. It is the Persian Gulf, not the Caspian Sea. The map also understated the extent of the Neo-Assyrian empire of the seventh century B.C. It included Egypt and Cyprus.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on Aug. 29 about Yasir Arafat's call for a general strike to protest Israeli policies misstated the amount that the Canadian Government had donated to a Palestinian day-care center in Jerusalem that the Israelis demolished. It was about $22,000, not $30 million.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A sports article and picture caption yesterday about the men's all-round gymnastics competition at the Olympics misstated the margin of victory for Li Xiaoshuang of China over Aleksei Nemov of Russia. It was 49-thousandths of a point, not 49-hundredths.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
Automobile travel directions in Weekend on Friday with an article in about Newport, R.I., misidentified a bridge. From Manhattan, take I-95 North to the exit for Route 138 East, near Wyoming, R.I., then follow the signs to the Jamestown and Newport Bridges (not to the Newport/St. James Bridge).",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An obituary yesterday about John Binnington, who developed the research library at Brookhaven National Laboratory, omitted a survivor. She is his widow, Julia Binnington of Brookhaven, L.I.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A picture caption on Aug. 4 with an article about nightclubs in New York City misstated the circumstances of a group of motorcyclists outside Irving Plaza, a Manhattan club. The motorcyclists were not observed leaving the club; according to one of Irving Plaza's owners, Andrew Rasiej, they had not been in the club.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A picture in some copies on Saturday with an obituary of the painter Leon Polk Smith was published in error. It showed Leon Smith, an abstract sculptor.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"3 Children Die In House Fire in Brooklyn
Three small children were killed yesterday in an electrical fire that swept through a row house in Brooklyn. Consolidated Edison Company officials said that electricity was being illegally siphoned through a tangle of extension cords from a power box under the sidewalk.
It was the second time in a year that such an illegal hookup had been discovered at the one-family house.
I knew it was going to happen; I told them mostly every day, 'You should get that fixed,' "" said a longtime friend of the family, Carol Annunziata, as she pressed against a police tape 100 yards from the smoke-blackened front of 12 Downing Street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section.
Ms. Annunziata, 31 years old, said all three floors of the red-brick building were receiving electricity through an octopus-like jumble of extension cords, all connected and plugged into a single socket in the front room on the first floor. On the second floor, she said, a hot plate had been sitting atop a space heater with frayed wires.
Consolidated Edison officials confirmed they had found a wire leading from the basement to the utility's power service box under the sidewalk. In April 1989, after the family failed to pay several bills, the utility cut off power to the building. 4th Child in Critical Condition
Fire Department officials said only that the cause of the fire was electrical.
A department spokesman, Tom Kelly, said the one-alarm fire was reported at 12:19 P.M.
Two children -- Sarina Green, 3 months old, and Jonathan Green, 2 years -- were pronounced dead at the scene. A 3-year-old boy, Charles Green, died later at Woodhull Medical Center. A 2-year-old girl, Danielle Anderson, was in critical condition with injuries from burns and smoke inhalation. Last night she was taken to the North American Hyperbaric Center on City Island in the Bronx, which treats smoke-inhalation victims in a pressurized chamber that forces oxygen into their blood and carbon monox ide out.
At Woodhull, in critical condition last night with burns and smoke inhalation, was their grandmother, Rosetta Anderson. Luwana Green, 29, the dead children's mother, was treated and released.
The fire started in the front room on the first floor, Mr. Kelly said. ""Very heavy smoke"" was coming from the first- and second-story windows when the first ladder truck arrived,"" he continued. ""One of the neighbors was screaming, 'There's children in there, there's children in there.' ""
Ladders were extended to the second floor, Mr. Kelly said, where one woman was found in the front room. After handing that woman out, firefighters went back inside and found two children in a rear bedroom. Meanwhile, firefighters on the first floor pushed through heavy flames to pull out another woman and two more children.
Firefighter Richard Radziewicz of Ladder Company 102 managed to save Danielle Anderson from the third floor. ""I raised our aerial ladder to the third floor, the floor above the fire,"" he said. ""I broke the window and climbed in. I was crawling around the floor when I came across Danielle.
""There was heavy smoke and heat. I could see, maybe, a couple of feet. I picked the child up off the floor and exited down the stairs, giving her mouth-to-mouth.""
Moments after he left the building, said his commander, Lieut. Lawrence Quinn, the stairs burst into flames.
""If she does make it,"" Mr. Radziewicz said, ""it'll feel good. Maybe 30 seconds later would have been too late."" 'Fire Met Us at the Door'
Firefighter Mike Omerza, also of Ladder 102, will not have the same satisfaction. He removed Charles Green.
""We went up the stoop,"" Firefighter Omerza said. ""The fire met us at the door. The guys with the hose knocked the flames down on the stairwell. We went up to the third floor and I found the kid. Everything in the room was melted. The paint was peeling off the room.
""I went around a sofa bed and I saw his feet sticking out from the bottom. I took him down. He had breathed in some very hot gas and air."" Charles died later at Woodhull.
Martin Gitten, a spokesman for Con Ed, said workers at the house yesterday found that a wire had been run from the basement to a power box under the sidewalk. It clearly was an unauthorized hookup, Mr. Gitten said.
The company had cut off electricity to the building on April 3, 1989, after the customer of record, Luwana Green, failed to pay several bills. Mr. Gitten said Ms. Green had not answered warnings that power would be shut off or to offers to work out a payment plan.
On a number of occasions, Con Ed employees had tried to check the meter in the building and been refused entry.
The building's use of electricity continued, he said, and on July 6, Con Ed workers found an illegal hookup and shut power off again.
Correction:  March 1, 1991, Friday
Because of an editing error, an article on Feb. 9 about a fire in Brooklyn that killed three small children misstated the age of one victim, Jonathan Green. He was 2 years old, not 2 months.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on Nov. 24 about a collection of Jewish texts in Lithuania misidentified the source of the title of Elijah ben Solomon Zalmen, the scholar known as the Gaon of Vilna. The term 'Gaon' was a title of respect, later associated with the street on which he lived. He was not named for the street.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A chart in Business Day on Thursday, listing the Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans that would be the largest if all announced mergers were completed, misidentified the No. 1 plan in some editions. It would be the merger of Pennsylvania Blue Shield and Blue Cross of Western Pennsylvania.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about charges filed in the  death of a police officer in the Bronx referred incorrectly in some copies to an event that led up to his death. According to the police, the man charged with manslaughter in the case, Anthony Richard Rivers, threw a mirror at his girlfriend, Gloria Virgo, in a domestic dispute. She was not accused of having thrown one at him.
The article also misspelled the surname of the police officer. He was Vincent Guidice, not Giudice.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on Friday about the crash of T.W.A. Flight 800 referred incorrectly to comments by Maj. Frederick Meyer of the Air National Guard, who witnessed it. While he described a streak of light that preceded two explosions  and a fireball, he said he saw no indication of a missile.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A chart in Business Day yesterday showing minute-by-minute changes in the Dow Jones industrial average reflected outdated figures in some editions. The version showing a close of 6,081.80 was for Wednesday's trading. Thursday's close was 5,992.48.
Two other market charts, showing daily changes in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index and daily volume on the New York Stock Exchange since Aug. 3, also reflected outdated figures. The versions showing the S.& P. 500 closing at 707.27 and N.Y.S.E. volume at 440 million shares were for Wednesday's trading. On Thursday, the S.& P. 500 closed at 702.29 and N.Y.S.E. volume was 415 million shares.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on page 39 of the Arts and Leisure section today about the ways exhibitions change as they travel from one museum to another omits part of the surname of the woman in charge of exhibitions at the Bard Graduate Center in New York. She is Nina Stritzler-Levine, not Levine.
The article also misidentifies the curator of 'A. W. N. Pugin: Master of Gothic Revival,' an exhibition at the center last year. The curator was Paul Atterbury, not Ms. Stritzler-Levine.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on Wednesday about a fire at One Lincoln Plaza, a high-rise apartment building near Lincoln Center, included an erroneous reference to the actress Linda Lavin. She does not live in the building.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A chart yesterday with an article about campaign spending in last year's House and Senate elections referred incorrectly in some copies to the amount raised from political action committees by Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of New Jersey, in his campaign for the Senate. It was $955,070, not $1,179,138. The chart also misstated state and party affiliations for some candidates, and omitted figures for three candidates from New York State. A corrected version appears today on page 10.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on Thursday about a NATO proposal for keeping troops in Bosnia referred incorrectly to a dispute between the United States and other NATO members over the size and mission of the proposed force. Gen. George Joulwan, the NATO commander, has been involved in the dispute and has argued that NATO needs to keep a sizable force in Bosnia next year. But contrary to the accounts of two senior NATO officials, General Joulwan did not attend a meeting at NATO headquarters in Brussels on Tuesday at which the issue was debated.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Correction
An article yesterday about the air collision this week in India referred incorrectly to the hometown of two women who had been waiting in New Delhi to board one of the two planes involved. The city, Bishkek, is in Kyrgyzstan, not Kazakstan.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An obituary on Sept. 4 about Erskine Childers, a longtime United Nations official who died on Aug. 25, omitted three survivors. In addition to his wife and son, he is survived by two daughters from his first marriage, Katrina Ann Selstad of Olympia, Wash., and Nicole Louise French of Concord, Calif., and a grandson, Joel Alexander French. His first wife was Sonia M. Childers. (This correction was delayed by attempts to reach survivors for verification.)",0
Top/News/Corrections,"New U.S.-Japan Chip Pact Approved
United States and Japanese negotiators here initialed a new agreement today on American access to the Japanese market for semiconductor chips, provoking criticism in Congress.
The agreement settled the last big single-industry dispute pending between the countries. A different team of negotiators reached an agreement on Saturday in Tokyo to expand American access to the Japanese public construction market.
The semiconductor agreement must be approved by the Japanese Cabinet and possibly by the United States Cabinet, said S. Linn Williams, the deputy United States trade representative. Carla A. Hills, the chief trade representative, and the Japanese Ambassador, Ryohei Murata, are tentatively scheduled to sign the accord in Washington next Tuesday. Similar Pact in 1986
Under the new agreement, which is similar to one reached in 1986 that was to expire on July 31, the target for the share of all foreign companies in the Japanese market was kept at 20 percent. Although this target has not yet been met, the new agreement contained no timetable for reaching this level.
With the agreement, the United States will also suspend some import duties imposed on some Japanese products by the Reagan Administration in 1987 when the foreign, mostly American, share of the Japanese chip market failed to reach 20 percent despite the 1986 agreement.
Senator Max S. Baucus, Democrat of Montana, the chairman of the International Trade subcommittee, praised the agreement but criticized the suspension of the sanctions. ""Japan did not live up to its commitments under the 1986 agreement,"" he said in a statement. ""The commitments have still not been met.""
But Mr. Williams said lifting the sanctions was appropriate because the Japanese Government had responded to United States concerns by putting pressure on industry in the last two years to buy more American semiconductors.
Representative Richard A. Gephardt, Democrat of Missouri, the House majority leader, said in a statement, ""The Administration was more interested in reaching any agreement than one that produced real results."" He added later, ""I don't see why we should reward Japan for failing to live up to an agreement they've already signed.""
Mr. Williams and Naomichi Suzuki, the vice minister for international trade at Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry, struck the final agreement at a 6:30 P.M. meeting Monday, a participant in the talks said. Both men initialed the agreement this morning after their staffs prepared the final documents and after the Japanese negotiators had obtained Tokyo's approval.
The new agreement is subject to review after three years, and will automatically stay in effect for two more years unless both countries agree to cancel it, Mr. Williams said at a news conference.
Both countries also agreed that their companies would keep detailed records of the price and volume of their shipments to each other and to third countries. This would make it possible to conduct much faster investigations into any charges that semiconductors were being sold in foreign markets for less than their cost of production, said Eric I. Garfinkel, the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for import administration.
Correction:  June 8, 1991, Saturday
Articles in Business Day on Tuesday and Wednesday about an agreement between the United States and Japan to extend regulations covering trade in computer chips referred incorrectly to a provision. Only Japanese companies will be required to keep detailed records of prices and volumes of semiconductors shipped; United States companies are not subject to the requirement.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A headline on Thursday about a study of whether nurses in intensive care units ever deliberately hasten a patient's death referred incorrectly to the group surveyed. The survey comprised a national sample of 850 nurses who practiced exclusively in adult critical care units, not nurses generally.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on Wednesday about the Government's approval of the first urine test to detect H.I.V., the AIDS virus, misspelled the name of the company that will market the test. It is Seradyn (not Seradun) Inc.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on July 7 about security lapses at American bases in Saudi Arabia  misstated the role of the Central Intelligence Agency in assessing the threat of terrorism there. The agency did not reach an official conclusion that Saudi terrorists could not build a bomb larger than 200 pounds.
The article was based on information provided by senior Air Force officials  and other Administration officials. The C.I.A., in a letter to The Times, said that this was not accurate, and that it had produced ""no assessment, analysis or reporting"" including such a judgment.
Questioned again, officials cited in the original report said that while they had consulted the C.I.A. on the potential threat posed by Saudi militants, they  had never asked the C.I.A. for a specific analysis of the size or type of bomb terrorists might use in attacking American servicemen in Saudi Arabia.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A chart on Wednesday with an article about the financial problems of rock clubs in New York City misstated the the total cost of promotion in some editions for a typical capacity concert at one club, Irving Plaza, in Manhattan. Other figures in the chart, based on the incorrect figure, were also in error.
The promoter's fee for the concert was $1,983 (not $1,317). Thus the club's total expenses for the concert were $15,203 (not $14,537), and the club showed a loss of $203 (not a profit of $92.60). Since no revenue remained (rather than $463), the band shared in no profit; it did not make $370.40.
In addition, the per-ticket share of the promoter's fee was $1.98 (not $1.32), and the per-ticket share of the total expenses was $15.20 (not $14.54).",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
On Thursday, June 12, 2003, The Times published an Editors' Note stating that ten additional articles by Jayson Blair, who resigned on May 1 as a reporter, were found to include misrepresentations or possible borrowed passages. An accounting of those articles was published online at nytimes.com/corrections.html. This article was among those described. The description:
'The Dreams of Webzines Fizzle Out; Online Magazines Scramble for Readers and Ads'
In this article about the declining fortunes of online magazines, Mr. Blair quoted Michael Hirschorn, then editor in chief of Inside.com, a Web site, since closed, for news media and entertainment industry professionals. Mr. Hirschorn said in a recent interview that although the quotations were accurate, they came from an interview conducted about five months earlier for an article with a different premise: on Internet companies that were working. That article never appeared. When approached by Mr. Blair in early March for another article, Mr. Hirschorn said, he declined to be interviewed, because by that point his company, like many other new-media firms, was struggling.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, a front-page article yesterday about military activities in Iraq misstated the origin of the ban on flights over a Kurdish-populated area of northern Iraq. It was imposed by the United States, Britain and France, claiming authority under a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the repression of Kurds and others in Iraq. The United Nations did not create the zone and disputes the assertion that the Security Council resolution authorizes one.
The headline of the article misattributed a report that Iraqi secret agents had been deployed in the northern zone. The principal source was Glyn Davies, a State Department spokesman, not John M. Deutch, the Director of Central Intelligence.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A Critic's Notebook article in Weekend on Friday about the MTV Video Music Awards misidentified the member of the rock group Van Halen who is to have a hip replacement. He is Eddie Van Halen, not David Lee Roth.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, a front-page article on Nov. 14 about studies of the health of veterans of the Persian Gulf war misstated the given name of a member of a White House panel that studied the issue. She is Dr. Andrea Kidd Taylor, not Andrew, an occupational health consultant with the United Automobile Workers.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A picture caption yesterday about a Congressional delegation's visit to an Army training center in Aberdeen, Md., referred incorrectly to two members of the delegation, Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York, and Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland. Both are currently members of the House, not representatives-elect.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A front-page article on Tuesday about an agreement by Republican Congressional leaders to drop a disputed provision of a new immigration bill misidentified the place where Bob Dole's campaign manager, Scott Reed, told two Republican lawmakers that Mr. Dole did not want Congress to pass an immigration bill that President Clinton could claim as his own. (An article on Sept. 13 also included the error.) The meeting, on Sept. 12, took place at the Dole campaign headquarters near Capitol Hill; it was not a Congressional office.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article in the Week in Review on Sunday about presidential pets misstated the Humane Society telephone numbers for a benefit poll on whether voters prefer a cat or a dog in the White House. The numbers are (900) 680-DOGS and (900) 680-CATS. Each call costs 75 cents, with profit of 25 cents for the society.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, a front-page article yesterday about a company's plan to capitalize on the high demand for Internet addresses omitted part of the name of the federally financed research center where World Wide Web browser software was developed. It was the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
Picture captions in Science Times on Tuesday with an article about new ways of using radar to measure changes in the earth's surface referred incorrectly to two images of Mount Etna and an image of the Landers Fault in California. The top image of Mount Etna showed the actual deformation of the volcano obtained after processing of radar data, not the raw data. The bottom image was a computer simulation of the deformation made from a mathematical model; it did not come from the radar. Similarly, the image of the Landers Fault was a computer simulation of the fault's deformation.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A picture caption yesterday about the Veterans Day Parade in Manhattan referred incorrectly in some editions to the high school whose R.O.T.C. members were shown. It was Francis Lewis, a city high school in Flushing, Queens, not St. Francis High School.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Correction; Revisiting a Poison Control Database on Supplement Risks
A national poison control database suggests that some diet supplements may pose risks to consumers, raising questions about a 1994 federal law stating that 'safety problems with the supplements are relatively rare.' But an essay in Science Times on Jan. 16 about those risks overstated the number of adverse reactions to supplements reported in the database.
The essay said the database, issued by the American Association of Poison Control Centers, reported 125,595 incidents of poisonings in 2005 related to vitamins, minerals, essential oils, herbs and other supplements, and a total of 1.6 million such incidents from 1983 to 2005. In fact, the figures refer to reports of exposures to those substances.
The poison control association defines 'exposures' as calls to poison centers from the public or health professionals reporting 'actual or potential exposure to a substance (e.g., an ingestion, inhalation or topical exposure).' In an e-mail message, Dr. Susan Smolinske, a spokeswoman for the association, said that 'some exposures to diet supplements result in unknown or benign outcomes, rather than adverse outcomes.' She cited an August 2005 report in the journal Clinical Toxicology suggesting that about 10 percent of exposures result in 'moderate to major' medical outcomes.
The database has no category for poisoning incidents, so that number is not known. While it does have a column headed 'adverse reactions,' that category refers only to reports of reactions 'occurring with normal, prescribed, labeled or recommended use of the product,' leaving out overdoses and cases where the dose was unknown.
The number given for 'adverse reactions' is lower than the number of people treated in health care facilities after exposure to a substance. It is also generally lower than the number of medical outcomes ranging from minor to fatal that were associated with the substance.
The 2005 figures in the essay should have been reported as follows:
St. John's wort: 203 exposures, 25 adverse reactions, 79 visits to health care facilities, 36 medical outcomes ranging from minor to fatal.
Homeopathic products: 7,049 exposures, 178 adverse reactions, 564 health care visits, 267 medical outcomes.
Glucosamine: 813 exposures, 65 adverse reactions, 108 health care visits, 62 medical outcomes.
Echinacea: 483 exposures, 33 adverse reactions, 55 health care visits, 32 medical outcomes.
Melatonin: 2,001 exposures, 53 adverse reactions, 535 health care visits, 320 medical outcomes.
Vitamins: 62,446 exposures (including 48,604 in children under 6), 1,938 adverse reactions (these are not broken down by age), 6,322 health care visits, 3,800 medical outcomes.
All diet supplements: 125,595 exposures, 5,334 adverse reactions, 17,843 health care visits, 12,314 medical outcomes.
Correction:  February 6, 2007, Tuesday  An essay in Science Times on Jan. 16 about risks associated with diet supplements referred incorrectly to statistics taken from annual reports by the American Association of Poison Control Centers. The statistics were for exposures to various substances, not adverse reactions to those substances. A corrective article appears today on Page F6.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Correction
A chart on Wednesday showing the rise in the Dow Jones industrial average, with an article about holiday parties on Wall Street this year, misstated the starting date of the period covered by the chart. It showed Dow closes from Dec. 30, 1994, through Tuesday, not from 1995.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An obituary on July 21 about Merrill C. Gilfillan, an Ohio conservationist and author, attributed five books to him erroneously. He wrote ""Moods of the Ohio Moon: An Outdoorsman's Almanac,"" but his son, Merrill D. Gilfillan, wrote ""Magpie Rising: Sketches from the Great Plains,"" ""Sworn Before Cranes"" and three volumes of poetry, ""To Creature,"" ""Light Years: Early Selected Works"" and ""River Through Rivertown.""",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A listing in the Calendar column of The Home Section on Thursday about a crafts fair in Woodstock, N.Y., misstated the dates. It is next Friday through Sunday, not this weekend.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on Saturday about the popularity of abalone on the Northern California coast misspelled the surname of a landscape architect who lives in the Sea Ranch, near Stewarts Point. He is Lawrence Halprin, not Halpern.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article in The Home Section on Thursday about Anne d'Harnoncourt, the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, referred incorrectly to the uniqueness of her position. She is the only woman in the United States who heads an art museum with a budget of more than $25 million, not the only woman in America who heads a museum of any kind with a budget of that size.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A film review in Weekend yesterday about 'Brother of Sleep,' based on a novel about a musical prodigy, referred to two characters incorrectly. Elsbeth is not related to the main character, Elias.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article in Science Times on Tuesday about a major mathematical proof achieved by a computer misstated the given name and affiliation of a researcher who worked on the problem before his death. He was Dr. Alfred Tarski, not Albert; he was at the University of California at Berkeley, not at Stanford.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, an article on the Fashion page yesterday about the rise of stores that sell used designer clothes misstated the location of one in Manhattan, Allan & Suzi. It is at 80th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, not Columbus Avenue.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on Wednesday about a White House ceremony marking International Human Rights Day misstated the timing of comments by Hillary Rodham Clinton that indirectly criticized China's human rights record. Mrs. Clinton made the comments at an international women's conference in Beijing last year, not at the White House this week.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article by Bloomberg Business News in Business Day yesterday about trading in the credit markets on Thursday included two municipal bond deals erroneously. The offerings, by the New York City Municipal Water Finance Authority and by the Clark County, Nev., school district, occurred in May, not on Thursday.
The article also misstated the volume of municipal offerings on Thursday. It  was $584 million, not $1.25 billion.
The article also included outdated comments from Paul Hylle, a portfolio manager for the American Express Financial Corporation. He was quoted on the municipal bond market in early May, not on Thursday's trading.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A film review in Weekend on Nov. 12 about 'Kinsey,' a biography of the sex researcher Alfred C. Kinsey, misstated the location of the Stevens Institute of Technology, where his father was a professor. It is in Hoboken, N.J., not in Rochester, N.Y.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A picture caption yesterday about the return of the Zairian President to France misspelled his surname. He is Mobutu Sese Seko, not Mobuto.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article in Business Day yesterday about trading in the currency markets on Thursday referred incorrectly in some editions to a high rate touched by the dollar against the German mark that day. It was 1.4960 marks, not 149.60 marks.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
The Frugal Traveler column on page 6 of the Travel section today, about Dublin, gives an incorrect first name in some copies for the playwright who wrote ""The Field."" He is John B. Keane, not Martin.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
The headline and introduction yesterday with excerpts from the Supreme Court  decision on Congressional districts in Texas and North Carolina misstated the number of districts affected by the ruling in some editions. The boundaries of four districts, not three, were invalidated because the Court said they had been unconstitutionally drawn using racial gerrymandering. A map caption with an article about the ruling repeated the error in some editions.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Correction
An article yesterday about changes in New York's domestic violence laws misstated the court history of a Brooklyn woman, Galina Komar, who was killed last February by a former boyfriend. Prosecutors had repeatedly appeared in court on Ms. Komar's behalf to complain about the boyfriend's threats, but Ms. Komar did not appear herself.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An obituary yesterday about G. David Schine, a central figure in the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, misstated the relationship of two of his sons. Berndt Schine, who died in a plane crash with his father, was the twin of Kevin, not of Mark.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article and a chart in Business Day on Friday about a dispute between the  New York Stock Exchange and the Cincinnati Stock Exchange overstated the frequency with which specialists on the New York exchange, who act as auctioneers, receive commissions. Specialists make commissions on fewer than 10  percent of trades, according to exchange officials.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article by The Associated Press on Thursday about the creation of a commission to oversee trash hauling in New York City misstated the number of zones that would be set up to monitor competition. It is two zones for the city, not for each borough.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on Tuesday about apartment rent increases in New York City mischaracterized a statement by the executive director of the Rent Guidelines Board, Douglas P. Hillstrom, about the findings of the board's staff regarding landlords' costs. While the staff reported that landlord costs had risen 6 percent in the last year, Mr. Hillstrom did not say those findings justified a rent increase; it is up to the board members, not the staff that Mr. Hillstrom heads, to determine what increase is justified.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections Gilbert and Sullivan Players Send an SOS to Gershwin Corrections
LEAD: A picture caption yesterday about the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players' production of George Gershwin's 'Of Thee I Sing' misidentified the actor shown. He was Alan Hill.  LEAD: 'We have not given up on Gilbert and Sullivan,' said Albert Bergeret, the founder, artistic director and principal conductor of the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players. 'But we have nearly come to the end of the Gilbert and Sullivan repertory, and we wanted to find a way to stretch some artistic muscle and possibly develop new audiences.  LEAD: A picture caption yesterday about the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players' production of George Gershwin's 'Of Thee I Sing' misidentified the actor shown. He was Alan Hill.
A picture caption yesterday about the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players' production of George Gershwin's 'Of Thee I Sing' misidentified the actor shown. He was Alan Hill.
'We have not given up on Gilbert and Sullivan,' said Albert Bergeret, the founder, artistic director and principal conductor of the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players. 'But we have nearly come to the end of the Gilbert and Sullivan repertory, and we wanted to find a way to stretch some artistic muscle and possibly develop new audiences.'
Mr. Bergeret is betting that one way to do those things is to take brief excursions beyond the confines of the Savoyard repertory in which the group has specialized since he founded it in 1974. He is also hoping that by appealing to a broader audience, he will be able to pull his company through a financially perilous time, and perhaps begin chipping away at the $100,000 deficit that hangs like the Lord High Executioner's ax over the company's future.
Tonight, the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players are forsaking their namesakes and offering a George Gershwin classic, 'Of Thee I Sing.' The production is to run at Symphony Space through April 15.
The show, a political satire written in 1931, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and a book by George S. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, was the first Broadway musical to win a Pulitzer Prize. It was revised and updated in the 1950's, and there was a television version in the 1970's. Three years ago, Michael Tilson Thomas led a concert performance of the music and some of the dialogue, featuring long-lost original orchestrations that were discovered in a New Jersey warehouse in 1985. But Mr. Bergeret's production will be the first staging of the complete original version of the work since the early 1930's.
'Both Dated and Timeless'
'Although 'Of Thee I Sing' is not an operetta, it is written in an operetta style,' the 41-year-old Mr. Bergeret said the other day at the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation on West 91st Street, where the company maintains a cluttered office. It is 'both dated and timeless, in the way the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas are,' he said. 'The piece is rooted in the 1930's, but there are jokes about the stock market, the Vice President and various South American governments.
'Also, in many of the original reviews, comparisons were made with Gilbert and Sullivan. Of course, the book is written with Kaufman's own particular style, and Ryskind's one-line zingers, and is very different from Gilbert's kind of writing. But it incorporates the same kind of sophistication.'
It was Kristin Garver, the company's stage director, who suggested doing 'Of Thee I Sing,' and after reading the book, Mr. Bergeret and his choreographer, Bill Fabris, agreed that it was well within the company's stylistic grasp.
The piece is about the campaign and administration of President John P. Wintergreen, whose principal qualification is his Presidential-sounding name. His campaign staff decides to augment his appeal by holding a beauty contest to select his First Lady, but by the time the contest is over, Wintergreen has fallen in love with Mary Turner, a secretary who can bake unimpeachable corn muffins. Meanwhile, the winner, Diana Devereaux, turns out to have distant family ties to Napoleon, and France has taken Wintergreen's neglect of her amiss.
Gershwin Galore
Along the way, there are plenty of the Gershwins' songs, several of which are standards. Besides the title song, the score includes 'Who Cares?' 'Love Is Sweeping the Country' and 'Wintergreen for President.' There is even a song that could almost be taken as an escapee from a Gilbert and Sullivan work, 'The Illegitimate Daughter,' which establishes Diana's pedigree as 'an illegitimate daughter of an illegitimate son of an illegitimate nephew of Napoleon.'
'We are going to do it straight, with no updating and no interpolations,' Ms. Garver said. 'One of the things I told everybody to do is to look at the movies of the period, because they're perfect examples of the styles of the time.'
The group is also benefiting from the experience of Al Simon, the rehearsal pianist for the original production. Mr. Simon, who is 82 years old, has attended some of the company's rehearsals, and performed with some of the singers at the Wall-to-Wall Gershwin marathon at Symphony Space last Saturday.
No matter how successful the run is, Mr. Bergeret and Ms. Garver say, the company's financial side will have to be reconsidered if the troupe is to stay in business. When Mr. Bergeret started the company, 16 years ago, his budget was $35; last year's budget was $250,000.
The company has developed a steady group of players - among them, Del-Bouree Bach, Keith Jurosko, Kate Egan and Jayne Lynch, who are the principal players in 'Of Thee I Sing.' Its productions have been consistently admired by reviewers, who have found their direct, unvarnished approach to Gilbert's librettos and Sullivan's music refreshingly bright and authentic.
But Mr. Bergeret's ensemble has reached a dangerous pass in its transition from a shoestring operation to a professional company. Until last year, when the company took a loss on its tour dates, it had been meeting 90 percent of its expenses from box-office receipts.
Still Ambitious
'Our strong point has always been putting on shows and selling tickets to meet our fees,' Mr. Bergeret said. 'But as we get bigger and bigger, we find we are in danger of growing out of business. What we need to do is develop a board of directors that is active in raising money. That's a slow process, but as soon as this show is over, we are going to have to do some crisis fund raising.'
The company's financial problems have not dampened its ambitions. Mr. Bergeret, taking it on faith that the money will be found, is already planning next season, which includes 'The Mikado' and probably 'Iolanthe' around Christmas, and Sullivan's grand opera, 'Ivanhoe,' in the spring.
'We hope people who are not predisposed to Gilbert and Sullivan will hear our Gershwin,' Mr. Bergeret said, 'and will then recognize the company and come to see us do Gilbert and Sullivan when they might not have otherwise.'
A picture caption yesterday about the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Players' production of George Gershwin's 'Of Thee I Sing' misidentified the actor shown. He was Alan Hill.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article in Business Day on Monday, comparing future technology predicted in the 1968 film '2001: A Space Odyssey' with real developments since then, misstated the date of the World's Fair at which AT&T demonstrated picturephones. It was in 1964-65, not 1963-64.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, an article on Wednesday about political advertising misstated the amount that the Dole campaign expects to spend on commercials through the Presidential election. It is $25 million, not $2 million.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An obituary yesterday about Edward J. Gurney, the former Senator from Florida, misstated Edmund S. Muskie's alma mater. Mr. Muskie, who died in March, was a graduate of Bates College, not Colby College, which was Mr. Gurney's alma  mater.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
The Personal Computers column in Science Times yesterday, about options for increasing computer memory, incorrectly described milliseconds (they are thousandths of a second, not millionths) and therefore misstated the difference  in speed between random access memory (RAM) and hard drives. RAM can be more than 100,000 times, not 150 times, as fast.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Correction
Because of a transcription error, a sentence in the Garden Q. & A. column last Sunday, about growing cleomes from seed, omitted a word. The sentence should have read, ""But keep in mind that seeds from hybrid plants may revert to the less showy color of one of the parents.""",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A report on the Evening Hours page on March 22 about a salute to Barbara Walters by the American Museum of the Moving Image in Queens misstated the museum's purpose. It explores the art, history, technique and technology of film, television and video through exhibitions, screenings and collections of memorabilia. It does not preserve old movies and television shows.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
The attribution of the Quotation of the Day yesterday, from Richard Petty, the stock car driver, referred incorrectly in some copies to the state in which he campaigned unsuccessfully for secretary of state. It was North Carolina, not South Carolina.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A picture caption yesterday about a Congressional hearing at which the families of victims of the Valujet crash testified misstated the subject of the  hearing. The panel was looking into the treatment of air crash victims' families by lawyers and airlines; it was not investigating the Federal Aviation Administration.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
An article on Wednesday about European criticism of Turkey's human rights record misidentified a Kurdish separatist group in Turkey. It is the Kurdistan Workers Party. (The Kurdistan Democratic Party is a group in Iraq.)",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about women elected to Congress misstated the net change in the Senate. The election of Mary L. Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat, as well as Susan E. Collins, a Maine Republican, does not change the number of women in the Senate, which will remain at nine.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A front-page article on Thursday about the contests to control the Senate and the House misidentified the college at which one political scientist, Prof. John Pitney, teaches. Professor Pitney, who pointed to the Republicans' slim majorities as a risk factor, teaches at Claremont McKenna College, one of the Claremont Colleges.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A brief report in the Yankees Notebook article yesterday about Chipper Jones, the Atlanta third baseman, misidentified the 1995 National League rookie of the year. He was Hideo Nomo of the Los Angeles Dodgers, not Jones.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, the About Real Estate column yesterday about rising house prices in the Hamptons omitted the first name and affiliation of a local real estate broker. He is Frank Newbold, a partner with Braverman Newbold Brennan Real Estate in East Hampton.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
On Thursday, June 12, 2003, The Times published an Editors' Note stating that ten additional articles by Jayson Blair, who resigned on May 1 as a reporter, were found to include misrepresentations or possible borrowed passages. An accounting of those articles was published online at nytimes.com/corrections.html. This article was among those described. The description:
'Healthy Skepticism and the Marketing of AIDS'
Mr. Blair appears to have borrowed from a series of passages in an article about the same subject written five years earlier by Amanda Bennett and Anita Sharpe in The Wall Street Journal. In one instance, Mr. Blair wrote, 'In 1987, for example, the federal government decided to blitz the American people with a frightening message: anyone could get AIDS. In their article of May 1, 1996, Ms. Bennett and Ms. Sharpe wrote, 'In the summer of 1987, federal health officials made the fateful decision to bombard the public with a terrifying message: Anyone could get AIDS.'",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Joining a School Board to Change ItCorrections
Edith Colon was born and raised in the South Bronx, attended its public schools and now has a daughter in seventh grade at Intermediate School 147. For  years, she said, she has watched her neighborhood schools deteriorate and test scores plummet, and now she is mad.
Ms. Colon, 42, lays the blame at the feet of the elected school board members, many of whom have no children in the public schools. They are motivated, she says, more by political ambition than by concern for what children learn. So this year, Ms. Colon, a homemaker, is making her first run for public office as a challenger in District 8 in the Bronx.
This year, more parents than ever are seeking seats on community school boards, according to various civic and community organizations. Almost since they were formed in 1970 with the decentralization of the school system, the boards have lacked parental representation and served more as stepping stones to higher office, like the City Council or State Assembly. Now, tired of corruption and disillusioned with the priorities of board members, parents like Ms. Colon are making their first forays into politics.
""What purpose does a person have, who has not shed the tears, not felt the pain of watching their child not getting an education, for wanting to serve on the school board?"" Ms. Colon asked the other day.
She is one of 553 candidates who are seeking 288 seats on the 32 nine-member  community school boards in the May 7 election. While no one keeps exact figures  on the number of parents among the candidates, community groups say that a big reason for their participation this year is a shift in issues.
In the last elections, three years ago, controversy over a multicultural curriculum, condom distribution and other ideological battles drew the attention of a number of political organizations. The races culminated in the highest voter turnout in a school board election since 1970 -- although it was only 12.5 percent.
This time, those issues have mostly been supplanted by frustration about failing schools, disillusionment with the taint of malfeasance on some boards and anger over school budget cuts.
""There's been so much publicity about school board corruption, and about the  lack of quality of the New York City schools,"" said Carolyn D. Archer, who is running for a seat in Brooklyn's District 16, where her son is a pupil. ""We keep hearing about people getting jobs in the schools because of who they know, not what they know. People are really tired of it.""
Community organizations ranging from Mothers on the Move, which has been advising Ms. Colon, to the East Brooklyn Congregation, an umbrella group of area organizations, are giving parents tips on campaigning.
Norman S. Fruchter, co-director of New York University's Institute for Education and Social Policy, has been working with 50 to 60 community and church groups in several parts of the city, including the troubled Districts 7 and 9 in the Bronx, to cultivate new leadership.
Many incumbents have ties to political parties, whose organizations help to keep them in office even while schools in their districts deteriorate. Reform of the school boards, Mr. Fruchter said, will come only with the help of community  groups working to educate voters and potential candidates. ""There is no other independent base of organization that can stir up this kind of interest,"" he said.
Newcomers to board contests are facing uphill battles against incumbents with the backing of political party machinery.
""Some of our board members have been in office since decentralization started"" in 1970, said Alberta D. Morgan, a parent running for the District 5 board in Central Harlem, where all nine incumbents are seeking re-election. ""Things have not, education-wise, gotten better. They have gotten worse.""
In some parts of the city, like District 9 in the Bronx, which Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew has taken over because of longstanding corruption, community groups have organized voter registration drives and forums for candidates.
""There are going to be 4,000 more pairs of eyes watching them,"" said Jacques  Hoffmann, associate organizer for the South Bronx Churches, a group that registered 4,000 new voters in the district, equal to the number of people who voted in the last election.
But few people expect this election to bring major change in the way the districts are run. Among the 553 candidates are many incumbents, even in districts known as the most troubled, like Districts 7 and 9 in the South Bronx.
Dr. Crew suspended both districts' boards last month, citing allegations of corruption and poor student performance. According to papers filed last week with the city's Board of Elections, only 10 candidates are running for the 9 board seats in District 9, among them 7 of the suspended board members, including Carmelo Saez Jr., the president. In District 7, 6 of the 13 candidates are incumbents.
The elections come at a time when the possibility for change in the way the schools are run seems more real than it has since the system was decentralized in 1970. That was when the local boards were created to oversee the city's elementary and junior high schools, which now number 848.
With Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani calling for direct control of the schools, and Dr. Crew taking an aggressive stance against failing schools and corrupt school  boards, state legislators have signaled that they are more willing to make changes in school governance.
Robert Berne, dean of the Wagner School of Public Service at N.Y.U., said many parents and other potential candidates have been encouraged by statements Dr. Crew has made indicating that he wants to work with local board members. Paul Chandler, a candidate in District 17, which has also been taken over by the Chancellor's office, said he is worried that his campaign will be for naught if  the Legislature grants Dr. Crew the power to continue suspending boards even after the elections.
Legislative leaders say they have reached agreement on the measure. ""This could set a precedent where the Chancellor begins to eliminate boards altogether,"" Mr. Chandler said.
Like Ms. Colon in the Bronx, Mr. Chandler is a product of the public schools  in his neighborhood. So are his children, and his grandchildren are now students in District 17. Mr. Chandler taught there, and he was part of the movement in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville section of Brooklyn whose efforts led to decentralization. But he is dismayed at what decentralization has wrought.
""I feel like I helped to create this monster,"" said Mr. Chandler, who is now  the director of the Jackie Robinson Center for Physical Culture, a youth organization in Brooklyn. The president of the suspended board, Sylvester Leaks, who critics say lacked the leadership to run an effective board, said recently that he was sure he could win re-election even without the support of parents.
""It shows his arrogance and ignorance,"" Mr. Chandler said.
Correction:  March 25, 1996, Monday
A picture caption on Thursday about the growing number of parents who are seeking seats on community school boards misstated the location of Edith Colon,  who is seeking a seat on the District 8 board in the Bronx. She was fifth from left, not second.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
On Thursday, June 12, 2003, The Times published an Editors' Note stating that ten additional articles by Jayson Blair, who resigned on May 1 as a reporter, were found to include misrepresentations or possible borrowed passages. An accounting of those articles was published online at nytimes.com/corrections.html. This article was among those described. The description:
'Tire Recall Brings Some Panic and a Large Need for Patience'
In this article about consumer reaction to the recall of Firestone tires, Mr. Blair appears to have made incorrect use of reporting he received from a freelance contributor for The Times. The lead anecdote of the article related the experience of Michael Matha, who was ostensibly sitting outside a Firestone tire and service center in Medford, N.J., waiting to get new tires for his gold Ford Explorer. Mr. Blair wrote that Mr. Matha was 'fuming' while outside the center. Both Mr. Matha and Lisa Suhay, the freelancer who interviewed him, said that was an inaccurate characterization. Mr. Matha also denied having said, 'I'm not taking no for an answer.' He also does not recall having said, The car has not moved out of the driveway since the recall was announced.' He says, I still had to drive it.'
Ms. Suhay said she had interviewed Mr. Matha in front of his driveway in Medford, not outside the Firestone tire and service center. Mr. Blair described the Firestone tire and service center as being in Medford. It is in Marlton.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A report in the Daily Briefing column in New Jersey copies on Saturday about the resignation of Frank J. Wilson as State Transportation Commissioner misstated the connection between his new employer, the engineering firm of Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall, and MFS Network Technologies of Moorestown, N.J., which is seeking the contract to install an electronic toll-collection system for New Jersey. Daniel, Mann is not a subsidiary of MFS.
(MFS said in its proposal that it might subcontract some work to Frederick R. Harris, an international engineering company; both Harris and Daniel, Mann are subsidiaries of the Aecomm Technology Corporation. Another company bidding on the contract, citing the connection between Harris and Daniel, Mann, had accused Mr. Wilson of a conflict of interest.)
The report also referred incorrectly to the status of the contract. While five transportation authorities in the state have recommended that MFS get the work, the contract has not yet been awarded.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A front-page article yesterday about a Government report tabulating the rate of layoffs in the mid-1990's referred incorrectly in some editions to the percentage change between two periods -- 1991-93 and 1993-95. The decline in job elimination was 7 percent, not 16.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
A picture caption on June 11 with an article about changes in the Newark school system after a state takeover misidentified the school shown. It was Barringer High School, not Barringer Preparatory School.",0
Top/News/Corrections,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, an article about Bosnia yesterday misstated the  given name of the President of neighboring Serbia. He is Slobodan Milosevic, not Radovan.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Seeing Norway's Fjords
Q.  I would like information on means of travel through Norway's fjords other than big luxury cruise ships. -- John Zimmerman, Longboat Key, Fla. A.  Norwegian coastal steamers known as mail boats are worth considering as a cruise alternative. The 11 steamers travel along the west coast of Norway, sailing from Bergen to Kirkenes at the Norway-Russia border and back to Bergen,  crossing fjords and calling at ports along the way.
The service, which has been operating for 103 years, no longer delivers mail but still carries cargo and local passengers. The ships make the northbound trip in seven days and the southbound voyage in six.  Passengers may take a voyage in either direction or take both legs in a 12-day voyage. There are 34 stops in each direction, but ports visited at night on the northbound trip are seen in daylight when traveling south (though in the height of summer, the midnight sun  season, there is lingering light almost around the clock).
The voyages do not sail into the biggest of Norway's fjords, but one stop requires navigating through the dramatically narrow Troll Fjord.  There are several sighseeing excursions available on the trips. In one, offered only on the northbound leg, a catamaran picks up passengers from the steamer and sails through the Vagsboten and Holands Fjord to the foot of the Svartisen glacier, on which participants can walk. The half-day trip is $75 a person.
A package of four different excursions from various ports is offered in each  direction, between May 1 and Sept. 30; the price is $135 a person northbound and $163 southbound.  Round-trip passengers can sign on for seven excursions for $224 a person.
Five new ships were added to the fleet in 1993. They are bigger than what are called the traditional ships (490 passengers, vs. 120 to 170), have two lower berths in cabins rather than upper and lower berths, and have a glassed-in viewing lounge.
Voyages take place year round.  Rates for the 12-day round trip in June, July and August range from $1,375 a person in a double cabin in a traditional ship to $2,855 a person in the most expensive double cabin in a new ship (the rates for  suites, available only in new ships, are higher; the most expensive is $3,785 a  person during that period), the seven-day northbound voyage is $896 to $1,858 and the six-day southbound voyage is $759 to $1,573. The price includes all meals, taxes and port charges.  September rates are $1,195 to $2,245 for 12 days, $660 to $1,237 for six days and $779 to $1,461 for seven. At other times of year, rates are lower, with winter being least expensive.
There are packages of 11, 12, 15 and 16 days that include round-trip air fare between New York and Norway, hotels, train within Norway and either a leg of the mail boat voyage or the round trip. Summer rates start at $3,105 a person for 11 days to $3,830 for 16 days.
Information: Bergen Line, 405 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022; (800) 323-7436 or (212) 319-1300. For brochure: (800) 666-2374.
There are also several tours of various lengths, mainly out of Bergen, that focus on the biggest, most scenic fjords. As a rule, they are offered May to late September. Among them:
Bennett Tours, 270 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016, (800) 221-2420, fax  (212) 779-8944, offers a variety of fjord tours, with tours of two, four, six or seven days. The cost for two days is $290 a person in a double cabin, and $1,190 for seven days. The rates include breakfasts (most buffet) and dinners. The tours may take in major fjords like Geiranger, Hardanger and Sogne and such other coastal attractions as the Trollstigen Mountain Road, Seven Sisters Waterfall, and Briksdal Glacier plus city tours.
Fjord Sightseeing, Post Office Box 4063, N-5023 Bergen, Norway, telephone (47 55) 25 90 00, fax (47 55) 25 90 01, offers four-hour fjord sightseeing cruises out of Bergen for $36.
Hardanger Sunnhordlandske Dampskipsselska, Post Office Box 2005, N-5024 Nordnes, Bergen, Norway, (47 55) 32 14 80, fax (47 55) 32 12 24, runs several fjord day tours out of Bergen, including ones focusing on Hardangerfjord ($61),  Eidfjord ($61), and Jondal ($50).
Fylkesbaatane i Sogn og Fjordane, Strandkiaterminalen, N-5013 Bergen, (47 55) 32 40 15, fax (47 55) 31 05 76, offers a one-day trip to Sogne Fjord and Stalheim mountain; $76. Another, $78, sails to Sogne Fjord and then tours the Flam gorge by train, $78. Tickets are available at railway stations in Bergen and Oslo.
Vegetarians in France
Q.  A friend and I will be traveling in France, including Paris. We are both vegetarians. Are there guides to vegetarian restaurants in France? -- Renee Kogel, Laguna Beach, Calif.
A.  A book that should be useful is ""European Vegetarian Guide: Hotels and Restaurants"" compiled by Hans Nietsch and Christina de Jongh and published by Hans Nietsch Verlag, 112 Brabanter Strasse, 52525 Waldfeucht, Germany; (49) 2455-98990. The book, in German, English and French, was published in 1993, so it might not be entirely up to date.  The 26-page chapter on France includes around 200 restaurants countywide. It can be ordered from vegetarian organizations in England and the United States, among them Vegetarian Resource Group, Post Office Box 1463, Baltimore, Md. 21203; (410) 366-8343. The price is  $16 if sent by fourth-class postage (which the organization says can take up to  four weeks), $18 if sent by U.P.S.
Another publication that you can use in Paris and close by is ""Paris Bio"" by  Benoit and Anne-Helene Lafleche Braschi, which describes 37 restaurants plus health food stores and organic street markets. ""Paris Bio,"" published by Editions La Couee Gargault, is available at bookstores in France, and sells for  about $16.
Nuns' Tours of Rome  Q.  I have heard about an order of nuns that give tours of holy places in Rome but cannot recall their name. Can you help? -- Marcia Klein, Guilford, Conn.
A.  Yes and no. I can give the order's name: the Ladies of Bethany. However, it  stopped giving tours in 1993, the 40th anniversary of their presence in Rome. The reason for the cessation is that there are only two Bethany sisters remaining in Rome. One is 91 years old and the other is 77, and they were unable to keep up with the pace required to give the tours and lectures they had offered. You can experience their guidance, at one remove, in the fall, when the order publishes a book, in Dutch and English, about their experiences in Rome.
CARL SOMMERS",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Changing Money in France
Q.  When traveling in France I find it difficult to convert dollars to francs in large amounts, for example, $5,000. Do you have any suggestions? -- T. Eaton, Mission Viejo, Calif.
A.  In major French cities, most banks or bureaux de change will readily convert large sums of dollars to francs. In small towns or rural areas, however, it is advisable to call at least one day in advance to insure that funds are available. Some banks and agencies, especially those off the usual tourist track, are often reluctant to make the transaction. A hotel telephone number where your reservations may be checked or even a room key will probably convince the agency to make the transaction as expediently as possible.
Used in ATM's, credit cards allow the conversion of dollars to francs at exchange rates that are often better than those found at bureaux de change. However, credit cards usually prevent the withdrawal of large sums at one time, and you may be charged a transaction fee (usually less than $10) and interest on the sum withdrawn. Before leaving home, ask the bank that issued your card how much you are allowed to withdraw, and what fees you will be charged for each transaction. Virtually all ATM's in France take Visa and Mastercard. Cards require a four-digit PIN code to function in France. Avoid using your credit card at bureaux de changes. They usually charge a considerable commission.
American Express card holders may withdraw francs from France's American Express centers (situated only in major cities). Platinum, gold, and green cards allow the withdrawal of $10,000, $5,000 and $1,000, respectively. Such transactions may be performed every 21 days; interest -- recently quoted at 2 percent -- is charged on the sum.
Cash cards provide yet another way of converting dollars to francs. Many French ATM's are linked to Cirrus and some to Plus. Here too, the amount of money you may withdraw and whether a fee is imposed depend on your bank back home. England's Holker Hall
Q. Could you provide information on Holker Hall in England's Lake District? -- Caroline Simpson, Detroit
A. Holker Hall, an estate in Cark-in-Cartmel dating to the 16th century, is near Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria. Formerly the residence of the Dukes of Devonshire, the house, which is surrounded by 23 acres of formal gardens, became the home of Lord and Lady Cavendish in the 1930's. Visitors can freely explore the house, which has undergone many stages of renovation, resulting in several contrasting styles of architecture and design.
The Lakeland Motor Museum, within the complex of buildings, houses over 150 cars and other vehicles. There is an 1880 Carrouche tricycle and a 1914 Dennis fire engine.
Holker Hall is open 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. daily except Saturday until Oct. 31. The Motor Museum opens at 10:30 A.M. Tickets to the house, gardens and auto museum cost about $9.50, calculated at 62 pence to the dollar. Information: (015395) 58328.  Taking the Dog
Q. My husband and I are planning a vacation in New Hampshire in September and October. We are taking our German shepherd with us. What inns will accept dogs? -- Gina Spring, Baltimore
A. A handy reference book on this subject is ""Frommer's On the Road Again with Man's Best Friend: New England"" by Dawn and Robert Habgood (1995; Macmillan/Howell Book House, $14.95; companion guides to other regions are also available). The book's listings include rates for people and dogs, as well as extensive descriptions of the accommodation.
There are many New Hampshire lodgings that accept dogs. Some require a nightly payment -- usually under $15 -- and advance notice, which is advisable anyway during the fall foliage season. Most do not discriminate against large dogs; only ""barkers"" are discouraged.
Lovett's Inn by Lafayette Brook, Route 18, Franconia, N.H. 03580, (800) 356-3802, has 22 rooms: 6 in the 1784 main inn (where dogs are not welcome) and 16 in seven modern cottages. The property, situated on 10 acres of forest and lawns, has a pond where your dog may swim, and a pool where it may not. The guest rooms in the cottages, where dogs are allowed, have large picture windows with mountain views. During the foliage season the cost is $120 to $150 a night, double occupancy, withbreakfast; $160 to $190 for breakfast and dinner. Rooms in the main inn also start at $120 in the fall. During the off-season, prices go down by about $20. There is no charge for dogs.
The Hanover Inn, Post Office Box 151, On the Green, Hanover, N.H. 03755, (800) 443-7024, which is owned by nearby Dartmouth College, has 92 rooms and 22 suites. Guests have access to Dartmouth's athletic facilities -- indoor swimming pool, tennis and squash courts, which are within walking distance. Double rooms start at $197. There is a $15 charge for dogs.
The Dana Place Inn, Pinkham Notch, Route 16, Jackson, N.H. 03846, (800) 537-9276, is surrounded by 300 acres of woods and gardens. The original 19th-century farmhouse has acquired some labyrinthine additions, so that there are now 35 rooms.  Dogs are welcome in the half-dozen or so rooms that have outside entrances. The average room rate during fall foliage is $155, including breakfast and dinner. Off-season rates are $20 to $30 less. There is no charge for dogs.  A Sicilian Village
Q.  Next year, I hope to visit my father's birthplace, the village of Santa Margherita di Belice in Sicily. Could you provide any information? -- B. Abruzzo, Tampa, Fla.
A.  Santa Margherita di Belice, about 45 miles southwest of Palermo, was founded in 1572 by the Sicilian baron Antonio Corbera on the remains of a Moorish castle. Today, little remains of the village's original buildings, most of which were destroyed by an earthquake in 1968. One site that was spared is the 17th-century Palazzo Cuto-Filangieri, which now houses the Town Hall. The palace and its surrounding park served as the setting for Luchino Visconti's 1963 film ""The Leopard,"" starring Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale.
The 13-room La Bandiera, 33 Via Umberto I, telephone 0925/31144, is the only hotel in the village. A double with bath costs about $32, figured at a rate of 1,548 lire to the dollar.
Getting to Santa Margherita Belice from Palermo is simple. The Azienda Siciliana Trasporti has daily buses from its bus terminal on Corso Re Ruggiero in Palermo leaving at 2:30 P.M., arriving at 5 P.M. The cost of a one-way ticket is about $4.75. Information: (091) 688 2783. By car one may take the Palermo-Mazara highway, exiting at the turnoff for Castelvetrano, and from there go in the direction of Menfi and then turn off again for Santa Margherita. SUZANNE MacNEILLE",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Cruise Line Hosts
Q. I am told single middle-aged men are sometimes given free trips by cruise lines if they will act as social hosts for single female passengers. Is this true or merely a pipe dream? -- Jim Clayton, Roswell, Ga.
A. A change of attitude has overtaken the cruise industry on the question of gentlemen hosts, as they are called, in only the last few years.
As recently as 1990 the existence of such a program, where single men act primarily as dance partners for female passengers in return for free passage and air travel to the ship, was not widely broadcast.
Some cruise lines, it seemed, were concerned such a program would not be regarded as being ""on the up and up,"" as a Royal Cruise Line spokeswoman put it.
Now, however, it is an idea that has caught on. A growing number of lines, realizing such programs have been popular with women, who make up the majority of cruise passengers, now openly seek men for the job, which calls for a gregarious personality and dancing skills. As a result, Royal Cruise Line and others find that some single women will book cruises repeatedly in order to dance in a non-threatening environment.
But with success there comes a price. Three lines, Delta, Cunard and Regency, use an agent to recruit and screen their hosts and the agency, Lauretta Blake the Working Vacation, charges successful candidates $21 for each day of the cruise.
The hosts are generally aged 45 and up; one is nearly 80. Current hosts include former teachers, entertainers and military men. Many are former passengers.
According to the Cruise Lines International Association, an industry group, six lines now openly seek male escorts. Other industry insiders say just about every line makes use of the hosts, although some are even now reluctant to announce it.
Following are the six lines that want to get the word out:
Royal Cruise Line, which began its program in 1982, seeks up to 12 men for each cruise by the Crown Odyssey, the Golden Odyssey and the Royal Odyssey. Starting next May it will also be recruiting for the Star Odyssey. The company prefers that candidates first be screened through a travel agent.
Royal Viking Line puts four hosts on each Royal Viking Sun cruise and five to six hosts on cruises longer than 50 days. Write to the manager of special programs at 95 Merrick Way, Coral Gables, Fla. 33134.
The Delta Steamboat Company use two hosts on each of the 50 annual departures of the Mississippi Queen along the river. Write to Lauretta Blake the Working Vacation, 4277 Lake Santa Clara Drive, Santa Clara, Calif. 95054; telephone (408) 727-9665.
Cunard runs the host program on the QE2, Sagafjord and Vistafjord.  Write to Lauretta Blake the Working Vacation.
Regency Cruises recruits hosts through Lauretta Blake for its cruises to New England, Canada, Alaska, Hawaii and South America, through the Panama Canal and on some Caribbean voyages.
Holland America Line goes one step better than free passage. It recruits and pays men to act as hosts on its ""grand voyages"" -- the Grand Orient South Pacific cruise next month, a world cruise starting next Jan. 20 and a 62-day cruise to Australia and New Zealand in the fall of 1994. Write to the entertainment department, 300 Elliott Avenue West, Seattle, Wash. 98119. Home From Home in Monaco
Q. I am interested in renting an apartment for up to six weeks in Monte Carlo. Can you help? -- Harold Zeidel, West Palm Beach, Fla.
A. There is only one agency in Monaco that rents out furnished apartments in Monte Carlo on a short-term basis, according to the Monaco Tourism Authority in Monte Carlo.
That agency, Utoring Maeva, rents apartments for a week to two months in La Residence Chateau d'Azur, about 50 yards from Monaco's only public beach, Larvotto, and 10 minutes from the casino.
Weekly rates for a studio range from $400 to $1,300, one-bedroom apartments are $550 to $1,400 and two-bedroom apartments $880 to $1,900, calculated at 5.8 francs to the dollar. Rates are highest in July and August and lowest between October and March.
For a brochure and more information contact Utoring Maeva, Residence Chateau d'Azur, 44 Boulevard d'Italie, 98000 Monaco; telephone 93.30.30.79, fax 92.16.15.89. Latin American Trains
Q. Is there is a passenger train that crosses the Andes Mountains in South America and one that goes up and down each coast. -- Mel Young, Chattanooga, Tenn.
A. The bible on such matters is the Thomas Cook Overseas Timetable, which lists all railroad, road and shipping services outside Europe (for travel in Europe it's the Thomas Cook European Timetable).
The overseas guide's 432 pages contain maps and other information about principal bus routes, scheduled railroad service and ship and ferry service in more than 150 countries.
Unfortunately, a look at the map of southern South America on page 183 of the current issue shows that your exact requirements cannot be met.
The best you could do at the moment on the Andes question is to take a train from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, Argentina, a bus from there to Los Andes, just inside Chile, and then an electrified train to Valparaiso on the Chilean coast.
There is no service that comes anywhere near making the trip up and down each coast.
The Cook timetables, which cost $28.95 each, including shipping, can be ordered from Forsyth Travel Library, 9154 West 57th Street, Post Office Box 2975, Shawnee Mission, Kan. 66201; telephone (800) 367-7984 or (913) 384-3440. The European timetable is published every month, the overseas every other month.  Cycling in New Jersey
Q. Is there any way I can get information about short cycling trips in northern New Jersey? -- Joyce Conaty, Toronto.
A. The perfect publication for you is ""Short Bike Trips in New Jersey,"" by Robert Santelli. The book, which costs $8.95 plus $3 postage, lists 30 tours in New Jersey, each under 25 miles. Seven are in northern New Jersey. The book is available from the Globe Pequot Press, 6 Business Park Road, Post Office Box 833, Old Saybrook, Conn. 06475; (800) 243-0495 outside Connecticut, (800) 962-0973 in Connecticut.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD: Hiking the Appalachian Trail
Hiking the Appalachian Trail
Q. I'm interested in getting information on taking a hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail starting in mid-October from Harriman State Park in New York and going to the end of the trail in Georgia. - Bennett Kotz, Glen Rock, N.J.
A. The segment of the Appalachian Trail you are interested in is about 1,130 miles long. The Appalachian Trail Conference, the umbrella organization of the 31 clubs that maintain the trail, estimates that the hike will take about four months. There are three-sided shelters all along the trail, each 10 or 12 miles, available on a first come first served basis. In October high temperatures in Harriman park average about 60 and the lows, 44. Into November and December, lows are consistently around freezing along the trail. And in Georgia, when you would be arriving in the winter, the highs at upper elevations may reach only 32 and the lows can be in the lower 20's. The conference says that hikers hitting the trail at the time you are considering should be experienced in winter camping and be equipped with low-temperature gear, especially a warm sleeping bag.
For information, you can contact the conference at Post Office Box 807, Harpers Ferry, W.Va. 25425; 304-535-6331. The conference will send a free booklet, 'Walking the Appalachian Trail Step by Step,' with basic information about planning a hike and describing the 2,000-mile trail from Maine to Georgia. The conference sells 10 detailed guides to segments of the trail. The cost of the guides range from $19.95 for central and southwest Virgina, with nine maps, to $14.95 for North Carolina and Georgia, with three maps. Maps are sold separately, and cost from $4.95 for the single Maryland map to $14.95 for the five maps covering Massachusetts and Connecticut. You may also contact your local club, the New York and New Jersy Appalachian Mountain Club, 202 East 39th Street, New York, N.Y. 10016; 212-986-1430.
Snorkeling From the Shore
Q. I enjoy snorkeling but frequently find that a boat trip is required to get out to the reef. Are there places where one can simply walk into good snorkeling reefs right off the beach? - Martin H. Birnbaum, Syosset, L.I.
A. The first place that dive-tour operators mention for offshore diving is Bonaire in the Caribbean, where the water is clear and the coral reefs begin just off the shore and slope down gradually. Nearby Curacao is also said to be good for offshore snorkeling. Other places recommended are the Cayman Islands (not beach areas like Seven-Mile Beach on Grand Cayman, but the Iron Shore, as the rocky part of the coast is called), Cozumel, the Bay Islands off Honduras and the outer islands of Belize, such as Ambergris Cay.
Hanauna Bay State Underwater Park, 10 miles east of Honolulu on Oahu, is popular for snorkeling from the shore. However, those familiar with the Pacific say that the best dives are remote from hotels and that boat diving is the best way to go.
Finding a Spa
Q. Do you know of a list of spas specializing in weight loss? - Pamelah Jills Jacobson, Hoboken, N.J.
A. There are at least 200 spas in the United States and the Caribbean, and hundreds more elsewhere, plus many hotels and motels with perhaps a whirlpool bath and exercise bike that call themselves spas. Many serious spas offer reduced-calorie diets, which combined with an exercise program result in weight loss. A number of them have notable weight-loss programs, and here are some of the books that list them.
'Fodor's Health & Fitness Vacations' by Bernard Burt (Fodor's Travel Publications, 1989; $13.95) has a directory that lists the spas within by programs, and under weight control there are about 60 spas.
In an introductory section in 'Select Spas in the United States, Canada and Mexico' (Somerville House, 1989; $12.95,) Anne Harding chooses her top 10 spa weight-loss programs.
'The Spa Book' by Judith Brode Hirsch (Perigee, 1988; $10.95) has a chapter listing 12 'medical weight-control centers.'
'The Best Spas' by Theodore B. Van Itallie, M.D., and Leila Hadley (Harper & Row, 1988; $21.95) includes foreign and domestic spas, though of the 11 listed for weight-loss programs only one, the Cormillot Clinic in Buenos Aires, is foreign. It also lists 14 weight-loss programs in hospital or university settings.
'Affordable Spas and Fitness Resorts' by Ryan Vollmer (Ventana, 1988; $12.95) reviews 80 spas, most under $1,000 a week, which includes the off-season rates of many otherwise higher-priced places.
'Guide to Health Spas Around the World' by Carol Wright (Globe Pequot, 1988; $12.95) tends to focus on spas in the old-fashioned sense of taking healing waters, though some have weight-loss programs.
Other sources of information are travel agencies that specialize in spa vacations, which can make recommendations based on a client's specifications. Spa Trek International Travel (470 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10016; 800-272-3480 or 212-779-3480) is one such agency. Another, Spa Finders (784 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10003; 800-255-7727 or 212-475-1000), lists 329 spas worldwide in its catalogue (available from the agency for $4.95, which is refunded if a vacation is booked with the company). The company's founder, Jeffrey Joseph, is author of a book, 'Spa Finder's Guide to Spa Vacations' (John Wiley & Sons, 1990; $12.95), which contains coupons redeemable at spas.
Custom Spas Worldwide (1318 Beacon Street, Brookline, Mass. 02146; 800-443-7727 or 617-566-5144) arranges for stays at 500 spas worldwideand specializes in Switzerland.
Herriot's Darrowby
Q. My wife and I are considering a trip to Britain, including Scotland, this November. We would like to visit Darrowby in Yorkshire, home of the famous veterinarian James Herriot. Can this trip be made by train or must we rent a car? - Adam Stoler, Bronx, N.Y.
A. Darrowby is the fictional name for Thirsk, which is about 200 miles from Edinburgh, a drive of roughly three and a half to four hours. Thirsk can also be reached by train, from Edinburgh, with a change at Darlington. The length of the trip varies according to the layover at Darlington. The trains run four times a day as follows: Departing Edinburgh 9 A.M. arriving at Thirsk 12:04 P.M.; departing at 10 A.M. and arriving at 1:51 P.M.; departing at 12:30 P.M. and arriving at 3:03 P.M; leaving at 2:30 P.M. and arriving at 5:07 P.M. One-way first-class seats are $76; second class is $53. Round trip fare is double.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q&A
LEAD: Stefan Batory  Question: I understand the Polish Ocean Lines' Stefan Batory is to be retired. Is there to be a replacement for this wonderful ship, which my family has enjoyed the past three summers? - W. B. R., New Paltz, N.Y.  Answer: Polish Ocean Lines is seeking a more modern ship to replace the Stefan Batory, which is to be taken out of service in March.
Stefan Batory  Question: I understand the Polish Ocean Lines' Stefan Batory is to be retired. Is there to be a replacement for this wonderful ship, which my family has enjoyed the past three summers? - W. B. R., New Paltz, N.Y.  Answer: Polish Ocean Lines is seeking a more modern ship to replace the Stefan Batory, which is to be taken out of service in March. An official of the lines' agents in Montreal said she hoped to have news soon of another vessel that would take over the Batory's route between Montreal and London, Rotterdam and Gdynia, Poland. The Batory, formerly the Maasdam of the Holland America Line, was acquired by Polish Ocean, and rebuilt, in 1969; since then it has provided trans-Atlantic service for up to 770 passengers from April to November and cruises in winter.
Its final trans-Atlantic trip from Montreal was Oct. 7. The ship's last voyage will be a cruise to the Caribbean in March. Meanwhile, Polish Ocean Lines offers Atlantic crossings aboard freighters departing every week the year round from New York to Bremerhaven. One-way fares are $740 a person; inquiries should be made to Polish Ocean Lines, c/o Gdynia America Line, 39 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10006; 212-952-1280.  Parliament  Question: While in London in April, I would like to tour Parliament and hear a debate in the House of Lords or the Commons. How can this be arranged? - M. C. S., New City, N.Y.  Answer: Tours of the Houses of Parliament in Westminster are not generally available to visitors. Those who want to listen to a debate in either the Lords or Commons must line up to get a seat in the visitors' gallery of each House. For the Lords, visitors line up at the St. Stephen's entrance for admission, on Monday (if the House is sitting) at 2:30 P.M., on Tueday and Wednesday at 2:30, on Thursday at 3, and on Friday (if sitting) at 11 A.M. At the Commons, the line is admitted from about 4:15 P.M. Monday through Thursday and 10 A.M. Friday. It is advisable to arrive early because of the number of people hoping to get a seat, particularly for the Commons, where the gallery has 156 seats. The Lords has about 100 gallery seats. Members of Parliament sometimes arrange for constituents to obtain admission to the gallery, and V.I.P.'s, including overseas ones, either make arrangements to attend debates or tour Parliament through M.P.'s or their embassy. Parliament used to be open for tours but these were discontinued some years ago for security reasons.  St. Martin  Question: Four of us are vacationing on the Caribbean island of St. Martin and would like suggestions for restaurants to visit and sightseeing. - R. A., Trumbull, Conn.  Answer: Since St. Martin is only 32 square miles, and neither the Dutch nor the French side of the island imposes border formalities, many vacationers visit restaurants and sites in both sections. A tour of both sides by van costs about about $25, although perhaps the best excursion is a day sail around the island. These trips cost about $55, including lunch and open bar. There are scores of eating places. Among Italian restaurants in the Dutch section is La Rosa on Front Street, Philipsburg, offering an extensive menu from lasagne to lobster at from $30 to $50 a person, including wine. Dinner at Le Bec Fin, a French restaurant, also on Front Street, overlooking Great Bay, will be from $30. Residents recommend Calypso at Simpson Bay for local cuisine ($25 to $30).
Philipsburg, a port of call for cruise ships, has a few buildings in Dutch colonial style, including the Town Hall and Post Office dating to 1793. Near the town are the remains of Fort Amsterdam, built on the foundations of a fort originally constructed by the Spanish. There are eight casinos on the Dutch side.
In the French sector, overlooking Oyster Pond, is Captain Oliver's restaurant, with a seaside terrace from which the island of St. Barthelemy is often visible. Jean Dupont, in Port La Royale, the marina in Marigot, is named for the owner, who also runs the more expensive Santal. Here, in what was the Terrasse tearoom, and at Captain Oliver's, dinner will cost $35 to $45 a person, excluding wine. A set price dinner for $37 is served at La Maison sur le Port, in an old island house overlooking the water in Marigot. About 20 restaurants line the only street of the village of Grand Case. One of the more popular, and expensive, places there is the Rainbow; from $50. Reservations are advised (87.55.80).
The French side lacks sightseeing places, although the old Fort St. Louis, offers a panoramic view of Marigot. The steps up to it were restored recently. A show of live eagles and falcons is presented daily on a hilltop at Pointe Pirouette Road. Admission is about $5. The local tourist bureau (87.53.26) can give times.  Books on Quebec  Question: We are visiting the province of Quebec next summer. Are there books that would help us understand the history of the area? - B. S., Ridgefield, Conn.  Answer: A book to be published in English in April will join the list of titles on Quebec's history. It is 'A Short History of Quebec' by Brian Young of McGill University and John A. Dickinson of the University of Montreal. According to the publisher, Copp Clark Pitman, it is the first text in English to deal explicitly with the social and economic development of the province from the first settlers to the present. The 224-page book will cost $14.95 (Canadian), which is about $11.50. (Copp Clark Pitman, 495 Wellington Street West, Toronto M5V 1E9; 416-593-9911).
Among other books that might be helpful are 'The Question of Separation: Quebec and the Struggle Over Sovereignty' by Jane Jacobs (Random House, 1980) and 'The English Fact in Quebec' by Sheila M. Arnopoulos, which focuses on English and other ethnic influences (McGill-Queens University Press, 1980). Among guidebooks that touch on the history of the province are 'Guide to Eastern Canada' by Frederick Pratson (Pequot Globe) and the Michelin Green Guide 'Canada.'
Correction:  February 14, 1988, Sunday, Late City Final Edition",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Scaling Mount Fuji  Q.
My wife and I will be visiting Tokyo and we would like to climb Mount Fuji. We would appreciate suggestions for nonathletes. Arthur A. Delaney, Roslyn, L.I.
A. Almost all Japanese, regardless of athletic ability, climb 12,388-foot-high Mount Fuji once. As a Japanese saying goes, ""He who climbs Fuji once is a wise man; he who climbs it twice is a fool."" Just proceed at your own pace, and remember that 90-year-olds have made it to the summit.
The season for climbing to the top is usually July 1 (or whenever the snow at the top melts sufficiently) through August. Climbers should be sure to wear sturdy shoes with rubber or Vibram soles, for support and to get traction on the volcanic rock, which can be slippery at times. Otherwise, no special equipment is needed. Most people bring their own food and water.
There are five trails to the top, with 10 rest stations -- some just shelters others selling food and souvenirs (at steep prices) -- on each trail. Walking to the peak from the bottom takes an average of nine hours, but most climbers leave from the fifth station, at 8,250 feet, and make the ascent from there. From Tokyo, you can take a two-hour bus trip from Shinjuku or Hamamatsucho to a trailhead at the fifth stage. Cars can be parked by the trailhead. The most popular route for those arriving from Tokyo is to climb up the Kawaguchiko-guchi Trail, 4 to 6 hours but as long as 10, and down the Subashiri-guchi Trail, about two and a half hours.
Climbers usually try to get to the summit by 9 A.M., before clouds form at the top half of Mount Fuji and obscure the view. To get there to see the dawn, a view prized by the Japanese, some leave the fifth station in early afternoon, spend the night in one of a number of the very basic huts around the seventh or eighth station, and head for the peak very early in the morning. (Hut space is about $35 a person a nght, including two meals; the Japan National Tourist Organization and the Tokyo Tourist Center have names of agencies that can arrange reservations, which are required.) Others leave the fifth stage at 4 or 5 P.M. and climb all night. This avoids the heat of the summer but obviously makes for a more strenuous trip. For climbing at night, you must carry a flashlight and bring warm clothing.
The Japan National Tourist Organization, 630 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10111, (212) 757-5640, has free copies of ""Mini-Guide to Climbing Mount Fuji"" with information on trails, transportation, lodging and other sites in the area. Yacht Honeymoon in Greece
Q.
In June my fiance and I would like to go to Greece on our honeymoon. We would like to consider hiring a small boat with crew to get us to the different islands. Are there companies we can contact? -- Jo Ann Vizzari, Mount Vernon, N.Y.
A. The least costly approach is to rent a bare boat with skipper; a skipper (or captain) refers to a person hired on for a sailing, as opposed to a crew, even of one person permanently associated with the boat. Here are three companies that can arrange for charters in Greek waters.
Lexow Yacht Charters, Post Office Box 1207, Darien, Conn. 06820; (800)662-2628 or (203) 655-8668. The minimum size is a 46-foot sailboat with one crew member, for $670 a day, not including any food or beverage. There is also a 48-foot sailboat with two crew members for $720 a day. Larger boats, usually chartered by four or six people, include a 67-foot yacht with three crew and three cabins for $1,400 a day, and a 106-foot yacht, also with three crew members and cabins for $2,500 a day. For cruises out of Rhodes (good for visiting the Dodecanese Islands of the Turkish coast), a 46-foot sailboat with crew of two is about $600 a day, with breakfast and lunch daily; dinner is generally eaten on the islands. A 47-foot boat with crew of two is $620 a day, also with two meals daily. The company says it also has 64-foot boats with two crew members for $580 to $740 a day out of Rhodes.
One-way cruises are possible at no extra cost if someone has chartered the boat for the return voyage. Eagle Yacht Charters, 150 Main Street, Port Washington, N.Y. 11050; (800) 766-6412 or (516) 944-6760. For a bare boat with skipper, a 36-foot boat is $2,145 a week, a 38-foot boat is $2,795 and a 44-foot boat is $3,845. (July 25 to Aug. 29, prices are about 5 percent higher.) Crewed yachts with skipper, cook and deck hand start at $5,000 a week.
Valef Yachts, Post Office Box 391, Ambler, Pa. 19002; (800) 223-3845 or (215) 641-1624. A 40-foot sailing yacht with skipper is about $500 a day without food. A 30-foot sailing yacht, which many people find snug, is about $300 a day with skipper. A 46-foot motor yacht is $1,000 a day. The company can get you on a scheduled weekly cruise, with about 20 passengers, for about $880 a person for a week, including two meals a day.  O'Keeffe's Ghost Ranch
Q.
I am interested in visiting Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, where Georgia O'Keeffe lived. Is it open to the public? -- Carole B. Okun, Port Chester, N.Y.
A. The home and studio that Georgia O'Keeffe referred to as being in Ghost Ranch, N.M., was in fact a neighbor of a ranch by that name, a guest ranch in the 30's and 40's and a conference center owned by the Presbyterian Church since 1955. At the painter's death in 1986 at the age of 98, her home was bequeathed to an associate, who now lives there; it cannot be visited by the public.
The Ghost Ranch proper offers seminars in such subjects as theology, arts and crafts of the area and various social issues. If there is space -- more common at times of year other than summer -- those not taking a seminar can stay in a room there (with shared bath) for $36.75 a day, including three meals. On the property, visitors can see the Southwestern landscape that O'Keeffe depicted, views that ranch personnel call ""original O'Keeffes."" Information: Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, N.M. 87510; (505) 685-4333. Windsor Mansion in Paris
Q.
Some time ago I learned that the house that was occupied by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in the Bois de Boulogne was to be opened to the public. Is it open yet? -- Elsa Martin, Ridgewood, N.J.
A. The house, Le Bois, where the Duke and Duchess lived in the Bois de Boulogne from 1953, has been renovated, but it is not open to the public, nor will it be, according to a spokesman for Mohammed Al-Fayed, who did the renovations. Mr. Fayed, owner of Harrods in London and the Ritz in Paris, has converted the top floor of the three-story mansion into a private apartment where he stays when visiting Paris. The rest of the house is a museum of Windsor memorabilia. Only scholars, guests of the French Government and members of the British royal family are allowed to visit.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
I plan to take a tour of Italy, France or Greece with my granddaughter next summer. Do you know of any intergenerational programs similar to that of Interhostel, which is being discontinued? -- Arnold R. Adler, Tucson
Elderhostel, which has been arranging programs for those over 55 for 30 years (it has recently added a program for adults 21 and over), might offer the closest thing to the Interhostel programs. It has a range of all-inclusive trips to Europe next summer, but note that these trips are best suited to certain age groups.
A 15-night trip to Greece, for example, is designed for children ages 13 to 15, though Elderhostel has accepted children older than the top age bracket on their trips. It is a fairly active hands-on history trip, focusing on Plato, Aristotle, archaeology, mythology and Greek culture, says Adam Hurtubise, director of public and media relations at Elderhostel. The program includes tours of Athens; Kastraki and its cliffside Byzantine monasteries, where activities include kayaking, hiking, rappelling and biking; Salonika, with an optional hike up Mount Olympus; and a cruise on 30-to-40-foot sailboats through the Sporades Islands, with instruction in sailing. The trip is scheduled for July 1 to 16; from $3,256 per adult and $3,106 per child, with most meals but not air fare.
Elderhostel also offers a 13-night program to Italy next July 1, geared to ages 9 to 11, focusing on Rome, with lectures and walking tours (including a treasure hunt), Sorrento, Naples and Pompeii, with an optional hike up Mount Vesuvius; more departure dates may be added; prices are not yet set. Both this trip and the ones to France described below will be on the Web site, www.elderhostel.com, later this month; you can reserve now by calling (877) 426-8056.
A 12-night program to southwest France combines language and cooking classes, home visits and games, with 2 nights in Bordeaux and 10 nights in the village of Villeneuve-sur-Lot; departures on July 2 (ages 10 to 13) and July 30 (ages 13 to 15). The trip includes excursions to castles and nearby villages and a boat trip in the Arcachon Basin to see the highest sand dunes in Europe.
A somewhat higher-end organization with trips specifically for grandchildren aged 7 to 17 and grandparents is Grandtravel,  founded in 1986 by Helena Koenig and recently acquired by Academic Travel Abroad, which
has been designing educational tours for 50 years. This summer an 11-day trip exploring Rome, Florence and Venice included a train trip through Tuscany; a Venetian mask workshop; visits to Murano's glass blowers and Burano; a day in Siena; a cooking lesson with a Tuscan chef; and a day spent hiking, biking and riding on a 16th-century farm. Next year's program will be similar, said Ms. Koenig, with departures July 5 and 11; the cost will be $7,690 a person, double occupancy; $7,390 triple, with most meals, but not air fare.
If you are flexible in terms of dates, Grandtravel offers a spring-break trip to Greece next year, April 8 to 16, and if you'd like a more urban experience, a London and Paris trip is scheduled for July 1 to 10, July 22 to 31, and Aug. 19 to 28. Information: (800) 247-7651; www.grandtrvl.com.
This autumn we plan to fly into Rome on a Saturday and take the train to Florence the same day. Because of possible flight delays, we are reluctant to make train reservations. We wonder if space on the Rome-Florence trains fills in advance. -- David L. Raasch, Waukesha, Wis.
You should have no problem making a train connection in Rome, but it would be best to reserve ahead. Trains from the Leonardo da Vinci (Termini) Station leave for Florence just about every half hour until 8:30 p.m. daily. George Tobias of Linden Travel in New York, who specializes in train travel abroad, suggests that, to be safe, you make a reservation on a train scheduled to depart three or four hours after your flight arrival time. The best way from the airport to the station is by express train (the Leonardo Express), he says, which takes half an hour and leaves about every half hour.
If your plane is late, you should have no trouble getting on a later train, says Mr. Tobias, especially if you have first-class tickets, about $67; you can simply take the next train (the trip takes 90 minutes). You can order tickets, adding the Leonardo Express ticket (about $5), at www.raileurope.com or (800)847-7245 or through a travel agent.  FLORENCE STICKNEY
Q & A
Correction:  October 23, 2005, Sunday  An answer in the Q&A column on Aug. 14 about train travel from Rome to Florence misstated the fare for the Leonardo Express from the Fiumicino airport to the Termini station in Rome. It is $11.75, not $5.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Reunion in Hawaii
Q.  Relatives in the United States and Australia want to have a reunion in Hawaii in late 1998 or early 1999. There would probably be 35 altogether, with ages ranging from 3 to 85. Club Med would be ideal, but there are no Club Meds in Hawaii. Are there places that might fill our needs? -- Dorothy Harper Levinson, Cranbury, N.J.
A.  Bear in mind that you should be able to negotiate a group hotel rate; how favorable a deal you strike depends on when you travel. Here are a few of the many possibilities that might be suitable, along with some tips from reunion specialists.
The Kona Village Resort, with 125 rooms in thatch-roofed cottages on the Big Island, operates on the all-inclusive plan, with breakfast, lunch and dinner included in the rate, as well as the use of kayaks, Sunfish sailboats and snorkeling equipment, an outrigger canoe, tennis and volleyball. It has a free children's program for ages 6 to 12, with activities such as rock painting and fishing contests. Younger children may participate if accompanied by an adult.
Rates start at $395 for two people and range up to $680. Additional adults in a room, $160; children 6 to 12, $110; children 2 to 5, $55, and those under 2, $25. Information: (808) 325-5555; fax (808) 325-5124.
The Hilton Waikoloa Village, also on the Big Island, is a 1,241-room, 62-acre oceanfront resort on the Kohala Coast, with a four-acre swimming and snorkeling  lagoon, beach and three pools. Here meals and activities are priced separately except for some free activities such as tai chi, yoga, water aerobics and an instructional golf clinic.
Guests can arrange to have encounters, supervised by a trainer, with some of  the 10 Atlantic bottle nose dolphins that live in a separate lagoon at the resort. For children aged 5 to 12, the cost is $45; for adults, the cost is $85, and there is a lottery because it is so popular.
The resort has two 18-hole golf courses ($82 including cart), eight tennis courts ($20 for 90 minutes, or $30 on clay) and a 25,000-square-foot spa. Red Sail Sports, an adventure outfitter, offers daily scuba and snorkel trips and other cruises.
Camp Menehune is geared to those aged 5 to 12, with crafts, games and swimming; $45 a day.
There are six restaurants, ranging from northern Italian to Japanese, all with children's menus, and eight lounges.
Regular rates for double rooms start at $210 a night for two, and range up to $340. Two children may stay free with parents. Information: (808) 885-1234, fax (808) 885-2900.
On the island of Kauai, the 600-room, 50-acre Hyatt Regency Kauai Resort and  Spa offers five acres of saltwater lagoon with kayaking ($7.50 an hour), scuba diving ($110 for a two-tank offshore dive) and snorkeling ($5 a day for gear). There are two pools, one for adults and another with water slides and volleyball. An 18-hole golf course is within walking distance; greens fees are $85 (for guests) for 18 holes.
The 25,000-square-foot spa, where guests pay $10 a day for admission, has a 25-yard lap pool, whirlpools and sauna and steam rooms.
The resort has four restaurants and four lounges, one of them serving as a disco on weekends and another with live entertainment.
Camp Hyatt for children aged 3 to 12 (2 with a sitter) costs $45 a day, including lunch.
Rooms start at $275 a night for garden view and range up to $465. One or two  children can stay free in the same room with their parents. Information: (808) 742-1234, fax (808) 742-1557.
Resort spokesmen said you should expect help from a staff member in planning  any group meals or activities you wish to organize.
You are wise to be thinking now about a reunion in 1998. According to Edith Wagner, publisher of Reunions Magazine in Milwaukee, Wis., two years is not too  much lead time.
Ms. Wagner's biggest single caveat: ""Set your dates and stick to them. A lot  of people change their dates because one person can't come and then find two people can't come on the second date.""
Paula Sheagley, a reunion consultant and manager in Colorado Springs, recommended that you obtain a contract from the hotel listing rooms and prices agreed on and suggested that you give yourself plenty of time to get deposit money from participants.
She also said you should think carefully about how structured you would like  the trip to be. In any event, breakfast and dinner should be group affairs, she  said. As for the rest of the trip, although people may want to go their own ways some of the time, she added, ""keep in mind the one reason you're getting together."" New Orleans Summer
Q.  I am planning a trip to New Orleans this summer and need information on hotels and the city's transportation system. -- Rick Novikoff, Santa Fe Springs, Calif.
A.  Hotels go on sale during the city's steamy summer. For example, the 100-room Hotel de la Poste, at 316 Chartres Street in the French Quarter, (504) 581-1200, which currently charges $150 to $165 for a double room, drops rates to $99 and $109 from June 15 to Sept. 15. For an accommodations guide, contact the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau at (800) 672-6124.
The city's transportation system includes its famous streetcars in addition to buses. The fare on buses and streetcars is $1 ($1.25 for the streetcar along  the riverfront). A Visitour pass permits unlimited riding on streetcars and buses for $4 for one day, $8 for three and can be purchased at hotels and gift shops.
Rooms Fit for Royalty
Q.  We own the sixth edition of a book titled ""Castle Hotels of Europe"" by Robert P. Long, published by Prentice-Hall in 1984. Do you have any idea whether these accommodations in Europe's castles are still available? -- Virginia Katims, Seattle
A.  The book you own is now out of print, according to a spokeswoman for Prentice-Hall, but you should be able to find recent information about castle stays in individual European countries in the ""Charming Inns and Itineraries"" books published by Karen Brown's Guides; many of the lodgings are in chateaux, villas and other historic buildings. One caveat: illustrations are drawings, not photographs. Most of the books cost $16.95. They are available in some bookstores or through Karen Brown's Guides, Box 70, San Mateo, Calif. 94401; (415) 342-9117 or fax (415) 342-9153. Shipping and Handling are $4 for the first book, 50 cents for each additional copy.
JANET PIORKO",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:  Park Passes
Park Passes
Question: My family plans to drive to several national parks this summer. Are the special passes allowing access to any of the parks still available? - T. I., Chicago.
Answer: A Golden Eagle Pass, permitting entrance to all the national parks, may be obtained at any of the parks for $25. It covers a driver and passengers for the remainder of the calendar year. It does not apply to camping and other fees like those charged for cave and other tours. The easiest way to buy the Eagle Pass is at park entrances, but it may also be obtained by sending $25 to the National Park Service, Office of Public Inquiries, Post Office Box 37127, Washington D.C. 20013-7127. The Park Service also issues a Golden Age Passport, which may be obtained free at the parks by visitors aged 62 and older. The Golden Age Passport allows free entry into all national parks for driver and passengers and a 50 percent discount on Federal camping and other use fees. But it must be applied for in person. Applicants for both passes must be citizens or permanent residents.  Guyana
Question: On our way to Rio de Janeiro last month, we enjoyed a brief stopover in Georgetown, Guyana. Do you have information about visiting Guyana, including flights, hotels, places to visit, and are there any railroads? - V. T., Brooklyn
Answer: There are several flights from New York each week to Guyana, the republic between Venezuela and Surinam on the northeast coast of South America.
Guyana Airways (800-327-8680) operates nonstop flights to Georgetown from Kennedy Airport on Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. Flying time is about four and a half hours. A 21-day excursion fare is currently $563, round trip. including tax. B.W.I.A. (800-327-7401) has service from Kennedy via Port-of- Spain, Trinidad. There are daily flights to Trinidad, and connections to Georgetown, an airline spokesman said, on three or four days a week. She said the fare and tax was $609. A charter operation called Caraibe Enterprises (106-13 Liberty Avenue, Ozone Park, Queens, N.Y. 11417; 718-848-6100) says it offers weekly flights, on Thursdays, from Kennedy, with a refueling stop in Puerto Rico. The Caraibe fare, with tax, is $538.
Among several hotels in Georgetown is the Guyana Pegasus, which is operated by the Trusthouse Forte group. One travel agent with experience in the country said the Pegasus is the only first-class hotel there. Centrally situated, with views of the river and the Atlantic coastline, it has 100 air-conditioned rooms. The hotel has a freshwater pool, shopping arcade and hairdressing salon. The address of the Pegasus is Seawall Road, Kingston, Georgetown, Guyana (telephone, 52856). Reservations may be made through Trusthouse Forte (800-225-5843).
Guyanese tourist officials list Kaieteur Falls, which plunge more than 700 feet, and Lake Mainstay, which is ringed by palm trees and is noted for birdlife, among the sightseeing attractions. Some visitors also head for the National Cultural Center in Georgetown, where theatrical performances are regularly produced. Another feature is the markets, where the produce includes pineapples, mangoes and bananas. Leather sandals and jewelry are among the craft work on sale. Guyana does not have any passenger railroads.
Among travel agencies that specialize in arranging trips is Guyana Suntours (897A Nostrand Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11225; 718-771-6412). Another agency with experience is Red Carpet Travel Service (2629 Connecticut Avenue N.W., Washington D.C. 20008; 202-462-7600). Information is also available from the Guyana Consulate (866 United Nations Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10017; 212-527-3215), where visas may be obtained.  Route to Malta
Question: How I can travel from Istanbul to Malta? Information on where to find hotel information for Malta would also be appreciated. My many efforts have been nonproductive. - E. S., Ottsville, Pa.
Answer: One suggestion is to fly on Turkish Airlines or Alitalia, the Italian airline, from Istanbul to Rome and from there by Alitalia or Air Malta to Malta. Rome is a major gateway to the Mediterranean island between Sicily and North Africa and is used by many visitors making their way there from the United States. There are no direct, trans-Atlantic flights. In addition to Rome, cities with direct service to Malta include London, Paris, Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich. One agency that specializes in booking flights to Malta from New York is Malta Holidays, 3306 Broadway, Astoria, N.Y. 11106 (718-932-7800 or, from outside New York City, 800-321-1199). It also has some information on hotels.
While Malta does not have a tourist office in this country, the Consulate General of Malta (249 East 35th Street, New York, N.Y. 10016; 212-725-2345) has a tourism section that can supply color brochures about visiting the island. It also has brochures on some hotels, including the Hilton International.  Royal Display
Question: I believe that the royal greenhouses in Brussels are open only on certain days. Will I be able to see them during a visit in late April? - B. S. B., Bridgeport, Conn.
Answer: The Greenhouses of the Royal Palace at Laeken, a suburb of Brussels, are open to the public for about two weeks each spring. The period this year runs from April 21 through May 7, but the greenhouses, with their floral displays, giant ferns and grottoes, are not open every day. According to the official schedule, the 19th-century complex is open, from 9:30 A.M. to noon and from 2 to 5 P.M., on April 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29 and 30 and May 1, 3, 4, 6 and 7 In addition, there are evening sessions (9 to 11; $2 admission), when the greenhouses will be illuminated, on April 21, 22, 23, 28, 29 and 30 and May 5 and 6. During the day admission is free.
Built by King Leopold II, the greenhouses are set in elaborate ironwork, cover six acres and house domes and galleries. The walk through them is a route of about a mile and takes visitors past banana trees and glades and displays of geraniums and fuchsias as well as a colony of birds and collection of orange trees. The Azalea House includes banks of red and pink blooms.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Wineries South of Rome
Q. My wife and I plan to drive from Rome to the seaside town of Agropoli in Campania. Are there wineries along the way we could visit? -- David Scholder, Winchester, Mass.
A. Asked about Campania, Eric Asimov, chief wine critic of The Times, commented that after years of producing oceans of indifferent wine, Campania has established itself in the last decade or so as an up-and-coming region. The aglianico grape is used for the region's best red wine, Taurasi, while a trio of ancient grapes, the fiano, the greco and the falanghina, make the best whites.
Campania is home to the cult winery Montevetrano, which makes cabernet sauvignons that are sought all over the world. In San Cipriano Picentino, not far from Pompei and Herculaneum, it can be visited by appointment only, by calling (39) 089-882-285; see www.montevetrano.it.
Here are a few others to consider, suggested by the Italian Wine and Food Institute, 60 East 42nd Street, New York, N.Y. 10160; (212) 867-4111, fax (212) 867-4114, and at www.italianwineandfoodinstitute.com:
Fontana di Papa, (39) 06-934-781, fax (39) 06-934-2910, online at www.fontanadipapa.com, is a large winery in Ariccia, just outside Rome. While not in Campania, it might offer a contrast in styles. A cooperative of 400 growers, it produces about 12 million bottles a year, in a variety of styles -- whites, dry reds, sparkling spumante, even organic and kosher wines. Tastings, which are free, are on weekdays only, 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and 2 to 4 p.m.
To get there from Rome, pick up the Via Appia near St. John's Basilica, and take it past Ciampino airport. Make a right onto the Via Nettunese and go about six miles to the winery.
Villa Raiano is a well-thought-of winery about 25 miles inland from Naples at Via Pescatore 19, Serino, Avellino; (39) 08-2559-2826, fax (39) 08-2559-5771. It produces 130,000 bottles a year, mostly whites but some Taurasi, too. Visits and tastings are free by appointment. The cellar is open from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., and 3 to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Take highway A16 toward Naples, getting off at Avellino Est in the direction of Salerno. Exit at Serino, make a left, then a right at the second traffic light.
Cantina Caputo in Caserta, (39) 081-503-3955, fax (39) 081-503-4307, www.caputo.it, makes about a million bottles a year, about equally dry whites and dry reds. Visits and tastings are free by reservation for up to 10 people; for larger groups, $6.20 a person, at $1.23 to the euro. Open Monday to Friday.
On the A16 to Naples, follow the signs to Pomigliano-Villaliterno, and exit at Teverola-Carino. At the traffic circle, the Cantina Caputo is the first group of buildings on the right.
Learning to Sail
Q. I have heard there is a cruise company in New England that gives passengers the chance to learn to sail on vacation. Do you know what it is? -- Kevin C. Meyer, Minneapolis
A. You are probably thinking about the Maine Windjammer Association, a fleet of 14 sailing vessels that cruise the coast of Maine from mid-May to mid-October. The cruises are generally for three or six days out of Camden, Rockport or Rockland, with fares of $395 to $1,025, with meals.
The ships range from the 46-foot Mistress, with room for six passengers, to the three-masted 132-foot schooner Victory Chimes, which can carry 40. Most are restored 19th- and early 20th-century working ships.
According to Meg Maiden, the association's marketing director, every cruise offers informal lessons for anyone interested. Some skippers offer formal courses, where passengers are divided into groups and are ultimately responsible for bringing their schooner safely back to port.
Contact Maine Windjammer at Post Office Box 1144, Blue Hill, Me. 04614; (207) 374-2993, fax (207) 374-295; www.sailmainecoast.com.
You can also seek schools certified by the American Sailing Association, Post Office Box 12079, Marina del Rey, Calif. 90295; (310) 822-717, fax (310) 822-4741, www.asa.com. Its executive director, Charlie Nobles, says its 250 affiliated schools in the United States have met a code of conduct and have certified instructors.
Some of them offer instruction-vacation trips in sunny spots like Southern California, the Virgin Islands and Hawaii. A listing of these are on the Web site under 'Paradise,' but for details, you must call (310) 822-7171 or send an e-mail message to info@american-sailing.com.
RAY CORMIER
Q&A",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:  Visiting Tunisia
Visiting Tunisia
Question: After seeing the glorious Carthage mosaics in the American Museum of Natural History, I am eager to visit Tunisia. Can you provide names of tour operators? - I. S., New York, N.Y.
Answer: The president of African Explorers, Richard Brill, says his company sends more Americans to Tunisia than all others combined. It has a year-round program of Saturday departures for travelers who want a 14- or 8-day trip. The 14-day tour costs $799 a person, double occupancy, plus round-trip air fare between New York and Tunis of around $750. The air route is either via Rome on Pan American or Casablanca on Royal Air Maroc, with a connecting flight to Tunis. The latter part of the longer stay is spent at a beach resort in either Hammamet or Kantaoui. The shorter trip is $599; all meals are included in both programs.
The itinerary includes the ruins of the ancient city-state of Carthage and of Gafsa, and Tozeur, Nefta, the island of Djerba, Sfax, Matmata (noted for its troglodyte dwellings) and Kairouan, among other sites. African Explorers (499 Ernston Road, Parlin, N.J. 08859; 201-721-2929 or, out of state, 800-631-5650) prefers to deal with travel agents.
The British company called Swan Hellenic, which has two departures of a Tunisian tour this year, is represented by Esplanade Tours (581 Boylston Steet, Boston, Mass. 02116; 617-266-7465). The 13-day tour starts and ends in London, and the cost, including air fare and most meals, is $1,800 a person. There is an emphasis on art history and archeology and the trip is led by a guest lecturer as well as a tour manager. The departure dates, from London, are May 22 and Oct. 2. Nights are spent in six cities, including Sfax, Sousse and Tunis.
Regaltours (29-09 Bridge Plaza North, Long Island City, L.I. 11101; 718-786-8033), which organizes fine-arts tours to Egypt, Morocco and other countries for museums and alumni associations, plans to start a Tunisian tour in the fall. It will consist of four nights in Tunisia and six in Morocco and cost under $2,000 a person, with air fare from New York. The company says it will arrange longer visits to Tunisia for people with a serious interest in archeology.
Travelers who want to go on their own may want to check on the cheap flights offered by Millenium Tours (133 Greenpoint Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11222; 718-389-5880). It says it has round-trip tickets from New York to Tunis, via Belgrade on scheduled flights of Yugoslav Airlines, at $663 through June 14, then $788 until Aug. 14 and dropping back to $663 until Oct. 14. The flights leave New York on Thursdays and return on Saturdays.
A Tunisian hotel guide and other brochures are available from the Cultural Office, Embassy of Tunisia, 1515 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005.  Music Festivals
Question: Please advise on the possibility of combining the Aspen and Santa Fe music festivals while we are traveling. - B. M. S., Reading, Pa.
Answer: A Western traveler could certainly attend performances at both since each festival spans several weeks this summer. The Aspen Music Festival will be held from June 24 to Aug. 21; the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival is from July 10 to Aug. 22. In addition, the Santa Fe Opera season is July 1 to Aug. 27.
A calendar of the events in Aspen is due to be ready in early May. It will be available by writing to Aspen Music Festival, Post Offfice Box AA, Aspen, Colo. 81612 (303-925-3254) or the festival's New York office at 250 West 54th Street, 10th Floor East, New York, N.Y. 10019 (212-581-2196). Ticket reservations will be available from mid-May by contacting the Aspen office; the box office number will be 303-925-9042. Prices of tickets vary from concert to concert, ranging from $8 to $22. Most of the performances, by quartets, singers and other solo artists, will take place in a tent on the edge of town. The festival also includes recitals, rehearsals and lectures. There will also be some operatic performances in the Wheeler Opera House downtown, with seats at $18. During the festival there will be at least one and sometimes three events each day.
The Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival is already taking reservations for seats and has a detailed brochure, with dates and artists, available. Musicians from all over the world and the United States will be taking part. The brochure can be obtained, and reservations made, by writing the festival office at Post Office Box 853, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87504 (505-983-2075 or 800-962-7286). The brochure also has information on accommodations and restaurants. The performances will be given in the St. Francis Auditorium at the Fine Arts Museum. Seats will cost from $5 to $25.  Portugal
Question: I would like advice on which part of Portugal I should visit on an 8- to 10-day trip in late summer. It should be picturesque with local color. - S. G., Manhasset, L.I.
Answer: Several suggestions could be made, but one to consider is the northernmost province of Minho, an area that is cooler than the south, less traveled and one with many attractive villages. Crafts are much in evidence, there are wineries to visit, and, in the Douro Valley, the terraced vineyards on the mountain slopes. There are some wide, sandy beaches, too. Also worth consideration in this region north of Oporto are some pousadas, or government-supervised inns, like the Santa Marinha da Costa, a former monastery in Guimarais, or the Dom Diniz in Vila Nova da Cerveira. Among guidebooks that will help identify the various regions are the Blue Guide Portugal, Frommer's Dollarwise Guide to Portugal and Baedeker's Portugal.  California Wine
Question: Where can I obtain material useful for a trip to the wine districts of northern California? -R. J. S., Kingston, N.Y.
Answer: Wineries and lodgings are listed in booklets available free from the Napa Valley Chamber of Commerce (Post Office Box 636, Napa, Calif. 94559; 707-226-7455) and the Sonoma Valley Visitors Bureau (453 East First Street, Sonoma, Calif. 95476; 707-996-1090). The Sonoma bureau also sells a $1 guide that includes hotel and motel rates.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Cycling in Ireland
Q.  I'd like to tour the west coast of Ireland by bike next year. I can rent or ship my own bike for two weeks. Which would be cheaper? And what would be the best routes and the best season to view the most gardens, public and private? -- J. W. Rommel, New York, N.Y.
A.  According to Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline, if you show up at the airport with only one bag your bike will be shipped to Ireland and back at no charge. If you make the trip with two bags you will charged from $35 to $40 round trip for the bike.
The airline says the handlebars and pedals must ""be turned in,"" or turned horizontal to the frame, and that it will supply a plastic bag to put the bike in. But it recommends that you go to a bicycle shop and buy a cardboard container made specially for shipping bikes.
A shop chosen at random from the Manhattan Yellow Pages, Pedal Pusher Bicycle Shop, 1306 Second Avenue, at 69th Street, (212) 288-5592, says such a container costs $4.95. It adds that the boxes, which are square, allow room for many items besides the bike to be included, like helmets and sleeping bags. The handlebars and saddle must be removed, the shop says, and for $19 it will do that for you and pack the bike, too.
The alternative, renting a bike once you get there, isn't likely to break the bank, either.
The Irish Tourist Board puts out information on cycling in Ireland that includes list of dealers in 23 counties that rent bikes offered by Raleigh Ireland and The Bike Store. All the western counties are represented, including Kerry, Clare, Galway and Mayo.
Rates for all Raleigh models are $11 a day or $50 a week, calculated at $1.60 to the Irish pound. Bike Store rates range from $8.30 a day or $41 a week for a three-speed to $11 a day or $50 a week for an 18-speed mountain bike.
More information: Raleigh Rent-a-Bike Division, Raleigh Ireland Ltd., Raleigh House, Kylemore Road, Dublin 10, Ireland; (353 1) 626 1333, fax (353 1) 675 1770, or The Bike Store, 58 Lower Gardiner Street, Dublin 1, (353 1) 725 931, fax (353 1) 364 763.
Anywhere from early spring to late summer would be a good time to see Ireland's many gardens at their best.
The Irish Tourist Board, 345 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10154, (212) 418-0800, has put together a cycling tour of Ireland that starts and finishes in Dublin. It is broken down into 25 segments, each one suggested as a day's touring by bike (the average length of each is about 50 miles).
Sit down with a four-page list of private and public gardens, also issued by the tourist board, and you can let your fancy wander. California Parks
Q.  Can you tell me where I can write for maps, brochures and other general information about Big Sur, Yosemite National Park and the Redwood National Park? -- Grace L. Dougherty, Glen Cove, L.I.
A.  Big Sur stretches 90 miles along the California coast from Carmel to San Simeon and most of the 192,000-acre area belongs to the federally administered Los Padres National Forest. The area is also home to five state parks and reserves, with the rest owned by some 1,200 residents.
For information, maps and brochures on all the California park areas write to the California State Department of Parks and Recreation, 1416 Ninth Street, Sacramento, Calif. 95814; (916) 653-6995.
For information on Yosemite write to the Superintendent, Post Office Box 577, Yosemite National Park, Calif. 95389; (209) 372-0200.
The address for Redwood is Superintendent, Redwood National Park, 1111 Second Street, Crescent City, Calif. 95331; (707) 464-6101.
A very useful publication for anyone contemplating a visit to the national parks is ""The Complete Guide to America's National Parks,"" published by the National Park Foundation, 1101 17th Street N.W., Suite 1102, Washington, D.C. 20036; (202) 785-4500.
It has a state-by-state listing of the 367 national parks, together with maps, driving directions, climate tables and such information as admission fees and access for the disabled. Staying in Boston
Q.  I have friends from France coming to Boston next summer who would like to rent a furnished two-bedroom home or apartment outside the city proper, even as far away as Plymouth. Could you give me names, addresses and telephone numbers of agencies? -- Jean Piston, Fresno, Calif.
A.  The ""Travel Planner,"" published four times a year by the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, is a guide to Boston restaurants, shopping, theater, historical sights and, among other things, accommodations. Twelve agencies are listed under the heading Bed and Breakfast Reservation Services, but don't be misled by the name; a number of them handle the sort of thing you are looking for.
A B &B Agency of Boston, 47 Commercial Wharf, Boston, Mass. 02110; (617) 720-3540 or (800) 248-9262, fax (617) 523-5761. The company, also known as Agency Suites, says it ""handles plenty"" of apartments and some houses throughout an area west of Boston to Cape Cod. Prices range from $100 to $200 a night.
Bed and Breakfast Marblehead & North Shore/Greater Boston and Cape Cod, Post Office Box 35, Newtonville, Mass. 02160, (617) 964-1606 or (800) 832-2632 outside Massachusetts, fax (617) 332-8572, says it handles many more one-bedroom apartments than two-bedroom, but that March is the best time to ask about availability for next summer. One-bedrooms and cottages rent from $80 to $100 a night, with the seventh night free if taken for a week.
Bed and Breakfast Cape Cod, Post Office Box 341, West Hyannisport, Mass. 02672, (508) 775-2772, fax (508) 775-2884, says a three-bedroom or four-bedroom house on the Cape can be rented for between $1,000 and $1,500 a week.
ABC: Accommodations of Boston and Cambridge, 335 Pearl Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02139, (617) 491-0274 or (800) 253-5542, fax (617) 547-5478, says it has three-bedroom houses on the Cape from about $800 to $1,000 a week. Vegetarian on Bonaire
Q.  My friend and I, both ovo-lacto vegetarians (we eat eggs and dairy products) are traveling to Bonaire in the Netherlands Antilles in January. Are there any vegetarian restaurants there? -- Renee Glessman, Highland Park, N.J.
A.  Just one (there were two until last year). The survivor is Jemar Restaurant, (599 7) 5012, 5 Kaya Grandi, Bonaire's main street. It is open from 7:30 A.M. to 9 P.M. and serves vegetarian dishes at lunch and dinner. The $10 dishes include tofu, soyloaf, rice and fresh vegetables. TERENCE NEILAN",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q. and A.
Books in the Borders
Q. I recently saw a segment on CBS's 'Sunday Morning' show about a literary trip to a small town on the English-Welsh border, Hay-on-Wye. Any information you may have on how to take such a trip will be appreciated. -- Jerome Kay,  Chadds Ford, Pa.
A. The town of Hay-on-Wye, in the Welsh Borders region, has a population of 1,400 and some three dozen bookshops, virtually all of them selling secondhand and antiquarian books. The phenomenon began around 40 years ago with Richard Booth, who opened a shop in town, 'and gradually it grew from there,' according to Pat Gamon, a tourist information officer at the Hay-on-Wye Tourist Information Bureau. The town gets about a million visitors a year, she said.
The tourist office is situated on Oxford Road, within the Crafts Center, at the top of the main parking lot; telephone (0497) 820144.
The town has had an annual literary festival in recent years, with readings and recitals; the 1997 dates are May 23 to June 1.
Several companies schedule stops in the town as part of tours focusing on literary Britain.
A company called British Heritage Tours is planning to run a seven-night trip next year, May 28 to June 4, that will spend two days in Hay to attend the literary festival. The tour will spend three nights in nearby Ross-on-Wye, as well as one night in Stratford-Upon-Avon and three nights in London. Other features will include literary walks of London and Bath, a visit to Shakespeare's birthplace and a performance at the Royal Shakespeare Theater.
The price of $1,075 to $1,288 a person, based on double occupancy, depends on how many participants sign up; a minimum of 10 will be required. It includes Continental breakfast in London and dinner and English breakfast outside London. Air fare is extra. British Heritage Tours, Richmond Place, 125 Boughton, Chester CH3 5BJ, England; telephone from the United States (800) 964-2819, or in Britain (01244) 342222, fax (01244) 320072.
A company called Back-Roads Touring in London includes Hay-on-Wye on its Literary England itinerary (which, obviously, also includes Wales). The tour ran last July; next year's dates are not set. In addition to spending a day in the town, it also visits Jane Austen's home at Chawton, Hampshire; towns and villages in Dorset associated with Thomas Hardy, and the city of Bath. The price is $1,499 including transportation, accommodations and full breakfast and dinner daily. Arrangements can be made through the company's United States representative,  British Network, The Mews, 594 Valley Road, Upper Montclair, N.J. 07043; telephone (201) 744-8814 or (800) 274-8583, fax (201) 744-0531.
Santa Monica Winter
Q. I would like to find furnished accommodations with kitchen facilities in Santa Monica, Calif., on a weekly or monthly basis. And is winter a high or low season? -- Sydney Schreiber, Philadelphia, Pa.
A. Winter, especially January and February, is low season in Santa Monica, according to a spokeswoman for the Santa Monica Convention and Visitors Bureau, when hotels may drop their rates by as much as 25 percent. (However, neither of the two hotels subsequently contacted would quote seasonal discounts for that period this far in advance.) Average temperatures range from lows in the mid-40's to highs in the mid-60's in January and February.
Here are two suite-style hotels that might fill the bill.
The Hotel Oceana, which just reopened after a $4.5 million renovation, has 65 suites ranging in size from studio to two bedrooms, on a cliff overlooking the ocean.
Each suite has a separate dining area and fully equipped kitchen. There is a heated outdoor pool, a fitness center and a laundry. Guests cross the street and take the stairs down to the beach.
Continental breakfast delivered to the room is included in the rates, which currently start at $170 daily for a studio; $190 for a one-bedroom,  and $275 for a two-bedroom. Though winter rates have not yet been set, a staff member at the hotel said you should be able to get a discount of 10 to 20 percent for an extended stay of more than a month.
Hotel Oceana, 849 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica, Calif. 90403; telephone (310) 393-0486 or (800) 777-0758, fax (310) 458-1182.
Doubletree Guest Suites Hotel, with 253 suites, offers lower rates but not a full kitchen. The suites, which all have separate living room and bedroom with a wall between them, also have a wet bar with coffee maker and fully-stocked mini-bar; small refrigerators and microwave ovens are available on request, as are eating utensils. The hotel, recently renovated, has an outdoor heated pool and whirlpool, a health club and sauna. The hotel is four blocks from the ocean. Nearby is the Third Street Promenade, a lively dining and nightlife area.
A standard suite with a king-size bed and a sleep sofa is $119 a night for a stay of at least seven days; $109 for a 14-day stay, and $99 a night for 30 days or longer.
Doubletree Guest Suites Hotel,  1707 Fourth Street, Santa Monica 90401; (310) 395-3332, (800) 222-8733, fax (310) 452-7399.
Telephone calls to a half-dozen real-estate agencies that are members of the local chamber of commerce found only one that might be able to help. Bob Katz, assistant manager of the Prudential Jon Douglas Company, said that with luck, his agency might be able to find a two-bedroom townhouse in a good location for $2,000 a month. 'That's a bare minimum -- it goes up from there,' he said. The Prudential Jon Douglas Company, 1531 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica 90403; telephone (310) 458-0091, fax (310) 458-6125.
Rock Collecting Down Under
Q. We are collectors of rock, fossil, mineral and gem material. We are interested in spending a few months in Australia collecting material. Do you have any information?
-- Fran Siegel, Chesterfield, Mo.
A. The Australian Tourist Commission has produced a 19-page information sheet, Fossicking in Australia, to help travelers with this interest; it can be obtained by calling the Aussie Help Line at (847) 296-4900. Since Australia produces most of the world's opals, according to the Tourist Commission, and is a major source of gold and diamonds, as well as semiprecious stones and other minerals, this is a very big subject, with various state regulations governing where amateurs can try their luck and what permits are required.
JANET PIORKO
Q. and A.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q&A
LEAD:  Seattle-Vancouver  Question:We are planning a trip to the Pacific Northwest and would like information on travel between Seattle and Vancouver by boat. - P. N., Hoboken, N.J.  Answer:Two ferry companies operate daily service between Seattle and Victoria on Vancouver Island. There are several ferry crossings a day between the island and the city of
Seattle-Vancouver  Question:We are planning a trip to the Pacific Northwest and would like information on travel between Seattle and Vancouver by boat. - P. N., Hoboken, N.J.  Answer:Two ferry companies operate daily service between Seattle and Victoria on Vancouver Island. There are several ferry crossings a day between the island and the city of Vancouver on the mainland.
The Princess Marguerite and Island Princess each does a round trip each day between Seattle and Victoria. They are operated by the British Columbia Steamship Company (2700 Alaskan Way, Seattle, Wash. 98121; 206-441-8200). The Princess Marguerite, carrying up to 1,400 passengers, makes the journey in 4 hours 15 minutes. The Island Princess, with a capacity of 900 people, does it in 3 hours 45 minutes. Round-trip fares are $32; children 5 to 11, $16. A buffet breakfast is $6.50 ($4 for childen) and dinner, $12 ($6 for children). The Marguerite carries cars for $40, one way, including driver's fare; the other vessel takes motorhomes and trailers. Reservations are not required for passengers but they are for vehicles. The service started May 7 and continues through Oct. 2.
The journey between Seattle and Victoria takes about two and a half hours on the water-jet catamaran Victoria Clipper, operated by Clipper Navigation. The 300-passenger craft, built in Norway, makes two round trips every day through Sept. 5, then one trip a day in each direction until May. The round trip costs $59, or $49 for passengers under 12 and over 59. Bar and beverage service and snacks are available at extra cost. Clipper Navigation is at 2701 Alaskan Way, Seattle; 800-888-2535 outside Seattle; and 206-448-5000.
Passengers take a bus from Victoria to the island's Swartz Bay to board the ferry to the outskirts of Vancouver. Service every two hours, and hourly from June 23, is offered every day in both directions by British Columbia Ferries (its number in Vancouver is 604-669-1211). The trip takes about 1 hour 40 minutes and the one-way fare is $21 for vehicle and driver and $4.50 for other passengers, with children half price. The hourly service from June 23 will continue until mid-September.  Toddler's Fare  Question:Our son will be under age 2 when we buy our air tickets for a trip to the Far East but over 2 when we return after six or eight weeks. Do we have to pay full fare for his return flight? - B. R., Austin, Tex.  Answer:The fare is determined by the departure date, say airlines that fly to the Far East. If the family sets out before the child's second birthday, his fare will be an infant's fare, 10 percent of what one parent pays. His round-trip ticket would remain valid for the return, an official of Japan Air Lines said. Only if the toddler was 2 before departure would he travel as a child (ages 2 to 12) and pay 50 percent of an adult's fare. British Airways and United Airlines said the child's age on the date of an outgoing flight determines the fare, which for an infant is 10 percent. B.A.'s child fares (2 to 11), a spokeswoman said, are calculated proportionately according to the type of adult fare. For an advance-purchase ticket, the rate is 67 percent. United said children aged 2 to 11 pay 50 percent.  European Trains  Question:Using a two-week Eurailpass, how long would it take me to travel by train from Copenhagen to Madrid? I would continue to ride on the pass in the south. - S. A., New York, N.Y.  Answer:There are options for the journey to Madrid, but one preferred by some train enthusiasts is via Hamburg and Paris. Leaving Copenhagen on, say, a Monday afternoon, the traveler arrives in Madrid at breakfast time on Wednesday. The three trains involved run every day. From Copenhagen, the EuroCity 32 train leaves at 4:40 P.M. and is scheduled to reach Hamburg at 9:59 P.M. The No. 234 train departs Hamburg at 10:47 P.M. and reaches the Gare du Nord in Paris at 8:38 next morning. The passenger then has to wait in Paris until 8 P.M. for the departure of the EuroCity 409 from Gare d'Austerlitz for Madrid. It is due at the city's Charmartin Station at 8:32 next morning.
An alternative is to catch the No. 127 from Austerlitz in Paris at 2:18 P.M., reaching Irun in northern Spain at 9:11 P.M., but you have to make another connection there for Madrid. The No. 204 leaves Irun at 10:45 P.M., arriving in Madrid at 9 A.M.
A 15-day Eurailpass ($298) is for travel in first-class on all trains, but does not include slpeeping accommodations. A Eurail Youthpass (for those aged under 26; $320 for a month) is for second-class, and the traveler has to pay a supplement of $35 when riding most EuroCity trains. The first-class traveler on the Hamburg-Paris overnight journey could have a single sleeper for $116, a less luxurious one for $83 or a double at $50 a person. In second class, a sleeping compartment for two or three people is $33 a person; a couchette, $15 a person. On the Paris-Madrid run, in first class, a single sleeper is $155 and a double, $66 a person. Second class: $44 a person for two or three sharing; no couchettes.  Colorado Ranches  Question:Are there any guest ranches, with horse riding, near Denver? We want to fly to Denver and not drive far. - P. J. T., Wilmington, Del.  Answer:There are some ranches within a two-hour drive of Denver, but to reach others vacationers can take commuter flights from the city to Colorado Springs, Steamboat Springs, Aspen and Gunnison. If flying only as far as Denver is preferred, one of the closest dude ranches is the North Fork (Box B, Shawnee, Colo. 80475; 303-838-9873). It's about 50 miles away and the ranch meets guests at Denver's Stapleton Airport. The transportation charge is $80 for a family of up to four people. Tumbling River (Box 30, Grant, Colo 80448; 303-838-5981), 62 miles from Denver, charges $100, round trip, to drive a group of up to six visitors arriving at the airport. Lost Valley (Route 2, Box 70, Sedalia, Colo. 80135; 303-647-2311), about 65 from Denver, picks up visitors and charges $125 for a couple and $160 for a family, round trip. The Colorado Tourism Board (800-433-2656) supplies a booklet about ranches.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Cooperstown Without a Car
Q.  I will be visiting New York City and would like to take a side trip to Cooperstown, N.Y., to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Can I get there by public transit? -- Bill Van Deelen, Fresno, Calif.
A.  Without a car, you may find it nearly as difficult to get to the Hall of Fame as Phil Rizzuto did. But the Scooter made it, and you can, too.
For now, Adirondack Trailways runs buses to Cooperstown from New York City only once a day Friday and Sunday. A 7 A.M. departure from the midtown Port Authority Bus Terminal, Eighth Avenue and 42d Street, arrives in Cooperstown at 12:30; the return leaves Cooperstown at 4:30 P.M., reaching New York at 10 P.M. Summertime service, June 24 to Sept. 8, has three trips daily from New York and two from Cooperstown. The round-trip fare is $76.70.
Another option is to travel to Utica on Amtrak, which makes at least two stops a day there from New York ($108 peak round trip), and take the daily Trailways bus to Cooperstown. For Adirondacks Trailways information, call (800) 225-6815; for Amtrak, (800) 872-7245.
But a much simpler -- and economical -- plan would be to reserve a place on the Catskill shuttle, a 14-passenger van run by Lans Transportation Service, (800) 607-2753. From May 15, Lans runs at least one shuttle a day except Tuesday and Saturday from New York to Cooperstown, leaving between 10 A.M. and 1:30 P.M. Bill Lounsbery, the owner, said you would have to stay overnight, though, because the return is early in the morning. The round-trip fare is $65.
The Hall of Fame is open daily 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. through September, then till at least 5 P.M. the rest of the year. Admission is $9.50; $8 for ages 65 and up, and $4 ages 7 to 12. Information: (888) 425-5633 or on the Web, www.baseballhalloffame.org.
Concorde Global Tours
Q.  Are around-the-world trips on the Concorde still available? If so, how demanding is it for someone who uses a wheelchair? -- Annette Horstman, Freehold, N.J.
A.  Both British Airways and Air France Concordes are chartered for around-the-world tours a couple of times a year, generally. This year, though, only Air France Concordes are making such trips. British Airways spokesmen said they knew only of a January 1999 around-the-world golf trip out of Hamburg.
But Intrav, a St. Louis company, is organizing two around-the-world excursions on Air France Concordes this fall, and plans three more next year. The ones this year are sold out, said Richard Hefler, senior vice president of Intrav, but there are waiting lists.
The itinerary for this year's excursions -- leaving Sept. 15 and Oct. 8 from New York, Dallas-Fort Worth or Las Vegas -- takes travelers to eight countries in 24 days. After two days in Hawaii, the tour makes three-day stops in Queenstown, New Zealand; Sydney, Australia; Beijing; Hong Kong; New Delhi (and the Taj Mahal); Nairobi, Kenya (and a game preserve), and Paris. The cost: $55,800 a person, double occupancy. Air travel will be in daylight hours. All meals are included, as are special parties, all sightseeing and gratuities.
Two of the Concorde global tours leave on the same dates in 1999: Sept. 15 and Oct. 8. The Sept. 15 itinerary is identical to this year's, but the Oct. 8 trip will have a few different stops, heading first to South America, then across the Pacific.
Intrav's third 1999 global charter is an 18-day trip leaving Dec. 24 -- to Hawaii (for Christmas), Australia, Hong Kong (for New Year's Eve), India, Kenya and Egypt. The cost: $75,000, double occupancy.
Asked about the rigorousness of such a trip, Lohn Lampl, a spokesman for British Airways, likened it to a cruise. Dennis Overman, vice president and general manager of Intrav, has led several of these trips and said that people confined to a wheelchair might find their enjoyment of some sights minimized. He said that there might be special arrangements needed for someone who is confined to a wheelchair, and that Intrav would make those arrangements.
Keep in mind that the Concorde is fairly narrow, and that Intrav has another global tour by air: 24 days starting in Indianapolis or Las Vegas on a refitted L-1011 wide-body jet. This trip makes many of the same stops as this year's Concorde trip, but with no more than 88 people on a plane designed for up to 362 seats, and which has been refitted with two lounges. So this plane may be more comfortable. This trip costs $37,800, double occupancy; an optional golf package is an additional $2,000.
For information on either trip, call Intrav at (800) 825-2900.
Finding Polish Roots
Q.  I am traveling to Warsaw and Lodz to investigate my family history. I need a guide who speaks Polish, and perhaps knows some Hebrew. Do you have any information on finding one? -- Sophie Zimmerman, Great Neck, N.Y.
A.  The Polish National Tourist Office, at 275 Madison Avenue, New York 10016, can provide a list of Polish-tour operators and the general services they offer. Call (212) 338-9412; Web: www.polandtour.org.
At Air Tours Poland in New York, one of the companies listed, Beata Zieja, the sales manager, said her agency can arrange custom excursions with a driver who speaks English. The company's Warsaw office deals often with travelers from Israel, she added. She can be reached at (800) 223-0593, extension 243.
At another New York agency, Orbis Polish Tours, Richard Cichocki, the manager, said his company also can help you find a guide and plan excursions. Call (800) 867-7247 and ask for the FIT department.
Orbis also works with a genealogist, Miriam Weiner, whose company, Routes to Roots, specializes in genealogical research and travel in Poland, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus. Based at 136 Sandpiper Key, Secaucus, N.J. 07094, she can be reached at (201) 866-4075 and has a Web site, www.routestoroots.com.
Miss Weiner also recently published 'Jewish Roots in Poland,' a guide to sites and archives. It includes descriptions of cities and towns (including several pages on Lodz, an industrial center once known as 'the Polish Manchester'), chapters on genealogical research, and archives in Poland. On page 123, it lists The Jewish Information and Tourist Bureau (Our Roots), 'a travel agency specializing in Jewish sites'; call or fax (48-22) 620-0556.
The book costs $50, plus $8 shipping (and $3 tax in New Jersey), and can be ordered from (800) 742-5403.
RAY CORMIER",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Affordable Spas
Q. I would like to go to a spa for a week or so to work on my weight and fitness, but most seem to be very expensive. Are there any that are more affordable? -- C. M. Kulwin, Upper Montclair, N.J.
A. The popularity of spas is based on pampering at least as much as sweating, so prices are going to reflect that. But if you consider less than $1,000 reasonable for a week's accommodations, three meals a day and exercise and relaxation programs, there are a few places in the Northeast that fit the bill, at least outside of peak season. The three here offer shorter stays, too.
At Deerfield Spa, in Marshall's Creek, Pa., near East Stroudsburg, double-occupancy rates range from $799 to $970 a week (plus 6 percent tax and a 15 percent service charge) and include two half-hour massages. Heather McMahon, a spokeswoman, said that the spa features low-fat cuisine and that exercise programs range from a 'boot camp' experience to Pilates to aquatic aerobics.
The spa has a gym for strength training, an outdoor heated pool, hot tub and sauna. A naturalist leads hikes on Pocono trails.
Deerfield accepts up to 33 guests for what Ms. McMahon described as a 'nonchalant, not ostentatious' program. Most guests stay in the three-floor main house in rooms decorated country style, with lots of floral prints. A one-story annex has larger rooms, two with king-size beds. Deerfield is open April to mid-November.
Contact Deerfield at 650 Resica Falls Road, East Stroudsburg, Pa. 18301; (800) 852-4494, fax (570) 223-8270; or www.deerfieldspa.com.
Vatra Mountain Valley Lodge and Spa is on 15 acres at the base of Hunter Mountain in the Catskills. Exercise options include a variety of aerobics, aqua fitness, yoga and dance. There is a fitness room and tennis, volleyball and basketball courts.
The spa has 27 rooms with televisions and phones, some with balconies and skylights. Meals are vegetarian totaling up to 1,200 calories a day. Weekly guests get four 30-minute massages in the $978 to $1,290 rates, which include all fees and taxes. Other treatments, which are extra, include seaweed wraps ($75) and a European facial ($60)
Vatra Mountain, Route 214, Post Office Box F, Hunter, N.Y. 12442; (800) 232-2772, fax (518) 263-4994.
Also in the Catskills is New Age Health Spa, where, says Patricia Fahie, director of marketing, most guests seek stress reduction. But it offers fitness classes and for the seriously overweight a program meant to lead to the loss of 50 pounds or more.
A typical day at the spa might include Zen meditation, an aerobic walk, water aerobics and yoga or tai chi. The spa features a 50-foot Alpine tower for climbing while wearing a harness. There are Trotter strength machines, free weights and cardio equipment, and indoor and outdoor pools. A variety of salon services cost extra.
Weekly double rates are $855 to $1,064 a person, plus 8 percent tax and 17 percent service charges. Here and at Deerfield (but not at Vatra), singles can be assigned a roommate.  New Age, Neversink, N.Y. 12765; (800) 682-4348, fax (914) 985-2467; www.newagehealthspa.com.
Heading to Sardinia
Q. I am planning a trip to Sardinia this fall. What is the best way to get there from Italy and what are some important sites? -- V. M. Palacios, Staten Island, N.Y.
A. Going to Sardinia should be easier in the fall than in summer. The chances are the crystal-clear waters will still be warm enough to swim in and there won't be the crush of tourists that flock to the beautiful beaches, especially on the Emerald Coast in the north, in summer.
Besides the beaches, the island's capital, Cagliari, in the south, is worth a visit for its 13th century cathedral, national archeological museum and a Roman amphitheater. Sassari, the second largest city, has a medieval center, and 11 miles away is the 12th-century Camaldulian abbey.
The inland areas are rural and hold many ruins. Remnants of the nuraghi, cone-shaped fortified tower houses made from massive stones well before the birth of Christ, dot the interior. Some of the most interesting of these are at Barumini, about 35 miles north of Cagliari.
Alitalia, (800) 223-5730, flies to Cagliari from most major Italian cities. There are at least eight daily flights from Rome, for example, costing about $210 round trip, at 1,868 lira to $1. A regional airline, Meridiana, (800) 275-5566, flies to Olbia as well as Cagliari from Rome, Milan and other cities, for about $100 each way.
Another option is to take a ferry. Among the major lines is Tirrenia Navigazione, which has an overnight ferry from Civitavecchia, near Rome, to Cagliari each evening at 6:30. It also has a three-and-a-half-hour hydrofoil crossing at 8:30 A.M.; a round-trip ticket is about $85. According to the Italian Government Tourist Board, it's best to call the Naples office for reservations: (39-081) 720-1111, fax (39-081) 720-1441.
The Italian State Railway runs ferries to Olbia, a board spokeswoman said, for about half Tirrenia's prices. Tickets must be bought at railroad stations, though.
Puerto Rico Summer Events
Q. Could you tell me what cultural events are on the schedule in Puerto Rico in July and August? -- Phyllis Mate, Brooklyn, N.Y.
A. A couple of summer highlights on the island involve lively music and dance. From July 26 to 31, the World Salsa Congress will spice up El San Juan Hotel and Casino in Isla Verde. Richard Goenaga, general manager of the congress, said that the event focuses on the dancers, coming from 32 countries to show off different styles. Each night at least three top bands will play, as well. Nightly tickets are $40, a four-night pass $150. For more information, call (787) 274-1601.
The Loiza Carnival, July 23 to Aug. 1, is an annual celebration of the African heritage of the northeastern town of Loiza. Besides parades, it features performances of the bomba, the lively Afro-Caribbean dance form. Free; (787) 876-3570.
Traditional music and dance is also part of the Tourism Artisans Fair, July 30 to Aug. 1 at Plaza de la Darsena and Paseo de la Princesa in Old San Juan. This free event will include several folk dance and singing performances, and will bring together more than 200 artisans showing and selling their crafts.
To learn more about these and other events on the island, including the many town patron-saint festivals, contact the New York office of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company at (800) 233-6530, or see www.prtourism .com.
RAY CORMIER",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Train to the Redwoods
Q. I have never seen the redwoods of northern California and am eager to do so, on a cross-country rail trip. My friend and I are 75 and 80, respectively, and would really enjoy seeing the United States this way.
-- J. C. Lieberman, Clifton, Va.
A. It is indeed possible to get within striking distance of the magnificent redwoods by train, although it is a trek, with several hours' wait for connections in Chicago and Sacramento.
Cliff Black, Amtrak's director of special projects, recommends a route to Klamath Falls, Ore., three and a half hours from Crescent City near the California border, a departure point for the state and national coastal redwood parks.
For the four-day trip from Washington, D.C., the Capitol Limited from Union Station to Chicago leaves daily at 4:05 p.m., arriving at 9:35 a.m. For the next leg, through the spectacular Colorado Rockies and Sierra Nevada, you switch to the California Zephyr, departing Chicago at 3:35 p.m. and arriving at 4 p.m. two days later in Sacramento; there you would board the Coast Starlight, which leaves at 11:59 p.m. and arrives at 7:55 a.m. in Klamath Falls, where you could pick up a rental car. (An agreement with Hertz enables you to reserve your car there through Amtrak, and to be picked up at the station free.)
Prices depend on availability and date, but one thing you can count on is a 15 percent discount for those age 62 or over. Your best bet is the Explore America fare, at $429 each round trip ($499 between June 15 and Aug. 20 and Dec. 15 to Jan. 2), with an additional $563 to $842 one way for a shared sleeper; all meals included. That means your total round trip on coach, with the discount, comes to  $843.20 a person with the least expensive shared sleeper.
If you'd prefer to fly back, Amtrak has an agreement with United, which means you'd avoid paying the premium one-way fare (you'd also get United's 10 percent senior discount);  the one-way train trip can cost from $250 to $450, without accommodations. In any case, for the lowest train fares, reserve several months ahead; call Amtrak at (800) 872-7245.
Sailing in Greece and Turkey
Q. I'm thinking about renting a sailboat for two or three couples for a three-week cruise in the Greek Islands and off the Turkish coast. Can you help? -- R. E. MacDonald, North Kingstown, R.I.
A. There are many options for chartering a yacht to sail in the Greek Islands and along the coast of Turkey. Grace Firogenis, a spokeswoman at the Greek National Tourist Organization in New York, and a skipper herself, says that spring and fall are the best times for sailing, with May and September the best months of all. (In summer, prices are higher, there may be no wind and it may be very hot; winter, of course, can be cold, with rough seas.)
But combining Greece and Turkey on a single chartered yacht is problematic, as exit and entrance papers are required when crossing into Turkish waters, as well as inspections and a fee of about $600, and papers are required for the reverse course into Greek waters as well.
One American company that specializes in charters in both countries and handles air transportation, transfers, land tours and hotels is Albatross Yacht Charters, Box 250, Moorestown, N.J. 08057; (800) 377-8877, fax (856) 778-7555; www  .albatrosscharters.com. Founded in 1982, the company has a fleet of more than 200 boats and can offer one-way charters, so you don't have to take a circular route.
A sailboat for two to eight people is typically 30 to 61 feet, and can be chartered with an English-speaking skipper and cook ($135 and $100 a day respectively) or with no crew, that is, 'bareboat.' (To charter a boat without a local skipper, a resume showing experience sailing a similar-size boat in open water is required.) Bareboat charters cost $1,000 to $5,000 a week, depending on the size of the boat.
For a three-week sail combining Greece and Turkey, in order to avoid the delay and expense of crossing into the other country's waters, Tim  Monsul, the president, suggests sailing to Rhodes after two weeks in the islands and taking the ferry from  Mandraki to the Turkish port of Marmaris, where you can pick up a Turkish-flagged boat.
More than 50 Greek brokers are listed with the Hellenic Yacht Brokers Association (Box 3093, Athens 10033, and on the Web at www  .biznet.com.gr/sail/brokers), which means they are licensed to charter yachts by the National Greek Tourist Organization. Closer to home, the Greek National Tourist Organization, at 645 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022, (212) 421-5777, fax (212) 826-6940, has a list of 10 U.S. companies that offer such charters. Prices for boats large enough for six range widely, from $1,000 and up a week for a boat without crew to $7,000 to $12,000 and up for one with crew.
While a spokeswoman at the Turkish Tourist Office in New York said it could not make specific recommendations, it does have a list of charter companies; call (212) 687-2194.
Hiking in Switzerland
Q. My husband and I would like to take a group walking tour in the Swiss Alps next summer, with our baggage being delivered to each evening's lodging destination. Do you know of such tours? -- Susan J. Trammell, New York, N.Y.
A. Wanderweg Holidays, based in  Cherry Hill, N.J., (800) 270-2577, fax (856) 321-1040, Web site www .wanderwegholidays.com, offers two 'hiking without luggage' packages in Switzerland. The 'self-guided' hikes consist of groups as large as 18, said Phil Scheidt, Wanderweg's president, who began organizing Alpine hikes in 1980.
The seven-day Three Resort Walk is through the Grisons (Graubunden), a region of Alpine lakes, that includes Davos, Arosa and Lenzerheide. The hikes are moderate; to avoid very steep climbs, hikers take the cable car from Davos to Strela Pass, at 7,200 feet, then walk a gradual ascent to Arosa, about five and a half hours, where their bags are waiting at the hotel. The tour includes a full day in and around Arosa, followed by a four-hour hike to Lenzerheide, beginning with a gondola ride. This trip is offered from mid-July to October, and this year cost $769 to $910 a person, double occupancy, without air fare, depending on your choice of a three-star or four-star hotel; meals and cable car rides included.
The Five Resort Walk begins and ends in Sierre, in the Valais region to the south, and costs $769 for 6 nights, $1,189 for 10, without air fare.
FLORENCE STICKNEY",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q&A
LEAD: San Diego Trips  Question:I would like to take a cruise of three days or so from San Diego down the coast of Baja California, Mexico. If there is such a cruise, on a small ship, who administers it? - Z. C. M., New York, N.Y.  Answer:Opportunities for a short cruise of this kind are limited.
San Diego Trips  Question:I would like to take a cruise of three days or so from San Diego down the coast of Baja California, Mexico. If there is such a cruise, on a small ship, who administers it? - Z. C. M., New York, N.Y.  Answer:Opportunities for a short cruise of this kind are limited. One option is the Executive Explorer of Catamaran Cruiselines which does four-night round trips from San Diego with an overnight in Ensenada, Mexico. Among other places visited are Anacapa and Santa Catalina Islands. This cruise will be available on the 104-foot-long vessel, which carries 49 passengers, in April and May.
Fares range from $559 to $859 a person, double occupancy. The Executive Explorer also does three-night cruises but these do not go to Mexico. From June the ship is scheduled to cruise to Alaska. (Catamaran Cruiselines, 1620 Metropolitan Park Building, Seattle, Wash. 98101; 206-623-2417 and 800-622-2042.) Visitors may also go down to Ensenada on a day trip aboard the Lucille operated by Ensenada Express (Post Office Box 81823, San Diego, Calif. 92138; 800-422-5008 in California, and 800-826-4815 out of state). They can also arrange to stay in Ensenada for one or more nights and return on the Lucille. The 120-passenger ship's departures are daily Friday through Monday until Memorial Day and then seven days a week. The journey takes three and a half hours, each way; five hours are spent in Ensenada. The round-trip fare is $59 until Memorial Day, then $79.
Baja Frontier Tours (2223 C Street, San Diego, Calif. 92102; 619-232-1600) will arrange accommodations in Ensenada for Ensenada Express passengers. At the Quintas Papagayo Beach Resort about a mile north of downtown, a studio room for two costs from $37 a night, and there are oceanfront rooms and villas at prices up to $80. Rates for two at the downtown San Nicolas Resort Hotel are from $82.70. Baja Frontier Tours also arranges cars with drivers, and accommodations in Loreto, Cabo San Lucas, La Paz and other towns in Baja California.  Customs Rules  Question:If I buy expensive items in duty-free shops in Martinique, will they be exempt from duty on returning to the U.S.? I am taking my new foreign camera. Could that be a problem with customs inspectors? -V. W., Syracuse, N.Y.  Answer:Anything American travelers purchase in duty-free shops overseas is subject to duty when they return home. But all purchases, including those bought in duty-free shops abroad, can be included in the exemption allowance granted to everyone who has been out of the United States for 48 hours. (People visiting Mexico or the U.S. Virgin Islands need not be out of the country for 48 hours to qualify for the exemption.) Each returning traveler is allowed to bring in $400 worth of goods free of duty (or $800 from the U.S. Virgin Islands). The exemption is allowed each time travelers return to the U.S., but 30 days must elapse before they qualify for another.
The description of airport and other stores as duty-free in Martinique and other islands indicates the absence or reduction of import duty that might otherwise have been applied in that country.
Generally, U.S. Customs inspectors are experienced in determining whether an item was purchased abroad or in this country. But to avoid a problem over the new camera, it is advisable to carry the receipt to prove it was purchased in the United States or on an earlier trip abroad. An alternative is to register the camera with the Customs Service at an international airport, or at a district Customs office, before traveling.  Portuguese Route  Question:How long is the drive from Lisbon to the Algarve, and can you suggest places to stay on the route? - B. S., Elkins Park, Pa.  Answer:The drive from Lisbon to Lagos at the western end of the Algarve, which extends eastward to the Spanish border, can be done in about five hours. The distance along this route, close to the Atlantic coast, is about 160 miles. There are many atractive villages and fishing ports with small inns - but no major hotels - along the way. The traveler might want to consider the small pousadas, or government-run inns, which all have restaurants, on the route. There is one, the Sao Filipe, in Setubal, although this is only about 30 miles from Lisbon. Farther south are the Pousada de Vale de Gaio in Alcacer do Sal and the Santiago in Santiago do Cacem, each with seven rooms.
Some drivers prefer to drive inland from Lisbon to Evora before heading south to the Algarve via Beja. The 32-room Pousada dos Loios in Evora, a city that reminds many visitors of Andalusia, is in a former monastery.
Rates at the governmemt-run inns generally range from $47 to $55 a night for two, including Continental breakfast. The Portuguese National Tourist Office in New York (212-354-4403) has information on making reservations for hotels and pousadas.  Theme Parks  Question:Is there a list of all the theme parks in the United States, with admissions and driving directions? - P. C. H., Winter Park, Fla.  Answer:It may not be possible to find one source giving all this information but there are publications that go part of the way. Rand McNally's Family Adventure Road Atlas ($7.95) includes a map showing a dozen theme parks across the country that is keyed to a list of details on each park. The Rand McNally Road Atlas & Vacation Guide to the United States, Canada and Mexico ($12.95) gives a list of recreational sites, including theme parks, above each state map. The Birnbaum guidebook called 'United States' ($12.95) includes a list of 18 theme parks and Fodor's 'U.S.A.' gives details of several. The Complete Traveller Bookstore in New York (212-685-9007) and Travel Books Unlimited in Bethesda, Md. (301-951-8533) are among stores that carry these publications.
'The 1988 Directory of Theme and Amusement Parks,' a revised version, includes 450 listings, state by state, with brief infomation on each park but not rates or directions. The 56-page book is available from Pilot Books (103 Cooper Street, Babylon, L.I. 11702; 516-422-2225) for $3.95 and $1 for postage.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:  Nuns' Tours of Rome
Nuns' Tours of Rome
Q. I have heard about a group of nuns who conduct tours of holy places in Rome. Can you tell me how to contact them? - L. R., Bronx, N.Y.
A. The Ladies of Bethany are Dutch Roman Catholic Nuns who offer travel services at Foyer Unitas, 30 Via Santa Maria Dell'Anima; telephone 6865951. They conduct tours of Rome and the Vatican and give lectures at the Foyer Unitas, and the subjects are not only religious. The sisters are also available at Foyer Unitas to give information about Rome to anyone who stops by. Generally they conduct walking tours every Tuesday and Thursday morning and two Saturday mornings a month and give one-hour slide lectures Monday and Friday evenings at 5:30 (visitors are welcome at 5 P.M. for tea). They also arrange for Wednesday morning audiences with the Pope. Tickets for audiences must be booked ahead; a preparatory talk is given Tuesday at 7 P.M. All the services are free.
The schedule of tours and talks for the next month is announced late the preceding month. The December program includes tours of the Jewish ghetto, Vatican City and the Roman Forum. Among lecture subjects are the Catacombs and '2,000 Years of Daily Life in Rome.'
Some tours require signing up ahead of time. Foyer Unitas is open from 9 A.M. to noon and 4:30 to 6:30 P.M. on weekdays; closed Saturday afternoon and Sunday.  Biking the Florida Keys
Q. My friend and I would like to spend our winter vacation biking the Florida Keys. Are you aware of bicycle routes linking the Keys? -C.M. T., Southampton, L.I.
A. There is only one route that links all the Keys, the two-lane U.S. 1. Car traffic is quite heavy, especially on weekends. Florida highway officials recommend that only experienced bicyclists make the trip and that they ride only from dawn until 10 A.M. About 70 percent of the route, including all the bridges, has four- to six-foot paved shoulders.
If you are starting on the mainland, you can bypass 29 miles of U.S. 1 by taking the Card Sound Road from Homestead to State Route 905 in Key Largo, connecting with U.S. 1. ALong about 15 miles of U.S. 1 in Key Largo there is a separate bike path.  Tickets to French Open
Q. How can we get tickets to the French Open? Are there any tours that include tickets? - G. M., Chatham, Mass.
A. Reservations are being accepted now for the French Open tennis tournament, to take place May 28 to June 10 in Roland Garros Stadium in Paris. To get tickets, request a reservation form from the Federation Francaise de Tennis Billetterie, 2 Avenue Gordon-Bennet, 75016 Paris, France (telephone 47.43.48.00). Payment, sent with the form, can be made by check in American dollars. Officials of the French Open advise applying as soon as possible, as tickets sell out quickly. It takes about a month after applying to get tickets. Prices for the best center court seats are $32 for a one-day ticket during the first four days of the Open; $36 a day for the four following days; $40 a day for the three following days, and $43 a day for the last three days. For seats higher up, prices are $15 to $23. Ticketholders can stay inside Roland Garros all day, usually from 11 A.M. to 8 or 9 P.M.
Here are some packages that include center court seats at the French Open. They include round-trip air fare froom New York, hotel, daily Continental breakfast and perhaps some extras like cocktail parties or Metro or museum passes. Prices are for one person in double occupancy:
Custom Travel Consultants (2105 Woodside Road, Woodside, Calif. 94062; 800-367-2105 or 415-369-2105) has two six-night packages. One, leaving May 27, is $799 including seats for May 28 and 30 and June 1. Another package, leaving June 5, includes seats for the semifinals on June 7 and 8, the women's final June 9 and the men's final June 10. The cost $1,250 or $1,550, depending on hotel.
International Tennis Associates (19 East 21st Street, Suite 3D, New York, N.Y. 10010; 212-460-8320) offers six-night packages leaving May 26 with three days at the early rounds, for $1,798, or leaving June 4 and attending the final four days, $2,295. They also offer a 16-day trip, including the final four days, stays in Paris and the Loire Valley, most meals and tennis with members of tennis clubs in Paris and the Loire Valley. The price from New York is $4,325.
McKinley Wilson International (Post Office Box 1623, La Quinta, Calif. 92253; 619-564-5443) offers three weeklong packages, one leaving May 25 with seats for five days in the early rounds at $2,195; five days in the middle rounds, at $2,595, leaving May 30, or the four days of final rounds, $2,725, leaving June 3.
Jet Vacations (888 Seventh Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10106; 800-538-1999 or, in California 800-538-2999, Concorde desk) has a five-night package departing June 6, that includes flights on the Concorde and seats for the final four days. The 1990 price is not set; the 1989 price was $3,999.  Reykjavik-Bergen by Sea
Q. We wish to fly to Reykjavik, Iceland, then travel by ship to the Faeroe Islands, Shetland Islands and Bergen, Norway. Where can we find information on passenger ships that follow that route? We prefer to travel in spring or autumn. - M.T.H., Lanoka Harbor, N.J.
A. To make the trip, you will have to leave from Seydisfjordur, on the east coast of Iceland, rather than Reykjavik, and you will have to wait until June. The Smyril Line runs a passenger ferry, the 940-berth Norrona, that leaves Seydisfjordur on Thursday and arrives at Bergen on Tuesday, June through August only. On the way, the ferry stops at Torshavn, Faero Islands; Hanstholm, Denmark; again at Torshaven (where the line is based); Lerwick, Shetland Islands, and Bergen. Passengers can stay a weekend in Torshavn for $120 additional, skipping the Hanstholm segment, and pick up the ferry on Monday. The cost of the ferry trip is $277 a person in a double berth for the first three weeks in June and $342 thereafter.
The line's representative in New York is EuroCruises, Post Office Box 30925, New York, N.Y. 10011; 800-688-3876, or 212-691-2099.
EuroCruises will offer a package, the Nordic Island Sampler, that will include an Icleandic flight to Reykjavik and on to Egilstad, Iceland, near Seydisfjordur, and the same ferry trip including a weekend in Torshavn, a a flight home from Oslo, with total cost of $1,279. Return flights are also available from Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen or Goteborg.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:  Sources on Freighter Travel
Sources on Freighter Travel
Q. Can you assist me in getting information on freighter travel? I no longer see it advertised. - L. D., New York, N.Y.
A. There are fewer freighters that take passengers than in previous years and those that do rarely take more than 12, so it hardly pays for the freighter lines to advertise. These are publications that list passenger-carrying freighters:
Freighter Space Advisory is published twice a month by Freighter World Cruises (180 South Lake Avenue, Pasadena, Calif. 91101; 818-449-3106), the passenger agent for about a dozen freighter lines. The newsletter is $27 for the first year, including $25 credit toward cruises booked through Freighter World Cruises, and $18 for subsequent years. The newsletter reports on available space, new sailings and discounts on the lines the agency represents.
TravLtips (Post Office Box 218, Flushing, N.Y. 11358; 800-872-8584 or 718-939-2400), a travel agency specializing in freighter travel, issues a booklet six times a year that is sent to members, who pay a $15 annual fee. Each booklet includes articles, mainly on freighter travel, and listings of available freighter space.
Ford's Freighter Travel is published twice a year. The directory, published by Ford's Travel Guides (19448 Londelius Street, Northridge, Calif. 91324), lists freighters and their itineraries by departure point and includes a section on river and canal travel. The directory also lists travel agencies that specialize in booking freighter travel. It costs $8.95 for a single copy and $15 for both annual issues.  Skiing in Megeve
Q. Can you give me information on the ski resort of Megeve, France? - A. M., Canton Ohio
A. Megeve is on southwest face of the Mont d'Arbois in the Alps, 372 miles from Paris, 47 miles from Geneva and 13 miles from Chamonix. A trip from Paris by T.G.V. to Bellegarde or Sallanches with a bus connection to Megeve takes about five hours. From the Geneva airport buses take about an hour and 45 minutes.
The ski area, established in 1933, is one of the oldest in France. It attracts a fashionable crowd, offering accordingly fashionable shops and restaurants, and is particularly popular with Parisians. Its charm derives largely from the traditional Savoyard architecture, with small wood-and-stone chalets, rather than the taller buildings in newer ski resorts. Horse-drawn sleighs transport people around town.
Skiing at Megeve can be combined with that of the neighboring resorts of St. Gervais, St.-Nicolas and Combloux. These areas are not as high as other areas in the French Alps, and thus the snowfall is less reliable. The runs are weighted toward beginning and intermediate skiers.
There are about 55 hotels in Megeve, ranging from the Parc des Loges (telephone 50.93.05.03) and the Mont-d'Arbois (50.21.25.03), which charge about $267 a night in high season for a double room with two meals, to Les Primeveres (50.21.23.09) and the Sevigne (50.21.23.09) at $40. There is a central lodging information and reservation service, Megeve Reservations (50.21.29.52; fax 50.93.03.09), part of the town's Office of Tourism, 74120 Megeve, France; 50.21.27.28.  Passion Play Tickets
Q. I am interested in attending the Passion Play in Oberammergau, West Germany. Do you know of any tours? - S. H., Irvine, Calif.
A. The Oberammergau Passion Play, the daylong pageant depicting the Easter story, is presented every 10 years in the Bavarian village of Oberammergau. It next takes place between May 21 and Sept. 28, 1990, with performances on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Except for Saturdays, those who attend performances must have accommodations in the village, so attending as part of a tour package is wise. Saturday performances are open to visitors without accommodations (ticket price about $59), but those tickets are reportedly very difficult to get.
These are some operators whose tours include a performance of the Passion Play. The prices, given for double occupancy, include hotel, bus transportation and some meals.
Hapag-Lloyd Tours (1640 Hampstead Turnpike, East Meadow, N.Y. 11554; 800-334-2724 or 516-794-1253) offers three tour packages that include tickets. Two of them are eight-night tours, one of Germany, with the land price $1,339, the other of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, $1,444. The third is a 14-night Germany tour at $2,336. The company has a limited number of unescorted three- or four-night arrangments, with prices including transfers from Munich, one or two nights in Munich and one or two nights in Oberammergau, some meals, and Passion Play tickets. Prices range from $387 for three nights in tourist-class hotels, to $597 for four nights in first-class hotels.
Pleasure Break Travel (1350 East Touhy Avenue, Des Plaines, Ill. 60018; 800-777-1566 or 708-298-8700) has some tickets plus stays in private homes in the village. Two nights is $403 and one night is $370, including meals.
Travelink Tours International (401 South Milwaukee Avenue, Suite 230, Wheeling, Ill. 60090; 800-323-0164) has six programs including the Passion Play, some geared to religious interests. Among them are a 10-day tour of Reformation sites for $1,998, including round-trip air from New York.
These two companies prefer that tours be booked through travel agents: Trafalgar Tours (21 East 26th Street, New York, N.Y. 10010) runs European tours that include Oberammergau. Land costs range from $1,384 for 14 days to $2,384 for 27 days. Unitours (8 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Ill.) has eight European tours. Land prices range from $819 for 6 days to $2,110 for 22 days.  Anguillan Currency
Q. I will be traveling in Anguilla and have gotten mixed opinions on whether I should convert money or use American dollars. - W. R. C., Doylestown, Pa.
A. Anguilla's official currency is the East Caribbean dollar, trading at about 2.7 to the United States dollar. However, United States currency is accepted throughout the island, save for a very few small shops. Given that a fee is generally charged for exchanging currency, your money is worth more if you do not exchange it. And at journey's end, you may find yourself with E.C. dollars that banks will not buy back or stores will not accept. If you find that you do need E.C. currency, an Anguillan bank will exchange American money or traveler's checks.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Virginia Woolf Tours
Q. My siblings and I would like to send our mother, a Virginia Woolf enthusiast, on a literary tour of England that includes Bloomsbury sights and some of the places were Woolf lived. -- E.A.H.P., Monsey, N.Y.
A. Compared with literary tours for Shakespeare, Dickens and Jane Austen enthusiasts, there are not many options for fans of Virginia Woolf. Day tours are a possibility, however. One experienced guide is Maire McQueeney, who has run Twentieth Century Walks, a series of literary walks in England, since 1985. On May 8, 15 and 22, during the Brighton Festival, Ms. McQueeney will lead 90-minute walking tours of Lewes, a few miles from Monks House in Rodmell, where Woolf spent her final years; $12.60, at $1.80 to the pound. On June 20, in London, she will lead two tours following the walk that Woolf's heroine Mrs. Dalloway took from Pimlico to Mayfair in June 1923; $12.60. And on June 22 she will lead a London-Sussex coach excursion to Monks House and a walking tour of Rodmell; the tour ($54) is planned in connection with the 14th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, in London from June 23 to 26. Contact Maire McQueeney at m.mcqueeney@btopenworld.com.
The conference will include a series of speakers, panel discussions and Woolf-inspired performances, as well as tours of Bloomsbury residences. It is open to the public, but requires registration and a fee of $233 (spaces are limited, so it is best to register soon). Information and reservations: (44-207) 862 8675; fax (44-207) 862 8720; www.sas.ac.uk/ies/conferences/virginiawoolf.htm.
Another option is to hire a car and guide for a customized Woolf tour with a company such as British Tours, in London. Jason Doll-Steinberg, marketing manager, says the company, in business since 1958, has 47 guides, a dozen with literary backgrounds. He suggests two day tours. A seven-hour London tour would include Bloomsbury and other sites for $450 for one or two people (the more people in the car, the cheaper the cost per person). A second day trip would be to Sussex, and would include Monks House and Charleston, the farmhouse of the painter Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant; $560 for one or two people for a seven-hour tour. (You should plan your visit during the months the house museums are open, April through October.) A third tour might include the two great Bloomsbury sites in Kent: Knole, where Vita Sackville-West grew up, and Sissinghurst, where she moved with Sir Harold Nicolson. Contact British Tours at (866) 464-3010; www.britishtours.com.
Self-guided tours are an alternative. Marylin Bender, an author and former editor, has written 'Virginia Woolf's London,' a detailed series of itineraries for self-guided walks in London, Richmond, Sussex and Kent, interspersed with quotations from Woolf's works, and including travel information (by public transportation). It can be found on the New York Society Library site, www.nysoclib.org/travels/woolf.html.
Another good source would be Jean Moorcroft Wilson's 'Virginia Woolf's London: A Guide to Bloomsbury and Beyond' (I.B. Tauris, 2001), which looks at Woolf's various homes and includes walking route maps.
Carnival in Dominica
Q. We will be visiting Dominica Feb. 12 to 19. What Carnival events might we attend? -- V.P., Chicago
A. This year the two official days of Carnival (Mas Domnik) are Feb. 23 and 24. But the Carnival period begins Feb. 7, according to Sobers Esprit, deputy director of tourism and a member of the Carnival Committee. For the next two weeks competitions and pageants take place almost every night, mainly in the capital of Roseau. Mr. Esprit explains that Dominica promotes some of the most traditional forms of Carnival in the Caribbean, and that some costumes, such as the elaborate shaggy sensay outfits, date back well over a century, originating in Africa.
Events you will be able to see during your visit include Ole Mas, a parade of masqueraders, Feb. 12; the Junior Calypso Monarch competition, Feb. 13; Band Splash, when the top bands perform, Feb. 14; a teenage pageant, with competition for queen, Feb. 15; the Lagoon Street Jam, with dancing to the music of the most popular calypso and bouyon music bands, on Feb. 16; and on Feb. 18, a king is chosen from the Stardom tent, the biggest and most popular calypso competition on the island.
While most events are held at the Festival City open-air grounds just outside Roseau, it is best to doublecheck at your hotel as to where each event will take place and when. The Dominica tourism Web site, www.dominica.dm, has a schedule of events.
FLORENCE STICKNEY
Q & A  Correction:  February 15, 2004, Sunday  An answer in the Q&A column on Feb. 1 about Virginia Woolf tours in England misstated contact information for a London-Sussex trip on June 22. It is open only to those who have registered and paid a fee to attend the International Conference on Virginia Woolf in London, mentioned in the column with contact information: (44-207) 862 8675, fax (44-207) 862 8720. While the excursion is indeed led by Maire McQueeney, those interested must contact the conference, not Ms. McQueeney.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Welsh Male Choirs
Q.  We are planning a trip to Wales in May or June and would like to attend a concert of Welsh singing in a formal setting. Any suggestions? -- T. P. Thompson, Evans City, Pa.
A.  The rich tradition of choral singing in Wales, primarily by men, dates from the days when coal mines, ironworks and quarries were a central part of life. Today there are more than a hundred male choirs, most of them in the south; they often number 60 to 100.
The repertory of a cor meibion (male choir) is wide-ranging: Welsh music, operatic choruses and spirituals are typical fare, but selections from 'Cats' and 'Phantom of the Opera' or perhaps a commissioned work may also turn up on a program.
You might want to consider attending a rehearsal. As John H. Lewis, secretary of the Pendyrus Male Choir, which gives 20 to 25 concerts a year, said: 'You see the finished product in a concert. It's always intriguing to see what goes on behind the scenes.' Rehearsals are held once or twice a week and most groups welcome visitors.
Here is a sampling of choirs, with rehearsal schedules, contact numbers (for choir secretaries) and concerts in May and June. If you plan to go to a rehearsal, it's best to call ahead. Concerts start at 7 or 7:30 P.M. and admission may be about $2.50 to $5, based on 60 pence to $1. While the settings may not be as formal as you had in mind, the choirs are established musical groups.
Cor Meibion Caernarfon, Tuesday, 7:45 P.M., Conservative Club, High Street, Caernarfon. Contact: John Williams, (1286) 675183. Concert: May 16, Community Center, Llanidloes.
Cor Meibion Pontarddulais, Sunday and Wednesday at 7 P.M., Ysgol Gynradd Pontarddulais, Upper James Street, Pontarddulais. Winston Price (44-1792) 865070. Concerts: May 9, Goppa Chapel, Pontardawe; June 13, Arts Center, Pontardawe.
Cor Meibion Rhosllanerchrugog, Monday and Thursday at 7:15 P.M. in Rhosllanerchrugog, Wrexham.  Monday at Hafod Social Club, Broad  Street, and Thursday at Grango School, Rhoslanerchrugog. J. Miles (44-1978) 353587. Concerts: May 22, the Cathedral, Chester; May 23, Oswestry, site to be announced.
Morriston Orpheus Choir, Sacred Heart Center, Morriston, Swansea, Sunday and Wednesday at 7:30 P.M. Richard Royston Pugh (44-1639) 772370. Concerts: May 30, St. Chad's Church, Shrewsbury; June 13, the Abbey, Romsey; June 21, the Cathedral, Ennis, Ireland.
Treorchy Male Choir, Treorchy Primary School, Treorchy. Tuesday and Thursday at 7:30 P.M., Treorchy Primary School. Islwyn Morgan (44-1443) 435852. Concert: May 30, Civic Hall, in Bedworth, near Coventry, England.
Pendyrus Male Choir, Sunday and Wednesday at 7 P.M., Tylorstown Primary School, Edmund Street, Tylorstown. John H. Lewis (44-1443) 730383. Concerts: May 9, University Hospital, Cardiff; May 23, St. Mary's Church, Bute Street, Cardiff; June 13, St. Theodore's Church, Port Talbot.
A brochure on choirs can be picked up at the British Tourist Authority, 551 Fifth Avenue (45th Street), in Manhattan, and at the Wales Tourist Board, 2 Fitzalan Road, Cardiff.
Cooking Classes in Thailand
Q.  I will be traveling to Thailand and would like to take a two-week course in Thai cooking that is taught in English. Can you help? -- Anita Moore Gander, Salt Lake City
A.  Most courses run from one to four days and are held at hotels in Bangkok. Minimum class size is 2 to 5 students, maximum is 10 to 15.
The Thai Cooking School at the Oriental Hotel gives three-hour classes from Monday through Thursday. Like other schools, it devotes each day to different subjects, in this case: Monday, snacks and salads; Tuesday, soups, desserts and carved fruit and vegetable garnishes; Wednesday, curries, condiments and side dishes; and Thursday, steam, stir-fry and grill. The cost, quoted in dollars, is $120 a person for a day's classes in English. A six-day program including lodging, six meals and airport transfers is $1,490 a person, based on double occupancy. Information: 48 Oriental Avenue, Bangkok 10500, Thailand; (800) 526-6566 or, in Thailand, (66-2) 437-6211, fax (66-2) 439-7587.
The Thai House, an hour from downtown Bangkok by van and boat, offers courses for one, two and four days. The fee for a day is $64, based on 54.8 Thai baht to $1. Given the travel involved, students taking multiple-day courses may prefer to stay overnight. The charge, including lodging, is $163 for two days and $338 for four days. Information: 22 Pra-Athit Road, Bangkok 10200; (66-2) 280-0740, fax (66-2) 280-0741.
Other possibilities to consider are these:
The Landmark Hotel, 138 Sukhumvit Road, Bangkok 10110, has a one-day class for $38 and a five-day course for $180. Information: (66-2) 254-0404, fax (66-2) 253-4250.
The Chiang Mai Cookery School, 1-3 Moon Muang Road, Chiang Mai, 50200,gives classes for one day ($15) as well as for two ($30) and three ($42). Information: (66-53) 206-388, fax (66-53) 206-387.
Panama Canal
Q.  We are contemplating a cruise through the Panama Canal in 1998.  What would be the best time weatherwise? -- Robert Nasella, Dingmans Ferry, Pa.
A.  The dry season, which starts in late December and usually runs until mid-May, is probably the best bet. But it may end early this year because of El Nino, Mike Davison, international desk coordinator for the National Weather Service, says. (Mr. Davison, who lived in Panama for two years, says he prefers the wet season because the flora is outstanding then.) Historically, the rainfall is 3.5 inches in April and it soars to 8 inches in May. The temperature range is from 70 to about 90 degrees from December to April and 70 to about 85 starting in May.
Tickets for a complete transit of the canal -- run once a month, on a Saturday -- are available from Panama Discovery Tours, Post Office Box 130, Clarita, Okla. 74535; (888) 716-1611, fax (580) 428-3499. Passengers go from the Pacific to the Atlantic on an Argo Tours vessel and return by bus the same day. Dates for the next few months: March 14, April 18 and May 16.
A four-day, three-night package is $488 a person including airport transfers, city and canal tour, but not air fare. Travelers planning a complete transit on a Saturday are urged to leave on a Thursday or before -- rather than risk missing the boat because a flight is delayed or canceled.
PAUL FREIREICH
Correction:  March 1, 1998, Sunday  An answer in the Q & A column on Feb. 15 about trips through the Panama Canal misstated the toll-free telephone number of Panama Discovery Tours. It is (888) 726-2621.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Diving Off Sipadan Island
Q.
I have heard that Sipadan Island off the coast of Borneo has outstanding scuba diving. I would like to combine a trip there with one to the Kirabantan River in Borneo. Is this possible? -- Laura Benish, Bronxville, N.Y.
A. The diving off Sipadan, about 12 miles from the northeastern part of Borneo, is superlative, especially for those who like to dive from shore. About 30 feet from the beach, and starting in only about 6 to 10 feet of water, is a coral wall that drops about 2,800 feet and teems with marine life, including a large concentration of sea turtles. There is also diving from boats, the farthest site being only about a 10-minute ride from shore.
Sipadan (pronounced Sih-PAH-dahn) is 30 acres, with thick jungle completely surrounded by white sand beach. Borneo Divers resort, which accommodates 36, is most often recommended by American dive operators. It is on the beach closest to the coral wall; there are two other resorts on the island, but getting to the wall requires swimming several hundred yards over rocky coral. Borneo Divers consists of several small thatched huts on stilts, one main hut for dining and a dive shop. The huts have electricity. There are hot showers in outbuildings and outhouses with flush toilets.
The Kirabantan River and other sites on Borneo are commonly included in Sipadan expeditions. Near the entrance to the river is an orangutan reserve, and along the river are proboscis and other monkeys, and tropical birds. Visitors may stay in a small lodge up the river and do more extensive exploring.
Dive operators report that the relatively few rooms on the island fill up as much as a year ahead, especially for July through October, when conditions are the best.
Getting to Sipdadan involves three days of traveling with several changes of plane, a drive and a boat ride.
One company with experience on Sipadan is Tropical Adventures, 111 Second North, Seattle, Wash. 98109 (800) 247-3483, fax (206) 441-5431.
A 13-day package leaving Los Angeles includes seven nights at Sipadan, and a visit to the orangutan preserve and other Borneo sites. The cost is $2,535 a person, double occupancy, including air fare, meals, diving and transfers. Tropical Adventure's most popular Sipadan package is a 16-day trip, $2,699, including seven nights on Sipadan and a day trip up the Kirabantan among other visits. A 22-day tour, $3,385, includes 10 nights on the island and two overnights up the river.
Another company, Sea Safaris, offers a 14-day package from the West Coast at $2,750. That includes a week on Sipadan and four days of sightseeing, two of them devoted to a trip on the Kirabantan. Additional days are about $100 a person. Sea Safaris, 3770 Highland Avenue, Suite 102, Manhattan Beach, Calif. 90266; (800) 821-6670, fax (310) 545-1672.  Payment for Lost Luggage
Q.
Is there a limit to how much an airline pays for lost luggage? -- O. Chin, Owego, N.Y.
A. The maximum that airlines are required to pay for lost luggage on a domestic flight is $1,250 , according to the United States Department of Transportation.
On international flights an airline's liability, as set by the Warsaw Convention, is $9.07 a pound. On checking in, the airline may weigh your luggage and write the total weight on your ticket; others assume a bag that each bag weighs 35 pounds, usually with a limit of two bags, making the liability $317.45 a bag.
Airlines may sell ""excess valuation"" that increases the line's liability. United, for example, charges $2 for each $100 in additional coverage. Also, several travel insurance companies sell coverage for lost luggage and some credit card companies provide such coverage when their cards are used to buy the plane ticket. Kosher Food on Liners
Q.
Are there any cruise ships that offer freshly prepared kosher food? -- Joseph Friedenberg, Baltimore
A. A company called Go-Kosher Tours is offering a Caribbean cruise aboard the Regent Star from Feb. 14 to 21 that will include fresh glatt, or rigorous, kosher meals. The cruise starts in Jamaica (Montego Bay) and calls at Aruba, Cartagena, and the Panama Canal before returning to Jamaica. The organizers expect 50 or 60 of the ship's 950 passengers to be part of their group, which will get four kosher meals a day and eat in a special section of the dining room. Part of the ship's kitchen will be made kosher and several rabbis will be on board to supervise food preparation. Prices start at $1,609 a person in double occupancy, including air fare from most Eastern and Southern cities ($95 or $125 additional for flights from other areas). Go-Kosher Tours, 1373 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, N.Y. 14209, will mail a brochure on the cruise but asks that reservations be made through a travel agent.
The Kosher Club, an organization that helps members find kosher restaurants, says there is no cruise ship with a permanently kosher kitchen and that on cruises other than the one mentioned here, passengers who request kosher food are likely to get frozen meals. The Kosher Club recommends that those who want kosher meals request them on making reservations. If the line says it has such food, the club suggests asking for a list of meals available to be sure the selection is acceptable. The dinners are rather small, the club says, and passengers may want to request more than one meal per sitting. The Kosher Club is at 82-84 Genung Street, Middletown, N.Y. 10940; (914) 344-1933.  Inside Wright Homes
Q.
I have heard that in the Chicago area there is a tour of private homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Will you please provide information? -- Timothy Garneau, New York, N.Y.
A. On the third Thursday of May the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio Foundation conducts a walking tour that includes interiors of private homes designed by Wright in Oak Park, Ill. The next tour, called Wright Plus, will take place May 15, 1993, and will take in eight private homes and two public buildings. The houses will be in the Prairie School Historic District; the tour is held there every four years. Two buildings by E. E. Roberts, a contemporary of Wright's, will be included. Tickets, $25 for foundation members and $35 for nonmembers, go on sale March 1 at the Oak Park Visitors Center, 158 First Avenue, Oak Park, Ill. 60302 or by charge card by calling (708) 848-1500. Tickets usually sell out by mid-April, the foundation says.
The foundation also plans a walking tour of Wright houses on Oct. 2 in the North Shore Chicago suburb of Glencoe, the first such tour in the fall and in that area. Tickets, $35 for members and $50 for nonmembers, will be available from Aug. 1.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:  Young View
Young View
Question: Could you name titles of books on traveling in Europe with a child? I am interested in sites and sights that have appeal to children. -A. S. M., Fresno, Calif.
Answer: The choice is scanty, and the books that exist are not easy to find. For example the comprehensive 'Fielding's Europe With Children' (Morrow) was last published in 1984 and somewhat out of date, although some material still serves as good background information. (Morrow says a new edition is planned for the fall of 1989.) There are some books on specific cities. Among these are 'Children's Guide to Rome' and 'Children's Guide to Paris' (both published by Blackie & Son, London, and both $6.95) and 'Children's Guide to London' (Cadogan Books, London, $11.95). These three guides and the Fielding book are available at some travel bookstores, including Travel Books Unlimited in Bethesda, Md. (301-951-8533).
'Kids' London' (Pan, London, $7.95) is also sold at some shops, including the Complete Traveller (212-685-9007) and Traveller's Bookstore (212-664-0995) in New York. This 180-page guide addresses such topics as walks, parks, sports and museums, and it includes maps.
Two newsletters contain information that might be useful. Family Travel Times (published by Travel With Your Children, 80 Eighth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10011; 212-206-0688) costs $35 a year for 10 issues. It sometimes touches on Europe. The first issue of Getaways: Family Vacations was published this summer. There will be four issues a year at a cost of $20 a year. The address is Post Office Box 11511, Washington, D.C. 20008, with a number in Virginia (703-534-8747).  Study in Mexico
Question: I want to spend several weeks in Mexico studying Spanish and would like the names of language schools. - B. H. J., Manhasset, L.I.
Answer: Mexico has several language institutes in various cities. Generally, the instruction is in Spanish only and the focus is on conversation rather than writing. These schools are open to students of all ages, and Americans taking their courses generally live with Mexican families.
A spokesman for the Mexican Government Tourism Office said the schools in Cuernavaca, where language schools first flowered nearly 20 years ago, generally begin new courses the first Monday of each month. Students, he said, arrive a few days early to register and find housing, often with the assistance of the school. At most of Mexico's language schools, classes are held for up to four hours a day, usually in the morning, and sometimes there are afternoon lectures on Mexican art and culture.
Other institutions with Spanish instruction include the University of Guadalajara and the National Autonomous University in Mexico City. Universities in the United States also offer summer programs, often on Mexican college campuses.
One source of information is the National Registraion Center for Study Abroad, Post Office Box 1393, Milwaukee, Wis. 53201 (414-278-0631). The center represents about 85 schools in other countries. A list of dates of courses and fees for all 13 schools offering language courses in Mexico that it represents can be had by sending a self-addressed, stamped (45 cents), business-size envelope to the center. Mike Wittig of the center says that a month's Spanish course in Mexico, with tuition, registration, course materials and lodging and all meals with a family usually costs, on average, from $600 to $700.
A list of schools provided by the Mexican Government includes these in Cuernavaca: Cemanahuac, Apartado 21C, San Juan 4, Las Palmas, (local telephone, 12-13-67). Cuauhnahuac, Apartado 26C, Morelos Sur 1414 (12-36-73). Cuernavaca Center for Bilingual Multicultural Studies, Apartado 1520, San Jeronimo 304, Colonia San Jeronimo, (17-10-87), which has an office at 3133 Lake Hollywood Drive, Post Office Box 1860, Los Angeles, Calif. 90078 (213-851-3403). Cuernavaca Language School, Apartado 254D, Privada Jazmin 2, Chapultepec (15-46-43).
Mexico City: Instituto Mexicano-Norteamericano de Relaciones Culturales, Hamburgo 115, Zona Rosa (525-33-57). Guadalajara: Instituto Cultural Mexicano-Norteamericano de Jalisco, Tolsa 300, Guadalajara, Jalisco (25-4101). Morelia: Centro Mexicano de Idiomas, Apartado 56, Aquiles Serdan 630-634, Morelia, Michoacan 58000 (3-27-96).  Whale Watching
Question: We plan to go whale watching on Cape Cod in October and would like the names of operators who provide this service. - H. D. F., Brooklyn
Answer: Provincetown is a good spot to take a whale-watching trip because the boats need only ride out for about half an hour before they find whales. The operators say this summer has been an excellent one for spotting (and they emphasize that they never bait whales). The trips usually last about three and a half hours. The following Provincetown operators are among those planning to continue daily trips through mid or late October.
Provincetown Whale Watch (508-487-1582 or, toll free in Massachusetts, 800-992-9333). Aboard the Ranger V; price: $15 a person, $10 for children under age 12.
The Dolphin Fleet (508-255-3857 or 800-826-9300 in Massachusetts). Three boats; $14, $12 for the elderly and children under 12.
The Portuguese Princess (508-487-2651 and 800-442-3188 in Massachusetts): $15, $13 for children under 14.  Venezuela
Question: For a visit to Caracas, are there any special things that have to be done before we go, such as shots or visas? Any special hazards? -H. K., New York, N.Y.
Answer: Neither visa nor shots are required for Americans visiting Venezuela. However, visitors are given a tourist card - on the plane or ship - and the card is exchanged for a receipt on entering the country. The receipt has to be presented on leaving, so it is important for travelers to hold onto that piece of paper. In Caracas visitors should be on the alert for pickpockets and should not walk along dark side streets at night.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
To France's Wine Regions
Q.
Could you give names of agencies that offer tours of wine-growing areas of France? -- Mary Flanagan, Port Washington, L.I.
A. Here are some companies that may be of help: Holden Pacific Wine Tours, 814 35th Avenue, Seattle, Wash. 98122, (206) 325-4324, offers ""France in Your Glass"" tours. The company will arrange tours for groups of as few as six. For 1992, the company plans a nine-night tour of Champagne and Alsace (starting in Paris) for $2,495 a person in double occupancy, May 3 to 11 and Sept. 6 to 15. A tour of the ""Great Estates of Bordeaux and Cognac"" May 26 to June 11 is $2,995 a person, and Oct. 5 to 17, $3,195. A tour of Cognac and the Loire Valley, June 4 to June 16, is $2,995, connects with the Bordeaux tour listed above. There is a Burgundy tour June 8 to 18 and Sept. 12 to 22, $2,995, and one of the Rhone Valley and Provence, June 16 to 26 and Sept. 12 to Oct. 1, for $3,595. Prices are subject to currency fluctuations, the company says.
X.O. Travel Consultants, 38 West 32d Street, New York N.Y. 10001, (800) 262-9682 or (212) 947-5530, which mainly organizes tours for wine clubs and companies, has two tours open to the public in 1992. One, of Champagne, Alsace and Germany, May 11 to 23, is about $3,000 a person, not including air fare. The other, sponsored by Executive Wine Seminars, a New York wine school, runs from July 23 to Aug. 2 and visits Burgundy the Rhone Valley and Provence. It includes dining at several Michelin three-star restaurants. The land cost is $4,200 a person.
World Wine Tours, 69-71 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PE, England, offers about 50 tours of wine regions in Europe, all led by wine experts. The number from the United States is (44) (865) 310 344. About 30 of the tours are in France, and participants sometimes combine two in nearby regions. There will, for example, be three tours of the Loire Valley in 1992: May 3 to 9, July 5 to 11 and Oct. 11 to 17; the cost is about $2,100 a person in double occupancy and includes lodging, meals, wine tastings and visits to wineries. The trips to Bordeaux fall into three categories: The standard tour, with lodging in a hotel at a cost of about $1,450 a person; the ""intensified"" tour with more visits and tastings, June 7 to 11, at $1,850 a person, and finally the three-day ($1,190) and six-day wine school sessions ($2,590) in Chateau Loudenne in Bordeaux, including lodging at the chateau and meals. L.A.-to-S.F. Bus Tours
Q.
I am interested in a bus tour from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Can you give names of operators? -- Charlotte Jacobson, New York, N.Y.
A. Here are some companies offering bus tours to San Francisco starting in Los Angeles.
Maupintour, 1515 St. Andrews Drive, Lawrence, Kan. 66047; (800) 255-4266. An eight-day tour originating in Long Beach, Calif., a suburb of Los Angeles, ends in San Francisco. At the start, participants spend two nights in Long Beach and take a cruise to Catalina. The tour then goes to Santa Barbara, Solvang, Santa Maria, San Simeon and the Hearst Castle, Carmel, two nights in Monterey, Felton (with a ride on a narrow-gauge railroad through a giant redwood grove), and then San Francisco, where there is a two-night stay. The cost is $1,699 for a single traveler and $1,299 a person with two in a room, including 15 meals. There are 12 tours April through December.
Talbot Tours, 1952 Camden Avenue, Suite 104, San Jose, Calif. 95124, (408) 879-0101. Tours from Los Angeles to San Francisco are 7 to 12 days, with several tours a year. A typical tour includes three or four nights in Los Angeles, then stops in Santa Barbara, Solvang and San Simeon, Monterey and Carmel, with a three or four night stay in San Francisco. Tours range from $90 to $125 a day, including hotel and meals, depending on the hotels and restaurants.
Misha Tours, Post Office Box 152046, San Diego, Calif. 92195, (619) 588-4644. This company organize bus tours for groups, but individuals can join some tours, usually during the summer. Five- to seven-day trips from Los Angeles stop in Santa Barbara, San Simeon, Monterey and Big Sur and San Francisco. The price is $550 to $600 a person for five days, including meals and lodging and a flight back to Los Angeles.
Mac's Travel Service, 18738 East Amar Road, Walnut, Calif. 91789, (818) 965-0731. This company offers five tours a year from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Tours are usually four or five days, with a scenic drive directly to San Francisco, and then a stay of several days in San Francisco, and a return bus ride to Los Angeles. Rates start at $210 a person, including sightseeing and lodging, no meals included. Ireland to Britanny by Ferry
Q.
Is there some way in late April or early May I can travel by boat from Ireland to the west coast of France near Nantes? -- Hubert J. Beudert, Bloomfield Hills, Minn.
A. About as close as you can get is Britanny. During the time you will be in Ireland, Irish Ferries runs weekly cruises from Rosslare, Ireland, about 100 miles south of Dublin, to Le Havre and from Rosslare to Cherbourg. The ship for both trips is the St. Patrick, a car ferry that holds more than 2,000 passengers and 280 cars. Basic passage at any time of year other that June, July and August is $116 ($202 in summer). A cabin is $119 to $215. The Le Havre-bound ferry leaves Rosslare each Wednesday at 7 P.M., arriving in France at 5 P.M. The ferry for Cherbourg leaves Rosslare each Friday at 10:30 P.M., arriving in France at 5 P.M. The ship has a restaurant, and there is live music. Irish Ferries is represented in the United States by Lynott Tours, 350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 2619, New York, N.Y. 10118; (800) 221-2474 or (212) 760-0101. Reservations required.
There is also ferry service from Cork to Rosscoff, offered by Brittany Ferries. The 1992 schedule for the 17-hour voyage is not yet available. In 1991, a ferry left Cork for Rosscoff once a week, and the fare was $103 to $128 depending on date, and a cabin was an additional $73 to $209. The line's United States representative is Odessa America Cruise Compmay, 250 Old Country Road, Mineola, N.Y. 11501; (800) 221-3254. Rain in Costa Rica
Q.
I am planning a trip to central and eastern Costa Rica some time between January and April. Can you outline expected rainfall during that time? -- J. A. Korda, Cromwell, Conn.
A. The period you are considering is the driest time of year. In January, San Jose, the capital, has an average of three rainy days, with an average rainfall of 0.6 inches; February has only one rainy day, with a total of 0.2 inches; March has two rainy days, with a total of 0.8 inches. April gets a little more rainy, with an average of seven rainy days and 1.8 inches. By contrast, in the summer, the rainy season, the capital has 23 or 24 rainy days a month.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:  The Adriatic
The Adriatic
Question: Are there any passenger ferries across the Adriatic Sea from Italy to Dubrovnik? Where can I arrange reservations? - J. D., Chevy Chase, Md.
Answer: Several steamers cross between Italy and Yugoslavia, with the most frequent service in summer. Some of the shipping lines are represented by travel companies in this country. Information and reservations for Italy's Adriatica Line, for example, are available through Extra Value Travel, 683 South Collier Boulevard, Marco Island, Fla. 33937 (813-394-3384). Adriatica operates service to Dubrovnik from Venice in the north, Ancona, in central Italy, and Bari, the southern port, and to Split from Pescara.
On the Bari route, the one with most frequent service, there are five sailings a week in summer, with departures at 11 P.M., arriving in Dubrovnik at 8 the next morning. There are a few daytime sailings, which are a little quicker and costs $45 a person, one way, in low season, $61 in summer. On overnight trips, a cabin costs from $61 to $91 a person, or $83 to $114 in midsummer. The higher rates are for outside cabin with private bathroom.
The service to Dubrovnik from Venice does not operate from July through September. From Ancona there's a sailing once a week in summer. On the Pescara-Split route - the crossing takes about eight hours - there are day and night departures; the daytime fare is $45. The ships have two- and three-berth cabins, a pool and a self-service restaurant. Meals are extra.
Reservations for the Yugoslav line named Jadrolinija may be made through the International Cruise Center, 250 Old Country Road, Mineola, L.I. 11501 (516-747-8880). Jadrolinija has weekly Bari-Dubrovnik service from May 26 to Sept. 23. The ferry leaves at 11 A.M. and arrives in Dubrovnik at 6:30 P.M. Fares are $34 or $45 in July and August. The line also sails from Ancona to the Yugoslav port of Zadar, with departures three times a week in June and September and five times a week in July and August. The crossing takes about six hours, with fares at $34 and $45.  Jerusalem
Question: When I was in Jerusalem I visited a church that had the same prayer in many languages on the walls. What is the name of this church? - B. W., Syosset, L.I.
Answer: The Lord's Prayer is written in calligraphy in about 60 languages on plaques on the walls of the courtyard and cloisters of the Church of the Pater Noster on the Mount of Olives. The original church was built by the Crusaders who believed it was on this site, which includes the ruins of the Byzantine Eleona Church, that Jesus taught the Pater Noster, or Lord's Prayer. The present building was financed by the the French Princess de la Tour d'Auvergne, and entrusted to the Carmelite nuns in 1874. The princess had the Lord's Prayer inscribed in numerous languages.  African Safaris
Question: Please supply names of tour organizers that run animal-safari trips with some walking in East Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe. - P. S., New York, N.Y.
Answer: There are several companies that specialize in African tours and on viewing wildlife. Travel agents can book these trips, although it might be a good idea to approach the companies first to obtain information on what they offer. One operator is Safariworld (1500 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Va. 22209; 800-336-5500), which has a 12-day African Bush Safari that includes 4 days of walking between bush camps in South Luangwa National Park in Zambia. The tour also includes a stay at the Victoria Falls Hotel in Zimbabwe and a flight over the falls.
Departures are from New York from June 20 through Oct. 10. The cost is $2,999 a person, including air fare. The company also goes to Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and Zaire.
Safaris in Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Kenya and Tanzania are also available through African Travel, 1000 East Broadway, Glendale, Calif. 91205 (800-722-7755 or 818-507-7893). Like other companies with tours in Africa, it arranges itineraries for individuals, in addition to group tours, and it offers special-interest segments, like gorilla watching in Zaire. African Travel's sister company, Gametrackers, owns several camps and lodges in Botswana and South Africa, and uses its own planes to fly between camps.
Among other specialists is Classic Tours International (625 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Ill. 60611; 800-828-8222 or 312-642-2400), which runs, among other East African programs, an 11-day Kenya Highlights tour that goes to the tented Governor's Camp in the Masai Mara National Reserve and the Ark, a hotel on stilts in Aberdare National Park. The land cost is $1,795 a person, or $1,695 in June and November; air fare is extra. KLR International (1560 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10036; 212-869-2850 and 800-221-4876) operates many African tours, some including walking trips.  Belgium
Question: I am looking for a timetable and other railroad information for Belgium. The Belgian Tourist Office told me that the Belgian railroads do not have an office here. - S. B., New York, N.Y.
Answer: Though Belgium does not maintain a railroad office in this country, four European countries that do can help with information on Belgian trains. The four are: the French National Railroads (212-582-2110); Germanrail (212-308-3100); Italian State Railways (212-397-2667), and Swiss Federal Railways (212-757-5944). All four are members of the Eurailpass system, which covers 17 countries, including Belgium. Travelers interested in rail travel in any of the 17 should ask at one of these four national offices for a booklet called Eurail 89/90, a timetable of many intercity rail links in Europe. For Belgium, it gives times of trains between several cities. The four offices should be able to help individuals and travel agents with other Belgian railroad information.
Otherwise, the traveler can make a detailed study of all Belgian and other European train times by obtaining a copy of the Thomas Cook Continental Timetable ($16.95), which is available in some travel bookstores. The North American distributor of the timetable is the Forsyth Travel Library (800-367-7984).",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Getting to the Guggenheim
Q. My wife and I will be in Paris this spring and would like to drop down to Bilbao, Spain, for a visit to the new Guggenheim Museum. Can this be done overland, by train? -- Elliot A. Rosen, Califon, N.J.
A. There is an excellent train service from Paris to Irun, Spain, and from there it is a fairly short bus ride to Bilbao.
The Rail Europe schedule until next May 23 shows that there is a daily train with couchette service from Gare d'Austerlitz to Irun, and three daily trains and one every day from Monday to Saturday from Gare Montparnasse.
The Austerlitz train leaves at 11:40 P.M. and arrives in Irun at 7:14 A.M. Trains from Montparnasse leave at 9:37 A.M. (arriving at 3 P.M.), 2:25 P.M. (7:55 P.M.), 5:25 P.M. (11:05 P.M.) and 6:30 P.M. (11:45 P.M.).
Fares for spring have not yet been posted, but current fares are $127 one way in first class and $104 in second. Montparnasse service is by the high-speed service known as the T.G.V.; Austerlitz service is by regular train.
Nine buses a day connect Irun and Bilbao. They leave from the bus station at 7, 8:20, 9:30 and 11 A.M., at 11, 2, 5, 6 and 8 P.M., and at midnight. The trip takes 1 hour and 50 minutes, and the one-way fare is $7, calculated at 140 pesetas to the dollar.
More information can be obtained from Rail Europe at (800)438-7245 or on the Web at www.raileurope.com.
Visiting English Cathedrals
Q. Do you know of any tours of cathedrals in England? - Naida Dewey, St. James, N.Y.
A. Apply enough, a company called Cathedral Tours England specializes in tours of english cathedrals and heritage sites. The tours, which last either 9 or 14 days, start and finish in London.
The 14-day tour visits Salisbury, Bath, Gloucester, Hereford, York, Durham, Cambridge, Ely, Canterbury, and St. Paul's and Westminister Abbey in London. Tours scheduled for this year are from May 3 to 17 and Sept. 20 to Oct. 3. The cost is $2,450 a person.
The shorter tours concentrate on specific regions. A tour of southeast and eartner England, for example, includes Canterbury, St. Albans, Cambridge, Norwich, Lincoln and Peterborough, and is scheduled for June 6 and Oct. 17. Tours of Western and northern England are also available. The shorter tours cost $1,550 a person.
All prices are based on two people sharing a room and include most meals, transport by luxury bus, accommodations, admission fees and guides. Travel to London from the United States is not included.
More information and reservations: Arts & Crafts Tours, 110 Riverside Drive, Suite 15E, new York, N.Y. 10024; (212)362-0761 or (800)742-0730, fax (212)787-2823. By E-mail: actours@aol.com. Arts & Crafts Tours also organizes its own trips, including one called Historic 19th-Century English Stained Glass, which visits Ely, Gloucester and Southwark Cathedrals. The tour, from July 11 to 19, costs $3,870 a person.
Castles and Cathedrals is a 10-day tour being organized by Lord Addison Travel Ltd., Post Office Box 307, Peterborough, N.J. 03458; (800)326-0170, fax (603)924-9210. The tour, from July 30 to Aug. 8, will visit Chichester, Winchester, Salisbury and Wells. The costs per person in double occupancy is $2,830, with air fare.
Another company that specializes in travel with culture as its main thrust is ACE Study Tours. Its programs center on a particular cathedral rather than on several. A five-day program called Hereford to Kilpeck concentrates ont he architecture, history and treasures of Hereford Cathedral.
Other programs feature cathedrals in Glasgow, Chester, Exeter, Gloucester, Norwich and Liverpool.
The Hereford program costs $500, calculated at $1.73 to the pound. Prices are based on two people sharing a room and include breakfast, dinner, most admissions, and lecturers and guides.
Information: ACE Study Tours, Babraham, Cambridge, CB2 4AP, England; telephone (44-1223) 835055, fax (44-1223) 837394. E-mail: ace@-study-tours.org.
A Place in the Eclipse
Q. I understand there will be a total eclipse of the sun on Feb. 26. Where is the best place to see it? - Stacy Bolton, New York, N.Y.
A. The total eclipse will cut a wide swath across the northern part of South America and into parts of the Caribbean, so in theory your choice of a place to visit is equally wide. In practical terms you might want to confine yourself to one of the islands and Aruba is offering special events for the occasion.
The path of totality, as scientists call it, touches down just south of the Equator in the Pacific Ocean about 1,875 miles southeast of the Hawaiian Islands. The first landfall is in the Galapagos Islands.
Fifteen minutes later the umbral shadow enters South America and follows the border between Panama and Colombia. If you can make it to the city of Valledupar you will get a total eclipse lasting 3 minutes and 29 seconds.
The center line passes directly between Aruba and Curacao, with both islands experiencing as much as three and a half out of a possible three and three quarter minutes of totality. The track continues across the Caribbean, where it enguls the Leeward Islands of Monserrat, Antigua and Guadeloupe.
The weather prospects for this region are promising, but not as promising as for Aruba annd Curacao, as well as for northern South America.
Most hotels on Aruba are on the northwest coast, where the totality is under three minutes. A 15-mile drive to the island's southern end, however, will increase the duration by 30 seconds. From an astronomical point of view, the west-facing Baby Beach and rodgers Beach offer the best locations on the island. Colorado Point, a short distance from Seroe Colorado, may also provide additional viewing sites. Seroe Colorado will be mainly restricted to scientists and organized groups, but individuals will able to register for the area. The registration fee is $50. Wright to Special Events Department, Aruba Tourism Authority, Post Office Box 1019, 172 L.G. Smith Boulevard, Orangjestad, Aruba, or send a fax to (297)834702.
Curacao, like Aruba, is dry and sparsely vegetated, with the best viewing spots on the north coast.
For more information about the eclipse log on to the Internet at planets.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/eclipse/html.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Around Pátzcuaro
Q. I'm traveling to Pátzcuaro in Mexico for the Day of the Dead this fall. What nearby towns and events do you recommend I include? -- S. R., San Francisco
A. Pátzcuaro, in the state of Michoacán, is renowned for its Day of the Dead celebrations on the shores of Lake Pátzcuaro. On Nov. 1 the ceremonies take place on Janitzio island and in villages along the lake. Boats decorated with flowers and candles carry celebrators between Pátzcuaro and the island to the sound of chanting and the ringing of bells.
Pátzcuaro itself is filled with cobblestone streets, plazas, parks and churches. The Museum of Popular Arts is a crafts museum housed in a 16th-century building. Visitors can take tours to islands in the lake from docks just north of town. Along the 55-mile road that leads around the lake are a number of colonial towns known for their crafts, including Tintzuntzán, where you can see 12th-century Tarascan stone temple ruins, a 16th-century Franciscan convent and a crafts market.
For more information on events and sights around the lake, visit the Pátzcuaro Tourist Office, at 7 Buenavista, Centro; (52-434) 342-1214.
About 30 miles east of Pátzcuaro Michoacán's capital, Morelia, a Unesco World Heritage Site with 200 historic structures, makes a good base for forays to nearby towns. The city's main sights, including its vast 18th-century cathedral, aqueduct and the Palacio de Gobierno, can be explored on foot. A former convent houses the Casa de Artesanías, where you can see artisans at work and buy their wares.
Uruapan, an hour west of Pátzcuaro, is an artisanal center, with a lush tropical park at its center. Eighteen miles northwest of the city is the site of the Paricutín volcano, which erupted in 1943 covering two villages but leaving a church tower rising from the lava. You can take riding or hiking expeditions to the rim, where there are views of the lava landscape.
And if you can go a little farther afield, the wintering grounds of the monarch butterflies lie three hours' drive east of Morelia. An estimated 100 million monarchs begin to arrive in early or mid-November, the end of their 1,500-mile journey from the United States and Canada; they begin their journey back in March or April. You can take a bus from Morelia to Angangueo and walk to El Rosario sanctuary; entrance is $4. Among the tour companies offering trips to the sanctuary is Movisa, in Morelia; day tours are $70, including pickup and dropoff in Morelia (or even Pátzcuaro if requested); lunch and guide. Contact Movisa at (52-443) 312 8723 or movisa@colonialtours.com; www.colonialtours.com.
For further information on this area, contact the Michoacán Tourist Office in Morelia at (52-443) 317 6426, extension 230; fax (52-443) 312-9816.
Tours From Helsinki
Q. We will be visiting our daughter and her family in Helsinki in November to mid-December. We want to visit Lapland. Are there tours from Helsinki? And what are the touring opportunities from Helsinki for Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia? --I. G. and A. G., Boston
A. For trips out of Helsinki, Helena Niskanen, spokeswoman for the Finnish Tourist Board in New York, recommends contacting one of the tour operators here, most of which work closely with those in Finland. She suggests the following three options: Nordique Tours, (800) 995-7997, www.nordiquetours.com; Passage Tours of Scandinavia, (800) 548-5960, www.passagetours.com; and Scantours, (800) 223-7226; www .scantours.com.
December is your best bet for seeing Lapland, as there are few scheduled trips to this region in November. Trond Malmer of Passage Tours explains that November is somewhat between seasons in Lapland, with winter activities starting in early December, when it's cold enough for icebreaker cruises and the ice palace and hotel in Kemi, and there is plenty of snow for safaris around Rovaniemi, Lapland's capital.
Scantours, for example, offers four itineraries to Lapland in December. An eight-day trip, based in Rovaniemi, with a choice of safaris into the wilderness (by reindeer, husky or snowmobile) is $695 a person double occupancy, plus $105 to $175 for each safari trip, depending on the length of the trip (two to six hours). The cost does not include air fare to and from Helsinki or guides.
These companies also offer tours from Helsinki to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Though there are no set tours in winter, all three said they customize tours based on their summer trips. (Tallinn, capital of Estonia, can be seen on a day cruise from Helsinki by hydrofoil or catamaran, across the Gulf of Finland.)
Passage Tours offers a 10-day Baltic tour out of Helsinki ($1,498 a person double occupancy in summer). The itinerary includes a three-hour cruise to Tallinn, and tours of Tallinn, Vilnius and Kaunas in Lithuania, and Riga. Mr. Malmer of Passage Tours said a customized tour in winter would cost a third more.
For more information, contact the Finnish Tourist Board, (212) 885-9700; www.gofinland.org; in Finland, (358-9) 4 176 911.
Cooking Classes in Spain
Q. I have been able to locate many cooking classes and gourmet excursions for foreigners in Italy and France, but none in Spain. Can you please point me in the right direction? -- Linda Roth, New York, N.Y.
A. Spain does, indeed, have fewer cooking programs. According to Dorlene Kaplan, editor at ShawGuides, which publishes an annual guide to cooking schools and vacations, it currently has 26, versus 167 for Italy and 125 for France. The Recreational Cooking and Wine Schools section of cookforfun .shawguides.com has listings of culinary vacations and contact information.
One company with programs on Andalusian, Basque and Catalan cuisine this fall is Food and Wine Trails, based in Santa Rosa, Calif. An Intimate Taste of Andalusia includes four nights in Seville and two in Arcos de la Frontera. Cooking lessons, meals in local restaurants and a tasting at a sherry bodega (winery) in Cadiz are included. The cost is $2,155 a person, based on double occupancy. Contact Food and Wine Trails at (800) 367-5348; complete itineraries may be found at www.foodandwinetrails.com.
Similar programs are offered by Epiculinary, in Lake Bluff, Ill., which offers seven cooking vacations in Spain, including a three-day tour of the wine region of La Rioja ($995, based on double occupancy). A more intensive six-day program is led by the Basque chef and cookbook author Luis Irizar, who runs a cooking school in San Sebastián ($1,975, double occupancy). Customized tours may be arranged. Contact Epiculinary at (888) 380-9010; www .epiculinary.com.
FLORENCE STICKNEY
Q & A",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Off to Balmoral
Q.  I believe Balmoral Castle in Scotland is open to the public this summer. Can I take public transportation to get there? -- V. Askerly, Brooklyn, N.Y.
A.  Balmoral Castle, which is Queen Elizabeth's personal property, not state owned, is 50 miles from Aberdeen, the nearest big city. The royal family takes an annual vacation in the castle each August and September and it is open to the public only from May 1 to July 31.
But don't imagine you will have the run of the place. The only parts of the castle building that are open to the public are the carriage hall and the ballroom, where several exhibitions will be staged. One will show paintings, porcelain and other objects from the castle collection.
This year there will also be an exhibition called ""Prince Philip -- A Personal Collection,"" made up of works of arts commisioned or collected by the Queen's husband. The collection, mainly paintings, displays a wide variety of styles and subjects, from animal portraits and seascapes to Australian landscapes. It includes works by John Constable, Sydney Nolan and Salvador Dali.
On display in the carriage hall will be a collection of commemorative china, a wildlife exhibition and a photographic display of carriages used by British royalty through the ages.
Visitors are free to visit parts of the castle grounds and the gardens. There are also three souvenir shops and a large self-service cafeteria serving hot and cold snacks, including venison burgers.
Balmoral is open from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. Monday to Saturday (the cafeteria opens from 10:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M.). It is closed on Sunday. Admission is $4, calculated at 60 cents to the pound. There is no charge for children. All areas in the vicinity of the castle and gardens are accessible to the disabled. More information: Balmoral Castle, Ballater, Aberdeenshire AB35 5TB, Scotland; telephone (44 13397) 42334.
During the time the castle is open to the public the No. 201 bus operates from Aberdeen Bus Station to Crathie, the nearest town to the castle, about five minutes away. The buses leave Guild Street, opposite the railroad station, at 7:40, 8:30 and 9:45 A.M. and then hourly until 10:45 P.M. The return buses leave Crathie hourly from 10:10 A.M. to 7:10 P.M. The journey takes about two hours.
The fare is $12 round trip and $7.40 one way. More information: Bluebird Buses, Aberdeen; (44 1224) 212266. Tourist information on Aberdeen: (44 1224) 632727. Australian Apartments
Q.  We are planning a trip to Sydney, Australia, in July, staying at least two months. We want to rent an apartment close to downtown. Is there an agent I can contact? -- G. Johnson, Sebring, Fla.
A.  There are at least two companies in the United States that act as agents for properties in Australia, ranging from studio apartments to luxurious villas.
Barclay International Group, which since 1963 has offered short-term apartment rentals in London and Paris, added 2,000 apartments in Australia to its portfolio last year.
Its offerings range from four-bedroom houses at $1,284 a day for up to eight people to studios and one-bedroom apartments in Sydney from $72 to $288 a day, calculated at 71 cents to the Australian dollar. Studios are for rent at three buildings in Sydney, including one on the waterfront at Manly, a close suburb. There is just about everything in between, from Cairns, Queensland, (from $99 a day for a one bedroom) to Hobart, Tasmania (a one bedroom for two people at $69 a day).
More information: Barclay International Group, 150 East 52d Street, New York, N.Y. 10022; (212) 832-3777 or (800) 845-6636, fax (212) 753-1139.
G'day Travel and Tours specializes in villa rentals, most of them two bedrooms and up. The majority are situated in rural areas but a few are in reach of all major metropolitan areas except Perth in Western Australia.
A 30-page brochure shows a color photograph of each property and includes a full descripton, including the prices, which are not all as high as the word villa might imply.
Pond Cottage, in Kyneton, Victoria, for instance, is set among seven acres of landscaped gardens surrounding a pond and costs $150 a night for two people from Monday to Friday. On Saturday and Sunday the price goes to $170. Another property, Comboyne Hideway, south of Port Macquarie, on the coast of northern New South Wales, rents for $325 for the weekend and $800 a week.
Farther north, near Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, the Northcott, a traditional Queensland colonial house on 80 acres of bush, rents for $55 a person a night for up to 8 people. The three-bedroom house offers a weekly cleaning service.
More information: G'day Travel and Tours, 1200 Harris Avenue, Suite 408, Bellingham, Wash. 98225; (360) 738-2939 or (800) 799-4329, fax (360) 671-1550. Memories of Germany
Q.  Back in the 1930's I used to visit the village of Braunlage in Germany's Harz Mountains every winter. Now, 60 years later, I want to make a sentimental return journey. Does the narrow-gauge railroad still run from Goslar to Braunlage? -- Edward Kern, New York, N.Y.
A.  The narrow-gauge line was closed many years ago. Today the most convenient way to get to Braunlage is by train and bus.
The first step is to take a train from Hanover ($17 one way for the 90-minute trip) or Braunschweig ($7.50; 45 minutes) to Bad Harzburg. Service is frequent from both cities and most trains connect with a bus that travels to Braunlage.
Buses leave from outside the Bad Harzburg railway station daily at 7:47, 8:20, 9:20 and 10:50 A.M. and 12:10, 12:55, 1:35, 3:17, 4:47, 5:19, 6:50 and 9 P.M. (the 12:10 P.M. runs every day except Sunday, the 9 P.M. every day except Saturday).
Buses on the return trip leave at 8:30, 9:05, 10:30, 10:55 and 11:27 A.M. and 1:55, 2:45, 4, 5, 6 and 7:40 P.M. (the 10:55 A.M. runs every day except Saturday and Sunday; the 11:27 A.M. runs only on Saturday and Sunday).
A one-way ticket costs $4 and the ride takes about 40 minutes. The Quito Climate
Q.  I am planning a trip to the Galapagos Islands in August and wonder what the weather will be like there and in Quito, Ecuador. -- A. M. S., Chappaqua, N.Y.
A.  Quito has a climate that is often described as a permanent spring. In August average highs will be 73 degrees and the lows 45. Through the year, average highs range only from 70 to 73 and lows from 44 to 47. Extremes are rare in the Galapagos, too, with highs ranging from 80, in September, to 88 in March. The August high is 81, the low 67. Precipitation is zero from May to December. TERENCE NEILAN",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Lights Over Manitoba
Q.  I understand there are tours to Churchill, Manitoba, to view the northern lights. Do you have information on tours given in March or April? -- Shirley U. Miller, New York, N.Y.
A.  Churchill, on the western shore of Hudson Bay, affords visitors the chance to marvel at nature's wonders day and night.
The best months to see the northern lights -- the aurora borealis --  are November through April when the nights are long, and the best time of the month is the new moon, according to Roger Woloshyn, an instructor at the Churchill Northern Studies Center.
For those who would like to see Churchill's other attractions, October and November is when polar bears gather on the shores of Hudson Bay to wait for it to freeze so they can head out and hunt seal. And June to August is the season for observing beluga whales.
The northern lights are luminous displays seen in such forms as curtains, streamers, rays and patches. They dance across the sky often starting as greenish white and sometimes having a red edge or a green or blue tinge.
What makes Churchill an excellent site for viewing the lights, Mr. Woloshyn said, is that it is directly under the aurora and accessible to travelers. (It's about 600 miles from Winnipeg, and can be reached by air or rail, but not by car.)
In describing what causes the northern lights, Mr. Woloshyn said solar particles, mostly high-energy electrons, are drawn along the Earth's magnetic field. They strike air molecules, transferring energy to them and cause gases to glow just as neon in a tube glows when electricity flows through it.
Typically, tour groups that view the lights are driven to the outskirts of Churchill and beyond in a Tundra Buggy, which has wheels 10 feet high as protection from overly curious polar bears, or taken to the domed observatory of the Churchill Northern Studies Center.
Each winter before and after the new moon, five-day classes are given at the center, a year-round scientific center 14 miles east of Churchill. Information: Post Office Box 610, Churchill, Manitoba R0B 0E0; (204) 675-2307, fax (204) 675-2139.
Travelers taking tours with companies based in Canada are charged a 7 percent goods and services tax, half of which is refundable. Some companies rebate half the tax to non-Canadians up front to spare them the bother of filling out a refund form.
Among the companies with northern light tours in March and April are these, with rates based on double occupancy, are these:
Aurora Tours, Box 355, RPO South St. Vital, Winnipeg Manitoba R2N 3X9, (204) 942-6617. Tours start and end in Churchill, with the remaining dates being March 12 to 15 and April 16 to 19. The price is $488 (at 66 Canadian cents to the United States dollar) plus 7 percent tax. Meals are not included.
Natural Habitat Adventures, 2945 Center Green Court South, Boulder, Colo. 80301; (800) 543-8917 or (303) 449-3711, fax (303) 449-3712. Date: March 14 to 20, with first and last nights spent in Winnipeg. Cost: $2,395.
Operators of aurora borealis tours during the rest of the year include the Great Canadian Travel Company, 273 Donald Street, Winnipeg, Canada R3C 1M9, (204) 949-0199, fax (204) 949-0188. It has a trip from Nov. 11 to 18, with the first and last nights spent in Winnipeg. Cost: $1,491 plus 7 percent tax, half of which is rebated up front.
Brazil's Departure Tax
Q. While getting ready to fly back to New York from Rio de Janeiro, I found it absurd that the Brazilian Government charged $36 per person for departure taxes. How does this compare with other countries? Robert Fucs, New Milford, Conn.
A. With the devaluation of Brazil's currency on Jan. 13, the picture has darkened for Brazilians and brightened for visitors.
By late January, the value of the real had dropped about 30 percent.  So while the tax remains 40 Brazilian reais on international flights, it has fallen to the equivalent of about $25.
The revenue the tax generates is used for modernization and maintenance of Brazil's airports, according to Renato Mosca, head of the press section at Brazilian Embassy in Washington. One such project, he said, was the building several years ago of a new international airport,  Guarulhos, outside Sao Paulo.
Noting that a departure tax also applies to domestic flights, Mr. Mosca said it was Brazilians who shouldered most of the burden of the departure tax. The tax, for example, on a 90-minute flight from his hometown, Ribeirao Preto, to Sao Paolo, is about $5.60, taking devaluation into account.
Many countries do, indeed, have lower departure taxes or other fees for departing international flights.  But with the devaluation, Brazil's tax is similar to that of its neighbors:  Venezuela charges $29, Ecuador $25 and Argentina $23.50.
Some fees elsewhere: $18 in France and Japan, $9 in Italy and $6.45 in Hong Kong -- all of which vary, of course, depending on the exchange rate. In Britain, for example, it's $:20, which is about $33, based on 60 pence to the dollar.
Steiff Menagerie
Q. My 10-year-old granddaughter is an avid collector of Steiff stuffed animals. I would like to take her to the factory in Giengen an der Brenz in Germany. Can you help? -- Mary T. George, Tallahassee, Fla.
A. The factory is not open to the public, but a museum in the same town -- displaying old and new animals, dolls, wooden toys and memorabilia -- is. And there is the inevitable modern touch -- a video, about the company's traditions, which include stitching the last seam by hand.
The company's origins date from 1890, when Margarete Steiff began making stuffed elephants. Seven years later her nephew Richard Steiff, who was taken with bears, started making the bears that became synonymous with the Steiff name.
They are still going strong: Of the million and a half animals made each year (with the trademark button in the ear), 350,000 are bears.
The Margarete Steiff Museum is at 2 Alleenstrasse; the telephone number is (49) 7322-131-1, fax (49) 7322-0131-475. Open Monday to Friday, 1 to 4 P.M.; Saturday, 8:30 A.M. to noon. On the first Saturday of the month the hours are 8:30 to 4 P.M. Admission is free.
Giengen an der Brenz, a town of 20,000 people in southern Germany, is 20 miles northeast of Ulm. The nearest airport of note is in Stuttgart, about 75 miles away.
PAUL FREIREICH",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Learning German in Zurich
Q. I will be in Zurich in the first half of 1999 and would like to learn German there. Where can I take German lessons in or near the city? -- Maryann Schultz, New York, N.Y.
A. Since Switzerland has three official languages -- German, French and Italian -- it is a great place to improve one's fluency. So much so that each year, Switzerland Tourism, 608 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10020, (212) 757-5944, publishes the booklet 'Language Courses in Switzerland.' While the courses it lists are aimed at teen-agers, there are at least a few schools in Zurich that serve adults.
The best known is probably Berlitz Language Schools, which has two branches in Zurich, including one at 7 Seefeldstrasse, 8008 Zurich, (41-1) 261-6807, fax (41-1) 261-9304. Sabina Graf, the assistant manager there, said the courses are open-ended and offered from two to five times a week. Price depends on the number of students: about $13 a lesson for classes of five to eight students, to about $35 for classes of two students.
You can sign up for classes before leaving the United States. For details, contact Lorenzo Diaz at the Berlitz office at 40 West 51st Street, New York, N.Y. 10020; (212) 765-1001, extension 638.
Another choice might be Klub schule Migros Zurich, Oerlikon Center, 305 Hofwiesenstrasse, 8050 Zurich; (41-1) 311-5088, fax (41-1) 311-5030. This school offers an intensive approach -- four hours a day for a month -- with sessions starting every month. It offers courses at 12 levels of fluency. The cost is about $510 a month. English-speaking students should ask for Jacqueline Assaintrangir.
A third option is the Alpha Sprachstudio, 10 Stadelhoferstrasse, 8024 Zurich; (41-1) 252-4994, fax (41-1) 262-3706. This school has been around since 1975 and offers courses on 12 levels, from twice a week to a half-day daily. Intensive courses start each month. Prices range from about $515 to $605 a month for daily lessons, or $25 a night.  Visiting the Canaries
Q. I would like to go to the Canary Islands with a friend in February. Are there package deals? And are there tours to learn about the original inhabitants of the islands? -- Halli Moskowitz, New York, N.Y.
A. While the Canary Islands are part of Spain and have long been a popular vacation destination, especially for Europeans, they are only about 70 miles off the coast of Africa and more than 600 miles from the Iberian Peninsula. The seven major islands of the Canaries -- essentially the peaks of an undersea mountain range that in ancient times were thought to be the remains of Atlantis -- have been described as having a climate that is perpetual springtime, with highs mostly in the 70's and the 80's. You can be comfortable at the beaches at any time, sometimes while gazing at snow-covered mountain peaks.
There are no direct flights to the Canary Islands from the United States, according to the Tourist Office of Spain, so the easiest and most common way to visit the islands is by chartered tour. Two New York tour operators, Canary Island Tours and Spain Tours and Beyond, offer identical packages to Tenerife, the largest island, and say they can put together individualized or standard side trips to other islands for an extra charge.
The tours from New York to Tenerife are on Air Europa via Madrid, and offer choices of 12 hotels, from three- to five-star establishments, in the resort areas on the south side of the island or on the north coast in Puerto de la Cruz. The fares, $759 to $1,649 in February, include hotel for five nights, daily buffet breakfast, transfers, casino entry and a night's stay in Madrid returning.
Culturally, the islands owe much to both Europe and Africa, with the influences of Hispanic, Portuguese, French, Italian and Berber immigrants. But before these people arrived, the Guanches -- tall, blond cave dwellers of unknown origin -- led a Stone Age existence, leaving behind cave paintings on the islands of La Palma and El Hierro, and embalmed bodies. On Gran Canaria Island, experts have reconstructed a Guanche city, Mundo Aborigen, using life-size figures.
It is in the Ayaguares National Park about three and a half miles from from Playa del Ingles Beach. It is open daily 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. Admission is about $14.50, $4.35 for children 13 and younger. Group tours in English are available except Monday and Tuesday by calling (34-928) 17-22-95.
If you want to go directly to Gran Canaria, you will have to book an individual trip. Spain Tours and Beyond says air fares in February to Gran Canaria via Madrid on Iberia Airlines are about $760 to $810, and three- and four-star hotels range from $60 to $100 a night, based on double occupancy.
Spain Tours and Beyond, is at 261 West 70th Street, New York, N.Y. 10023; (212) 595-2400, fax (212) 580-8935. Canary Islands Holidays, part of Spanish Heritage Tours, is at 116-47 Queens Boulevard, Forest Hills, N.Y. 11375; (888) 767-8822, fax (718) 793-4278.
For general information, contact the Tourist Office of Spain, 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10103; (212) 265-8822, fax (212) 265-8864.
Washington Millennium
Q. Six couples would like to celebrate the millennium in Washington. Can you provide information on events there on and just before Jan. 1, 2000. -- George N. Havens, Bratenahl, Ohio
A. Hard as it may be to believe, there are a lot of promises coming out of Washington but few concrete plans for that weekend, now 432 days away.
There should certainly be a number of events, since 2000 is not only the end of the millennium but also the 200th anniversary of the White House, the Capitol, the Library of Congress and of Washington itself as the nation's capital. But a spokeswoman for the Washington Convention and Visitors Association says it doesn't expect to start getting details from businesses or government until at least December. The association has a Web site, www.washington. org/, that can help in planning a visit, and offers tourism information at (202) 789-7069.
Another place to check is the White House Millennium Council, which will coordinate many activities. Sue Vogelsinger, the council's spokeswoman, said galas, parades and family events (including fireworks) on the Mall are planned. The council's Web site, www.2000.whitehouse.gov, is supposed to list events as they are announced. You can also call the council at (202) 456-2000.
RAY CORMIER",0
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New York by Tugboat
Q. My wife has always had a fascination with tugboats, and I would like to arrange for her to ride on one. Is there a company in the New York area that offers the opportunity? -- J.T., Port Washington, N.Y.
A. Though tugs are more likely to be guiding vessels than sightseers, a few do accommodate visitors. Among them are these:
The W.O. Decker, based at the South Street Seaport, offers public tours this year on Saturdays between April and Oct. 18 and chartered tours for a minimum of three at other times. A maximum of six passengers applies to all tours.
Departing from Pier 16, the W.O. Decker offers seven itineraries, varying from week to week and taking four or six hours. Among the four-hour tours is one that travels up the Hudson River, almost to the George Washington Bridge and then heads south to Liberty State Park; the six-hour trips include one along the Hudson to Dobbs Ferry, returning via the Harlem River.
Saturday tours depart at 10 a.m. in April, May, September and October and at 9 a.m. from June through August, but not on July 19 and Sept. 13. The cost for the general public is $125 for four-hour trips and $180 for six-hour trips. For members of the South Street Seaport Museum, it is $105 and $150, respectively. The Decker can be chartered for a minimum of three hours. The hourly rate for the boat is $150, $125 for museum members. Information: (212) 748-8786.
Also available for hire by up to six passengers are two tugboats owned by the Kosnac Floating Derrick Corporation. Headed by Veronica Kosnac Marshall, the company dates to 1931, when Mrs. Marshall's grandfather Fred founded it. The tugboats can be hired for a minimum of two hours at $255 an hour. Charges for time begin when the boat leaves the company's dock in West Brighton, Staten Island. But passengers can start and end the trip elsewhere.
Mrs. Marshall said passengers liked to see Kill Van Kull, the Statue of Liberty and the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, then head up the East River to the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges and finally go up the Hudson a bit to see the former World Trade Center site. Information: (718) 876-5447; ktugs@aol.com.
Touring Auto Plants
Q. A pilgrimage by my husband and 10-year-old son to the Mercedes, BMW and Porsche birthplaces is on hold. Are any American sites (Detroit? Lansing?) worth a visit? -- Janis Hirsch, Los Angeles
A. You would, indeed, have to leave American soil to see where Porsches are manufactured. But tours for the public are available at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Ala., near Birmingham, and the BMW plant in Spartanburg, S.C. There is one small problem, though: the minimum age for visitors is 12. There are other possibilities, but not in Michigan.
Whatever plant tour you take, remember cameras and open-toed shoes are prohibited and sometimes so are cellphones, backpacks, purses and briefcases; photo ID's and reservations may be required. Because of plant shutdowns, it's a good idea to call ahead.
The Mercedes-Benz plant, (888) 286-8762, www.bamabenz.com, is where S.U.V.'s are made. Nearby are a visitors center and a museum, where the highlights include an 1885 Daimler motorcycle and an 1886 three-wheel Benz patent motorwagen. Tours: Monday to Friday at 10, 10:15 a.m., 11 and 11:15 a.m. and at 1 and 1:15 p.m. Admission: $5.
The BMW plant, (888) 868-7269, www.bmwzentrum.com, is where the Z4 roadster and X5 sports activity vehicle are built On the site are a visitors center and museum, where the highlights include a 1928 Dixi and at least one of the Art Cars made by such people as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Tours: Tuesday to Friday at 10 and 10:15 a.m., 1, 1:15, 3 and 3:15. Admission: $5.
Plants where children 10 or younger are welcome include these:
Kentucky -- The GM Corvette Assembly Plant in Bowling Green, (270) 745-8287. Reservations are not required. Tours, which are free, are given Monday to Friday at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. Minimum age: 7. Highlights at the nearby National Corvette Museum, (800) 538-3883, online at www.corvettemuseum.com, include a Corvette from 1953, the car's first year, and prototypes that never made it to the showroom, including the only 1983 in existence. Admission to the museum is $8; it is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. There is no age minimum for the museum. The Toyota plant in Georgetown, (800) 866-4485, www.toyoytageorgetown.com, runs a tram tour Monday to Friday at 10 a.m., noon and 2 p.m. On Thursday there is a 6 p.m. tour. Minimum age: first grade. Free.
Tennessee -- The Saturn Spring Hill plant, (800) 326-3321, www.saturn.com. The plant, which has been closed for retooling, begins production, and tours, tomorrow. Free tours, on a tram, are Monday to Friday at 8:30 and 10 a.m. and at 1 and 2:30 p.m. (No 8:30 tour on Wednesday.) Visitors can book three months ahead. Minimum age: 6, or 42 inches high. Tours of the Nissan plant in Smyrna, (615) 459-1444, aboard a tram, run Tuesday at 8:30 and 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. Minimum age: 10.
Pen Pal in Japan
Q. I am planning a trip to Japan with my 8-year-old daughter. Can you offer advice on finding a Japanese child who could be a pen pal she might visit? -- K.P.G., Chicago
A. Since schools in Japan don't teach English till students are 12 or 13, the outlook is limited. But there are possibilities that you can explore.
iEARN, (212) 870-2693, www.iearn.org, connects students so they can collaborate on projects 'that can make a difference,' says Lisa Jobson, director of programs. Active in 100 countries, iEARN links individuals and students in 700 American schools (kindergarten to 12th grade).
The KeyPals Club service, accessible free through teaching.com, has almost 50,000 members from 112 countries, with 2,000 from Japan. To participate, parents or teachers fax or mail a permission slip. Using such criteria as interests, geography and language, the club matches potential pen pals. The match is activated only after both parties agree.
Patrice Fusillo, author of Japan Guide (Open Road), suggests the home visit program as a way to meet Japanese. Though Tokyo and Yokohama no longer have this program, it is available in other major cities. Information: Japan National Tourist Organization, (212) 757-5640.
Your daughter will find a friendly introduction at the Kids Web Japan site, jin.jcic.or.jp/kidsweb. It covers subjects like sports, coins and legends.
PAUL FREIREICH
Q & A",0
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Greenwich Dome Tickets
Q. Is it possible to buy tickets for the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, England, yet? -- Mitchell Peters, St. Louis
A. Although admission prices to Greenwich's much anticipated (and much criticized) Millennium Dome were announced last month, tickets won't go on sale until Sept. 22. Entrance to this high-tech indoor theme park will cost about $33 (at an exchange rate of 60 pence to the dollar); $27.50 for children 5 to 15 (under 5, free); and a family of five will pay $95. The dome is scheduled to open Jan. 1, 2000.
Jacinta Johnston, a spokesperson for the New Millennium Experience Company, which is in charge of the project, said that pricing was announced early so that travel agents could organize packages. So far, at least one British tour-bus company -- National Express, telephone (44-8705) 808-080 -- is offering packages from any city in Britain for $50, including transportation and admission. Ms. Johnston said that other tour organizers, including United States travel agents, will also have packages -- updated information will be posted on the dome's Web site, www.dome2000.co.uk, as it becomes available. A telephone number for ordering tickets, which must be purchased in advance, will be added to the site on Sept. 22.
Twelve million visitors are expected to visit the $1.2 billion Millennium Dome, which, upon completion, will be 164 feet high, 1,049 feet in diameter, with some 20 acres of floor space. 'The Millennium Experience,' the dome's opening yearlong  exhibition, will include 15 thematic zones filled with high-tech games and gadgets, virtual reality and interactive displays that will explore work, leisure, travel, the human body, spirituality and learning (among other topics) in the next millennium.
The dome, designed by Richard Rogers, one of the architects of the Pompidou Center in Paris, has stirred up controversy mainly because of its enormous cost and doubts about whether a new subway line to the site, seven miles southeast of London, will be completed. At this point, the Jubilee Line Extension is scheduled to be completed in late fall.
New York Walks
Q. I will be in New York City in July and would like information on walking tours. -- Alyce Waltzman, San Diego
A. Guided walking tours are a popular summer offering in New York, and you're likely to find at least a dozen in July. You might want to do some preliminary research on exactly what area you wish to explore, since most of the walks focus on individual neighborhoods like Harlem, the financial district and Greenwich Village. Among the possibilities are these:
On July 11 at 1 P.M., The New-York Historical Society and Big Onion Walking Tours are offering a two-hour walk through Harlem. The Abyssinian Baptist Church, Strivers' Row (a group of late 19th-century brownstones on 138th and 139th Streets that were once home to Harlem's elite) and sites associated with the writers Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes are on the itinerary. Participants meet at the northwest corner of 135th Street and Lenox Avenue. The cost is $10, $8 for students and seniors. Reservations are not required. On the day of the tour, call Big Onion Walking Tours, (212) 439-1090, after 10:30 A.M. to verify the schedule. Among other July walks, Big Onion has a Jewish Lower East Side tour scheduled for July 11 at 1 P.M. and a Central Park at Twilight walk on July 1 at 6 P.M.
The 92d Street Y runs a number of tours. A 90-minute walk through Chelsea on July 11 at 1 P.M., for example, takes in the area's Greek Revival and Italianate town houses and art galleries. On the itinerary are the turn-of-the-century Chelsea Hotel on West 23d Street; the Chelsea Market, a blocklong collection of food shops near 15th Street between Ninth and 10th Avenues; and the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, a shady ensemble of 100-year-old red brick and brownstone buildings bounded by 20th and 21st Streets and Ninth and 10th Avenues. For information and reservations call (212) 996-1100. The tour costs $20. The 92d Street Y also offers a tour of the Hudson River Promenade at dusk (July 24 at 6:30 P.M.) and a walk through Union Square's Green Market (July 28 at 10 A.M.).
Other options include a customized culinary tour of Little Italy, Chinatown and other areas through Savory Sojourns, (212) 691-7314 (prices vary), and a guided walk through Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, where Herman Melville and Miles Davis are buried, with Signature Tours, (212) 517-4306 (starting at $30 a person). And if your feet get tired, you can always sign up with Gray Line for a double-decker-bus tour, (212) 397-2620 ($22 for the downtown or uptown tours, $33 for the 'grand tour'). For more information, call the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau, (212) 484-1222.
Vancouver B & B's
Q. Can you suggest a reasonably priced bed-and-breakfast (in the $100-for-two range) in Vancouver? -- Shirley Shostell, New York, N.Y.
A. Vancouver has plenty of centrally situated bed-and-breakfasts that provide affordable alternatives to the city's big, expensive harborside hotels. Super, Natural British Columbia, (800) 663-6000, the division of Tourism British Columbia that deals with accommodations, can provide information on such inns. You might also refer to one of the numerous bed-and-breakfast guidebooks, like Pamela Lanier's 'Complete Guide to Bed and Breakfasts, Inns and Guesthouses' (the 1999 edition is $16.95).
Walnut House, for example, is a three-story 1912 Craftsman-style house at 1350 Walnut Street next to the Granville Market, and within walking distance of downtown and Stanley Park. The house has a big front porch and an upper deck, and there are three guest rooms decorated in a country style, each with private baths. The $90 rate for a double room includes a full breakfast (smoked salmon, eggs, fruit, bread pudding). Information: (604) 739-6941, fax (604) 739 6942.
The Manor Guest House, 345 West 13th Avenue, has 10 guest rooms in a four-story 1902 Edwardian building surrounded by English gardens in the downtown area, about 15 minutes from the airport. Six of the large rooms, decorated with English antiques, have private baths. A double room is $59 to $117. The price includes a full breakfast. Information: (604) 876-8494, fax (604) 876-5763.
SUZANNE MacNEILLE",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Air Pollution in Mexico City
Q.
I expect to be in Mexico City around Christmas. In spite of how bad the air pollution is there, are there precautions one can take? Are some sections worse than others? -- John Ponciano, Holland, Mich.
A.  Mexico City's air is considered by many the most polluted in the world. You are likely to experience the effect of the pollution, as it is generally at its worst in December into March, when air inversions often keep bad air trapped over the city. This year there were thermal inversions every day in January, 27 days in February and 28 days in March. Pollution is usually at its worst at midday, but when there is an inversion, early morning is worst. Generally the southwestern part of the city, which includes Coyoacan and San Angel, popular with tourists, is highest in ozone. Carbon monoxide and lead are heaviest downtown with its concentration of traffic, and sulfur is heaviest in the industrial northern section.
One way to keep up to date on air conditions is to look at The Mexico City News, an English-language daily paper, which publishes a daily air quality index. The index divides the city into five sectors, telling, for the previous day, levels of ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide in each, on a scale of zero to 500, with 100 being the highest acceptable level for each substance. (Zero to 100 is satisfactory, 101 to 200 is unsatisfactory, 201 to 300 is dangerous and 301 to 500 is very dangerous.) Suspended particles -- namely, dust, fecal matter and other substances -- are not rated. Another information source is the English-language FM radio station, Radio VIP, 88.1 on the dial. At 7:15 each morning, a pollution expert discusses the outlook for the day.
The most common reaction to the bad air is a runny nose, cough and irritated eyes; eye moistening drops and throat lozenges may provide some relief. Those who wear contact lenses should take glasses, as the lenses often become irritating. Beyond those problems, the chief risk is of respiratory system infections, such as bronchitis or sinusitis, according to Dr. Richard F. Thompson, director of the travel clinic of the Sunnyvale Medical Clinic, in Sunnyvale, Calif.  Dr. Thompson recommends that concerned travelers, especially those with a history of respiratory problems, check with a doctor before they go to Mexico City, and ask about medications to take along in case of problems. Travelers should drink plenty of fluids, which can help move irritating particles out of breathing tubes, he suggests. Dr. Daniel Libby, a pulmonary specialist at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in New York, also cites the risk for anyone with a history of asthma. He suggests considering a filtering mask.
Here are some precautions that many Mexico City residents take when pollution is highest: Stay indoors when pollution is at its daily peak, and avoid walking around congested areas during rush hour. Avoid gas stations, whose fumes may aggravate eyes and lungs. Indoors, keep windows closed, and use air-conditioning. Do not exercise outdoors when pollution is at dangerous levels.  Working Farms With Guests
Q. Are there working farms in driving distance of New York to which families can go? -- Barbara Feldman, Spring Valley, N.Y.
A.  A working farm about 120 miles north of New York is Merrill's Farm, R.D. 1, Roscoe, New York 12776; (607) 498-4212. The owners raise beef cattle on their 450 acres farm, which borders the Catskill Forest Preserve. There are four rooms for guests, each with two beds. The cost is $40 a bed a night, including all meals.
The greatest concentration of such places in driving distance of New York is near Lancaster, Pa., about three and a half hours away.
One is Cedar Hill Farm, 305 Longenecker Road, Mount Joy, Pa. 17552; (717) 653-4655. The farm raises chickens and grows corn and soybeans. Guests stay in an 1817 farmhouse at $55 for two in a room with private bath, including breakfast.
Jonde Lane Farm, 1103 Auction Road, Manheim, Pa. 17545, (717) 665-4231, eight miles northwest of Lancaster, has four guest rooms in a 1859 house. The 100-acre farm has 30 cows and 70,000 broiler chickens, plus kittens, puppies, a pet lamb and a pony. The rate is $40 for two adults plus $5 a child, including breakfast. All rooms have shared bath.
Country Pines Farm and Cottage, 1101 Auction Road, Manheim, Pa. 17545, (717) 665-5478, is a dairy farm with guest rooms in a cottage converted from a smokehouse and in the main house, which was built in the early 19th century. Rates are $40 for two people; $5 per child and $10 for each additional adult in a room. Breakfast is $2.50; free for children. Hut-to-Hut Colorado Hiking
Q.
I am interested in hut-to-hut backpacking in the Colorado Rockies. Can you provide information? -- Michael Solomon, Millburn, N.J.
A.  Eleven huts along the 10th Mountain Trail in Colorado, used previously only in winter for cross-country skiers, have been opened this summer for hikers. The huts are in the central Colorado Rockies in an area roughly bounded by Aspen on the southwest, Leadville on the southeast, Vail Pass on the east and Vail on the north. The huts are at altitudes ranging from 10,300 to 11,700 feet.  Each sleeps 16 and is furnished with mattresses and pillows on sleeping platforms, propane cooking stoves, wood stoves for heating and kitchen utensils. Hiking along the trail is of intermediate difficulty, the trail association says, and off-trail hiking is intermediate to difficult.
The huts are designated for hikers, mountain bikers and horseback riders; a four-wheel drive vehicle may be allowed, but only if necessary to take supplies. (The huts are near the Holy Cross and Hunter Frying Pan wilderness areas, which do not allow mountain bikes.) The fee is $20 a person a night, and reservations are vital, available from the 10th Mountain Trail Association, 1280 Ute Avenue, Aspen, Colo. 81611; (303) 925-5775. The association also books space in three private lodges along the trail, at $20 to $27 a person a night. Radio City Christmas Show
Q.
What will be the dates of the Radio City Christmas show in 1991? How does one get advance tickets? -- Sallie Pryor, Winston-Salem, N.C.
A.  The upcoming Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall will take place Nov. 15 this year to Jan. 7, 1992. Tickets, which will go on sale Aug. 28, will be $22 to $37, depending on date and seat location. Tickets are sold at the Radio City box office, at 50th Street and Avenue of the Americas. in New York, or from Ticketmaster outlets anywhere in the country.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
The Erie Canal and Beyond
Q. I am interested in making a canal trip up the Hudson River that includes the Lake Champlain canal, the St. Lawrence River, Lake Ontario and the Erie Barge Canal. -- Donald Lord, Forest Hills, Queens
A. This route passes through calm canals, where the speed limit is typically 10 miles an hour, and across Lake Ontario, where open waters allow greater speed and winds call for more maneuverability. So you want a vessel versatile enough for both situations. The trip covers almost 700 miles and can take three to eight weeks, depending on route and pace.
Among the companies that can handle the trip are these:
Blue Heron Boating Vacations with offices in Mount Vernon, N.Y., (800) 320-1224 or (914) 668-1040, fax (914) 667-2762; www.blueheronboats.com. It does not supply a crew and requires that someone aboard have boating experience. Now in its fourth year, Blue Heron has two 34-foot trawlers based in Whitehall, N.Y. Each has two cabins and two bathrooms. The rate is $3,100 a week plus 7 percent New York State tax; that includes a 10-foot inflatable boat with a 3-horsepower engine, third-party liability insurance and canal fees. Discounts are available for long and out-of-season rentals. Fuel and dockage fees are extra.
Classic Cruiser Charters, based in Kingston, N.Y., (607) 397-9344, online at home.stny.rr.com/cccharters, is in its eighth year. The company, headed by Henry Geerken, provides a crew of three for the 47-foot motor yacht Ka-Dee-Ge. Passengers use the two aft staterooms, which have an adjoining shower and bath. Mr. Geerken, who estimates the trip will take six weeks or so, underscores that he is not interested in speed records. The total rate for one to four people is $1,500 a week, including tax, breakfast, lunch, fuel and the cost of canal passes. Passengers pay dockage fees (generally $1.25 to $1.75 a foot), if any.
For those planning a route, here's one way to go, suggested by Robert Reib, author of eight guidebooks about cruising in North America; (724) 775-4892; skipperbob.home.att.net. From Troy, head west 160 miles on the Erie Canal to the Oswego Canal. On the Oswego Canal, go north to Oswego, which is on Lake Ontario. Head north across the lake to Kingston, Ontario, where you enter the Rideau Canal. Traveling northeast on the Rideau Canal for 126 miles will take you to Ottawa. From there, you can continue to the outskirts of Montreal and then Sorel at which point you head south on the Richelieu River and Canal to Lake Champlain, the Champlain Canal and back to Troy and the Hudson. This 690-mile route passes through 99 locks.
The itinerary Mr. Geerken takes is similar. But after coming into Lake Ontario from Oswego, he heads for the St. Lawrence River and through the Thousand Islands rather than taking the Rideau Canal to Ottawa.
Information about the New York State Canal System: (800) 422-6254 or www.canals.state.ny.us. Inquiries about canals in Canada: (888) 773-8888 or www.parkscanada.gc.ca/searchengine/search--e.htm.
Greek Wine Festivals
Q. Having enjoyed the wine festivals in Greece, I would like to include at least the one in Dafni and Rhodes next year. Any idea of the dates? -- George Newman, Montclair, N.J.
A. Greece's increasing urbanization in the last decade has resulted in a decline in wine festivals, says Nick Cobb, who runs www.greekwinemakers.com. The site focuses on the variety of Greek wines.
The festival on the outskirts of Athens at Dafni is no more, Mr. Cobb reports. But on Rhodes a festival is scheduled at Embona, with the probable dates being Aug. 29 to 31, says Mary-Irene Triantafillou, area marketing director and exports manager of Emery Wines. Emery has a winery in Embona, on the northwest side of Rhodes, about 30 miles southwest of Rhodes town. It is open 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. daily. Information: www.emery.gr/visitorsguide.htm.
Other celebrations include these:
On Crete, Rethimno holds a 17-day festival, starting July 20. According to Yiannis Prokopakis, owner of the Veneto Hotel in Rethimno, which is about 40 miles west of the capital, Iraklio, typically there is traditional Cretan music and dancing in the evening.
In Anhialos, a village in northern Greece, nine miles northwest of Thessaloniki, a weeklong festival is to begin on Sept. 14. Information: www.wineroads.gr/engindex.htm.
A Stay in Verona
Q. I would like to rent an apartment in Verona -- not in the countryside -- for a month or so. Any suggestions? -- Camille Hoheb, Loudonville, N.Y.
A. If you go to a real estate agency, expect to be asked for two months' rent as a security deposit, which is returned at the end of a stay, and to pay extra for utilities -- which is the policy at both agencies listed here.
'With some luck you can find an apartment' though supply is not keeping pace with increasing demand, says Andrea Serafini, a real estate agent with Gruppo Forsale Immobiliare, at Via Lungadige Porta Vittoria 5A. The agency has about 40 apartments available starting at $550 a month plus a 20 percent commission. A one-bedroom furnished apartment in the center of town can be had for $1,200 a month. Information: (39) 045 800 4494 and (39) 045 800 30 7000, fax (39) 045 800 5798; e-mail centro@forsale.it.
The Turolla agency takes a month's rent as commission, says Rosanna Gaspari, one of its agents. Other charges, she says, are for upkeep of the building (usually about $50 a month) and for drawing up a contract (about 2 percent of the total rent for duration of the lease). A couple of 'lovely, new' studio apartments now available, Ms. Gaspari says, cost about $750 a month; there's also a one-bedroom with access to a garage for $1,136 a month. Information: Piazza Cittadella 15, (39) 045 803 6400, fax (39) 045 800 1044; e-mail ugo.turolla@libero.it.
Another option is a residence hall, which provides fresh sheets and towels regularly. Residence Verona House, at Via Antonio Provolo 3, has about 20 rooms, mostly studios and one-bedroom apartments. Longer stays cost less, but a deposit of 20 percent of a month's stay is required. For a month's stay in low season, November to January, it's $62 a night for a studio, $68 for one bedroom and $88 for a suite. Information: (39) 045 808 9311, fax (39) 045 800 1177; www.residenceveronahouse.com.
Residence San Zeno, Regaste San Zeno, 3, has upscale rooms and small apartments, with rates that run from $100 to $600 a night. For information, call (39) 045 59 7721, fax (39) 045 800 2439 or visit www.residencesanzenoverona.it.
PAUL FREIREICH
Q & A",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Windsor's Royal Celebration
Q.  I understand a major equestrian event is planned in honor of the golden wedding anniversary of Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh. Please provide details. -- Robin H. Goldberg, New York, N.Y.
A.  'Major' might be considered an understatement. The Royal Pageant of the Horse, scheduled for July 5, is being billed as the largest equestrian event ever staged. It will be held at the Queen Victoria Review Ground at Windsor Great Park, a former hunting ground in view of the royal residence, Windsor Castle, 22 miles west of London.
More than 1,300 horses, 120 carriages, 600 musicians and singers, military bands and entertainers from all over Britain will take part. The Gold State Coach with a full Sovereign's Escort of the Household Cavalry will make a rare appearance. A musical production of Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries,' which will include the King's Troop of the Royal Horse Artillery, the Massed Bands of the Household Division and the Bach Choir will be conducted by Sir David Willcocks. Equestrian events in the Royal Pageant of the Horse aim to illustrate all aspects of horsemanship from racing and polo to show jumping and leisure riding. Working horses such as the heavy shire breeds and horses used in transport and the army will also be  represented.
The hour-and-a-half pageant, which will offer seating for up to 28,000, will start at 9:30 P.M. Tickets will cost about $68, $85 and $102. Parking will be provided for ticket holders.
Windsor Great Park will be open from 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. during which time viewers will be entertained with  jousting and other diversions, including a display of vintage Rolls-Royces.
To make reservations, which are required for both the daytime and evening events, and for information, call (44-1604) 831889.
Colonial Splendor in Morelia
Q.  My husband and I are planning a trip to Morelia in Mexico, and we would like some general information about the city, as well as some tips on mid-priced hotels. -- Carrie Dobbs, Pittsburgh
A.  Morelia, the capital of Michoacan in central Mexico, was founded in 1541 as Valladolid, but was renamed in the 19th century after Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon, an Independence War hero who was born there. The city, graced with some of Mexico's loveliest colonial buildings -- many of them constructed of a pale, rose-colored stone -- is a lively market town with a university, several Spanish language schools and an active arts scene. It is known for its sweets -- honey fudge, crystallized mangos and tamarinds -- which are sold in abundance on the streets and in the Mercado de Dulces, a market on the western arcade of the Clavijero Palace near the main square. Morelia is also known as a central marketplace for regional crafts: lacquerware, handmade guitars, copper pots and ceramics.
Most of the city's sites are within walking distance of the central zocalo, which is known by several names, including the Plaza de Armas. The most famous building is the 17th-century Cathedral overlooking  the zocalo. The Cathedral, built in a combination of styles, most prominently Baroque, has twin, 200-foot bell towers, the tallest in Mexico. The sanctuary contains a 4,600-pipe organ.
Inside the 18th-century Palacio de Gobierno, at 63 Avenida Madero, (52-43) 12 78 72, are murals by the artist Alfredo Zalce. Morelos was among the graduates of the seminary that was once housed here.
Another worthwhile site is the Casa Museo de Morelos, 323 Avenida Morelos Sur, (52-43) 13 26 51, the former home of Morelos, with exhibits related to his life and his involvement in Mexico's struggle for independence. Admission is $1. It is open daily from 9 A.M. to 6:30 P.M.
Among the midpriced hotel options is the Hotel Posada de la Soledad, 90 Ignacio Zaragoza, (52-43) 12 18 88, which has 58 rooms ranging from about $50 to $80. It occupies a restored 17th-century mansion. The rooms on the front section, facing the Plaza de Armas, are surrounded by a patio with fountains and bougain villea. All the rooms are decorated with Colonial-era memorabilia.
Hotel Catedral, 37 Calle Zaragoza, (52-43) 13 04 06, is a 44-room inn housed in a restored colonial building. Rooms surround a courtyard and some have views of the Plaza and the Cathedral. Double rooms also range from about $50 to $80.
Pollock's Hampton Domain
Q.  I understand it's possible to visit the former studio of Jackson Pollock in East Hampton, L.I., but that visiting hours are erratic. Will the studio be open in June? -- Irene Maddox, Cincinnati
A. Yes, the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center will be open when you're in the area. The site is a National Historic Landmark, situated in the Springs section of East Hampton at 830 Fireplace Road. It may be toured by appointment from May through October on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The site's research collection, which focuses mainly on the development of the Abstract Expressionist movement -- of which Jackson Pollock was a leading member -- is open year round, also by appointment.
The cedar-shingled, 19th-century farmhouse, along with Pollock's paint-splattered studio in a converted barn, overlook Accabonac Creek. Jackson Pollock and his wife, the artist Lee Krasner, bought the property in the 1940's. Jackson spent the last 10 years of his life there (he died in an automobile accident in 1956), producing his best-known works. In the process, he and other noted artists, including the late Willem de Kooning, established the surrounding area as an artists' colony at a time when what is now known as the Hamptons was a quiet string of fishing and farming villages surrounded by agricultural fields and wetlands.
In the studio, whose floor is still caked with paint, you'll find a series of photos, chronicling Pollock and Krasner's artistic careers, and a collection of both artists' implements. The house, left as it was in the 50's, contains their Victorian furnishings and personal library.
The Stony Brook Foundation, which is affiliated with the State University of New York at Stony Brook, operates the House and Study Center. Admission is $5, children are admitted free. For appointments and for information on lectures and special exhibitions, call (516) 324-4929.
SUZANNE MacNEILLE
Q and A",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
To Beijing From Hong Kong
Q.  I will be in Hong Kong during the first week in November and want to spend two nights in Beijing. I would like a guide to meet me at the airport with a car, take me to my hotel and then give me a tour of the Great Wall. He would also take me back to the airport. Must I make these arrangements before I leave for Hong Kong? -- Mary Rex Grimes, Fairborn, Ohio
A.  The first week of November is the peak of the high season for travel to both Hong Kong and Beijing, which runs from Sept. 15 to Nov. 15. Because of this, a prudent traveler would make arrangements before leaving the United States, although people traveling on their own would probably find it still possible to reserve a room and book a flight from Hong Kong.
On average, prices would be around $1,100 a person for the two-day package of round-trip air fare from Hong Kong, a guide with car and a hotel room for two nights in double occupancy. For single occupancy add about $100 a night.
Any of the following would be able to make the arrangements before you leave for Kong Kong:
China Travel Service, 212 Sutter Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94108; telephone (415) 393-9667, fax (415) 398-6669.
Pacific Bestours, 228 Rivervale Road, Rivervale, N.J. 07675; (201) 664-8778, fax (201) 664-1497.
Pacific Select, 120 West 45th Street, Ninth Floor, New York, N.Y. 10036; (212) 575-2460, fax (212) 575-2468.
Orient Flexi-Pak, 630 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017; (212) 692-9550, fax (212) 370-1477.
If you leave the arrangements until you get to Hong Kong, the following would be able to help:
DragonAir Hong Kong, Package Tours Department, 22d Floor, Devon House, Taikoo Place, 979 King's Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong; (852) 590-1133, fax (852) 590-1333.
China International Travel Services, Sixth Floor, Tower II, South Seas Center, 75 Mody Road, Tsimshatsui East, Kowloon, Hong Kong; (852) 732-5888, fax (852) 721-7154.
Swire Travel, China Tours Division, 18th Floor, Devon House, Taikoo Place, 979 King's Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong; (852) 579-6699, fax (852) 590-0099.
For general information about China, contact the China National Tourist Office, 350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 6413, New York, N.Y. 10118; (212) 760-9700, fax (212) 760-8809. On the Trail of King Arthur
Q.  I am interested in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Are there any festivals in England devoted to him that I might attend? -- Nancy Kramer, Brooklyn
A.  Few figures in legend or in history have gripped the English mind like King Arthur and his court at Camelot, but he seems to be honored more in literature than in life. Other than a re-enactment last month of Arthur's last battle, at Rhyd-y-Groes, Wales, the calendar is apparently clear.
Part of the problem may be that there is no general agreement on who he was or even where he lived. Over the years various cities in England have come to be associated with Arthur.
Colchester, in Essex, and Winchester, in Kent, have all been scrutinized by archeologists in the quest for the site of Camelot.
And no city has been more closely associated with him in the popular mind than Glastonbury, Somerset, in legend the burial place of Arthur and Queen Guinevere.
The latest historical theory about Arthur's true identity depicts him as a fifth-century warlord and his base of operations more than 100 miles north of Glastonbury, around present-day Shrewsbury and Wroxeter, Shropshire.
In their book, ""King Arthur: The True Story"" (Arrow), Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman say they believe Arthur was the British warrior who defeated the invading Anglo-Saxons at the battle of Badon after the Roman withdrawal from Britain in the fifth century. He was, say the authors, a king of Powys, which covered the modern Shropshire and central Wales.
Based on the authors' research, Shropshire Tourism, a county agency, has set up the King Arthur Trail, a 138-mile route that is designed to be started in Wroxeter and continued in a clockwise direction, in a roughly semicircular pattern, through Cosford, Ironbridge, Long Mynd, Welshpool and Oswestry to Shrewsbury.
The route, which visits sites associated with Arthur, is designed to be seen by car in about a day, although a more leisurely pace is recommended so that the sites can be explored.
A foldout pamphlet containing a map of the trail and historical notes and background, as well as the authors' interpretation of the historical data, is available from the British Tourist Authority, 551 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10176. Enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope with 29 cents' postage. It is also available from Shropshire Tourism, The Shirehall, Abbey Foregate, Shrewsbury, Shropshire SY2 6ND, England; (44 743) 252258.
A list of farmhouses, guest houses and hotels close to the trail is also available from Shropshire Tourism.  'Where Eagles Dare'
Q.  I will be traveling in Europe in July and would like to find out which castle was used in the filming of the motion picture ""Where Eagles Dare,"" which starred Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood. Can you help? -- Ron Shindor, Riverview, Fla.
A.  The main shooting location for the movie, a British production from 1968, was Ebensee, a small town near Bad Ischl, in Austria.
The castle is Hohenwerfen Fortress, 25 miles south of Salzburg.
Dating from 1077, the castle was rebuilt in the 16th century. The outside of the fortress has undergone little change since 1565.
Today Hohenwerfen offers special events like concerts, small theatrical performances, court dances, minstrel singing, medieval tournaments and banquets, hunting parties, horn blowing festivals and other medieval festivities in the courtyard.
The castle, which is open for visitors and guided tours from April 1 to Oct. 31, also maintains an aviary with eagles, vultures and falcons.
Information on scheduled events at Hohenwerfen can be obtained from the Event Management Office, Schlossverwaltung Schloss Kless heim, 5071 Wals, Austria; 85 08 85, fax 85 08 85 44 (the dialing code for Austria is 43; the code for Wals is 662).
The castle can be reached at Festung Hohenwerfen, 5450 Werfen, Austria; 7603 Fax 76 03 4 (the code for Werfen is 6468). A Kosher Disney World
Q.  Is there anywhere at Disney World where a family of very observant Jews who eat only at glatt kosher restaurants can stay? -- Judith Tallerman, Princeton, N.J.
A.  According to a Disney World spokeswoman in Orlando, Fla., a local company produces glatt kosher (rigorously kosher) dishes, which can, by arrangement, be brought in to any of Disney World's hotels. TERENCE NEILAN
Correction:  July 3, 1994, Sunday
An answer in the Q & A column on June 19 about King Arthur misidentified the county in which Winchester is located. It is Hampshire, not Kent.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q AND A
Practice, Practice, Practice
Q.  My husband, a serious amateur pianist, and I are planning a trip to Europe. Our itinerary will include London, Paris and Edinburgh. Is there anywhere in those cities he can practice while we are away? -- Patricia Green, New York, N.Y.
A.  There are a few places that should fit the bill.
In London, the Royal Academy of Music has its hands full with students in the daytime but says evenings and Sundays are available for practice. Two studios are available, one with a grand piano at $18.60 an hour and the other with an upright at $15.50 an hour, calculated at $1.55 to the pound. The academy is at 34 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5HT; telephone (44 171) 873 7373, fax (44 171) 873 7374. Nearest Underground station: Baker Street.
Wigmore Hall has two rehearsal rooms available Monday to Friday from 10 A.M.  to 6 P.M. at $12.40 an hour. The hall is at 36 Wigmore Street, London W1H 0BP; (44 171) 935 2141, fax (44 171) 224 3800. Nearest Underground: Bond Street.
Fazioli Studios has rooms available Monday to Friday from 9 A.M. to 9 P.M. Saturday from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. and Sunday by appointment. Rates are $11.60 for a grand and $13.20 an hour for an upright. The studios are at 29 Marylebone Lane,  London W1M 5FH; (44 171) 486 0025, fax (44 171) 935 8454. Nearest Underground: Bond Street.
In Edinburgh, Varsity Music has a practice room available Monday to Saturday  from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. for $4.65 an hour. Alternatively it will deliver a piano to your hotel room (with the hotel's permission) at a cost of $232.50 a week. The studio, which is a half mile from the main railway station on the A7 road opposite the Festival Theater, is at 8A-10A Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DH;  phone and fax (44 131) 556 3273. Ask for Seph Turner.
In Paris the Salle Pleyel has rooms available for $10.50 an hour once the daily students have finished their work. The hall is at 252 Rue du Faubourg St.-Honore, Paris 8; (33 1) 45.61.53.00, fax (33 1) 45.61.46.87. Nearest Metro:  Ternes.
Pianos Hamlet is a short distance away at 264 Rue du Faubourg St.-Honore, Paris 8; (33 1) 44.15.84.84, fax (33 1) 44.15.84.80. A room with a Steinway is available for $19 an hour Monday to Saturday from 10 A.M. to 7 P.M. Nearest Metro: Ternes.
Pianos Hamm has practice rooms available Monday to Saturday from 10 A.M. to 10 P.M. at $9 an hour for a grand and $7 for an upright. Hamm is at 135 Rue de Rennes, Paris 6; (33 1) 44.39.35.35, fax (33 1) 44.39.35.50. Nearest Metro: St.-Placide.
South African Rentals
Q.  Two years ago we went on a wonderful trip to South Africa and would like to return to the Llandudno-Cape Town area and rent a one-bedroom apartment during the Maine winter. Are there any agents there who could handle that? -- Rosina Fontein, Biddeford Pool, Me.
A.You have picked a lovely spot to return to, but be aware that Lladudno is an upscale area, mostly on the beach front, and that January to April is the peak period in South Africa. You should expect, therefore, to pay up to $100 or  more a day.
Any of the following can help:
Accommodation Shop, Shop 10, Marine House, St. John's Road, Sea Point 8001, South Africa; (27 21) 434-2248, fax (27 21) 434-2238. Vacation and long-term rentals available throughout the Cape.
A-Z Holiday Accommodation, Post Office Box 383, Milnerton 7435, South Africa; (27 21) 551-2785, fax (27 21) 551-1450. Short-term and long-term accommodation available in all areas, ranging from budget to luxury private homes and cottages.
Accomplace, Suite 9, Primavera, Gilmourhill Road, Tamboerskloof 8001, South Africa; (27 21) 26-2245, fax (27 21) 124-1796. A range of private homes.
Apartments and Homes, 154 Main Road, Sea Point 8001, South Africa; (27 21) 439-4126, fax (27 21) 439-9621. Apartment and hotel reservation service.
Cape Holiday Homes, Post Office Box 2044, Cape Town 8000, South Africa; (27 21) 419-0430, fax (27 21) 217-370, Houses and apartments throughout the Cape Peninsula.
Execurent, H106 Dolphin Beach, Marine Drive, Table View 7441, South Africa; (27 21) 557-5450, fax (27 21) 557-4280. Luxury homes and apartments for daily, weekly and monthly rentals.
Holiday Booking Service, Post Office 5514, Cape Town 8000, South Africa; (27  21) 24-3693, fax (27 21) 24-1907. Private homes, from economy to luxury.
Private Places, Post Office Box 489, Milnerton 7435, South Africa; (27 21) 52-1200, fax (27 21) 551-1487. Vacation and business apartments.
Vietnam's Tet Holiday
Q.  We plan to visit Vietnam as independent travelers next February. When is Tet, the lunar new year, and is it a good time or a bad time to be there? -- J.  Tuttle, Orinda, Calif.
A.  The Tet celebrations will be held from Feb. 18 to 20, and if joyous but noisy celebrations, with lots of fireworks and milling crowds, are what you have in mind then you are headed for the right place.
Many regular public activities will come to a halt as people take off from work to spend time with families and friends. Many others will be visiting Buddhist pagodas and churches and other public places. New Year's Eve, Feb. 18,  is the night for joining the crowds on the streets.
If you haven't booked a hotel room by now, particularly in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, you might have left it too late. The Tet holiday brings thousands of people to those two cities, including Vietnamese from overseas.
And be sure your airline reservations have been made. Because of the large number of visiting Vietnamese, getting in and getting out can be a problem at Tet time. The Train in Spain
Q.  I am planning to visit Spain this fall and want to travel by overnight train from Barcelona to Madrid. I would like to reserve sleeping-car accommodations for the journey and don't want to wait till arriving to make them. Can I can do that from the United States? -- Lawrence M. Quigley, Fair Haven, N.J.
A.  Tickets and sleeping car reservations for that train can be obtained from Rail Europe, a marketing group that represents rail travel in virtually all of Continental western Europe, and big cities in eastern Europe.
This fall, from Sept. 24 to Dec. 3, the overnight train runs Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. It leaves Barcelona Sants station at 11 P.M., arriving at Madrid Chamartin at 8 A.M. the next day.
The one-way fare is $62 in first class and $41 in second.
The sleeping accommodation is provided in second-class couchettes (seats that convert to beds; bedding is provided) for $24 a person; second-class sleepers for four people at $42 a person; first-class single sleepers at $94 and first-class double sleepers at $58 a person. Prices do not include a $10 handling fee.
The train is the No. 1373. More information: Rail Europe, (800) 438-7245 or (800) 848-7245, fax (800) 432-1329.
TERENCE NEILAN",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
French in the Islands
Q.  Do you know of any French-language schools in the Caribbean islands? -- L. M. B., Somerville, N.J.
A.  The French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, integral parts of France, now provide language and culture programs designed for foreign students, particularly those from the United States.
The Centre International de Recherches d'Echanges et de Cooperation de la Caraibes et des Ameriques, with facilities on both islands has begun a program called Le Francais aux Ameriques (French in the Americas).
Nine-week courses at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels give students 420 hours of instruction, while an intensive two-week course provides 60 hours.
There are also special classes for French teachers from the United States in the Easter break, lasting 68 hours, and during the summer (175 hours).
In Guadeloupe the cost of the courses for an individual student start at 4,500 francs (about $978, calculating 4.6 francs to the dollar) for the two-week course. Lodging is provided at an additional cost.
In Martinique arrangements are similar, but, in general, groups with a minimum of 10 students are preferred. The cost per person drops to 2,200 francs (about $478).
For detailed information about the programs in Guadeloupe contact Cirecca, Post Office Box 44, Petit Bourg 95179, Guadeloupe, French West Indies; telephone (590) 95.64.72, fax (590) 94.36.03.
For information on the Martinique programs contact Cirecca, Post Office Box 393, Fort-de-France 97258, Martinique, French West Indies; (596) 73.45.19, fax (596) 60.51.04. Expo in Portugal
Q.  My wife and I enjoy going to Expos and we understand that there will be an Expo coming up in Lisbon.  Can you give me any more information? -- Bernard S. Greenbaum, Kew Gardens, Queens
A.  Expo '98, the theme of which will be ""The Oceans and the Seas,"" will open in eastern Lisbon on June 10, 1998, the year Portugal commemorates the 500th anniversary of Vasco da Gama's historic voyage to India.
The Expo, the first to be held in Portugal and the last to be held this century, will be built on a 62-acre site on the banks of Tagus River in an economically depressed area that will be subject to a huge urban renewal project. The exhibition, which will continue for three months and cost an estimated $565 million, will leave a legacy of new parks and housing, road networks, shopping centers and cultural sites. It is expected to attract some nine million visitors.
The exhibition hopes to stress the interdependence of the oceans and the atmosphere and the effects of this on the climate; to build an awareness of the need to safeguard the world's marine heritage, and to provide a forum for the exchange of information and experience.
More information: Portuguese National Tourist Office, 590 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10036; (212) 354-4403; fax (212) 764-6137. To London and Paris
Q.  I know the Changing of the Guard in London has cut down its daily routine. How can I find out what days they march? And as I will be in Paris for Beaujolais Nouveau are there any special events planned for the occasion? -- Dennis F. Curran, Havertown, Pa.
A.  As of last Sunday and until Sept. 1, the Changing of the Guard takes place at 11:30 A.M. every other day on even-numbered days (before last Sunday it was held daily at the same time). Starting on Sept. 1 it will switch to every other day on odd-numbered days. Next May 1 it will again be held every day.
The ceremony lasts 40 minutes and takes place inside the railings of Buckingham Palace. The Guards, usually drawn from the Foot Guards of the Household Division, leave Wellington Barracks at 11:27 A.M. and march by way of Birdcage Walk to the palace.
The Old Guard forms up in the palace forecourt, going off duty and handing over to the New Guard. The guard, normally two men at each post, is reduced to a single guard at each post when Queen Elizabeth is not in residence at the palace. The Queen is there if her Royal Standard is flying from the flagpole on top of the palace. The ceremony is canceled in bad weather.
The nearest Underground stations to the palace are St. James's Park and Green Park.
Meanwhile, a separate ceremony is held at Horse Guards Parade on Whitehall. The Mounted Guard Changing Ceremony takes place daily, Monday to Saturday at 11 A.M. and Sunday at 10 A.M. The nearest Underground stations to Horse Guards Parade are Charing Cross and Westminster.
As for Paris, be prepared for a citywide celebration of Beaujolais Nouveau on the third Thursday of November, this year the 16th.
The wine will be tasted and judged in just about every restaurant and bistro. One of the highlights is the awarding of ""Les Meilleurs Pots"" by the Rabelais Academy, a group of journalists and painters who are wine connoisseurs, to the bistros they consider warm and friendly and which serve good wine and food.
These are a few of the past winners:
Les Pipos, 2 Rue de l'Ecole Polytechnique, (1993 winner), 43.54.11.40; Metro, Maubert Mutualite.
La Tour de Pierre, 53 Rue Dauphine (1992), 43.26.08.93; Metro, Dauphine.
Le Vin des Rues, 21 Rue Boulard, (1989), 43.22.19.78; Metro, Denfert Rochereau. South African Weather
Q.  My husband and I will be traveling to South Africa in late October. What will the weather will be like in Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town? And how formal is dress in these three cities? -- Suzanne L. Ethridge, Farmington Hills, Mich.
A.  October is springtime in South Africa, considered by some travelers the best time to visit.
Johannesburg and Pretoria are both in what is called Gauteng, or high veld region, most of it above 4,000 feet, where temperatures are rarely excessive and low humidity and many hours of sunshine make for a pleasant and healthy climate.
In October look for average highs of 77 degrees in Johannesburg and lows of 53, with precipitation at 2.2 inches.
In Pretoria highs average 80 degrees and lows 55, also with 2.2 inches of precipitation.
Cape Town, in the Cape Mediterranean region, is a little windier than the other two and you might need a sweater at night. In October average highs should be around 70 degrees and lows 52, with precipitation at 1.2 inches. In November the highs pick up to 73.
South Africa is not in general a formal country, but for dinner in a good restaurant men would look out of place if they were not wearing a jacket and tie. At night women generally favor a dress with perhaps a cardigan for the cooler evenings. TERENCE NEILAN",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Hiking in the Pyrenees
Q. I have heard of a hiking trail called G.R. 7 that traverses the Pyrenees. Where can I find information, preferably in English, to help plan a walk next summer? -- Christopher Newton, Clinton, N.J.
A. The G.R. 7 (G.R. stands for Grand Randonnee) runs 183 miles from Castelnaudary in southwestern France to Andorra in the Pyrenees. A guide, in French, is available in Paris from the Federation Francaise de la Randonnee Pedestre.) The route is covered by Topo-Guide No. 714, each 57 francs (about $11), with a map on one side and information (in French) on walking times, places to see, sleep and eat on the other.
Another Grand Randonnee that crosses the Pyrenees is G.R. 10, between Banyuls on the Mediterranean to Hendaye on the Atlantic, 434 miles. The whole route is covered by topo-guides Nos. 1086, 1087 (each 87 francs, or $17.40), 1088 and 1089 (each 78 francs, or $15.60).
Also available at the the Federation Francaise de la Randonnee are guides to the ""Detours Pyreneens."" These detail two- to seven-day walks that branch off of the grand randonnees in the Pyrenees. These detours appear on maps No. 013 and 014, each $17.40. The material is available from the Federation Francaise de la Randonnee Pedestre, Centre d'Information, 64 Rue de Gergovie, 75014 Paris, France, telephone (44 1) 45.45.31.02. The guides may be ordered from the United States with an international money order for the price of the maps in francs, plus 30 francs (about $6) for mailing.
The maps of the French Institut Geographique National Serie Bleue sheets, $8.60 each, cover the eastern (map No. 2249) and western (No. 2349) areas of the Pyrenees, and include the Grand Randonnees and other routes. They are sold at large bookstores and at Institut Geograph ique National, 107 Rue la Boetie, 75008 Paris, France; (33 1) 43.98.85.00, fax (33 1) 40.70.04.39.
An English-language translation of the Federation Francaise de la Randonnee Pedestre guide to G.R. 10 called ""Walking the Pyrenees,"" from the British publisher Robertson McCarta, is available for $17.95 (plus $3.50 for shipping) from The French Walker, 145 East 22d Street, Apartment 5E, New York, N.Y. 10010; (212) 353-2022.
Another source of English translations of French guidebooks is Michael Chesler Books, Post Office Box 399, Kittredge, Colo. 80457; (800) 654-8502. Books include ""Pyrenees High Level Route,"" by Georges Veron ($27.95), and ""Pyrenees East"" ($20.95) and ""Pyrenees West"" ($19.95), both by Arthur Battagel; all three are published by Gastons-West Col. Shipping parcel post is $2.50 for one book and 50 cents for each additional one. U.P.S. is $3.50 for one book and 50 cents for each additional one. Avoiding Seasickness
Q. What is the best location on a cruise ship to minimize the chance of getting seasick? Any other pointers? -- Helga Doessinger, College Point, Queens
A. The least motion is experienced in a cabin in the lower part of midship, according to a spokeswoman for the Cruise Line International Assocation, which represents 31 cruise lines.
Dr. Kenneth L. Koch, a gastroenterologist at Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, Pa., who specializes in the study and treatment of motion sickness, offers this additional advice to those prone to seasickness:
When on deck face forward and keep your gaze on the horizon. The sight of rolling waves or the nearby shoreline can contribute to nausea.
Eat lightly, mainly starchy meals or snacks like cereal, toast or crackers. Laboratory tests have found that a stomach doing the work of digestion is less likely to suffer the most intense symptoms. Fatty meals, which slow the stomach down, do not help.
Divert your attention with a card game, for example, or some other activity. Pilots and astronauts report little nausea when engaged in tasks requiring concentration.
If you worry that the above won't help, ask your doctor about medication. Dr. Koch says that many travelers find a scopolamine patch worn behind the ear to be effective; these work for three days. The side effects can be dry mouth, blurring of vision and some sedation, he said. Dramamine and Bonine, trade names for two types of antihistamines used to prevent motion sickeness, often cause sedation, he said. Dr. Koch said that continuous electrical stimulation of a point on the left wrist said by acupuncturists to affect nausea has helped control motion sickness. A portable stimulator is being developed, he said, and some use a wrist band with a lump that applies pressure to the point.
Finally, Dr. Koch, said, remember that if you do get seasick, it will most likely pass. Most people adapt to their new, moving environment. How long that takes varies, but for most it is within a few days. Zion and Bryce in January
Q. We were planning to visit Zion and Bryce National Parks in Utah in January but wonder whether it will be too cold. -- Dirk van Roon, New York, N.Y.
A. Temperatures in Zion Canyon itself, at 4,000 feet elevation, range from 39 to 60 in the daytime and from 15 to 37 at night. There is about two inches of precipitation in January, either as rain or snow that melts quickly. In the eastern part of the park, where elevations are 6,500 to 8,000 feet, temperatures are below freezing day and night in January, and those two inches of rain translate into two feet of snow.
At Bryce Canyon, where the elevation is 5,200 feet, the daily average high in January is 39 and the low is 9. The highest ever recorded there in January was 62 and the low was minus 30. At the rim of the canyon, snowfall averages 100 inches each winter. Whose Air Ticket Is It?
Q. I had bought a round-trip ticket on American under my son's name but my wife used it instead. When the flight was overbooked, an agent inspected her ticket. It was taken away and she had to pay a more expensive fare. Does an airline have the right to do this? -- William E. Pollak, New Brunswick, N.J.
A. According to a spokesman for American Airlines, tickets are considered a contract between the airline and the person whose name is on the ticket. Tickets are not transferable under any circumstances, he said, and you would have needed to buy a new ticket under your wife's name. He added that you would retain the value of your son's unused ticket, which could be applied toward a new flight minus a $25 service fee. The nontransferability of tickets is written into the conditions of carriage, which govern all American air tickets, according to Cornish Hitchcock, legal director of the Aviation Consumer Action Project, a consumer organization based in Washington.
Correction:  November 8, 1992, Sunday
An answer in the Q & A column on Nov. 8 about the weather in Bryce Canyon, in Utah, misstated its elevation. A letter from a reader, delayed in reaching the editors, points out that it is 8,000 feet, not 5,200.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
My mother wants to go to St. Petersburg, Russia, this summer to see the palaces, Hermitage, etc. The tours I've found seem to include just three days there. Any suggestions of tours of the city for a week? -- C.Q., Arlington, Va.
There is much to see in the fascinating city of Peter the Great -- with more than 500 palaces and the vast Hermitage museum among the draws -- but most tour companies combine St. Petersburg with Moscow, devoting just three or four days to each in the usual itinerary. The exception is during the White Nights Festival in June, when some tour companies offer trips exclusively for that event, too late for your mother this year.
Regent Holidays, a British company specializing in Eastern Europe and Asia, runs both custom and scheduled trips. Every Saturday a Regent tour (usually no more than 20 people) departs from Moscow for an eight-day guided trip that includes three days of sightseeing in each city and overnight train from Moscow to St. Petersburg, for $1,090, at $1.85 to the pound (without air fare). The trip can be customized to consist of three nights in St. Petersburg (with no Moscow visit), for $1,100 a person in summer with air fare from London included, or it can be extended (extra nights at a three-star hotel are $130 a person per night). An English-speaking guide can be arranged for $46 a person per half day. Information: (44-117) 921-1711; www.regent-holidays.co.uk.
Steppes Travel, also based in Britain, with an office in St. Petersburg, has been offering custom trips to the city for 15 years. One suggested four-day itinerary includes lodging at one of three central four- or five-star hotels or a private apartment, a city tour and visits to the Russian Museum, the Hermitage and Catherine Palace; from $1,840 a person, with air fare from London, hotel, guide, car and driver and entrance fees; (44-1285) 651010; www.steppeseast.co.uk.
A higher-end customized trip is offered by Exeter International, in Tampa, Fla., which specializes in deluxe travel to Russia and Eastern Europe. The company will design an itinerary that includes accommodations in a five-star hotel, car and driver and English-speaking guide; they can also arrange behind-the-scenes tours and book theater tickets and restaurant reservations. The daily price estimate for a private tour, based on two people traveling together in July, would be $650 to $850 a person, based on double occupancy. Information: (800) 633-1008, www.exeterinternational.com.
However you go, with a scheduled or custom trip, you can find a knowledgeable guide once you arrive. For example, you might look into one of the guided tours given by Peter's Walking Tours, based in St. Petersburg, with a team of eight English-speaking guides. Morning tours leave every day from the International Hostel. Special tours include a Rasputin Walk, a Dostoyevsky Walk and Peter's Food Tour; a Siege of Leningrad tour is offered every Saturday.
Peter Kozyrev, founder of the nine-year-old company, says the walks emphasize not just the main attractions but also the city itself, its history, culture and everyday life as seen in its markets, back streets, public transport and the like. Most tours are three to five hours and cost $14.25, at 29 Russian rubles to $1; group size is an average of 10 to 12 people. Tours can be customized (with less walking, for example). Information: www.peterswalk.com.
Now that we are retired, we would like to follow our love of J.S. Bach by visiting Bach festivals, at least in the United States. Is there a complete list? -- Emily and Marc Eisen, Monroe Township, N.J.
Probably the most comprehensive list of festivals appears on www.bach-cantatas.com/Links/Links-Festivals.htm. The listing includes more than two dozen festivals within the United States, with links to each festival's home page, from the Peoria Bach Festival, which took place June 1 to 5 in Illinois this year, to the White Mountain Musical Arts Bach Festival in North Conway, N.H., Aug. 25 to 28. (Note that some of the festivals are not exclusively devoted to Bach.) The listing includes Bach festivals around the world, organized by country, if you wish to extend your visits beyond the United States, and has links to a range of Bach societies, concerts and recordings.
A similar listing can be found at www.jsbach.org/web.html, a collection of Bach-related Web sites with a number of festivals including two of the oldest, dating back to the 1930's: the Winter Park Bach Festival at Rollins College in Florida this past winter, and the Carmel Bach Festival, July 16 to Aug. 6 this year, in California.
FLORENCE STICKNEY
Q & A",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Searching for Nessie
Q. My 12-year-old son is obsessed with the Loch Ness monster, so I have decided to take him to the source next month. Can you provide information on what Nessie-themed tours or sites there are in Drumnadrochit, Scotland? -- Sam Payne, Newport, R.I.
A. It has been described as resembling everything from a dragon to a giant sturgeon, but whatever it may or may not be, Nessie, the legendary inhabitant of Loch Ness attracts tens of thousands of tourists each year. Many of the monster sightings have been near your destination, the tiny village of Drumnadrochit on the northern side of the lake, about 15 miles from Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. That is where you'll find the greatest concentration of Loch Ness monster sites, as well as shops selling everything from stuffed Nessies to refrigerator monster magnets.
Local historians say the first recorded sighting of the beast was by the Christian missionary St. Columba in 565. In 1886 the Inverness Courier noted the 'local tradition of a strange fish in the Loch.' Some 50 years later newspapers throughout  Britain carried reports of a surging mass of water in the center of the 23-mile-long loch created by an enormous animal rolling and plunging. One of the most recent sightings was reported on June 1, following 11 in 1997.
Over the years, high-tech investigations involving submarines, sonar and underwater video cameras have neither proved or disproved Nessie's existence.
In Drumnadrochit, you'll find two major exhibitions on the lake and the monster. At the Official Loch Ness Monster Exhibition, which is housed in a former Victorian hotel in the center of Drumnadrochit, a 40-minute presentation uses video, photographs, music, narration and dramatic lighting to describe the geology, history and legends surrounding the 800-foot-deep lake, whose basin was carved out by glaciers some 300 million years ago; it is the largest body of fresh water in Britain. Ample time is devoted to the myths surrounding Nessie and the various attempts to locate her. Exhibits include the John Murray, a sonar research vessel used in search of the monster in the 1970's. The center is open from 9:30 A.M. to 8:30 P.M.; admission is $7.60 (figured at a rate of 59 pence to the dollar), $4.25 for children. From late October to next spring, the center will be partly closed for renovations. Information: (44-1456) 450573.
Next door is the Original Loch Ness Visitor Center, where you can view another multimedia presentation, as well as photographs of the creature (probably faked, a spokesman for the center says). Admission is $6, $4.65 pounds for children. The center is part of the Loch Ness Lodge Hotel, a 350-year-old 60-room inn with modern double rooms available for $119, including breakfast. Information and reservations: (44-1456) 450342, fax (44-1456) 450429.
The winding one-mile-wide lake, rimmed by forested hills and glens, is an attraction in itself. Among the sightseeing cruises available is an hourlong trip on the Deepscan research vessel, which carries up to 12 people and departs hourly in the spring, summer and fall from 10:30 A.M. through 5 P.M. Besides learning about the Nessie legend from well-informed guides, you'll pass the imposing ruins of the 500-year-old Urquhart Castle (the castle, about two miles southeast of Drumnadrochit, is open to visitors, admission is $6). The cost of the cruise is $13.50; $8.50 for children. The trip can be booked at both exhibition sites mentioned above.
For more information, contact the Highlands of Scotland Tourist Board, Post Office Box 9, Dunoon, Argyll PA23 8QQ; (44-1997) 421160.
Maui Day Hikes
Q. I'm looking for companies offering guided day hikes on Maui. Can you help? -- Susan Wolff, New York, N.Y.
A. Here are two possibilities:
Hike Maui has a variety of half-day and full-day hikes on the island; most are described as moderate hikes, meaning they are suitable for people in reasonable physical shape. Prices range from $75 to $115 and include snacks and sandwiches. Participants are transported by van to trail heads; during the trip -- which, depending on the itinerary, could last up to two hours -- guides lecture on the geology, flora and fauna of the volcanic island. For example, a seven-hour three-mile hike along the arid coastline above La Perouse Bay costs $90, $70 for children 15 and under. Snorkeling equipment is included. Information: (808) 879-5270, fax (808) 876-0308.
Soul Journeys to Paradise, which organizes kayaking, driving and hiking trips, has a Haleakala Hiking tour that lasts six to eight hours and covers eight miles. Participants start at an altitude of 8,000 feet and hike into the Haleakala Crater. The cost is $79 and includes transportation to the trail, lunch and snacks. Information: (888) 232-3601 or (888) 345-7685.
Castles in Catalonia
Q. Do you know of a Spanish organization that offers tours to a group of private castles in Catalonia? -- Janice P. Mincks, New York, N.Y.
A. You're probably thinking of the Castle Cultural Foundation of Catalonia, a relatively new foundation committed to preserving 77 privately owned castles, most of them in the region of Catalonia in eastern Spain. Only four of the castles are open throughout the year (except in August), although the owners of the majority of the castles will participate in the second annual 'open door' visit on Sept. 27, when free guided tours are scheduled at 11 A.M. and 12:30, 4 and 5:30 P.M.
Among the four that are open year round is the 11th-century Montsonis Castle, in the village of the same name, 36 miles northeast of the provincial capital of Lerida. The idea for the foundation was conceived in 1991 by the castle's owner, Baron Carlos Montoliu. His 30-room palace is five stories tall and has a former prison and a secret escape passageway. Mr. Montoliu, a corn and alfalfa farmer, lives there with his family.
Montclar Castle, about 15 minutes away, and two castles in the nearby towns of Florejachs and Pallargas, also share the same year-round schedule of guided tours, which are on Sundays at 11 A.M. and 12:30 P.M. Admission is $3.30 for each. Group visits are held on other days, by appointment; individuals may be able to join the groups by contacting the foundation's office in Montsonis, at (34-973) 402 045, fax (34-973) 400 735.
SUZANNE MacNEILLE",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Studying in Latin America
Q.  I want to live in Central or South America for four months to improve my Spanish and learn more about the region's culture and politics. Which countries have language programs offered in a hospitable environment? -- Gloria Bowles, Berkeley, Calif.
A.  There are scores of language schools throughout Latin America that teach intensive Spanish and also give classes on the region's history and culture. The most established schools are in Cuernavaca, Mexico; San Miguel de Allende, Mexico; San Jose, Costa Rica; Quito, Ecuador, and Antigua, Guatemala. (Before visiting Guatemala, check with the State Department; there have been some anti-American incidents there recently.) Most large cities in Latin America -- including Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Caracas -- also have language schools. Although the quality and curriculum of the programs vary, most admit students for periods that range from a week to several months.
The Wisconsin-based National Registration Center for Study Abroad is a private organization that certifies language programs throughout the world. It represents more than 30 programs in Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Venezuela, Costa Rica and Guatemala.
For instance, the Escuela de Idiomas D'Amore in Quepos, Costa Rica combines 20 hours a week of language classes with visits to Manuel Antonio National Park. Students live with a Costa Rican family where they are immersed in Spanish. The program costs between $685 and $795 a week, including board.
The Chile Homestudy program places its students in the houses of local teachers from the Santiago area. The program costs between $850 and $1,085 for two weeks, including room and board.
Mexico City's National Autonomous University has a special intensive language school for foreigners. The university charges $395 for an intensive six-week program in Spanish. The school does not provide housing or meals.
The South American Spanish Institute in Quito, Ecuador, offers one-on-one Spanish tutoring for 20 hours each week for $300 (including room and board with a local family). It schedules two field trips for students each week.
For more information on these and other language programs, contact the National Registration Center for Study Abroad, Post Office Box 1393, Milwaukee, Wis. 53201; (414) 278-0631, fax (414) 271-8884. Key West Lodgings
Q.  We have been considering an extended vacation in Key West. Can you tell me anything about accommodations available at monthly rates, especially ones that accept pets? -- C. Northen, Birmingham, Ala.
A.  According to rental agents in Key West, a two-bedroom, two-bath house in Key West's historic district averages about $2,500 to $3,000 a month during the summer and fall, and $4,500 to $5,500 during the peak season (from mid-December to late April). However, if you search hard enough, it is possible to find efficiency rentals for as little as $800 a month in the summer. But there is no getting around the 11 percent sales tax and, for pet owners, a $100 or $125 deposit, often nonrefundable.
A private house is probably the best bet, especially if you have a pet. (Most motels, large condominium developments and bed-and-breakfasts do not accept pets). Furthermore, there are few full-service establishments that give advantageous monthly rates; generally the best you can get is a weekly rate.
One exception is Travelers Palm Garden Cottages and Suites, 815 Catherine Street, Key West, Fla. 33040, (800) 294-9560, in the historic district. It has seven one- and two-bedroom cottages with central air conditioning and private gardens. Amenities include two pools and boat charters. Clyde and Brigid Hensley, the owners, said they offered four weeks for the price of three during the summer and fall, when weekly rates range from $650 to $1,250. During peak season, there are no price breaks for monthly stays; the weekly range then is $750 to $1,450. Unobtrusive pets -- a small dog, for instance -- are accepted. A $100 refundable deposit is required for a pet.
Among the agencies that list houses, condominiums and apartments for monthly vacation rentals are Bassett Real Estate and Rent Key West. Be sure to ask about any fees for cleaning and whether or not you must pay utilities. Such charges vary not only from company to company, but often from property to property.
Bassett Real Estate, 1218 Duval Street, Key West, Fla. 33040, (800) 780-1386, currently has properties with monthly costs starting at $1,800 off-season ($3,000 in season) for a one-bedroom, one-bath apartment above a Watson Street house with a pool, deck and Jacuzzi. A three-bedroom, two and a half bath house with a pool on Rose Street costs $3,500 a month in the summer. During the peak season, the same house costs $5,000. There is a $100 nonrefundable deposit for pets. To reserve the property, you must pay half the rate in advance; the other half, plus a $500 security deposit, is due on arrival.
Rent Key West Properties, 1107 Truman Avenue, Key West, Fla. 33040, (800) 833-7368, has listings ranging from a one-room efficiency on Ann Street, that rents for $800 for one summer month ($2,000 in season) to a seven-bedroom, waterfront estate with pool, gazebo and boat docks ($24,000 a month off-season, $30,000 in season). There is a $125 pet deposit, and to reserve the property, rent and a $500 deposit must be paid in advance.
The Key West Chamber of Commerce, 402 Wall Street, Key West, Fla. 33040, (800) 527-8539, will provide a free listing of accommodations and rental agencies. Among the categories used to describe each accommodation, is, conveniently, one that addresses the admissibility of pets.  Driving in Ireland
Q.  I have been informed that in Ireland a person 75 years or older cannot rent a car and that between the ages of 70 and 75 years special insurance is required in addition to all of the regular insurance. Is this true? -- C. O. Lamp, Danville, Calif.
A.  There are no government regulations that specify an upper age limit for those renting cars in Ireland. However, some companies have set their own limits. Citing high car insurance rates in Ireland, a Hertz spokesman said the company would not rent to drivers over the age of 75 in that country. Avis said the upper age limit for small to midsize cars was 70 years in Ireland; for large cars the cutoff was 65 years. Both companies said they did not require older renters to purchase special insurance. The companies set no upper age limits in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. SUZANNE MacNEILLE",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Round-the-World Air Fare
Q.
Do airlines still offer round-the-world fares that allow a traveler to stop at several destinations for one flat price? -- L. Masone, New York, N.Y.
A. Some airlines, generally in conjunction with other carriers, do continue to offer such fares. British Airways, (800) 247-9297, for example, maintains a round-the-world desk. Tickets, good for a year, must be bought at least 14 days before the first flight. With a travel agent or ticket agent, a buyer works out an itinerary, which does not require dates for any but the first flight. There may be any number of stopovers, with no minimum or maximum stay, as long as stops are continuously in one direction. Passengers may make a total of five stops in the United States and Canada in addition to the first stop on entering North America. There is no charge for making dates for flights, for changing dates or for making one change in the routing. Subsequent route changes are $25.
There are several optional side-trip flights available along the way. For example, when passengers arrive in London, they may make round trips at no charge to other cities in Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland, or for $128 to Austria, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain or Sweden. Another option, out of North America, is to fly to the Cayman Islands, $175 round trip out of New York (the price varies by city), with a free flight to Cayman Brac. Those who arrive in Honolulu can make one free round trip to any of the other islands.
A British Airways trip, in conjunction with United, that makes the Pacific leg in the north (with choices of Japan, Hong Kong, and so on) is $2,570 in economy class, $3,618 business class and $5,020 first class. First-class passengers can fly the Concorde on the trans-Atlantic leg for $863, and business-class passengers can take it for $1,718. A South Pacific route (including Australia and New Zealand), with United and Qantas, is $3,274 in economy; $5,180 business class and $6,744 first class. The route also allows some stops in Africa.  Chelsea Flowers in America
Q.
You recently answered a reader's question about the Chelsea Flower Show in England. I have heard there is to be a Chelsea America Flower Show held in the United States. Is it associated with the one in England? -- Sandra J. Fusco-Walker, Kinnelon, N.J.
A. The Chelsea America Flower Shows in the United States are ""patterned"" after the Chelsea Flower Show in London, a spokesman for the Chelsea America Foundation says.  But he notes that there is no formal relationship between the foundation and the Royal Horticultural Society, which runs the London show. Some of the show's advisors, including Stephen Bennett, the show director of the Royal Horticultural Society in England, have been involved with the Chelsea Flower Show in England.
Chelsea America Flower Shows will take place outdoors (with parts under tents) and will include model gardens, floral and cut flower displays and educational exhibits.
The first show will be held at Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Feb. 6 to 9, 1993. It will take place on 40 acres on the former site of Marineland at the south end of Santa Monica Bay, in Los Angeles County. Information: (310) 648-6602.
The second will occur Feb. 20 to 23, at West Palm Beach, Fla., on 30 acres at the Vista Center of Palm Beach, on Okeechobee Boulevard at the West Palm beach exit of Florida's Turnpike. Information: (407) 793-7577. Both shows, which are planned as annual events, take place from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. and admission to each show is $10 a day. The organizers say admission is guaranteed, so buying tickets ahead of time is not necessary. However, tickets bought in advance in groups of 10 or more are $8.50; call (212) 207-1774.
The shows are likely to expand to other cities as well, the company spokesman says.  Parisian Theater
Q.
Can we get information on theatrical performances in Paris in February? -- Anita Lifson, Washington
A. Here are some of the productions (all in French) that will be in Paris in February. Tickets can be reserved by telephone.
Theatre de la Colline, 15 Rue Malte-Brun, 20th arrondissement, telephone 43.66.43.60: ""Domaine Ventre,"" a comedy by Serge de Valletti, continues to Feb. 27. Performances are Tuesday to Saturday at 8:30, and Sunday at 3:30 P.M. ""Terres Mortes"" by Franz Xavier de Krotz (originally ""Bauern Sterven"") will be presented Feb. 16 to April 10; Tuesday to Saturday at 8 P.M. and Sunday at 3 P.M. Tickets for both are $28.
At the Comedie Francaise, 2 Rue Richelieu, in the first, 40.15.00.15, ""Les Precieuses Ridicules"" and ""L'Impromptu de Versailles"" two short comedies by Moliere, are being presented Feb. 6 through July, daily at 8:30 P.M. Tickets: $9 to $32.
At the Theatre de la Bastille, 76 Rue de la Roquette, 11th, 43.57.42,14, ""Le Chasseur de Lions "" a comedy by Javier Tomeo, begins Jan. 11 and continues to Feb. 7. Performances are Monday to Saturday at 7:30 P.M. and Sunday at 3:30 P.M. Tickets: $20.
Theatre National de Chaillot, 1 Place du Trocadero, 16th, 47.27.81.15: ""Filumena Marturano"" a comedy by Eduardo de Filippo, Jan. 21 to March 13, Tuesday to Saturday at 8:30 P.M. and on Sunday at 3 P.M. Also, ""Les Fausses Confidences,"" an 18th-century comedy by Marivaux, Feb. 3 to to March 20, Tuesday to Saturday at 8:30 P.M. and Sunday at 3 P.M. Tickets are $28 for each. An Expo in Korea
Q.
Where will the next world exposition be held? -- Mary Greenwood, Key West, Fla.
A. The next world exposition will take place Aug. 7 to Nov. 7, 1993, in Taejon, Korea, about 100 miles south of Seoul. The theme of Taejon Expo '93,""The Challenge of a New Road to Development,"" addresses the problems of industrial development, such as the effort to maintain the environment and traditional culture while developing economically. Taejon, with nearby Taedok Science Town, has emerged as a Korean science and technology center. The exposition will use computer technology to present information on the grounds and also in airports, bus and train stations and at hotels and tourist information centers. It is unusual for the Bureau International des Expositions, the sanctioning organization for world expositions, to allow an event two years in a row. The Korean exposition is sanctioned as an international exposition, which has a narrower focus than a universal exposition such as the Seville event. More information: Korea National Tourist Office, 2 Executive Drive, Seventh Floor, Fort Lee, N.J. 07024; (201) 585-0909.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Irish Cooking Classes
Q.  I am interested in taking cooking lessons in Ireland. Do you know of any culinary schools there? -- Sandra Sculley, Cumberland, Me.
A.  The Irish Tourist Board provided the names of three schools. Prices are based on $1.40 to the Irish pound (the kind you spend, not gain).
Country House Cookery, Berry Lodge, Annagh, Miltown Malbay, County Clare; telephone and fax (353-65) 87022. Rita Meade, a cooking teacher for more than 25 years, mixes traditional and modern Irish food. Classes are in Berry Lodge, the restored 19th-century home in which she learned to cook from her mother. Meat, fish and vegetarian recipes are included. The lodge is near the Cliffs of Moher on the west coast, 160 miles south of Dublin. Three-night packages with lodging, all breakfasts, two other meals and seven hours of lessons are $308; companion guests not taking courses pay $154.
The Old Rectory Country House and Restaurant, Wicklow, County Wicklow; (353-404) 67048, fax (353-404) 69181. The chefs, Linda Saunders and Richard Doyle, lead one-day programs with lunch, including courses on vegetarian cooking, home entertaining and fish and shellfish. Double rooms with private bath and breakfast are $140; courses are $70 a person. County Wicklow is in eastern Ireland, on the Irish Sea.
Ballymaloe Cookery School, Shanagarry, Midleton, County Cork; (353-21) 646785, fax 646909. Darina Allen leads one-, three- and five-day courses, and a 12-week professional certification course offered twice a year. The one- and three-day courses focus on such subjects as breakfasts, salads and sandwiches, and home entertaining. The five-day programs teach small-business skills like pub cooking or cafe and delicatessen dishes. The 12-week course covers food preparation, menu planning, costing out dishes, food preservation and hygiene, and choosing a wine list. For those who cannot attend these courses, afternoon demonstrations are offered, with a reservation. Accommodations are available in cottages in 18th-century farm buildings, renovated with private bath, central heating and television. Fees start at $137 for one-day courses, $357 for three days and go up to $5,285 for 12 weeks. Ballymaloe is 23 miles east of Cork.
For more information: the Irish Tourist Board, 345 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10154; (212) 418-0800, fax (212) 371-9052.
Cozy Cabins
Q.  My husband and I seek a romantic weekend getaway for our 25th anniversary. We'd like our own separate room -- preferably a cabin in the woods or by the sea -- so we could be alone but have amenities nearby. Do you know of any places near us? -- Carolyn Reimers, Great Falls, Va.
A.  We searched the woods and found a few cabins in your price range -- $200 to $300 a night -- that were not too far from your home in Washington's northwestern suburbs. But you may have to wait for a last-minute cancellation in one case.
Sugar Tree Inn, Highway 56, Steeles Tavern, Va., (800) 377-2197, is on 28 wooded acres just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. The rooms are in cabins, but the smallest of the inn's three cabins has three guest rooms (the others have four each); they are nicely decorated and have woodburning fireplaces. Doubles: $95 to $140, with breakfast.
Nearby is Osceola Mill Country Inn, Steeles Tavern; telephone and fax (540) 377-6455. There are two large, separate cabins with fireplaces (doubles: $375 to $475 for two-day weekends, $475 to $575 for three days) and a mill store converted to a cottage with a whirlpool by a fireplace. Rates: $169 a night on weekends. Breakfast is included.
If you prefer massage, loofah scrubs and reflexology, Coolfont, Berkeley Springs, W.Va., (800) 888-8768, is a resort, spa and conference center near the eastern tip of West Virginia. On weekends, private chalets with double whirlpool tubs and wood stoves are $119 to $129 per person, double occupancy, and include breakfast and dinner daily, hiking programs, tennis, fishing and use of the fitness center.
Blackwater Falls State Park, Davis, W.Va., (304) 259-5216, fax (304) 259-5881, is adjacent to Monongahela National Forest, farther west in the state, about a four-hour drive from your home. This 1,688-acre park in a high mountain valley has numerous hiking trails and a waterfall in an eight-mile-long gorge. The modern cabins have knotty-pine paneling but no housekeeping. The staff said that they are fully booked for most weekends, but suggested you put your name on a waiting list in case of a last-minute cancellation. Cabin rates are about $70 to $110 a night.
Cheat River Lodge, Elkins, W.Va., (304) 636-2301, is about five hours from your home, nestled amid 4,000-foot mountain peaks. It has six deluxe individual cabins, each with an outdoor hot tub and a fireplace or wood stove. Hiking, mountain biking, bird watching and fishing are among the activities. The property is next to the Monongahela National Forest. Double rates for cabins on weekends start at $151, without meals.
Beatle Crossing
Q.  We plan to visit London this summer and want to see where the cover photograph of the Beatles' album 'Abbey Road' was taken. Can you tell us? -- Alice Graves, St. Petersburg, Fla.
A.  The place where the Beatles recorded most of their albums was known as E.M.I. Studios until the success of the album named after the street it is on. Now, Beatles fans come together at Abbey Road -- the street and the studios -- to pose in the zebra crossing, just as the Beatles did shortly before noon on Aug. 8, 1969, and scribble on the walls.
Abbey Road, the thoroughfare, is in St. John's Wood, in northwest London, near Lord's Cricket Ground. According to 'Rock & Roll Traveler, Great Britain and Ireland,' by Ed Glinert and Tim Perry (Fodor's, $19), the cover photograph was taken in the zebra crossing near the southern end of Abbey Road, immediately south of the studios. (Paul McCartney is the only barefoot Beatle in the photo, which Paul-is-dead theorists claimed was a secret clue supporting their belief.) The authors say that the tile street sign shown on the back of the album was attached to a building that has since been demolished. No other tile street signs remain.
To make your own album cover, go to the St. John's Wood tube station, walk along Wellington Road toward Regent's Park, then make a right onto St. John's Wood Road, following it to Abbey Road. The studios, at 3 Abbey Road, are not open for tours.
And as for Penny Lane, it's in Liverpool.
JOSEPH SIANO
Correction:  May 10, 1998, Sunday  An answer in the Q & A column on April 19 about Irish cooking schools misstated the location of Miltown Malbay. It is west of Dublin, not south.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Chasing a Wave
Q. A group of friends would like to attend a surfing camp for beginners this summer in Southern California or Hawaii. Are there such camps? -- Jeff Rhodes, Cambridge, Mass.
A. There has been a proliferation of surfing camps and schools, especially in California, in recent years. In fact, the International Surfing Association in La Jolla, Calif., (619) 551-5292, has set up a committee to monitor and set criteria for such camps, according to Pierre Camoin, the association's spokesman. The committee has just begun its work, though, and no offical recommendations are available.
But Mr. Camoin said prospective students should ask about accommodations and safety -- in particular whether the staff is CPR certified and whether lifeguards are always on duty.
Among his personal recommendations was the granddaddy of them all, the Paskowitz Surfing Camp, Post Office Box 522, San Clemente, Calif. 92674. Started in 1972 by Dr. Dorian Paskowitz, it offers five-day sessions from May 31 to Oct. 1, including seven adults-only weeks. The $900 fee includes three meals a day, camping in tents provided by the camp at San Mateo State Park, two lessons a day and the use of boards and wet suits.
Izzy Paskowitz, the director and one of the founder's sons, said all the instructors are former or current professional surfers with at least 10 years' experience. They have training in first aid and CPR, he said. Eight instructors are assigned to a group of 15 to 20 students. And at age 79, Doc Paskowitz still demonstrates.
Information: (949) 361-9283, fax (949) 361-9211, members.aol.com/ SURFCAMP/.
One of the newer schools is Groundswell Surf Camp, Post Office Box 5313, San Clemente, Calif. 92674, established three years ago by Terry Senate. Mr. Senate said all his instructors are certified lifeguards with CPR training. Classes are held at either Cardiff Reef or Silver Strand beaches, near San Diego, and students camp in San Elijo State Park, just off the beach. There is a large common tent with carpeting, television and VCR.
Sessions start every Monday from June 14 to Sept. 5 and cost $650 for lodging, three meals a day, equipment and about two and a half hours of instruction each morning. Adult-only sessions will start June 14 and July 26. Phone and fax (949) 364-2262; www.surfcamp.com.
A possibility in Hawaii is the four-year-old Hans Hedemann Surf School, 2947 Kalakaua Avenue No. 105, Honolulu, Hawaii 96815. It offers two sites, at the Diamond Head Hotel near Honolulu and on the North Shore at Pupukea. The fee of $150 a day includes four hours of lessons, equipment, lodging at the hotel or in a six-bedroom house in Pupukea that sleeps 10, and daily breakfast ($185 a day for three meals). Kayaking, snorkeling and biking are offered.
The school runs all year, said Howard Hart, the manager. All 15 instructors are certified lifeguards and most are professional surfers; (808) 924-7778; www.hsurf.com.
Other camps are listed on the Web at this address: www.surfvideo .com/portal/instruc.htm.
Visiting Bilbao
Q. We plan to visit Spain, arriving and departing Barcelona. Are there tours to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao from there? -- Elaine Skoler, Hyannis, Mass.
A. It's not difficult to make a day trip to Bilbao by air from Barcelona.  An agency that can book such a trip for you is Tecnic Viajes, 78 Gran Via de Hortaleza, 28043 Madrid, telephone (34-91) 388-1636, fax (34-91) 759-7879. It has a Barcelona office, but bookings should be made through its Madrid office.
Tecnic offers a day excursion of a flight to Bilbao (about an hour) from either city in the morning, a bus or car tour of the city, a tour of the Guggenheim with an English-speaking guide and a return flight in the evening for about $190 a person in a group of two to four (about $235 for a single), at the rate of 155 pesetas to the dollar.
You could also book such a trip on your own. There are four flights daily from Barcelona to Bilbao, most on Iberia, (800) 772-4642, with round-trip fares of about $190 to $240. (Figure on frequent airport delays in Spain, which could slice an hour or two from your time in Bilbao.)
By train, the trip is about six and half hours ($83), so you'd probably want to stay over. Information: (34-91) 328-9020. If you drive, Barcelona is 385 miles from Bilbao. (Madrid is 245 miles from Bilbao, so rail and air fares from there are a little less.)
Admission to the Guggenheim -- which is open 10 A.M. to 8 P.M. daily except Monday -- is about $5, and a 90-minute guided tour in English would cost about $77 total for a group of 2 to 20. Tours must be reserved at least two weeks in advance by contacting the museum at (34-94) 435-9090, fax (34-94) 435-9039 (but call between 3 and 8 A.M. Eastern time to speak to someone in English).
The Top of Australia
Q. I would like to hike up Mount Kosciusko, Australia's highest peak. Are there companies that can plan a trip there? -- Robert Yentel, Dix Hills, N.Y.
A. At 7,310 feet, Mount Kosciusko, in New South Wales about 90 miles southwest of Canberra, is indeed the highest you can go Down Under. But for those adventurers who try to climb the highest peak on every continent, it is the least challenging -- you can even drive a good ways up.
Kosciusko National Park, in the Snowy Mountains, has become a prime recreational and tourist area in the last couple of decades, with its caves, glacial lakes, forests and ski resorts. In summer, it is a fine place for bushwalks and wildfowers. From Charlotte Pass, the peak is about a five-mile hike, though there are longer trails, too.
Two West Coast companies offer a seven-day hiking package from Dec. 1 to March 31 (the Southern Hemisphere summer) with five days of hiking in the area, including the fairly comfortable trek to the peak. Accommodations are in alpine chalets in doubles or shared rooms, and most meals and a guide are included.
Australia-New Zealand Down Under Travel, 1328 El Camino Real, Los Altos, Calif. 94022, (800) 886-2153, fax (650) 969-3215, anztravel.com, said the package would be about $725, not including air fare. At Down Under Answers, 12727 N.E. 20th Street, Bellevue, Wash. 98005, (800) 788-6685, fax (425) 895-8929, www.adventour .com, the estimate was $930. Mary Lou Serr, president of Down Under Travel, suggested waiting till after the millennium for better air fares.
RAY CORMIER",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q&A
LEAD:  Hungary  Question:I have heard conflicting accounts from friends about the amount of Hungarian currency that must be purchased by visitors to Hungary. Can you enlighten me? What is the time involved in getting a visa? Is a visa required for Austria as well? -R. R., Buffalo  Answer:Hungarian officials say there is no requirement to purchase a specified amount of Hungarian currency.
Hungary  Question:I have heard conflicting accounts from friends about the amount of Hungarian currency that must be purchased by visitors to Hungary. Can you enlighten me? What is the time involved in getting a visa? Is a visa required for Austria as well? -R. R., Buffalo  Answer:Hungarian officials say there is no requirement to purchase a specified amount of Hungarian currency. There used to be, but it was discontinued in 1978. A spokesman for the government's Hungarian Travel Bureau said visitors may take a maximum of 100 forints a person - about $2 - in coins, not bills, into Hungary, and must leave all forints behind when they leave. Dollars and traveler's checks may be converted into Hungarian money at border crossings, international airports, banks, hotels and state tourist offices. It is not recommended that travelers buy forints ahead of time, the bureau spokesman said.
The Hungarian Consulate (8 East 75th Street, New York, N.Y. 10021; 212-879-4127) says that a visa can be processed in about 24 hours after the traveler has submitted application form, two photographs, passport and the $10-a-person fee. Visas can also be applied for at the Hungarian Embassy (3910 Shoemaker Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20008; 202-362-6730). Processing takes 48 hours, the embassy said.
Austria does not require American visitors to obtain a visa.  Iceland  Question:Can you tell me what kind of weather to expect in Iceland in the first week in May? I want to know which clothes to take. -W. S. M., Wellfleet, Mass.  Answer:The average daily maximum and minimum temperatures that can be expected in Reykjavik, the capital, during May are 50 and 39 degrees. It usually rains on about 16 days of the month. Woolen suits and dresses, sweaters, overcoat and rainwear are needed. Iceland's weather is changeable throughout the year because it lies both in the track most frequented by depressions and the path of the warm current called the Gulf Stream. Visitors in May have seen cloudy weather, snow flurries and sunshine on the same day. The inland mountains are covered with snow the year round. Early May is the start of Iceland's relatively warm season, which continues through September.  West Germany  Question:Do your know of any tours that focus on the northern area of West Germany - Hamburg, Hanover and Bremen? Most trips we have seen seem to concentrate on Bavaria and the south. B. H., Old Tappan, N.J.  Answer:A number of options in the north are available, including some tours that also go to West Berlin and East Germany. Hapag-Lloyd is among tour operators with long experience in Germany, and, like others, it can supply information but deals with travel agents when it comes to reservations. Hapag-Lloyd has an eight-night escorted tour that starts and ends in Frankfurt and visits, by bus, Cologne, Amsterdam, Hamburg, West Berlin and Hanover. It is available from May though October. The cost is from $1,000 a person, double occupancy, including hotels, breakfasts and a three-hour cruise on the Rhine. The company also does some rail tours in the north, one starting from Frankfurt and going to Hanover, Hameln (scene of the legend of the Pied Piper), Bremen, Hamburg and Cologne at between $1,000 and $1,200. The train trips are done independently, without guide, and include some meals as well as hotels. Round-trip air fare between New York and Frankfurt is from $550 to $800, depending on date. (Hapag-Lloyd, 159 Great Neck Road, Great Neck, L.I. 11022; 516-466-1262.) American World Travel schedules seven-day, escorted coach tours from Frankfurt, starting Sundays between May and October. On the itinerary are Cologne, Luneburg, Hamburg, West Berlin and Hanover, among other places; dinners, breakfasts, a trip on the Rhine and sightseeing as well as hotels are included in the price of $885. (American World Travel, 5799 Broadmoor, Shawnee Mission, Kan. 66202; 913-722-5929 and 800-255-6165.) Unitours (8 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Ill. 60603; 312-782-1590 or, out of state, 800-621-0557) offers a six-night stay at the Hamburg Plaza Hotel, with optional day trips to Lubeck and Luneburg. The price of around $400 includes breakfasts; the day trips are $69 each.
One of the most expensive German tours, visiting West and East Germany, staying at leading hotels, and with a la carte meals, is offered by Hemphill Harris (16000 Ventura Boulevard, Encino, Calif. 91436; 818-906-8086 or 800-421-0454). This 24-day trip, from Frankfurt, is $5,980, excluding air fare. The Kempinski in West Berlin and the Grand in Garmisch-Partenkirchen are among the hotels. In the north, the tour visits Wiesbaden, Cologne, Hamburg and Lubeck. Five departures are scheduled this year.  Winter 1992  Question:Is information regarding tickets and lodging for the 1992 Winter Olympics in France available yet? Where can one write? - M. M., Scotch Plains, N.J.  Answer:There is an organization to write to for information: Le Comite d'Organisation des 16eme Jeux Olympiques d'Hiver d'Albertville et de la Savoie. The address is 73206 Albertville, Cedex, France; telephone: 79.37.92.92. That office can provide information on how far plans and arrangements extend at this point. The opening and closing ceremonies (Feb. 1 and 16), speed skating, figure skating and ice dancing will be in Albertville, which is in the Savoy Alps about 55 miles from Grenoble and 40 miles from Chamonix. Most of the events will take place in such neighboring resorts as Val d'Isere, Les Arcs and Tignes (skiing), Macot-la-Plagne (bobsled and luge), Courchevel and Meribel (skiing and hockey) and Col des Saisies (cross-country skiing).
Officials in the Savoie say the region has 60 winter resorts and 250,000 beds, and more hotels and inns are being built. The nearest international airports are at Lyons and Geneva, which are also served by France's high-speed T.G.V. trains.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Walking in Wales
Q. I am planning a hiking trip to Wales this spring, and would like some general information on trails. -- Mindy Dillon, Buffalo
A. There are thousands of miles of walking paths throughout Wales, ranging from those that traverse the  heather moorlands and mountainous terrain of the 845-square-mile Snowdonia National Park in the north, to less demanding trails that crisscross the gentle countryside of central Wales. Other popular destinations are in the western coastal regions of Pembrokeshire National Park and southern Wales' mountainous Brecon Beacons National Park. Wherever  you roam, especially in the parks, you're likely to encounter abundant wildlife, including seals and numerous bird species.
The Wales Tourist Board publishes a free 53-page guide called 'Walking Wales' that includes a selection of walks long and short, tough and easy. Nearby accommodations and a small map with Ordnance Survey  references accompany each entry. Among the short walks is the four-mile St. Brides Major Walk that incorporates both inland countryside and segments of the 14-mile Glamorgan Heritage Coast in southern Wales. Sites on the route include a ruined castle, the remains of an old walled garden, the sandy beach at Dunraven Bay, traces of a Celtic settlement and an ancient church. Among the longer walks are the 182-mile Offa's Dyke Path, which crosses the England-Wales border 13 times; and the 186-mile Pembrokeshire Coast Path with its rugged cliff trails and sandy beaches.
The guide also includes a 10-page list of publications on hiking in Wales, a list of tourist office addresses and phone numbers, advice on  transportation; and other useful information. It is available from the Wales Tourist Board, Department PP12, Post Office Box 1, Cardiff, Wales; telephone (44-1222) 457766, fax (44-1222) 482436.
Among the companies specializing in hiking in Wales are Acorn Activities, in Hereford, (44-1432) 830083; fax (44-1432) 830110, and Heart of Wales Farm and Country Holidays, telephone and fax (44-1686) 688444.
You may also be interested in a spring walking festival. From May 28 to 31, the Llanelli Festival of Walks will include 10 hikes along  coastal paths, and through the hills of southern Wales; the walks range from 6 gentle miles to 10-mile strenuous walks. The fee is $24.50. A festival dinner costs $16. The Festival Office in Llanelli, telephone (44-1554) 770077, can provide information on lodgings in the area.
Brazilian Rhythm Festival
Q. I would like to go to the Panorama Percussivo Mundial festival in Salvador, Brazil. Please provide information. -- Mabel MacDonald, Aspen, Colo.
A. The six-year-old Panorama Percussivo Mundial (World Percussive Panorama, or Percpan, as it is called in Brazil) is a jubilant festival that showcases international percussion-based music -- both traditional and modern -- from Brazil, Africa, the Caribbean and other areas. Even though the festival is only two months away, promoters for the event, which will be held March 22 to 27 in Salvador, the capital of the northeastern state of Bahia, are not releasing details about international performers, with whom they're still in negotiation. It has been announced that the Brazilian songwriter Gilberto Gil and Nana Vasconcellos, a percussionist, will act as masters of ceremony.
You're likely to see some colorful performances by musicians and dancers decked out in headdresses,  feathers and flowing robes. Calabash and gourd rattles, cowbells, an exotic variety of drums, even a pair of wooden shoes, provided the rhythms for last year's festival, which included Doudou N'Diaye Rose, a Senegalese drum and dance ensemble, the Japanese group Wadaiko Yamato and the Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal.
In addition to the evening performances (there are about five a night), you can attend daily two-hour workshops, led by participating musicians.
Percpan will take place in downtown Salvador's Castro Alves theater (Praca 2 de Julho, Campo Grande). Nightly ticket prices are likely to be the same as last year: $8, $4 for students. For more information call (55-71) 243 6364, or by E-mail to percpan@e-net.com.br.
Rare Book Shops in Paris
Q. Do you know the names of bookstores in Paris that specialize in rare books? Simon Lagroste, Providence, R.I.
A. Most of Paris's antique book stores (called librairies) are concentrated in two distinctly different  neighborhoods: on the Left Bank, in the fifth arrondissement near the Sorbonne and in the sixth arrondissement between St.-Germain-des-Pres and Odeon; and on the Right Bank in the area around the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honore, as well as in the eighth and ninth arrondissements. The Left Bank shops are in a neighborhood for printers and book shops, which were established in the 15th century. At that time, the first printing press arrived in the city, and was housed in the Sorbonne.
Shops you might come across include: Alain Brieux, at 48 Rue Jacob in the sixth arrondissement. It was established at the end of the 19th century, and began specializing in rare medical and scientific books and instruments in 1958. It is open Monday to Saturday from 10 to 1 and 2 to 6:30; telephone (33-1) 42.60.21.98.
Librairie Gourmande, 4 Rue Dante in the fifth, stocks many rare books on the art of dining from the 16th century to the present. It is open every day from 10 to 7; (33-1) 43.54.37.27.
Librairie Beres, 14 Avenue Friedland in the eighth, is reputed to have the best collection of rare books from the 9th to the 20th centuries, on subjects ranging from politics and economics to literary first editions.  Hours are 9 to 6 daily; (33-1) 45.63.85.53.
Laurent Coulet, 166 Boulevard Haussmann in the eighth, specializes in handsomely bound works of French literature from the 16th to the 18th centuries. It is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 to 12:30 and 2 to 6:30; (33-1) 42.89.51.59.
For rare maps, atlases and engravings from the 15th to the mid-19th centuries, you might want to go to the Librairie La Bail-Weissert, 5 Rue Lagrange in the fifth. The shop includes original topographical maps of the world, as well as maps of European cities, regions and a collection of architectural engravings. Hours are Monday to Saturday, from 10 to 12:30 and 2 to 7; (33-1) 43.29.72.59.
SUZANNE MacNEILLE",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Cape Canaveral
Q. I would like to visit Cape Canaveral in the next month or so. Are tours available to the public and, if so, when? Will there be a liftoff or a similar event of note during this time? -- Rose Keyian, Vestal, N.Y.
A. The flight of the space shuttle Columbia was scheduled for Jan. 17, within the time frame you had in mind. But that flight has been moved to Feb. 14 -- changes in the launch schedules are common, a spokesman said -- so that additional work could be done on the Columbia. The mission of the astronauts aboard is to service the Hubble telescope, which was launched in 1990.
When Columbia does take off from the Kennedy Space Center, at Cape Canaveral, which is about an hour east of Orlando, the closest visitors will be able to get to it will be six miles away, at the NASA Causeway viewing site. There, they will have an unobstructed view of the launch pad and will be able to listen on loudspeakers to communication between Mission Control and the astronauts. Visitors are asked to provide their own blankets or folding chairs.
Since Sept. 11, the bus tour at the space center has been curtailed as a security precaution. In addition, the space center is prohibiting backpacks and coolers.
The bus now makes a single stop, at the Apollo/Saturn V Center, where there is a moon rocket exhibit and a re-creation, complete with rattling windows, of the launch of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon in 1969.
The route had also included a stop at an area where one could see Columbia close up about a month before the launch. (Now the closest one can get is three miles away.) Also on the tour was a visit to the International Space Station Center, where there is a life-size mockup of the international space station and also a gallery overlooking a 'clean' room where components to be used in launches are processed.
But at no extra charge, visitors can still meet an astronaut to ask questions and see two different movies at two IMAX theaters. Another option is to attend the Dine With an Astronaut program, which is limited to 100 people and costs $29.95, $19.95 for ages 3 to 11.
Except for Christmas Day and during some launches, tours depart daily from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and to 4 p.m. as the summer draws near. All-day admission to the space center is $25, $15 ages 3 to 11. For a ticket that includes a bus to the viewing site on the Indian River, the costs are $35.50 and $22.50, respectively. Tickets to a launch usually sell out six to eight weeks in advance.
Through Friday, up to two children 14 and under will be admitted free with each adult who pays in full.
For more information, call (321) 449-4444 or take a look at www. kennedyspacecenter.com.
Hiking Around Monte Rosa
Q. We are planning a trip to Monte Rosa next summer and were interested in either an organized tour or a self-guided one that goes from town to town and inn to inn rather than the traditional refuge hut system. -- Steven Krugman, Newton, Mass.
A. Making a circuit around Monte Rosa can be really demanding and may not suit novices whose backpacks become intolerably heavy. Dufourzpitze, at 15,203 feet, is the highest peak of the Monte Rosa massif and, after Mont Blanc, it is the second highest in Western Europe.
The hike usually takes at least a week and calls for alternately ascending and descending the passes in Switzerland and Italy that surround Monte Rosa.
Among the tour operators that will run the trip next summer are these two. Both start and end in Zermatt. Rates are based on double occupancy and include breakfast and dinner.  Air fare is extra.
Ryder-Walker Alpine Adventures, Post Office Box 947, Telluride, Colo. 81435; (970) 728-6481, fax (970) 728-1009. Scheduled for July 17 to 26, this trip takes hikers through Grächen and Saas Fee, among other places, during four days in Switzerland; they then head into Italy. With the help of a local guide and crampons, they make the roped crossing of the Theodul Glacier.
On a single day hikers should be prepared to handle up to 12 miles and ascents of up to 4,000 feet. If that seems intimidating, be assured that hikers work their way up to that. Day 2, for example, lists seven miles and 1,200 feet of elevation gain. (That gain is the distance between the highest and lowest points on a given day.)  For those preferring to skip a day of hiking, a van is always available. Lodgings in Switzerland are four-star except for a single night in a hut, and in Italy they are three- and four-star inns that tend to be on the simple side. The cost is $2,350 a person; rail fare is extra.
Distant Journeys, Post Office Box 1211, Camden, Me. 04843; (888) 845-5781 or (207) 236-9788, fax (207) 236-0972. Now in its 15th year, the company plans its first Monte Rosa trip for Aug. 12 to 23, with hiking on nine of those days. The tour, which heads into Italy on Day 2, lists 8 to 15 miles a day of hiking with elevation gains of 2,000 to 3,500 feet a day. For those who may not wish to take on the challenge on a given day, transportation can be arranged, but at the hiker's expense.
The lodgings are two-  and three-star hotels in Switzerland and, in Italy, comfortable inns with shared baths. No nights are spent in huts. The cost is $2,350 a person, including train to and from Geneva or Zurich.
Mountain Travel-Sobek does not currently offer a Monte Rosa tour, but it can arrange one; (888) 687-6235 or (510) 527-6100, fax (510) 525-7710; www.mtsobek.com.
Information about other tours in the Zermatt area is available from the Zermatt Alpin Center, 3920 Zermatt, Switzerland; (41-27) 966 24 60, fax (41-27) 966 24 69.
Getting a V.A.T. Refund
Q. Because of the pressure of time, I did not have my V.A.T. form stamped before leaving Scotland. Do I have a recourse? -- M. K. Concannon, Milton, Mass.
A. You have missed the boat, says a spokeswoman for British Information Services.
The rules require that tourists applying for a refund present a voucher for a value-added-tax refund with the goods purchased to Customs when leaving the European Union. 'Forms cannot be certified after departure from the E.U.,' according to chapter and verse cited at www.britainusa .com. Once at that site, click on FAQ and then on Currency, V.A.T., Customs and Excise.
Since stores in Britain don't have to take part in what is called the Retail Export Scheme and some  may require a minimum purchase, not every purchase qualifies for a refund.
PAUL FREIREICH
Q & A",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:  France  Question: Please suggest sources of information for accommodations in France equivalent to the paradors in Spain. I would also appreciate knowing where I could find a list of farmhouses and bed and breakfast lodgings. - S. E., Bellevue, Wash.  Answer: France does not have a chain of government-owned inns like the 80 or so paradors, mostly in historic buildings, in Spain.
France  Question: Please suggest sources of information for accommodations in France equivalent to the paradors in Spain. I would also appreciate knowing where I could find a list of farmhouses and bed and breakfast lodgings. - S. E., Bellevue, Wash.  Answer: France does not have a chain of government-owned inns like the 80 or so paradors, mostly in historic buildings, in Spain. What is generally perceived as similar in France is the Relais & Chateaux group of hotels, which are in chateaus, abbeys and manor houses converted into hotels and restaurants, and are managed by their owners. The Relais group began in France in 1954. Its American representative, David Mitchell & Company (200 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016; 212-696-1323 or, out of state, 800-372-1323), supplies a guide listing details of all the hotels and restaurants for $5. The 1989 issue is expected to be available in about two weeks. Mitchell makes reservations for the hotels.
Chateau Accueil is an association of about 70 privately owned chateaus, many of which are in the Loire Valley and most of which are occupied by their owners. Generally they have from 4 to 10 guest rooms and although they do not include restaurants they do provide breakfast and often will serve dinner on request. Rates for two are generally from $100 to $150, with breakfast and including tax and service. The organization is represented by B. & D. de Vogue Travel Services (Post Office Box 1998, Visalia, Calif. 93279; 209-733-7119 or 800-727-4748), which issues a free guide with photographs and descriptions of all the chateaus. The company makes reservations.
The Chateau Accueil lodgings are also booked by the French Experience (171 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016; 212-683-2445), which represents France's gites, too. The thousands of government-approved gites in the countryside are homes for rent. These properties, which are given from one to three ears of corn, according to standard, are supervised by about 90 regional offices in France and each office makes reservations and maintains its own local list. There is no central reservations office in France. People who inquire at French Experience are sent an application form in which they state their preferred region and dates. The company then contacts the appropriate regional office to find out what is available, Demand is heavy, and prices higher, in July and August. A two-bedroom cottage with kitchen might cost about $250 a week most of the year but double that amount in midsummer.
French Experience also acts for Cafe Couette (coffee and quilt), an association of hundreds of bed and breakfast homes, mostly in Paris and other tourist areas.
The French Government Tourist Office (628 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10020; 212-757-1125) usually has a pamphlet about the Chateau Accueil properties and a list of the gites' regional offices. Among books that might prove useful is Country Hotels & Inns of France ($10.95), which lists about 4,500 small hotels and inns with brief details in French. It is available at many travel bookshops, including the Traveller's Bookstore at 75 Rockefeller Plaza in New York (212-664-0995).  Busy Venice  Question: Was any decision made on the proposal made a while back to levy an admission charge on people making day trips to Venice? - H. V., Brooklyn  Answer: Venice has not imposed a visitor fee of the kind proposed during the particularly busy summer season of 1987. It was argued then that the crowds thronging the Rialto Bridge, St. Mark's Square and other areas on day trips were excessive and posed as threat to preservation efforts. Aside from pleas to tour bus companies to stagger their arrival times and to motorists to park their cars outside the city and take the train, no regulations have been used to limit the number of visitors. The word from Venice is that the city government remains reluctant to charge an entrance fee, although the idea remains under consideration. A decision is expected to be made in early spring.  London Veggies  Question: Do you know of any vegetarian restaurants in London? I would really prefer places that serve other food, too, as my companion eats meat, but any suggestions are welcome. - J. M. B., Elmhurst, Queens  Answer: Vegetarian restaurants in London (and there are several) tend to be simple, with pinewood tables and gingham drapes, are often self-service and not licensed to serve drinks. But Presse, 53-54 Frith Street (telephone, 437 0666), serves more exotic dishes and has a short but good wine list. It is not strictly vegetarian since it includes a few fish and chicken dishes on its menu. A meal for two with wine is about $60 (calculating the pound at $1.80). Presse is in Soho near the theater district.
There is a chain of vegetarian restaurants called Cranks in the following central locations: 11 The Market, Covent Garden (379 6508); 17-18 Great Newport Street (836 5236); 8 Adelaide Street (836 0660), and 9-11 Tottenham Street (621 3912). Cranks were pioneers of vegetarian restaurants in Britain, existing long before vegetarianism became fashionable, thus their name. Dinner for two with wine is about $60.
There are two more expensive restaurants that have separate vegetarian menus: Inigo Jones, 14 Garrick Street, near Leicester Square (836 6456), where dinner for two costs about $180; and Leith's, 92 Kensington Park Road, Notting Hill (229 4481), around $150 for two.
Many of London's numerous and usually inexpensive Indian restaurants offer vegetarian dishes.  San Francisco  Question: What sort of weather should we expect in San Francisco in late March? - G. H. Y., Baltimore  Answer: Visitors should expect cool, breezy and showery conditions. That may be true the year round in San Francisco, but March is still the rainy season there. On average it rains on at least 10 days of the month, and average temperatures range from 48 to 61 degrees (the lowest and highest recorded are 33 and 86). The weather at any time is changeable - it often varies from neighborhood to neighborhood. Residents advise dressing in layers.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Learning French in Canada
Q. In July, the Travel Q & A column answered an inquiry about French language study in Paris. Is there anything comparable in either Quebec City or Montreal? -- Elizabeth Swinton, Chestnut Hill, Mass.
A. There are numerous schools for studying French in both these cities, where French is the primary language. If you want a short course in a college setting, however, you may be limited to summer sessions.
For example, the University of Montreal offers three- and four-week courses in May, June and July. These meet for a total of 45 hours Monday to Friday mornings; sessions two afternoons a week can be added. This year, tuition was $297 and $363, at 66 U.S. cents to the Canadian dollar, and on-campus rooms were $79 a week.
For more information, contact École de Français, Faculté de l'Éducation Permanente, C.P. 6128, Succursale Centre-ville, Montreal, Canada H3C 3J7; (514) 343-6090; (514) 343-5984; or www.fep.umontreal.ca/langues.
In Quebec City, the Université Laval's École de Langues Vivantes plans two five-week courses, in May and July, and a three-week session in May. Sylvia Weiser, the language school director, said mornings were devoted to class and laboratory work and afternoons to cultural activities. Dates and prices are not yet set, but this year's three-week program cost $457, plus $46 a week for campus housing. Family stays and apartment rentals are available.
Contact École de Langues Vivantes, Pavillon Charles-De Koninck (2305), Quebec, Canada G1K 7P4; (418) 656-2321; fax (418) 656-7018; www.fl.ulaval.ca/elv.
A good source for year-round language schools is the Canadian Association of Private Language Schools, 12880 - 54A Avenue, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada V3X 3C9. It sets standards for teacher experience and training, and has 60 members. For a list of them, go to www.capls .com, or call (604) 507-2577.
Two of its older members are Boucherau Lingua International in Quebec City and International Language Schools of Canada in Montreal. Boucherau, which also has a one-on-one program in Montreal, starts sessions every Monday. Students are placed in one of six levels, generally in groups of four to eight, for 20 hours of class work a week. Tuition is $225 a week (private lessons are $36 an hour). Boucherau encourages students to stay with families, which costs $175 a week, including breakfast and dinner.
For more information, contact Boucherau at 43, rue de Buade, Bureau 430, Quebec, Canada G1R 4A2; (418) 692-1370; fax (418) 692-6026; www.bli.ca.
In Montreal, International Language Schools offers programs of three, four and a half, or six hours a day for $119, $175 or $218 a week, plus $88 for registration and materials. Classes average 10 students, and facilities include a computer laboratory. While you can start on any Monday, the courses follow a four-week cycle and beginners must start in the first week. ILSC offers home stays, with three meals a day, for $120 a week, plus $142 registration.
ILSC is at 1134 Ste. Catherine Street West, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3B 1H4; (514) 876-4572, fax (514) 876-4093; www.ilsc.ca.
Channel Islands Tours
Q. Are there any tour operators in the United States with packages to the Channel Islands? -- Sue Rubin, Flemington, N.J.
A. Apparently not. Neither the British Tourist Authority nor local Channel Islands tourism groups know of any American tour packages to this rocky archipelago between Britain and France that includes Jersey and Guernsey Islands. They advise that you (or a travel agent) book a trip from London through British companies (Jersey Tourism says it is easier to get to the islands from London than from Paris, even though they are just off Normandy).
There are many British operators with island packages, and a few suggestions from Jersey Tourism follow. But none of these companies arrange trans-Atlantic travel. From Britain, you can fly to the islands or go by ferry; these prices are per person, double occupancy at mid-level hotels (three suns), with round-trip air fare from Gatwick, daily breakfast and transfers. Visits to smaller islands would be extra.
Channel Islands Direct, (a division of Premier Holidays in Cambridge), (44-870) 889-0858 and at www .channelislandsdirect.co.uk, offers as an example, three nights in Guernsey and four in Jersey for $632 to $837, depending on season, at $1.55 to the pound.
Islanders, based in Bournemouth, (44-1202) 578-422, www.islanders -holidays.com, said two nights on Guernsey and three on Jersey would start at $463.
One Step Holidays, Post Office Box 29, London N3 1HG, (44-870) 120-3091, www.onestepholidays.co.uk, specializes in Channel Islands trips. It says three nights on each island would run $775 to $930 a person.
You can find more information on the Jersey and Guernsey tourism Web sites, www.jersey.com, and www.guernsey.com.
Prague Concert Tickets
Q. How can I get tickets to a Prague Chamber Orchestra concert or similar event in Praque any time from Nov. 9 to 12? -- J. T. F., Ann Arbor, Mich.
A. According to Michaela Palkova, trade manager at the Czech Center in New York, the easiest way, other than going to box offices, is to use Bohemia Ticket International, a Ticketmaster-type business. You can see schedules and order tickets at www.ticketsbti.cz; by calling (420-2) 2422-7832 or (420-2) 2423-7727; or by faxing (420-2) 2421-8167. B.T.I. charges $1.90 a ticket for handling, and $3.15 each to deliver tickets to a hotel, at 32 koronas to the dollar.
The Czech Center lists events and organizations at www.czechcenter .com/travel. There are also links to B.T.I. and other ticket outlets. The center includes the Czech Tourist Authority, 1109 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10028; (212) 288-0830, fax (212) 288-0971.
Unfortunately, the chamber orchestra plays in Prague only on Dec. 16 this fall. To learn more, contact the managing director, Jaroslav Manda, by e-mail at www.pko.cz, by calling (420-2) 7477-2697, or by faxing (420-2) 7477-2703.
Events that November weekend that are available through B.T.I. include performances of 'The Magic Flute' and 'La Bohème' at the Prague State Opera, Wilsonova 4, (420-2) 2422-7266, www.opera.cz; and 'La Traviata,' 'Fate' and 'Russulka' at the National Theater, Senovazna 2, (420-2) 2422-7981, www.nationaltheater.cz.
RAY CORMIER
Q & A",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
The Single Supplement
Q.
Could someone explain what a single supplement buys? For example, last year on a Perillo tour to Italy, the supplement was $399. -- Joanne Palmer Morgan, Drexel Hill, Pa.
A.  All the single supplement buys is privacy. The cost that is cited for tour packages is almost always based on two people sharing a room (or ship cabin), and those who occupy a room alone often are charged extra. A spokeswoman for Perillo Tours said their single supplement is ""not our charge, it's the hotel's charge."" (For your tour this year, the supplement is $539.)
Hotels almost always negotiate with tour operators on the basis of double occupancy; it is more profitable to take in $100, say, for two in a room than $75 for one. Also, two people eat and drink more at a hotel than one, and the hotel wants to make up for what it sees as lost revenues. So the tour agency levies a supplement to make up for what it loses on the room if one person occupies it.
According to Paula Saint-Amour, senior vice president for wholesale travel for American Express, the single supplement is practically universal in Europe, but is not always charged for some newer domestic hotels and resorts, which take into account the fact that a certain portion of single travelers will be staying there. There are no single supplements for American Express's independent packages in Hawaii, where there are many new hotels, she said, though there is still a supplement for escorted tours there.
If your privacy is not worth the extra charge, one option is to ask a tour company if it will provide another willing single traveler as a roommate. Both Perillo and American Express will do that.
Another option is to use a service that matches singles who want a travel companion, either through newletters with ads or by putting putting people in touch. The services generally charge a fee. Among them: Travel Companion Exchange, Post Office Box 833, Amityville, N.Y. 11701; (516) 454-0880. Partners in Travel, Post Office Box 491145, Los Angeles, Calif. 90049; (213) 476-4869. Travel in Twos, 239 North Broadway, Suite 3, North Tarrytown, N.Y. 10591; (914) 631-8409. Odyssey Network, 118 Cedar Street, Wellesley, Mass. 02181; (617) 237-2400.  Attending the Galway Races
Q.
I hear that it is imperative to book early for the Galway Races in Ireland, yet no one seems to know when the races take place or how one gets tickets. -- Melvin Moser, Pittsburgh
A.  The Galway Races, at Ballybrit Race Track just outside Galway, will be July 29 to Aug. 3 this year. The Galway Plate, the premier steeplechase of the week, will be July 31 and the Galway Hurdle, another major race, will be Aug. 1. General admission is $9 on July 29 and 30 and Aug. 2 and 3, and $13 on July 31 and Aug. 1. These tickets are always available at the gate. For an extra $4.60 racegoers may watch from an upper deck. There are also reserved seats for $22.25 a day.
Rafting the Grand Canyon
Q.
I would appreciate any information on organized trips on the Colorado through the Grand Canyon. -- Alexandre B. Laudet, New York, N.Y.
A.  Here are some of the companies that offer trips through the Grand Canyon; many run trips on other parts of the Colorado and on other rivers. Participants taking a segment of the canyon usually have to hike 9 or 10 miles in or out. The prices include all equipment, including camping gear, and meals and may include transportation to and from the river.
Sobek's Whitewater, Post Box 1359, Angels Camp, Calif. 95222; (800) 888-0229. An eight-day motorized raft trip, from Lees Ferry to Lake Mead is $1,195.
Dvorak Kayak and Rafting Expeditions, 17921 Highway 285, Nathrop, Colo. 81236; (800) 824-3795 or (719) 539-6851. Six-day upper-canyon rafting trips are $581, 8 days is $851 and 12 days is $1,732.
Wilderness River Adventures, Post Office Box 717, Page, Ariz. 86040; (800) 992-8022. A three-and-a-half-day motorized upper canyon trip is $473. Motorized trips of 7 days are $1,117, 8 days are $1,260 and a 12-day oar trip is $1,544.
High Desert Adventures, 240 East Morris Avenue, Salt Lake City, Utah 8411; (800) 345-7238. Five-day oar-powered trips are $851; 8 days, $1,292, and 12 days at $1,732. A motorized raft trip of 8 days is $1,495.
OARS, Post Office Box 67, Angels Camp, Calif. 95222; (800) 346-6277 or (800) 446-7238. Oar-powered raft trips, 13 days, are $2,053. A six-day segment is $1,093 and nine days is $1,567. The company also runs trips on dories. The whole canyon, usually 16 days, is $2,410; the upper segment, six days, is $1,193 and the lower section, 11 days, $1,817. A five-day sampler includes a night at a dude ranch, helicopter into the canyon and a raft ($848) or dory ($825) trip.
Grand Canyon Expeditions, Post Office Box O, Kanab, Utah 84741; (800) 544-2691. An eight day-trip on a motorized raft is $1,495, and a 14-day rowing expedition in a dory with motor support is $1,895.
World War I Tours
Q.
I would like to see some of the principal sites of the western front of World War I. Are there organizations that could expedite such a trip? -- T. C. Ware, Chattanooga, Tenn.
A.  One organization that focuses on European battlefields is Major & Mrs. Holt's Battlefield Tours, Golden Key Building, 15 Market Street, Sandwich, Kent CT13 9DA, England; telephone (304) 612248. The three-day ""It's a Long Way to Tipperary"" tour is the most popular World War I itinerary, the company says. It follows the British Expeditionary Force route in France over Mont Cassel to Ypres in Belgium, and also visits the Vimy Ridge and Somme battlefields. The cost is $398 a person ($68 single supplement). There are three-day tours focusing solely on the Somme or on Ypres, and one on winners of the Victoria Cross at the Somme, April 13 to 15, $402. A tour focusing on Operation Michael, the March 1918 German attack in France, takes place April 27 to 29, and costs $402. An April 3 to 7 itinerary in France and Belgium is based on poems, songs, letters and diaries of various writers; the cost is $596. Prices generally include hotel, breakfast and dinner daily and transportation to and from London.
Another tour leader is Graham Maddocks, 10 Ashburton Avenue, Birkenhead, Merseyside LT43 8TJ, England; (51) 653 7108. Mr. Maddocks will mark the 75th anniversary of the battles of the Somme, visiting the battlefields July 22 to 28. The price is $592 ($24 a night single supplement), including travel to and from Liverpool, hotel and breakfast and dinner daily.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Cruising to Charleston
Q.  I would like to take my mother, who is 80, on a tour of plantations in the South, by bus or barge. She has mentioned visiting Charleston and thereabouts. Any suggestions? -- Kathleen Sullivan, Manhasset, N.Y.
A.  A number of companies, like the Delta Queen Steamboat Company, (800) 215-0805, and Riverbarge Excursions, (888) 456-2206, offer plantation cruises on the Mississippi River. There is no such great river meandering through the Southeast, of course, but there is the Intracoastal Waterway.
The Nantucket Clipper is a 100-passenger ship that makes several seven-night tours of the antebellum South in March, April and November, between Jacksonville, Fla., and Charleston, S.C., calling at Savannah, Ga., among other places. On Oct. 19, the vessel is also scheduled to depart on an 11-night Colonial America and Civil War cruise from Washington to Jacksonville, also calling at Charleston and Savannah.
There is time for touring on your own at the ports of call, or optional excursions can be booked at extra cost, according to Elizabeth McQuinn, a spokeswoman for Clipper Lines.
At Charleston, for example, a three-and-a-half-hour outing to Middleton Place, an 18th-century plantation with landscaped gardens on the Ashley River, costs $46. A three-hour Historic Charleston tour, including the 1803 Joseph Manigault House, costs $33. Similar tours are offered in Beaufort, S.C., Savannah and other ports.
The prices for the antebellum cruise are $1,950 to $3,490 a person; the Civil War cruise costs $2,900 to $5,000. For more information, contact Clipper Lines, 7711 Bonhomme Avenue, St. Louis, Mo. 63105; (800) 325-0100, fax (314) 727-6576; www .clippercruise.com.
If you go to Charleston directly, Charleston Tours offers several tours of the area, using 15- and 25-passenger buses. These range from a 90-minute city tour for $15 to an 'all-day adventure' combining the city tour and a trip to Boone Hall, a plantation with gardens, slave cabins and an Avenue of the Oaks, for $45. Jane Kiser, the owner, said she also arranges custom tours.
Contact Charleston Tours at 545 Savannah Highway, Charleston, S.C. 29407; (843) 571-0049, fax (843) 571-6248; www.charleston.net/com /charlestontours/tours.htm.
There are no true preserved plantations around Savannah, but there are plenty of historic sites. The Savannah Convention and Visitors Bureau, (877) 728-2662, and its Web site, www.savcvb.com, can lead you to about three dozen tour operators.
Among them is the River Street Riverboat Company, (800) 786-6404, which uses two paddlewheelers for 60- and 90-minute narrated tours, some with meals and entertainment (including gospel music), for $13.95 and up. It offers occasional special tours in conjunction with the Georgia Historical Society, a spokesman said.
By land, Gray Line Historic Landmark Tours, (912) 234-8687, offers daily bus tours to museum and private homes in the city and low country for $16 and up. It can arrange for a private guide and a car, as well, said Betsy Clapcott, director of sales and marketing.
Montreal to Europe by Ship
Q.  I would like to explore France and the British isles on foot. Since I've grown wary of air travel, can I take a ship across the Atlantic from Montreal or Boston? -- Hillary Smith, Peacham, Vt.
A.  Most trans-Atlantic crossings these days are out of Florida or New York, the latter mainly on the Queen Elizabeth 2. I could find only one ocean liner calling at Boston from Europe. But you can leave nearly any week from Montreal on one of two passenger-carrying freighters operated by Canada Maritime, according to Kerry Touloumis of Travltips, freighter cruise specialists in Flushing, Queens.
The ships, the Canmar Pride and the Canmar Honour, are 40,881-ton vessels built last year. Each has a double and two single cabins, which are carpeted and air-conditioned, and have a refrigerator and a sitting area, as well as private bath with shower. Each also has a passenger lounge with television and VCR. Passengers dine with the officers on Western and Indian cuisine.
The ships leave Montreal on Sunday and are due in Thamesport, Kent, England, a week later. On the return trips, they leave England on Monday and stop in Antwerp, Belgium, and Le Havre, France, before returning to Montreal. The cost is $1,740 one way, $3,165 round trip.
Contact Travltips at Post Office Box 580188, Flushing, N.Y. 11358; (800) 872-8584; www.travltips.com.
If you'd like to return in luxury and the timing is right, the Seabourn Pride, a Cunard line ship, leaves London on Sept. 5 for a 14-day cruise to Scotland, Iceland and Newfoundland, arriving in Boston on Sept. 19. The cost is from $11,550 a person, double occupancy. Information and reservations: (800) 528-6273; www .seabourn.com.
Summer Skiing
Q.  For my husband's 50th birthday, we would like to plan a ski trip for July. Are there choices for summer skiing other than Portillo, Chile? -- Susan Zimmer, New York, N.Y.
A.  Portillo, where the United States ski team has trained, is but one of more than a dozen ski resorts in Chile, including several -- La Parva, El Colorado and Valle Nevado -- close to Santiago. And across the border in Argentina are another dozen. The main centers for skiing in Argentina are around Mendoza in the northwest (including Valle de Las Lenas) and around Bariloche, farther south, in the Lakes District.
Another alternative is to head for the South Pacific, New Zealand specifically. There are a number of ski areas, but the most popular, according to Anna Synnott of the New Zealand Tourism Board, are those on the South island, near Queenstown. These include The Remarkables and Coronet Peak.
Holidaze Ski Tours, 810 Belmar Plaza, Belmar, N.J. 07719, (800) 526-2827, www.holidaze.com, offers Southern Hemisphere ski trips. Bob McErlean, the owner, said his most popular trip to New Zealand was five nights in Queenstown. Including air fare from Los Angeles, a Milford Sound cruise and transfers, it is $1,325 each, double occupancy. Four days of lift tickets is $87 more.
The agency also books summer ski trips to Chile and Argentina. In Chile, seven nights at Valle Nevado, including air fare from Miami, breakfast and dinner daily and lift tickets, start at $1,716, a person double occupancy. Holidaze has similar trips to Bariloche or Las Lenas in Argentina, with prices from $1,716.
RAY CORMIER
Correction:  May 30, 1999, Sunday  An answer in the Q & A column on May 16 about cruising to historic areas in the Southeast misstated the name of a cruise and a telephone number for the line. The Oct. 19 cruise on the Nantucket Clipper is 'America's Colonial Heritage Along the Intracoastal Waterway,' not the Civil War site cruise. Clipper Lines' toll-free number is (800) 325-0010.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Farm Vacations
Q.
I would like to spend some time on a working farm in the Midwest before and during the harvest. Can you help? -- James J. Butler, Arlington, Va.
A.  A number of working farms throughout the country take paying guests, many of them offering the opportunity to participate in or just observe the day-to-day business of the farm. Some provide such diversions as horse riding, fishing and swimming; others offer simply accommodations and the chance to be part of a rural family, if only for a day or two.
Three farms that might suit your purposes are in Ohio, Iowa and Indiana.
The Circle K Ranch, in Circleville, Ohio, has been taking paying guests since 1968. The 200-acre wooded farm has a creek stocked with fish and grows corn, soybeans, oats, wheat and hay. The hay harvest is in the summer, usually July, wheat and oats from June to August. Soybeans and corn are harvested in the fall, usually in October. Accommodations are in a six-room cottage that is equipped with linen and kitchen utensils. From June to September rates are $275 a week for up to four people. From the middle of April to the end of May and in October only weekends are available. Rates are $20 a person, with a $60 minimum. More information: Cliff and Marjorie Kerns, Circle K Ranch, 26525 Gay-Dreisbach Road, Circleville, Ohio 43113; telephone (614) 474-3711.
The Centennial Farm, in Webster City, Iowa, has been in the family since 1869. It is surrounded by fields of corn and soybeans (harvesting is in October and November) and is near golf and canoeing. The four guest rooms, with shared bath, are available all year for $35 a night for two people, $25 for a single. Full country breakfast is included, and lunch and dinner are available in either Highview, two miles to the east, or Duncan, two miles to the west. Webster City, which has a full range of restaurants, is seven miles to the east. More information: Tom Yungclas, Rural Route 2, Post Office Box 40, Wesbster City, Iowa 50595; (515) 832-3050.
The Bee Hive B&B is in the heart of Amish country in Indiana. Its 360 acres are planted with oats and wheat (harvested in July) and corn and soybeans (September to November). The owners, Herb and Treva Swarm, have a collection of antique farm machinery, some of which is used in July for threshing. Rates in a guesthouse that adjoins the farm (two double beds) are $63 a night, with a full breakfast. Three rooms in the house rent for $52.45 a night, also with breakfast. More information: Post Office Box 1191, Middlebury, Ind. 46540; (219) 825-5023.
A useful guide to farm vacations and overnight stays has been published for 40 years by Farm & Ranch Vacations, 36 East 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022; (212) 355-6334 or (800) 252-7899. The book, ""Farm, Ranch & Country Vacations,"" by Pat Dickerman, is available from the publisher for $12, including postage. The Boston Pops
Q.
To celebrate my wife's birthday on July 28 we wish to attend the Boston Pops concert on that date. Can we make a reservation and get tickets in advance? -- Henry John Buggeln, Gloversville, N.Y.
A.  There is no concert on July 28 this year, but if you are willing to move up your celebration by a couple of weeks you will still be able to enjoy the Boston Pops' music.
Concerts this season will be held from May 8 through July 14 every night except Monday. They will be performed, as usual, in Symphony Hall, 301 Massachussetts Avenue, Boston, Mass. 02115.
The Tuesday to Saturday concerts will start at 8 P.M., the Sunday concerts at 7:30 P.M. Tickets will go on sale at the end of April, but prices have not yet been set. They can be ordered from Symphony Hall or from SymphonyCharge, (617) 266-1200.
Free concerts, starting at around sunset, will be held the first week of July at the Hatch Shell on the Charles River Esplanade. The July 4 program will be accompanied by a free fireworks display.
For all the Esplanade concerts it is advisable to arrive by 6 P.M. at the latest. Many spectators make a day of it, arriving with blankets and picnics. Some diehard fans have even been known to show up at dawn to stake out their turf. Encephalitis in Florida
Q.
For the past two years we have taken our family to St. Augustine, Fla., in the first two weeks of July. We would like to go back but are very concerned about last year's encephalitis outbreak. Is it safe to return, especially for our children, the youngest of whom is 3? -- W. Nealon, Rochester
A.  According to the Florida State Department of Health there were no cases of St. Louis encephalitis recorded in St. Augustine in last year's outbreak, which reached as far north as Gainesville, some 70 miles southwest of St. Augustine. A spokesman, David Adams, said this year's visitors should, however, use an insect repellent at dusk and at night to ward off attacks by mosquitoes, which transmit the disease. A physician should be asked to recommend a repellent suitable for young chilren, he added; many repellents for use by adults may contain substances that might prove toxic to children.
Dr. Diana L. Wells, assistant state epidemiologist, said the only time epidemics were known to have occurred in successive years was in 1961 and 1962. Based on that experience and other factors, she said, another epidemic is not expected in Florida in the near future, although no one can guarantee it will not happen. She said it was not fully understood why epidemics occurred one year and not another. ""This is being studied,"" she said. In most years, Mr. Adams said, only one to five cases are recorded in Florida.
From July 28 to Dec. 12 last year a total of 223 people contracted St. Louis encephalitis in Florida, said Dr. Wells, and 10 people died. The average age of those who died was 73, she added. Those at particular risk are people under 6 and over 55. Caribbean Sugar Mills
Q.
Is there, anywhere in the Caribbean, a restored sugar mill in working order that is open to visitors? -- Aart Bayle, Beverly, Mass.
A.  The closest you will come to what you are looking for is in Barbados, where the National Trust has restored a sugar mill with all its machinery intact but not in operation. The Morgan Lewis Mill in St. Andrews Parish is open every day from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Admission is $4, $2 for children. Many mills on other islands have been restored but most are used as accommodations, stores or private homes.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Show Tapings in Los Angeles
Q.
I will be in Los Angeles in June. How do I get tickets to see any of the various television game shows or the ""Tonight"" show? Also, how can I get to be a contestant on ""Wheel of Fortune""? -- C. Donello, Bronx
A. Except for talk shows, choices may be few in June, as most shows go on break in April, May and June.
There are two ways to attend tapings of TV game shows, talk shows or situation comedies. One is to call the network of the show you are interested in and get specific information on that show. Generally, you will have to pick up a ticket from the network ticket office and then go to the studio and stand in line. Tickets rarely guarantee a seat. The shows usually overbook to assure a full audience, and you will have to get in line ahead of time to assure getting in. In all casesthe tickets are free. There are often minimum age requirements (often 12 or 16 years old) for audiences.
The second method is to use one of two services that distribute free tickets for shows; these have the advantage of offering a number of choices.  One is Audience Associates, (213) 467-4697, which distributes tickets for NBC (where the ""Tonight Show"" is taped), CBS (""Wheel of Fortune""), Fox and Universal Studios, and says that its tickets are for guaranteed seats, though people have to wait 20 to 60 minutes outside the studio. Other game shows handled by Audience Associates include ""Family Feud,"" ""The Price is Right,"" ""Jeopardy"" and ""Love Connection."" On an average day, there is a choice of three to six shows, according to the service, which offers a free bus from Mann's Theater in Hollywood to the tapings. The service recommends that interested audience members call the day they want to view a show, or the day before, to get the widest selection. Sometimes the service offers inquirers jobs as extras in movie crowd scenes.
The other service is Audiences Unlimited, (818) 506-0043, or, for recorded information on shows available in upcoming weeks, (818) 506-0067, which supplies tickets mainly for situation comedies. The few game shows include ""Love Connection"" and ""Shop Till You Drop.""
Regarding the ""Tonight"" show, a call to NBC Audience Services, (818) 840-3537, gives information on who the day's host and guests will be. Tickets are available in Burbank just off California Street (follow signs marked ""Audience Tickets"") starting at 8 A.M.; there is usually a line beforehand. The tapings are from 5:30 to 6:30 P.M., and ticketholders are advised to be in line by 4:30, but it is best to be at least an hour earlier than that to be sure of getting a seat. To get tickets by mail, write at least a month ahead to NBC Tickets, 3000 West Alameda Avenue, Burbank, Calif. 91523, requesting date and number of tickets and enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope.
Those who want to be a contestant on ""Wheel of Fortune"" must audition first. If they pass the audition they are usually not scheduled to appear for taping until six months to a year later, and they must go to Los Angeles for the taping at their own expense. If you want to audition while you are on vacation, call (818) 972-8088 two weeks ahead, and, if there are openings for auditions, make an appointment. The show's staff also travels around the country for contestant searches; they generally get to New York once a year. To be notified when the search will get to a certain region of the country, mail a postcard, listing name, address and telephone number, to Wheel of Fortune Travel, 3400 Riverside Drive, Burbank, Calif. 91505. The auditions, done in groups, are in three parts. The first is a five-minute written test in which auditioners must solve 16 word puzzles like those on the show. Those that pass then play a 45-minute mock version of the game. Applicants chosen for the third stage play a two-hour mock version. Contestants are selected who show enthusiasm, smile nicely, speak loudly and clearly and do not get nervous during the contests, the spokeswoman said.
Numbers for other taping facilities are: ABC (213) 520-1222 (""America's Funniest Home Videos,"" among others); CBS (213) 852-2624 (""The Price Is Right,"" Wheel of Fortune,"" ""Family Feud,"" ""Seinfeld""); Paramount (213) 956-1777 (""Arsenio Hall,"" ""In Living Color,"" ""Cheers"").  Using a Recharger Overseas
Q. Will a recharger for AA batteries work in the 110-volt outlets supplied in many foreign hotels? -- George Kean, New York, N.Y.
A. Your recharger should operate in such an outlet, according to Allen Sausen, president of Applicances Overseas, a New York company that sells electrical devices for use abroad. Appliances made for use in the United States are designed to work on the 110-volt current used here. Most of the rest of the world uses a standard of 220 volts, which would burn out your recharger. But as you note, many overseas hotels have an outlet marked 110 volts for American-made electric shavers or hair driers. American current operates at 60 hertz (or cycles), meaning impulses per second, Mr. Sausen points out, while many foreign currents operate at 50 hertz. This difference makes American devices with electric motors, like shavers or driers, run more slowly than usual, but if they are used for no more than a few minutes they will work effectively, he says. However, devices, like fans, used for longer periods at the different hertz will burn out, he says. A battery recharger does not have a motor, so it will not be affected by the difference in hertz.
Mr. Sausen's company sells a battery recharger that can be used at 110 or 220 volts. The recharger is $12 plus postage and it may be bought from Appliances Overseas, 276 Fifth Avenue, Suite 407, New York, N.Y. 10001; (212) 545-8001.  Rome to Catania by Bus
Q.
I have decided to travel by bus from Rome to Catania, Sicily. What is the schedule for the summer? Are there buses from the Rome airport? -- Benito Brancaforte, Madison, Wis.
A. Bus service from Rome to Catania is operated by Autolinee Sais, telephone (06) 4885924, which departs from the bus station in Rome at 62 Piazza della Repubblica, next to the Termini train station. The buses run Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, leaving at 7:45 A.M. and arriving in Catania at 6:45 P.M. The cost is about $50; $37 for those 26 and younger and 60 and older. There are no buses to Catania from the airport.  May Day in Moscow
Q.
A group of us will be marching in the May Day parade in Moscow as members of the Friendship Force international exchange organization. What will the weather be like? -- Alice G. Gutter, Walden, N.Y.
A. The average high temperature in early May is around 60 and the low, about 40. There is a bit less than an even chance of precipitation; Moscow has an average of 13 rainy (or, occasionally, snowy) days in May.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q.&A.
Music, Lace and Wine
Q.  Many amateur musicians may know of the French town of Mirecourt, which is noted for cello-making and is also near the Alsatian Wine Road. We wanted guidance on visiting both the Wine Road and a maker of string instruments as well as on seeing the sights, attending festivals and finding a place to stay. -- Betty and Tom Cox, Dallas
A.  Over the years, Mirecourt attracted not only artisans who made string instruments but lace makers as well. The town, in the departement of Vosges, is 25 miles south of Nancy.
Mirecourt began developing as a center for the makers of stringed instruments (not just cellos) in the late 18th century. With the founding of conservatories at that time, there grew a need for more and cheaper 'factory fiddles,' in the words of The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. The best known of the violin makers from Mirecourt was probably Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, who went on to set up shop in Paris.
String instruments are still being produced in Mirecourt. Of the dozen makers, several can be visited by appointment. Among them are Jean-Jacques Pages, 70, rue Chanzy, telephone (33-3) 29.37.11.33, and Alain Carbonare, 22, rue Georges Clemenceau, (33-3) 29.37.41.78.
A museum for string instruments, the Musee de la Lutherie, is currently housed in the Town Hall and will be transferred on April 30 to the halles, where the market stood.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, thousands of women were engaged in bobbin-lace making, a technique that requires plaiting, twisting and interweaving the threads. Today, only two lace makers are left in town; both are full-time employees of the Maison de la Dentelle, 1 bis, rue Chantaire; telephone and fax: (33-3) 29.37.3959. But over 100 local residents who make lace as a hobby visit the maison regularly and make small doilies. The maison is open daily from May 1 to Sept. 30 and closed Saturday during the rest of the year. More information: Mirecourt Tourist Office, telephone (33-3) 29.37.01.01, fax (33-3) 29.37.52.24.
There is no particularly note worthy hotel in Mirecourt. The closest town of some importance is Epinal, 21 miles to the southeast. The nicest hotel there is La Fayette, where the rate is about $70 for a double room; (33-3) 29.81.15.15, fax (33-3) 29.31.07.08. Epinal also has a restaurant, with one star in the Michelin guide, called Relais des Ducs de Lorraine; (33-3) 29.34.39.87, fax (33-3) 29.34.27.61.
To reach the Wine Route (Route des Vins d'Alsace) from Epinal, drive east 57 miles through St-Die, over the Vosges Mountains and into Ribeauville or Riquewihr, two villages famed for their wines. The villages have a Web site, www .ribeauville-riquewihr.com, that includes a list of hotels. Officially, the 106-mile route -- which actually comprises several roads -- runs from Marienheim south to Thann. But the map shows it extends a bit farther north (to Gimbrett) and south (to Leimbach). The Wine Route has a site, www.vinsalsace .com/rte",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:  Foreign Currency
Foreign Currency
Question: I am going to Tunisia this fall but have been unable to obtain Tunisian currency. Do you have any suggestions? - T. L. C., Hartsdale, N.Y.
Answer: The Tunisian dinar is a so-called soft currency, one that is not generally bought and sold outside Tunisia. To Deak International, the currency trading group, and similar companies, soft currencies are those for which there is little international demand and are regarded as risky commodities because of their fluctuations in value. A spokesman for Deak said that among many other currencies it does not deal in are Burma's kyat and Botswana's pula.
Tourists visiting Tunisia obtain dinars by cashing traveler's checks at banks, currency exchange centers and hotels. Visitors who want local currency right away may cash a traveler's check on arrival at the Tunis-Carthage Airport, where there is a bank. Major credit cards are honored at some hotels, restaurants and shops in the main cities. At this writing the dinar is worth about $1.30.  India's Trains
Question: Are there travel companies that arrange tours of India? I am especially interested in a railway package. - J. L., Newport Beach, Calif.
Answer: Tour operators that specialize in India are not generally enthusiastic about railroad travel. Some liken first class on India's trains to second class in Europe, and, with one exception, there are no established, scheduled railroad tours. On the other hand, a land package, with train journeys included, can be arranged. The one train tour that is well regarded for comfort and service is called Palace on Wheels, an eight-day journey from New Delhi aboard a train made up of private cars that once belonged to majarajahs. The Palace on Wheels leaves Delhi every Wednesday from October through March. The train runs at night across the desert country of the state of Rajasthan, stopping at Jaipur, Jaisalmer and other cities in which passengers are taken on escorted sightseeing trips during the day aboard an air-conditioned bus. The Taj Mahal in Agra and forts and palaces are among the sites visited.
Tours of Distinction (141 East 44th Street, New York, N.Y. 10017; 800-888-8634) is among wholesalers that sell this trip to travel agents. On its own, the train tour costs $1,150 a person, double occupancy, including daily breakfast and dinner on the train. A 13-day tour combining the Palace on Wheels with a stay and sightseeing in Delhi, and most meals, costs $1,600. (Round-trip air fare between New York and Delhi costs $1,189, except in December when it is $1,386.) The trip is also available through other companies, including Journeyworld (410 East 51st Street, New York, N.Y. 10022; 212-752-8308 or, out of state, 800-635-3900) and Flag Tours (5625 F.M. 1960 West, Houston, Tex. 77069; 713-580-1700 or 800-223-8889).
Independent travelers who want to make land arrangements, including rail journeys, may do so through several Indian companies. One is Travel Corporation India (20 East 53d Street, New York, N.Y. 10022; 212-371-8080), which has 25 offices in India. Another is Trade Wings (25 West 43d Street, New York, N.Y. 10036; 212-354-8328). Both arrange land packages suited to individual requirements. One train trip recommended by a member of Trade Wings is the run between Delhi and Agra on the Taj Express. The round trip can be completed in a day.
The Indrail Pass, which allows unlimited travel on trains, can be purchased from Hari World Travel (30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10112; 212-957-3000). This company, which sells cut-rate air tickets to India and Europe, also makes train reservations in India. The pass is for various durations between 7 and 90 consecutive days and for first or second class. A pass for 7 days in air-conditioned first class costs $190, and for 15 days, $230. A spokesman for Hari, who said the pass could easily save the traveler money, advised against traveling in second class, which is often crowded, hot and dusty. The company can supply an Indian railroad timetable for $3.  Mexican Sites
Question: During a short visit to Cancun, the Mexican resort, will it be possible for me to see any important archeological sites on day trips? -C. D. F., Brooklyn
Answer: The ruined Maya cities of Tulum and Chichen Itza can each be visited in a day from Cancun, although the time left for exploring these remarkable sites would be brief. The walled fortress of Tulum is on the Caribbean coast about 80 miles from Cancun. Notable structures include a pyramid-type building with a two-room temple on the top and the Temple of the Descending God. Chichen Itza, 100 miles from Cancun, is believed to have been founded in the sixth century. It is one of the largest ancient centers in Yucatan, with many pyramids and other ritual buildings, including temples and a well used for human sacrifice.
Tour desks in Cancun's hotels and local tour agencies - like Ceiba Tours (telephone Cancun 4-19-62) -can reserve seats on the frequent bus excursions to both sites. Visitors also go to both by rental car or by renting a car with driver.  Study in France
Question: I am 14 years old and plan to go to France on an exchange program for a learning - and enjoyable - experience for four weeks next summer. I would like names of agencies that handle this kind of program. - G. M., Lincoln, Neb.
Answer: Programs for high-school students in other countries, including France, are available through the American Institute for Foreign Study (102 Greenwich Avenue, Greenwich, Conn. 06830; 800-727-2437) and the Council on International Educational Exchange (205 East 42d Street, New York, N.Y. 10017; 212-661-1414). Both combine stays of several weeks in private homes with language and other courses at French schools and colleges. Some of the programs also include touring in Europe; some are in summer, others during the academic year. The council publishes a book called 'The Teen-Ager's Guide to Study, Travel and Adventure Abroad' that outlines opportunities available with various organizations. It costs $8.85 and $1 for postage.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:
Cherry Blossom Time
Cherry Blossom Time
Q. This is our year for a Washington, D.C., weekend - as close to cherry blossom time as possible. Can you suggest a weekend or two? - P. S., Lawrenceville, N.J.
A. The 3,900 trees surrounding the Tidal Basin usually begin blossoming the last week in March and reach their peak by the first weekend in April, so March 30 to April 2 and April 6 to 8 seem like the best bets, but the peak dates depend on rainfall and temperature in March.
This year's Cherry Blossom Festival is scheduled from April 1 to 8 and include a parade down Constitution Avenue. For more information, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to the National Cherry Blossom Committee, Post Office Box 33324, Washington, D.C. 20033; telephone recording: 202-737-2599.
For information on hotel accommodations and other events in Washington, write to the Washington Convention and Visitors Association, 1212 New York Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005; 202-789-7000.
Getting Luggage to Newark
Q. Is there a service which will pick up baggage from a midtown hotel and take it directly to Newark Airport? After the Big East basketball tournament in March, we would like to leave directly for the airport from Madison Square Garden instead of going back to the hotel to collect our luggage. - M. G., Auburn, N.Y.
A. Unique Delivery Service (201-961-2250), which operates out of Newark Airport, will pick up your luggage from a midtown hotel and transport it to a holding area at central storage at the airport. When you arrive at the airport after the game, you can contact the service and, a spokesman said, it will deliver your bags to the check-in counter or departure gate within 10 to 15 minutes.
The service, which is licensed by Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, charges $15 to pick up as many as three suitcases from midtown Manhattan ($1 per additional bag) and $3 more for delivery to the counter or gate. Payment, in cash or traveler's checks only, is collected when the bags are claimed. The company also charges a $1 storage fee a piece for each calendar day.
The owner, Jim Battle, said the service was available throughout New Jersey and in parts of New York, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The rates depend on distance from Newark Airport. For example, the rate from Stamford is $30.50, from Brooklyn $21, from Philadelphia $60, and from Fort Lee, N.J., $10.
In addition to luggage, the company can store skis, backpacks, trunks, baby carriages, musical instruments, and military duffle bags. There is a $1.50 surcharge to the pickup fee for each such item (a pair of skis counts as one item). For any item of 50 pounds or more, including bicycles, the surcharge is $3.50.
For arriving travelers who want to go unencumbered to a business meeting or sporting event, the company will deliver luggage to hotels or residences from the airport on a C.O.D. basis. There is a $10 surcharge for C.O.D. deliveries.
Winter Olympics in France
Q. We are interested in taking our family - five children, plus five spouses, plus several grandchildren - to the Winter Olympics in Albertville, France, in 1992. Please advise how we can make reservations. - E. K. P., Charleroi, Pa.
A. Americans can book tickets for the '92 Winter Olympics in the French Alps through Olson-Travelworld, an American agency with exclusive U.S. distribution rights here. For tickets write to: Jane Katzoff, Olson-Travelworld, 100 North Sepulveda Boulevard, El Segundo, Calif. 90245; 213- 615-0711. For hotel reservations and information about Albertville, write to the Office du Tourisme, Place de la Gare, 73200 Albertville, France; telephone (33)-79-32-04-22.
Residents of France can write directly to the Albertville Winter Olympics Committee: at C.O.J.O., Chem. Charrette, 73200 Albertville; telephone 79-45-19-92 or, for information in English, 79-46-19-92.
Radios for European Trips
Q. Please identify a lightweight, battery-powered radio that tunes in European stations, the model number, price and where it can be purchased. - J. C. H., Lexington, Va.
A. Most commercial European stations broadcast on AM and FM bands, so you can use a standard portable radio. For shortwave broadcasts, such as Voice of America, the BBC and Voice of Moscow, several portable models are available. Sony offers two - the ICF 2010 ($360), which weighs less than four pounds, and the ICF 2003 ($240), which weighs only a pound and a half.
Radio Shack, which has many national outlets, offers shortwave receivers, the DX 360 ($89) and the DX 440 ($189). Other manufacturers include Panasonic, Kenwood and Japan Radio Corporation. Most electronics stores will carry a brand and model that suits your taste and budget.
For information on stations abroad, two books might be helpful. '1990 World Radio and Television Handbook' (Billboard; $19.95) lists radio and television stations by frequency from around the world. 'Password to World Band Radios' (International Broadcast Services, Ltd.; $14.95) covers shortwave.
Tipping on Cruise Ships
Q. What kind of tips are expected on a cruise ship and how does one give them? I am going on a short, inexpensive cruise, if that makes a difference. - R. C., Fresno, Calif.
A. On some ships, cruise directors announce tipping policy; others have cards in the cabins suggesting proper levels, and still others give you the information in a brochure. Some lines, notably with Greek-registered ships, pool tips and recommend a flat $6 to $8 per day.
The service personnel such as waiters and stewards are tipped, but not the ship's officers.
Here are commonly accepted guidelines: For a cabin steward, $2 to $3 a passenger a day. For a dining room waiter, $2 to $4 a passenger a day. For an assistant waiter, $1.50 to $2 a passenger a day. For a bar waiter, bartender, deck steward or wine steward, 15 percent of the check. For the headwaiter or maitre d'hotel who has provided unusual service or helped accommodate a request for a change in tables, $5 at the end of the voyage is appropriate.
Seasoned cruise travelers tip discreetly at the last meal of the cruise, and use an envelope for each person. As a rule of thumb, the less expensive the cruise, the more the staff is likely to count on tips to augment income. So you might consider tipping slightly higher than the guidelines suggest.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Scuba Diving in Belize
Q.
I am interested in obtaining information about Belize, with special emphasis on scuba diving. -- Nina Garfinkel, New York, N.Y.
A. To some extent, your choice of a way to scuba dive in Belize depends on your own enthusiasm and how much discomfort you are willing to tolerate, or how many amenities you desire. In Belize, an independent Commonwealth nation once known as British Honduras, both packages that offer live-aboard-a-ship arrangements and others based at resorts are offered. One source for either kind of package is See and Sea Travel Service, 50 Francisco Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94133; (415) 434-3400 or (800) 348-9778. For those who wish to stay aboard a ship, the 110-foot Belize Aggressor, which holds 18 people, departs from Belize City every Saturday, and returns the following Saturday. The price, not including air fare, is $1,395 a person. If you prefer to stay at a scuba resort, See and Sea represents three, from 20 to 60 miles offshore, at rates from $1,950 to $1,999 a person. These rates also apply from Saturday to Saturday and do not include air fare. Similar packages are offered by Tropical Adventures, 111 Second North, Seattle, Wash. 98109; telephone (206) 441-3483 or (800) 247-3483.
Another source of information and reservations, but only for single travelers from 25 to 55, is Gallivanting, the Club for Adventure, at 515 East 79th Street, Suite 20F, New York, N.Y. 10021; telephone (212) 988-0617 or (800) 933-9699. Representatives of the Belize Aggressor may also be contacted directly at Post Office Box 9182, Treasure Island, Fla. 33740; telephone (800) 654-3483 or (813) 367-1952. More information, and the names of additional operators, is available from the Belize Tourist Board, 415 Seventh Avenue, 18th floor, New York, N.Y. 10001; telephone (212) 268-8798 or (800) 624-0686. Indians and Amish
Q.
Are there any areas of New York State where Native American and Quaker or Amish working communities (not just museums) can be visited? -- Elizabeth Cuesta, Marlboro, N.Y.
A.  A spokeswoman for the Division of Tourism of the New York State Department of Economic Development had no information on working Indian communities that could be visited, but did point out that Salamanca, N.Y., in the western part of the state about 10 miles northwest of Olean, was partly inhabited by Senecas. The town rests on Indian land, the 22,000-acre Allegany Indian Reservation, and is leased from tribe.
A little-known community of about 5,000 Amish is also in western New York State, around Cherry Creek, about an hour and a half's drive south from Buffalo and only 18 miles from Lake Erie. A map for self-guided tours is available at a local restaurant, the Grainery, and either motorcoach tours with a guide or tours with a guide in your own car can be arranged. The three-hour tour with the guide in your car is $45, and lunch or dinner must be taken in the Grainery, which is in a 100-year-old barn. Bus tour rates, for groups, are set by the individual companies; information and reservations from the restaurant: (716) 287-3500.
The Amish in the area are mostly farmers, but there are also shops selling such items as leather belts, wallets, wooden toys and other handmade craft objects. Quilts, pillows and similar household goods are generally sold directly from individual homes. Seeing Flowers in 1992
Q.
Where and when will the next International Flower Expo take place? -- Janice Kelly, Westport, Conn.
A.  Two International Horticultural Expositions, as they are formally known, have been sanctioned by the Bureau of International Expositions for next year, according to Michael Italiaander of Expo Garden Tours of New York. One, Floriade, will be held in Zoetermeer, the Netherlands, from April 10 to Oct. 11. The other, Ameriflora, the first such international exposition to be held in the United States, is scheduled for April 20 to Oct. 12 in Columbus, Ohio. At both, numerous countries mount flower exhibits reflecting their native and cultural heritages.
In the Ohio city that bears his name, Columbus will be honored in an exposition with 88 acres of gardens, exhibits, restaurants and performance spaces. Organizers say they are spending $93 million to remake Franklin Park, two miles east of downtown Columbus, for the event.  Formal gardens will be created to equal those on several royal European estates. A 3,500-seat amphitheater will be used for jazz, country music and symphonic performances.
More information on the Zoetermeer exposition is available from the Netherlands Tourist Board, 355 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017; telephone (212) 370-7360. For information on the Columbus event, contact the Greater Columbus Convention and Visitors Bureau, 10 West Broad Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, or telephone (800) 282-5393. Expo Garden Tours, 145 Fourth Avenue, Suite 4A, New York, N.Y. 10003, (212) 677-6704, offers travel packages to both expositions. The 14-day one to the Netherlands is $2,650 a person, including hotels, most meals and entrance fees, but not air fare. The similar, seven-day, package for the Columbus exposition is $1,495. Renting a House in Brittany
Q.
We are planning a family trip to France for June and July and would like to rent a house in St.-Servan or St.-Malo on Brittany's northern seacoast. How can we find rental information for this area? -- Ellen J. Kennedy, Edina, Minn.
A.  There are several sources for house rentals in Brittany, as well as elsewhere in France, according to the French Government Tourist Office. Among them, RAVE (Rent a Vacation Everywhere) offers rentals in Brittany from about $650 a week to $2,195, depending on the size of the house and the season. (The $2,195 house sleeps 12.) For more information, contact RAVE, 328 Main Street East, Suite 526, Rochester, N.Y. 14604; telephone (716) 454-6440. On the West Coast, Chez Vous has rural cottages as low as $420 a week. Chez Vous is at 220 Redwood Highway, Suite 129, Mill Valley, Calif. 94941; telephone (415) 331-2535. July and August are high season, so the rates then are at the more expensive end of the scale. But since this part of the coast is at the end of the Gulf Stream, the area is relatively mild and green year round. And Mont St.-Michel, the medieval fortress and religious shrine, is only about 20 miles away. The agencies mentioned, and others, also rent houses, from modest cottage to great chateaus, throughout France, as well as apartments in Paris and bed-and-breakfast accommodations in private houses around the country. Information is also available from the French Government Tourist Office, 610 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10020; (212) 757-1125.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:
Bumped From a Flight
Bumped From a Flight
Q. My husband and I were recently 'bumped' from an Alitalia flight to Rome. We arrived at the ticket counter 40 mintues before the flight, because of delays in traffic, and were advised that our seats had been sold. We took a later flight to London and a connecting flight to Rome the next afternoon, losing a full day of our vacation. Are passengers on international flights entitled to be compensated for the inconvenience and loss of time resulting from overbooking as are passengers on domestic flights? - Denise G. Rabinowitz, Tuxedo Park, N.Y.
A. Passengers on international flights from the United States are entitled to compensation if they are bumped because of overbooking. If the airline cannot put bumped passengers on a flight that will arrive within four hours of your original flight, the passengers are entitled to two times the price of the one-way fare to the destination or $400, whichever is lower. The computation is not based on half the round-trip fare, which is often less than the one-way rate. For domestic travel, if the airline cannot provide a flight that arrives within two hours of the originally scheduled time, passengers are entitled to double the one-way fare or $400, whichever is less. If passengers get to their destination between one and two hours of the original flight, they are compensated the one-way fare or $200, whichever is less.
To qualify for compensation, passengers must check in no later than the time recommended by the airline. A spokesman for Alitalia said that international passengers are advised to report two hours before flight time. Therefore, you were not entitled to compensation. Other exceptions: if passengers are bumped because a connecting flight is late, if the flight is on a plane with fewer than 60 seats, or if the flight orginates outside the United States.
A Parrot to Canada and Back
Q. I am hoping to travel to Canada this summer in my car with my Amazon parrot. What kind of documentation do I need? - Betsy Cramer, Ipswich, Mass.
A. Canada does not require a permit for bringing in one or two birds of the parrot family or songbirds. You simply fill out a form (AGR 1553) when you enter, declaring that the birds have been in your possession for the previous 90 days and have not been in contact with other birds in that time. To bring the bird back to the United States, you must come in at entry points where there is a veterinarian on duty or on call. They are Eastport, Idaho; Houlton and Jackman, Me.; Detroit, Port Huron and Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.; Opheim, Raymond and Sweetgrass, Mont.; Alexandria Bay, Buffalo and Champlain, N.Y.; Dunseith, Pembina and Portal, N.D.; Derby Line and Highgate Springs, Vt., and Blaine, Lynden, Oroville and Sumas, Wash. You will need to sign a statement that the bird has been in your possession the whole time you were in Canada and not exposed to other birds. A veterinarian will examine your pet and attest to its general good health. If the bird looks unwell, it may be quarantined and observed for signs of illness.
If you are crossing into Canada at the same point you will return, it is a good idea to ask at the United States side what hours the veterinarian is on duty, as there is no charge for the examination if you cross during those hours. At other times, you will be charged for an overtime examination. In general, the best time to find a veterinarian on duty is during weekday working hours.
The regulations on bringing in birds that have been in countries other than Canada may differ.
Thyssen Collection in Madrid
Q. Please advise me when the Thyssen Collection will open in Madrid. - Nicholas Tomich, Elizabeth, N.J.
A. In 1988, Spain arranged a 10-year loan of 787 paintings of the 1,500-work collection of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. They include masterpieces by Piero della Francesca, Raphael, Titian, Tintoretto, Durer, the Holbeins, Rubens, El Greco, Klee and other major painters from the 14th to the 20th centuries. The paintings are to be on display in the 19th-century Palacio de Villahermosa in the Plaza de Neptuno across from the Prado. The building is undergoing extensive internal remodeling, expected to be completed in September 1991, and then the paintings will be moved there from Lugano, Switzerland. Tentatively, the collection will go on exhibition in Novmember 1991.
The Government hopes that the loan arrangment will be made permanent.
Falls and Trees at Yosemite
Q. I have visited Yosemite National Park twice. Once, in the fall, I saw the giant sequoias, but the waterfalls in the Yosemite Valley had stopped flowing. The other time, in April, the waterfalls were flowing, but I could not see the seqouias because the road was clogged with snow. There must be a period when you can see the falls and the trees. - Norbert N. Edert, Brooklyn
A. Your April trip must have been at a time when it had just snowed, because it is usually possible to see the giant sequoias when the falls are full. The falls in Yosemite Valley are fed mainly by melting snow pack, and they are normally at their peak water flow in late May. However, snowfall in the Sierras has been unusually light over the past four years, and the peak has been late April, according to a park spokeswoman. In drier years, the flow can appear to stop as early as late April and not be visible until mid-September. Actually, they do not stop flowing altogther, but continue in crack systems behind the falls, or run moderately down the rock face, which will appear wet.
There are three seqouia groves in the park, at 5,000 to 7,000 feet. The main park roads at that altitude are open year-round, though snowfall occasionally necessitates use of chains. The most visited trees, a group of 200 called the Mariposa Grove, are at the southern end of the park. The grove is reached by a two-mile spur, the Mariposa Grove Road. From the parking area it is a half-mile walk to the largest tree. When it snows, mainly between November and April, the spur is closed intermittently; the road is last on the park's plowing priority list, the spokeswoman said. Some visitors walk, snowshoe or ski when the road is closed. Mid-May to mid-October there is a loop road through the grove open only to tour trams. Tuolumne Grove, a group of about 25 giant seqouias in the northwest part of the park, is served by a six-mile one-way road, which is typically open from late May to October. Merced Grove, 20 trees also in the northwest part of the park, is a two-mile walk from a trailhead off a main road.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q. & A.
Japanese Gardens
Q.  I am looking for a trip to Japan in April or May that would focus on temples and gardens. Do you have any suggestions? -- Bernard Aserkoff, Boston
A.  The Japan National Tourist Office suggests a 13-day tour offered by Esprit Travel, a California company.  It begins in Kyoto, the 1,200-year-old city that is considered the cultural heart of Japan, where you will visit, among other sites, Tofukuji, one of the city's principal Zen temples; Sambo-in, a temple with a 16th-century garden that's particularly beautiful in cherry-blossom season; and Ginkakuji Temple, a medieval villa and garden.
Besides Kyoto, the tour stops in Kurashiki, a town famous for its galleries and museums of folk art and Western art as well as its warehouses from the 17th century; Takayama, a traditional mountain town in pristine condition; and Kamakura, with its 745-year-old, 37-foot-high bronze Buddha, 65 temples and 19 shrines. You'll also see the contemporary side of Japan, with rides on Shinkansen, the high-speed bullet trains, and a visit to a futuristic bayfront development in Tokyo.
The tour guide will be Michael Kuranoff, who has explored the country on foot, by train, bicycle and car, according to Esprit, while working in the computer industry there.
The Esprit package includes air fare from Los Angeles, hotel, most meals, ground transportation and all sightseeing and admission fees. The tour will be offered from May 5 to 17 and May 18 to 30. If you wish to wait until the fall, it will be offered again Oct. 5 to 17. The price is $3,100 a person, double occupancy. Contact Esprit Travel Corporation, 2101 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 101, Santa Monica, Calif. 90403; (800) 377-7481, fax (310) 828-3564.
French Yacht
Q.  A friend of mine had a very pleasant Mediterranean cruise on a ship called Le Ponant. I believe it is owned by a French line. Can you tell me more about it and where I can obtain a brochure? -- Virginia J. De Rugeriis, Margate, N.J.
A.  Le Ponant is a 289-foot powered yacht built in 1991. It can carry 60 passengers and has a crew of 30, primarily French. Breakfast and lunch are served buffet-style on a canopied deck; dinners include a choice of three entrees. There's postprandial piano music, and a full-service bar. The vessel is air-conditioned, but has no elevator to link its four passenger decks.
It is, indeed, French-owned, belonging to Compagnie des Iles du Ponant, 60 Boulevard du Marechal Juin, 44100 Nantes, France; telephone (33-2) 40.58.14.95, fax (33-2) 40.58.27.02. The company books some of its cruises directly, including a  sailing from Guadeloupe to Martinique, Dec. 5 to 12, for $2,281 (based on 5.72 francs to $1), with port taxes, and a Grenadine and Venezuelan Island cruise Dec. 12 to 19 for the same rate, starting in Martinique and ending in Caracas. From April 1 to 8 (Caracas to Guadeloupe) and April 8 to 15 (the Grenadines, beginning and ending in Guadeloupe), it's $2,509.
Most of the time, however, Le Ponant's cruises are part of land-sea tours sold by Tauck Tours of Westport, Conn. There are 14 departures from Dec. 22 to March 7; they include a six-day cruise on Le Ponant as part of 10-day tours of Costa Rica and the Panama Canal. Stops will include the San Blas Islands, where you can snorkel and meet Kuna Indians, a Panama Canal transit, the Pacheca Island Bird Refuge off Panama's Pacific coast, Coiba Island National Park for more swimming, snorkeling and bird-watching, and the Marenco Biological Reserve in Costa Rica. The price, $3,990 a person in double occupancy, includes shore excursions, hotels, port taxes, tips, wine with dinner on board and most meals. Air fare is extra.
From May 21 to Oct. 4, Tauck offers 21 departures on 13-day trips between Marseilles and Malta that include a seven-day cruise on Le Ponant. The cruise departs from Nice and ends in Valletta, Malta, or the reverse, depending on departure dates. Ports of call include the cliffside Corsican town of Bonifacio, the dramatic active volcano on the island of Stromboli off Sicily and the Greek ruins in the Sicilian town of Agrigento. Rates are $4,975 a person, double occupancy. Tauck Tours, (203) 226-6911, fax (203) 221-6828.
World's Fair Fans
Q.  My wife and I enjoy going to world's fairs and other large international expositions. We used to subscribe to a magazine that had the latest information on world's fairs, but we cannot find it anymore. Can you suggest any source of advance information on these events? -- Vaughn Tidemand, Roseville, Minn.
A.  Although World's Fair magazine has ceased publication, Fair News, published six times a year, has information on upcoming fairs,  as well as articles on past fairs and fair collectibles. It's $17 a year. Contact Fair News, Post Office Box 20806, Sarasota, Fla. 34276, (941) 923-2590.
If you have access to the Internet, you can call up Web sites with the latest information on the next two world's fairs (including exactly how many days remain until their respective openings).
You don't have to wait long for the next one. Expo 98 is set for May 22 to Sept. 30 in Lisbon. It commemorates the 500th anniversary of the sea voyage to India by Vasco da Gama, the  Portuguese explorer -- the first by a European to that region. As you might expect, the theme is 'The Oceans: A Heritage for the Future.' The fair's Web site is www.expo98.pt and it contains ticket prices, a map of the fair site and a preview of the exhibits and entertainment at the fair.
If you're thinking of going, it might pay to buy tickets now. A single-day ticket is $31 (at 162 escudos to $1), $15 for ages 5 to 14 or 65 or older. A three-day pass costs $54, $27 children and seniors, if you order before Nov. 22. From Nov. 22 to April 21, the three-day passes will cost $62, $31 seniors and children. After that, they will be $77 and $39, respectively. Call (351-1) 8680426 or fax (351-1) 8681800.
After that fair, the next one is  Expo 2000 in Hanover, the first world's fair in Germany. The theme is 'Humankind-Nature-Technology.' On the Web, the address is www.expo2000.de. Dates are June 1 to Oct. 31, and more than 140 nations are expected to participate at the 1,000-acre fair site in southeastern Hanover.
And for long-term planners, Nagoya, Japan, is scheduled to be host to a world's fair in 2005.
JOSEPH SIANO",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:  New Hampshire
New Hampshire
Question: Is it true that New England has a prehistoric site similar to Stonehenge in England? If so, please supply details. - R. M., Morristown, N.J.
Answer: America's Stonehenge is the name given to what is believed to be a megalithic calendar site at Salem, about 20 miles southeast of Manchester, N.H. In the center of the main site, on a hilltop, are 22 structures - walls and chambers - and in the area around it are large standing granite slabs set among more walls. These slabs are astronomically aligned, supporting the theory that the area was laid out 4,000 years ago by an advanced civilization that studied the movement of the sun, moon and stars. Some of the monoliths are aligned wth sunrise and sunset on the solstices and equinoxes on March 22, June 21, Sept. 22 and Dec. 21.
Casts of inscriptions found on the site are among exhibits in the museum at the entrance lodge on State Route 111 in Salem. From there it is about a five-minute walk to the hilltop. The privately owned site is open daily through October from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. and in November on weekends only. Admission is $5; $4 for the elderly, 65 and over, and $1.50 for children 6 to 12. Telephone: 603-893-8300.  Lugano Gallery
Question:What are the visiting days and hours of the Baron Thyssen Collection at the Villa Favorita in Switzerland? We plan to be in the area Aug. 29 to 31. - T. J. W., South Nyack, N.Y.
Answer:The private picture gallery of the 17th-century Villa Favorita at Castagnola, Lugano, is open Tuesday through Sunday, from 10 A.M. to 5 P.M., until Oct. 16. (In spring it open only on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.) Admission is about $8. People who go to see this extensive collection from Aug. 9 will also be able to attend a special exhibition described as 40 of the most significant Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in museums in the Soviet Union. They are being exchanged by L'Hermitage Museum in Leningrad and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow for 40 works from the Thyssen Collection. The Russian exhibition will remain open until Nov. 15. The villa's gallery exhibits works of all European schools from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.  Vietnam
Question: I am a Peace Corps volunteer stationed in the Philippines and want to know if Vietnam is open to American tourists. Where would I get a visa? - T. A. B., Manila
Answer: Manila and Bangkok, Thailand, are cities where Americans planning a visit to Vietnam may apply for a Vietnamese visa. Philippine Airlines operates weekly service to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), and there is service from Bangkok on Thai Airways International and Air France.
However, the United States does not have diplomatic relations with Vietnam, and for this reason the Treasury Department forbids travel companies in this country to arrange or promote tours there. Philippine Airlines in New York, for example, no longer offers package tours, which it did for a time last year. The airline had an arrangement with a tour company in Manila, Philippine Impex International, and promoted 10-day packages to Vietnam from American cities, via Manila, for about $2,100.
Visitors to Manila can still arrange on their own to join a trip to Vietnam. Philippine Airlines' round trip from Manila to Ho Chi Minh City, departing and returning on Wednesdays, costs about $1,300. The airline's office in Toronto still offers a Vietnam tour.
Morris Schuster, president of Orient Flexi-Pax Tours, recently visited Hanoi, Da Nang, Ho Chi Minh City, Hue and other cities. He secured his visa in Bangkok where, he says, an American must stay three days while the visa application is approved by the Vietnamese Consulate. The application has to be submitted at least three weeks in advance. Mr. Schuster said he hopes to be able to offer group tours sometime in the future when the diplomatic situation improves. Meanwhile, a few Americans have visited Vietnam on the group tours available weekly from Bangkok. From there, they cost about $1,200 for a six-night visit to Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi and $1,660 for an eight-night stay that includes more cities.
Mr. Schuster said the Vietnamese are interested in developing tourism. The furnishings and facilities in the hotels he visited, he said, were akin to those found in a modest American motel - 'or in China 10 years ago.' (Orient Flexi-Pax Tours is at 630 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017; 212-692-9550 or, out of state, 800-545-5540.) Travel to Vietnam by Americans is not forbidden and their passports are valid there, but the State Department discourages visits by Americans because it cannot provide consular protective services. No third country represents the interests of the United States in Vietnam.
Individuals contemplating a visit are advised to seek advice on financial regulations from the Office of Foreign Assets Control, Treasury Department, Washington, D.C. 20220.  Guatemala
Question: Can you put me in touch with companies that are accustomed to arranging tours in Guatemala? -J. M. L., Chicago
Answer: An escorted five-day, four-night tour in Guatemala for $235 a person, double occupancy, is offered by Sanborn Tours (Post Office Box 761, Bastrop, Tex. 78602; 512-321-1131 or 800-531-5440).
Two nights are spent at the Pan American Hotel in Guatemala City and two at the Mayan Inn in Chichicastenango. Air fare is additional, and no meals are included. Sanborn also has a three-night stay in Guatemala City for $110 a person and a day excursion by air from the city to Tikal for $199.
Among several other tour operators that go to Guatemala is Venture Tours (870 Market Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94102; 415-433-3600 or 800-289-7070).
It has a seven-night fly-drive tour that, depending on hotels used, costs about $900, including air fare from New York. Flights can also be arranged from Miami. Travelers also get a subcompact rental car for the itinerary, which includes Guatemala City, Antigua, Lake Atitlan and Chichicastenango.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
I am told that the Star Alliance has great deals on round-the-world fares. How can I get information on this? -- Y. J. Kim, Toms River, N.J.
The three main airline alliances -- Star Alliance (www.staralliance.com, with 18 carriers, including United, Singapore, Lufthansa, Air New Zealand), Oneworld (www.oneworld.com, with 8 carriers, including American, British Airways and Qantas) and Skyteam.com (10 carriers, including Continental, Delta, Air France, KLM and Alitalia) -- offer round-the-world opportunities with a raft of options, based on the number of continents visited or miles traveled. Prices depend on itinerary (a Northern Hemisphere routing traveling east or west taking in Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok or Tokyo will cost about 30 percent less than a southern routing via Australia or the South Pacific) and the number of stopovers.
Most alliance round-the-world trips are made with two airlines; for example, British Airways across the Atlantic to a variety of gateways and on to Sydney, and Qantas back home across the Pacific.
You must travel in a continuous direction with no backtracking, stay away at least 10 days, and make at least three stopovers. You can often buy your ticket at any time before you depart and change the dates of most flights and even destination cities for a fee. The tickets are typically valid for one year; usually allowing two stopovers in Asia, two in the Pacific and three in North America. Compare prices and conditions for the places you want to go. Travelers can both earn and redeem frequent-flier miles among member airlines of each alliance.
Round-the-world tickets, like most multisector trips, are too complicated to book online. Check out the options on an airline alliance site, then call a member airline or a travel agent to make reservations.
If you already need to fly halfway around the world, it makes sense to fly all the way around on a ticket that can save up to 40 percent on the cost of a conventional round-trip fare. (Fly westward and you beat jet lag because you extend your natural day, whereas flying east, you exacerbate it by shortening your natural night.)
In general, expect to pay from $2,400 for a ticket in economy class, $7,000 in business class and $12,000 in first. Travelers who make at least one trip a year to Europe or Asia may want to buy a round-the-world fare somewhere along the way, which could save 30 percent over buying in the United States. Thus if you were to fly to London, you would need a ticket to get there; but though you end your itinerary back in, say, New York, you would normally have 12 months in which to use the part of the ticket to return to London.
ROGER COLLIS",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"QUESTION BOX
LEAD: Tulip Time Question:Where can one arrange a trip to the Netherlands in the spring when the tulips are in bloom? -M. C. H., Dolgeville, N.Y. Answer:An eight-day trip called Holland Holiday visits bulb fields, gardens and other sites in spring and summer, including April and May, when the tulips, daffodils and other flowers are in bloom.
Tulip Time Question:Where can one arrange a trip to the Netherlands in the spring when the tulips are in bloom? -M. C. H., Dolgeville, N.Y. Answer:An eight-day trip called Holland Holiday visits bulb fields, gardens and other sites in spring and summer, including April and May, when the tulips, daffodils and other flowers are in bloom. It is operated by Maupintour (408 East 50th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022; 212-688-4106 and 800-255-4266, which can be called from New York). Departures and return are on Saturdays. The itinerary includes the 70-acre Keukenhof Gardens at Lisse, the showcase of the bulb industry, as well as The Hague, the Delft pottery factory in Rotterdam and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. A guide accompanies each group and the land cost of $1,498 a person, double occupancy, includes hotels, 13 meals and tour bus. The tour uses KLM for the flight from New York to Amsterdam, which, depending on date, costs from $448 to $628, round trip.
Another way to see the spring flowers is from a 100-passenger ship that cruises along the canals and rivers of the Netherlands. A program combining this seven-night cruise and three nights in Amsterdam is offered by Sea Air Holidays (733 Summer Street, Stamford, Conn. 06901; 203-356-9033 and 800-732-6247). The price, excluding air fare but including most meals and sightseeing ashore, is $2,079. The cruise on its own costs from $1,199. The ship leaves Amsterdam on six consecutive Saturdays starting April 4. Battlefields Question:Where can I find information about escorted tours of the Normandy battlefields? - H. W., New York Answer:World War II sites in Normandy are included in tours from the United States and on shorter trips from Paris, all of them escorted. One of the longer ones, a 15-day 'March to Victory' tour, is offered by Battlefield Tours (1680 Old Spanish Trail, Slidell, La. 70458; 504-641-4422 or, out of state, 800-321-9412). The tour starts with a flight to London and a visit to Southampton, goes across the Channel by ferry to Cherbourg and continues to Caen, Paris, Rheims and Aachen, West Germany. The return flight is from Frankfurt. There are departures on June 26, Aug. 14 and Sept. 21, and the cost of $1,995 a person, double occupancy, includes trans-Atlantic round-trip air fare, hotels, most meals and guides.
Galaxy Tours (Post Office Box 234, Wayne, Pa. 19087; 215-254-6600 or 800-523-7287), which has organized visits to Normandy for 28 years, does a lot of trips for veterans of specific military units who want to retrace their own routes. But it also has a general tour, scheduled for June 1. The 10-day trip includes London and Paris as well as the beaches and other landmarks in Normandy. The land-only cost will be about $900 a person.
From Beach to Bastogne is the name of a nine-day trip, departing June 11 and Sept. 26, with Tours of Historic and Important Places (Post Office Box 203, Mountain Lakes, N.J. 07046; 201-335-8316). The cost of $1,599 includes air fare.
A one-day visit to the Normandy landing beaches and other sites can be taken from Paris through City Rama (347 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016; 212-683-8120). Its program is on Tuesday and Friday from April 17 through October. The one-day tour, by bus and back to Paris by train, costs $113, including lunch. Eleuthera Question:Would you please give some information on the Cotton Bay Club in Eleuthera, the Bahamas? I never see it mentioned any more. We stayed there some time ago. -M. F. P., Edison, N.J. Answer:By all accounts, the Cotton Bay Club near Rock Sound, Eleuthera, continues to flourish. The resort is one of the few in the Bahamian Family Islands with an 18-hole golf course, and it also has its own marina and four tennis courts. There are 77 rooms, about half of them in the main lodge, the remainder in cottages and villas in the gardens. Rates this winter are from $254 to $302 a day for two people, breakfast and dinner included. Reservations can be made through Hotels of Distinction (800-843-2297) or the Bahamas Reservation Service (800-327-0787). The address is: Cotton Bay Club, Post Office Box 28, Rock Sound, Eleuthera, Bahamas; 809-334-2101. Yugoslavia by Bus Question:Will there be bus tours of Yugoslavia next summer, and where can reservations be made? - J. F., Philadelphia Answer:Several tours are scheduled from April through October, many of them taking in the Dalmatian coast and visiting Dubrovnik. Some either begin or end in Zagreb, which, like Dubrovnik, is a gateway city for international flights. For travelers making their own way to Yugoslavia who are interested only in land arrangements, there are some Yugoslav travel agencies with respresentatives in New York that make reservations.
Among them are Atlas Ambassador (60 East 42d Street, New York, N.Y. 10165; 212-697-6767) and General Tourist (212 East 47th Street, New York, N.Y. 10017; 212-935-3022). Both offer escorted tours of eight days from about $420 a person, double occupancy. Their prices include hotels, with private shower or bath, most meals and sightseeing. Travel agents can book bus tours with Yugotours (350 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10118; 212-563-2400 or 800-223-5298), whose prices include international, round-trip air fare as well as hotels and two meals a day. A 10-day itinerary, including 2 nights in Dubrovnik, costs, from New York, from $958 to $1,308. Departures are on Tuesdays. A two-week tour, with visits to Belgrade and Sarajevo, leaves on Thursdays and is $1,209 to $1,598.
A Yugoslav bus tour is also available with Saga Holidays (120 Boylston Street, Boston, Mass. 02116; 617-451-6808 or 800-343-0273), which caters to travelers aged 55 and over and deals directly with the public. Saga has a 17-night trip, with four departures in April and three in May, all on Mondays. The tour includes one night in London on the outward and return journeys. Price, including round-trip air fare from New York, hotels and three meals a day: $1,409. Readers are invited to send written questions about travel to Q & A, Travel Section, The New York Times, 229 West 43d Street, New York, N.Y. 10036. Questions may be answered only through the column, not by mail or telephone.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
V-E Day in London
Q.  What special events will take place in London this May to celebrate the 50th anniversary of V-E Day? -- William J. Stone, Mount Pleasant, S.C.
A.  May 8, marking the 50th anniversary of victory in Europe in World War II, will be a public holiday in Britain. Throughout the year scores of events will be held to celebrate the occasion, although the official theme will be one of peace and reconciliation. Commemorative events will also be held for V-J Day, on Aug. 15, marking victory over Japan, and the end of the war.
The focus of events in London will come on the weekend of May 6 to 8 in Hyde Park, with a variety of exhibitions and performances. At 8 P.M. on May 8 Queen Elizabeth II will light a beacon in the park, to be followed by the lighting of many similar beacons across the country. The Hyde Park lighting will be followed by a concert with a number of international stars.
Following are some of the many other events:
The Royal British Legion, an organization of ex-servicemen, is staging a Hyde Park concert on May 6 with a 4,000-member choir, and a ""Golden Gala Evening"" at the Royal Albert Hall on July 12. There will be free access to the park concert but no seating provided. Tickets for the gala, from $46.50 to $62, can be reserved through the Royal Albert Hall Ticket Shop, (44 171) 589 8212.
Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Road, London SE1 6HZ, (44 171) 416 5000, will present a ""Victory Festival"" from March 17 to Aug. 28 that will include an exhibition about London at war. Open daily from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Admission $6, calculated at $1.55 to the pound, children $3.80. Admission free after 4:30 P.M. and on V-E Day and V-J Day.
Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, South Kensington, London SW7 2RL; (44 171) 938 8349 (recorded information about exhibitions), (44 171) 938 8441 (general information). Until March 19 an exhibition called ""Warworks, Women, Photography and the Art of War"" will present images and themes of war through the eyes of 11 female artists working with photography. Open 10 A.M. to 5:50 P.M. from Tuesday to Sunday, noon to 5:50 P.M. on Monday. A $7 donation is requested, $1.50 for children.
National Army Museum, Royal Hospital Road, London SW3 4HD; (44 171) 730 0717. A special ""Victory for Europe"" exhibition will be presented but full details have not been made final. Open daily from 10 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. Admission free.
National Portrait Gallery, St. Martin's Place, London WC2H OHE; (171) 306 0055. Gallery 16A on Level 2 will show portraits of men and women who played a role in Britain in the 15-year postwar period. Admission free. Open Monday to Saturday from 10 A.M. to 6 P.M., Sunday noon to 6 P.M. through June 18.
Free information sheets listing V-E and V-J Day events in London and outside London will be available at London Tourist Information Centers at Heathrow Airport Underground station, Liverpool Street Station, Victoria Station and the Self ridge's store on Oxford Street.
The Southern Tourist Board has set up a telephone line about V-E and V-J Day events throughout the country at (0891) 88-1945. It can be dialed only in Britain and costs from 60 to 75 cents a minute. Hong Kong Shopping
Q.  A friend and I are planning to spend a week in Hong Kong in March. How do we find reputable tailors to make men's and women's suits, and what should we expect to pay? -- P. Caldwell, Kansas City, Mo.
A.  A 200-page booklet called ""Shopping"" published by the Hong Kong Tourist Association would seem to answer your needs. The booklet, which is available only at the association's offices in Hong Kong, lists 26 tailors on Hong Kong Island and more than 100 in Kowloon. All belong to the association, which says it insists that members offer value for money, accurate representation of products and prompt resolution of justified complaints.
Following are four taken at random from the booklet:
Ideal Tailor, Suite 127, 1/F., Prince's Building, Chater Road, Central, Hong Kong; (852) 2522 4861.
Loa Hai Shing, 201-206 Tak Shing House, 20 Des Voeux Road, Central, Hong Kong; (852) 2523 6167.
The Success Shop, AR209, Princess Shopping Plaza, Hotel Miramar, 118 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon; (852) 2366 7974.
Winston Company, Shop 106, 1/F., Far East Mansion, 5-6 Middle Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon; (852) 2366 7924.
For top-quality suits for men or women expect to pay from $500 to $750. Suits at $250 are also available.
To get a copy of the ""Shopping"" booklet when you arrive contact one of the following Hong Kong Tourist Association offices, all of which can be reached at (852) 2807 6543, fax (852) 2806 0303:
Star Ferry Concourse, Tshim Sha Tsui, Kowloon (open 8 A.M. to 6 P.M. Monday to Friday, 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. Saturday and Sunday).
Jardine House, Shop 8, Basement, 1 Connaught Place, Central, Hong Kong (9 A.M. to 6 P.M. Monday to Friday, 9 A.M. to 1 P.M. Saturday and Sunday).
Hong Kong International Airport (8 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. daily).
For general information contact the Hong Kong Tourist Association, 590 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10036; (212) 869-5008. The Rain in Portugal
Q.  I will be traveling to Lisbon and the island of Madeira in early March. Please tell me what weather conditions I should expect. -- E. Stanton, Brooklyn
A.  Be sure to pack an umbrella. In both places you will be arriving in one of the rainiest months of the year.
Winter is the wet season everywhere in Portugal. In Lisbon, the capital, you can expect a total of 4.2 inches in March and some 14 wet days. The March total is surpassed only in January, at 4.3 inches. Temperatures, however, are mild, with the average highs 63 degrees and the lows 50.
In Madeira, about 450 miles west of Morocco, the winter months are quite wet and stormy and cloudy conditions might last for days.
In March you can expect 3.1 inches of rain. In November the total averages 3.5 inches and in December 3.3 inches. March temperatures there are also mild. Average highs are 66, lows 56. Tennis in Sweden
Q.  We are planning a trip to Sweden in June. How can I get in touch with local tennis clubs and perhaps set up a game with a local player? -- D. Schlorf, Longboat Key, Fla.
A.  The more than 200 tourist offices in Sweden can put you in touch with local clubs. For a list of the offices write to the Swedish Travel and Tourism Council, 655 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017; (212) 949-2333. TERENCE NEILAN",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Please warn travelers about problems they may have in getting their full mileage benefits from American's AAdvantage program. One is led to believe that if flying on American, or a partner carrier in Oneworld Alliance, like British Airways, one gets the same number of miles for the flight. But on a recent round-trip flight on British Airways from London to Tokyo, I got only 25 percent of the miles I should have received. American told me I should have checked with British Airways beforehand. American refuses to reimburse me for the 9,000 miles I lost. -- Archer Adams, London
Frequent-flier programs are rife with rules and abstruse exceptions and exclusions buried in the small print. Remember that airlines are competing with one another within the alliances: Oneworld (eight carriers, including American, British Airways and Qantas) and Star Alliance (25 carriers, including Air Canada, United, US Airways, Air New Zealand, Thai, Singapore Airlines and Swiss). While you can normally earn and redeem miles with each partner, there can be exceptions, especially when it comes to upgrades and mileage bonuses. And some miles may be more equal than others because every program has different rules, like award levels or the category of fare that earns miles or 'elite' status.
The Web site aa.com/aadvantage states: 'Earn a minimum of 500 AAdvantage miles each time you purchase and fly on a published eligible fare ticket on British Airways, except for miles earned on eligible Discount Economy Class Fares, which will be 25 percent of the normal minimum (125 AAdvantage miles). British Airways' trans-Atlantic flights to/from the U.S. are not valid for AAdvantage mileage accrual or redemption.' (To get to this takes much searching. From hwww.aa.com/content/aboutUs/codesharePartners/BA--Codeshare--Partner.jhtml, click on 'View more information on redeeming miles on British Airways.'
You can check the status of 150 frequent-flier programs and compare the benefits at Global Flight Management in Germany (www.globalflight.eu), which charges 129 euros, or $168 at $1.30 to the euro, to join for a year. Matt Bennett, a self-styled 'Mr. Upgrade,' is an authority on United States-based premium travel ticketing strategies, especially how best to use miles for upgrades. Mr. Bennett is editor and publisher of Firstclassflyer.com, a monthly newsletter ($97 a year). Inside Flyer, edited and published by Randy Petersen (www.insideflyer.com, $45 a year), is a great source for fliers trying to make better use of frequent-flier programs.
ROGER COLLIS",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
London's Fall Gardens
Q. I will be in London this fall and hope that the public gardens will have some interesting autumnal displays. Can you provide information?  -- Alexandra Maynard, Cincinnati
A. Fall is a good time to visit many of the gardens in and around London, not only for the seasonal foliage but also for the comparative lack of crowds.
In October and November, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew will offer a series of events under the banner 'Fruitful Autumn at Kew.' There will be displays of pumpkins, gourds and other members of the cucurbit family, and on Oct. 28 and 29, apple celebrations will feature exhibits on various kinds of apples and a cider-making machine. The grass garden is popular during the fall and on Oct. 21, 22 and 28, the role of grasses in contemporary gardens and in making mats, baskets and other goods will be examined in exhibits and in traditional story-telling sessions. A restoration of the garden's Broad Walk will start on Nov. 3 to 5, when workers in 19th-century costume will use a horse-drawn tree planter to replant cedars along the wide pathway from the central lake to the orangery that was originally laid out by the landscape designer William Nesfield in 1845. Kew Gardens is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. Admission is $7, $3.50 for children 5 to 16 (calculated at 71 pence to the dollar). Information: (44-20) 8332 5655.
The Chelsea Physic Garden, founded in 1673 by the Society of Apothecaries, houses what is believed to be one of the earliest rock gardens in Europe, created with balsatic lava brought back by the botanist Sir Joseph Banks from Iceland in 1772. Fall highlights of the four-acre garden are such flowering bulbs  as Guernsey lilies, a flowering crab apple tree and the brilliant red foliage of the American Tupelo tree. The garden, at 66 Royal Hospital Road, London, is open Wednesday and Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. until Oct. 31. Admission is $5.65. Information: (44-20) 7352 5646.
Fenton House, a 17th-century house in Hampstead, about three miles from central London, has a  lovely, terraced garden of about one acre, with hollies, yew hedges and an orchard. The garden, on Windmill Hill in London, is open Wednesday to Friday, 2 to 5 p.m., and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends until Oct. 31. Admission is $6. Information: (44-20) 7435 3471.
Also in Hampstead are the 120-acre gardens of the neo-classical Kenwood House. The oak and beech woods to the south of two large lakes are especially beautiful in the fall. The gardens, on Hampstead Lane, are open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. through October, and until 4 p.m. from November through March. Admission is free. Information: (44-20) 8348 1286.
Hudson River Festivities
Q. Are any of the historic estates along the Hudson River organizing events during the long Thanksgiving weekend? -- Josephine Sardone, Rochester
A. Historic Hudson Valley, the organization that manages several sites on or near the Hudson River in New York, is offering a variety of  special programs for visitors during the Thanksgiving weekend. They all, however, focus on another holiday: Christmas.
At Montgomery Place, in Annandale-on-Hudson, there will be two holiday-decorating workshops. On Saturday, Nov. 25, from 10 a.m. to noon, children 7 to 10 years old can make Christmas ornaments to take home. The cost is $10 a person, $8 for members. The following day, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., a workshop for adults focuses on creating decorative centerpieces. The cost is $20, $18 for members. You can also take a 45-minute tour of the early 19th-century, Federal house, which will be in the process of being decorated for a 1920's Christmas. The tour costs $6, $5 for seniors and $3 for children 5 to 17. Information: (845) 758-5461, extension 16.
From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Nov. 24 through 26, at Sunnyside, Washington Irving's cottage in Tarrytown, visitors can attend a Christmas Premiere Weekend at the 17th-century cottage. Children can make Victorian Christmas cards, eat cookies and candy, and decorate a gingerbread model of Sunnyside, while adults can admire the traditional 19th-century decorations. Admission is $8 for adults, $7 for seniors and $4 for children 5 to 17. Information: (914) 591-8763.
The 18th-century Van Cortlandt Manor, in Croton-on-Hudson, will have its own Christmas Premiere Weekend, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Nov. 24 through 26. Candle lanterns, a marzipan hedgehog, wreaths and ribbons are among the decorations. There will be live period music and  crafts for children. Admission is $8, $7 for seniors and $4 for children 5 to 17. Information: (914) 271-8981.
Cooking in Umbria
Q. I'm interested in taking cooking classes anywhere in Umbria this fall, preferably a program that includes sightseeing excursions. -- Maxine P. Leonard, Syracuse
A. Perhaps the only thing better than eating Italian food is learning how to prepare it. Here are a few places in Umbria that organize cooking classes.
The Palazzo Terranova, an eight-room hotel near Citta di Castello, has a program that includes shopping in Umbrian markets, visiting local food producers and participating in the preparation of meals. The British owner of the hotel, Sarah Townsend, assists in the cooking classes and also organizes tours to Umbrian vineyards and trips to nearby towns and cities, like Perugia. Every weekend in November, the hotel will offer Feasts of the Forest workshops, which focus on ingredients like porcini mushrooms, truffles and olive oil. Prices for the program are about $135 a day, in addition to accommodations, which range from about $280 to $590, at a rate of 2,237 lire to the dollar. Information: (39 075) 8570083 or visit www.palazzoterranova.com.
The American chef and cookbook author Evan Kleiman holds weeklong cooking courses just outside of Todi, using a recently restored farmhouse as her base, where students also stay. Participants shop in local markets for the ingredients that will be used in the day's cooking class. Day trips to nearby towns like Perugia, Orvieto and Assisi as well as visits to local food producers round out the week's activities. In the fall, the courses highlight olive oil, porcini mushrooms, chestnuts and wild boar. Prices start at $2,800 for the course, including lodging. Information: (323) 936-9086.
SUZANNE MacNEILLE",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Sunny Art Classes
Q. I'd like to spend the winter at an artist colony or school in a warm area. Have you any recommendations? -- Dorothy Epstein, Brick Township, N.J.
A. First, find a good guide to art schools, colonies and workshops, since there are many to choose from in all parts of the country -- although many run in the summer in areas that welcome skiers in the winter. Also remember that many true artist colonies are places that do not offer instruction, but are retreats for working away from most mundane distractions, according to Miriam Feurle, program coordinator at the Alliance of Artists' Communities, 2325 East Burnside Street, Portland, Ore. 97214; (503) 797-6988, fax (503)-797-956.
The alliance offers a directory of artists' communities -- many of which, but not all, are competitive-entry refuges that do not offer classes -- for $20.95, which includes shipping, by mail or through its Web site, www.artistcommunities.org/.
A broader listing of art-study opportunities is available through Shawguides, which offers its Guide to Art and Craft Workshops ( 1991) for $16.95 from Bookmasters, (800) 247-6553 or (419) 281-1802, fax (419) 281-6883. This is not updated yearly, but the Web site, www.shawguides.com/ is, and it allows you to look for classes by subject or region.
Among those that may meet your desires are these three:
Scottsdale Artists' School, 3720 North Marshall Way, Post Office Box 8527, Scottsdale, Ariz. 85252; (800) 333-5707, fax (602) 990-0652. This organization offers dozens of five-day workshops through the winter taught by visiting professional artists from around the country, costing $375 to $500. It also offers classes one day a week for 10 to 12 weeks. It doesn't provide lodging, but arranges for discounts from hotels and motels.
Konis Art offers a chance to 'paint and party' in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, Feb. 6 to 15. Taught by Ben Konis, who specializes in pastels and oils,  classes are held four hours on each of five days of the trip. There will be informal Spanish lessons at cocktail hours. Accommodations at the villa Casa de los Abuelos and all meals -- but not air fare -- are included in the price of $2,125. Contact Jini Konis, Workshop Director, 712 West 17th Street, Amarillo, Tex. 79102; (806) 373-8458, fax (806) 354-2148.
Atlantic Center for the Arts offers more of a residency experience. Teachers choose up to 10 students for the five to six sessions -- lasting from one to three weeks -- from slides, a resume and a letter of intent. But Jim Frost, assistant to the program director, says the program is not limited to experienced artists and encourages anyone to apply.
A three-week residency costs $800, including a private room with bath, communal living space and kitchen. Transportation and meals are extra. The center is at 1414 Art Center Avenue, New Smyrna Beach, Fla. 32168; (904) 427-6975, fax (904) 427-5669; www.atlantic-centerarts.org.
A Quick Honeymoon
Q.  I am getting married this fall and my fiance and I want to go on a mini-honeymoon of just two nights, within a few hours' drive of home. Any suggestions? -- Lenore Levy, New York, N.Y.
A.  There are surely many choices within 150 miles of New York, but a few destinations come to mind.
The Mayflower Inn, Route 47, Washington, Conn. 06793, is definitely romantic -- a number of couples hold their weddings there each year. This restored inn is set among spectacular gardens in a quiet corner of Litchfield County. There are 25 rooms, painstakingly decorated with antiques, an excellent restaurant, tennis courts, a heated outdoor pool, a spa, aerobics and tai chi classes and wilderness trails. Doubles range in price from $270 to $430, suites $450 to $710; all meals are extra. Reservations: (860) 868-9466, fax (860) 868-1497.
If you enjoy seaside vacations, consider the Mainstay Inn in Cape May, N.J., a Victorian former gentlemen's club (read casino). It has three buildings -- two traditional B & B's and the more resortlike Officer's Quarters, with four suites that offer an array of amenities like fireplaces, in-room Continental breakfast and whirlpool tubs. All buildings have airy rooms and furnishings that you might think belong in a museum. There is no smoking in the buildings. Double-occupancy rates, which include Continental breakfast and afternoon tea, are $95 to $255. Call (609) 884-8690.
Fall is prime season to enjoy the Berkshires and Blantyre, Post Office Box 95, Lenox, Mass. 01240, which treats honeymooners to champagne in their rooms. This Tudor mansion has 23 rooms -- eight with fireplaces -- divided among the main house, carriage house and three cottages, on 85 acres, and a splendid restaurant. There are a heated pool, whirlpools, sauna, four Har-Tru tennis courts and two croquet lawns. Rates: $285 to $500, suites $325 to $675, double occupancy, including Continental breakfast. Dinner is $70 a person. Reservations: (413) 637-3556, fax (413) 637-4282.
For an active retreat, Skytop Lodge, Skytop, Pa. 18357, in the Poconos is a large, picturesque, old-fashioned fieldstone resort on 5,500 acres that include a golf course, tennis courts, a lake for boating, streams for fishing and trails for biking and hiking. There are 185 rooms, including 19 suites, decorated in English country or contemporary style. A Romantic Getaway package, including three meals a day, champagne, flowers and use of all recreational facilities is $575 a night plus tax and 15 percent gratuity. Reservations: (800) 345-7759.
Getting to Althorp
Q.  I plan to visit Althorp, the ancestral home of Diana, Princess of Wales, next year. Is there public transportation available from London? -- Lucy Foster, Stratford, Conn.
A.  The closest train station to Althorp, some 70 miles northwest of London, is Northampton. According Britrail, there are frequent trains -- as many as three an hour -- from Euston station in London to Northampton, costing $32 first class or $22 second class each way for the 75-minute trip.
This summer, shuttle buses took visitors from Northampton to the estate, several miles out of town. Transportation information was given out with tickets to tour the estate. But it closed to the public Aug. 30, and next year's schedule won't be announced for several months. The telephone number for Althorp ticket information is (44-1604) 592-020; for Britrail information and tickets, (888) 274-8724.
RAY CORMIER",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Studying Art in France
Q. We are interested in spending a month or two in France and would like information on art schools or studios that offer painting and ceramics courses in English. What time of year would be best? -- Al and Fran Schwartz, New York,  N.Y.
A. The summer months offer the best opportunities for English-speakers to study art in Paris as well as in the provinces.
In Pont-Aven, the village on the Brittany coast where Gauguin painted, Caroline Boyle-Turner, an art historian at the Rhode Island School of Design, runs summer art courses for English-speaking students at the Pont-Aven School of Art. The classes -- in painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, French and art history -- have 6 to 12 students. A four-week session, from June 1 to June 28, is followed by a six-week session, from July 1 to Aug. 9. Courses are open to graduate and undergraduate fine-arts students; artists with little formal training are asked to submit slides of their work before admission. Fees range from $2,500 to $5,000, depending on the length of the session and the number of  classes taken; charges include board, breakfast and dinner with local families.  More information: (508) 263-1654 in the United States.
The school at Pont-Aven is also organizing a summer session with the American University of Paris. Classes, with a maximum of 12 students, are held in Pont-Aven from June 3 to 28, then continue in Paris from July 9 to Aug. 9. Students visit the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay and other museums. This course is open to fine-arts graduates and undergraduates; other applicants are asked to submit slides of their work. Course fees are $6,140 and include tuition, room and board while in Pont-Aven, and tuition in Paris.
The American University in Paris offers summer-session courses in painting, drawing, photography and art history. They run from June 3 to July 4 and from July 9 to Aug. 9; class size never exceeds 20. Fees, covering tuition only, start at $1,320. More information: in the United States, (212) 677-4870; in Paris, telephone (33 1) 40.62.06.00, fax (33 1) 47.05.33.39.
The Parsons School of Design in Paris offers five-week sessions, with a maximum of 15 students per class, in drawing, painting, ceramics, furniture-making and photography during the academic year. The fee is $235 per class. In the summer, classes are given in Paris from June 29 to July 25 in drawing, painting, art history and photography. Fees are $2,700 and $825 for dormitory. In La Napoule, near Nice, classes run from July 28 to Aug. 17 in drawing and painting, and contemporary art history. The charge for tuition, room and board is $3,500. More information: Holly Warner, Parsons School of Design in Paris, 14 Rue Letellier, 75015 Paris, France; telephone (33 1) 45.77.39.66, fax  (31 1) 45.77.27.36.
To Buenos Aires to Tango
Q. I will be in Buenos Aires in November and would like to know where I might see the best tango and where I might also take some tango lessons. -- William R. Burton, Redondo Beach, Calif.
A. Perhaps as a result of the success of tango shows abroad in the last few years the tango has undergone a revival in Buenos Aires, where it was born in the late 1800's.
The two best tango shows in town, which attract primarily a tourist crowd, are at El Viejo Almacen and Casablanca, in the San Telmo district; that's a five-minute taxi ride from downtown. Both feature two-hour performances at a cost of $40 a person, including unlimited drinks.
El Viejo Almacen, at Avenida Independencia and Balcarce, presents all-tango shows nightly, beginning at 10. Telephone (54 1) 300-3388.
At Casablanca, 668 Balcarce, telephone (54 1) 334-5010, the show begins at 10 P.M. from Monday to Friday. On Saturday, there are shows at 9 and 11 P.M. that feature tango and Argentine folk-dancing with dramatic displays of the boleadoras, a three-pronged leather device Argentine cowboys use to lasso cattle. There is no show on Sunday.
To see traditional and experimental tango in an authentic atmosphere, try the Cafe Tortoni, at 829 Avenida de Mayo, a turn-of-the-century institution that still has its original decor of stylish woodwork and decorated tiles. A different tango program is offered each night; for details, check the daily English-language newspaper The Buenos Aires Herald. Admission is about $9 plus a minimum of $6 for a drink.
To learn the tango's intricate steps, travelers may want to visit Rodolfo Dinzel's studio at 160 Jufre in the Almagro neighborhood, telephone (54 1) 777-0405. Group lessons are given by Mr. Dinzel, who performed in ""Tango Argentino,"" a spirited and successful show that opened in New York in 1985. The  lessons, with no more than 20 participants, take place on Wednesday and Thursday from 7 to 10 P.M. and cost $20 a person. Private lessons run two hours and cost  $70.
Also recommended is Volver, at 837 Avenida Corrientes, telephone (54 1) 322-5100. There, Gloria Barraud and Eduardo Arquimbau, who also appeared in ""Tango Argentino,"" teach one-and-a-half hour group lessons from Monday through Friday, from 6 to 9 P.M. A single class, with a maximum of 18 students, is $10 a person. (Later in the evening, you can also watch the two perform at Casablanca.) Wagner in Arizona
Q. My fiancee and I will be in Arizona in June. We understand that Wagner operas are being performed in the area then. Can you provide information? -- Thomas Irving, North Bergen, N.J.
A. In what the Arizona Opera company says will be the first of an annual series, Wagner's complete ""Ring des Nibelungen"" will be performed twice in Flagstaff between June 3 and 15. Collaborating on the presentation will be Glynn Ross, general director, and Henry Holt, artistic director, who drew acclaim for  their productions of the Ring at the Pacific Northwest Wagner Festival in Seattle from 1973 to 1983.
The four operas that make up the Ring -- ""Das Rheingold,"" ""Die Walkure,"" ""Siegfried"" and Gotter dammerung"" -- will be performed in sequence in two six-day periods, just as they are at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany. The operas will be sung in German, with English surtitles, at the Ardrey Auditorium  at Northern Arizona University. The hall seats 1,500, close in size to Bayreuth's Festspielhaus. Among those performers will be the soprano Karen Bureau as Brunnhilde (she has sung with the Hanover Opera), the tenor George Gray as Siegfried (the Hamburg and Zurich Operas).
While in the Flagstaff area, visitors can take the opportunity to see such sights as the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert. Information: Arizona Opera, 4600 North 12th Street, Phoenix, Ariz. 85014; (602)  266-7464, fax (602) 266-5806. Tickets for a Ring cycle: $100 to $525.
PAUL FREIREICH",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Home Exchange Sources
Q.
I am trying to find organizations that facilitate international home exchanges. -- Ann Jung, Olivebridge, N.Y.
A. Here are three services that publish lists of homes and apartments for exchange. Subscribers, who can list their own homes, contact the owner of a home in the directory and make their own arrangements. To make an exchange, it helps to be flexible about dates and exact location.
Intervac U.S., Post Office Box 590504, San Francisco, Calif. 94159; (800) 756-4663. This company publishes directories in February, April and June of houses and apartments for exchange (and some for rent). The total number of listings is about 8,400, with 80 percent international. Subscribers pay $62 for three direcotires and a listing in one; for those 62 and older, $55.
Vacation Exchange Club, Post Office Box 650, Key West, Fla. 33041; (800) 638-3841. This company publishes directories in January and March followed by monthly supplements, with a total of about 16,000 listings, about 60 percent of them international. The cost is $50 a year, including a listing in one of the directories.
Trading Homes International, Post Office Box 787, Hermosa Beach, Calf.  90254; (800) 877-8723. This new service will publish two directories a year. It expects to have about 2,000 listings, 40 percent of them international, in its first directory this December; the second will appear in May. Membership is $65, which includes a listing in both directories.
There are companies that, for a fee, search for homes to exchange for yours. One is Better Homes and Travel, Post Office Box 10664, Marina del Rey, Calif. 90295; (310) 821-5500. Send a stamped, self-addressed business-size envelope if requesting material. There is a $50 registration fee, which, if no exchange is made, is credited toward a rental; the closing cost for an exchange is $150 to $600 depending on location, length of stay and type of accommodation. The company deals primarily with properties in France, Switzerland, Italy and England.  Walking in Winter
Q.
My husband and I would like to find a group walking holiday this winter in a warm climate. Do you know of any such trips? -- Ethel Roskies, Montreal
A. Wintertime walking tours are available in Central and South America, Australia and New Zealand and other parts of Asia and, for those who don't mind sweater weather, in southern Europe. Here is a sampling of tours in the winter. They may be booked, at the same cost as from the organizer, through All Adventure Travel, Post Office Box 4307, Boulder, Colo. 80306, (800) 537-4025, which represents operators of hiking vacations all over the world. All rates, based on two people sharing a room, include accommodations and most meals but not air fare. In all of the tours, luggage is transported from lodging to lodging, so walkers need carry only a day pack.
""Big Island Walking,"" on the island of Hawaii, six days, emphasizes volcanoes, flora and fauna. Operated by Backroads Bicycle Tours of Berkeley, Calif., it costs $1,195 a person.
""Caribbean Rain Forest,"" on the island of Dominica, seven days, is offered by Earth Tours of New York.  Participants stay in country inns and small hotels. The cost is $990. There are monthly departures (including groups especially for older hikers).
Costa Rica, with its rain forest and beaches, is popular for winter hiking, and several companies offer trips there. One, ""Costa Rica Nature Safari,"" 12 days, is $1,495 and is run by Avenir Adventures of Park City, Utah.
Our winter is summer in New Zealand. ""Great South Island Wilderness and Walking,"" 9 days ($985) and 13 days ($1,470), takes walkers to country hotels, bed and breakfasts and farms. It is operated by Alpine Recreation of Lake Tekao in New Zealand). The seasons are also reversed in Australia, where ""Wildlife, Wildflowers and Wilderness,"" run by Monarch Nature Tours in Canberra, Australia, takes in six national parks in southeast Australia in 14 days. The cost is $1,968.
In ""Thailand Tropical Adventure,"" 16 days, run by Bolder Adventures of Boulder, Colo., participants hike in the hills of northern Thailand and stay in villages. They spend the last five days on the resort island of Phuket. The cost is $2,295.
In Europe, it is possible to make ""self-guided"" village-to-village walks along the mountainous ridge in the west of Majorca, Spain. The weather is in the 60's; December and January can be rainy, though. The operator, Sherpa Expeditions of London, makes lodging reservations and supplies maps and instructions and arranges moving of luggage from place to place. The cost is $619 for eight days. A similar trip can be made on the Greek island of Rhodes. A seven-day walking tour there, offered by Avenir Advenures, is $699.  Foreign Coins for Charity
Q.
Is there a charitable organization that solicits the foreign coins travelers have when returning to the United States? -- Mary H. Pollack, New York, N.Y.
A. There are sometimes receptacles at airports that solicit traveler's coins for various charities. Once you are home, there is an organization, called Change for Good, based in Washington, that accepts foreign coins. Operated by the Potomac Area Council of the American Youth Hostel, Change for Good collects coins (paper money is accepted too), which banks have agreed to convert into dollars without charging a commission. The money is used for community programs, among them Partners in Education, which arranges outings bringing together disadvantaged children and young people who stay at the hostels. For more information, or to send foreign money, contact American Youth Hostels Change for Good, 1108 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005; (202) 783-0717.  Hawaii, Wet and Dry
Q.
We will be in Hawaii in January. I have heard that the weather on one half of an island can be drastically different from that on the other half. Is this so? -- Sandra M. Pulver, New York, N.Y.
A. It is indeed. The north and eastern coasts, which are exposed to the trade winds, get much heavier rainfall than the south and western coasts. For example, Hilo, on the east coast of the island of Hawaii, has a total annual rainfall that averages 128 inches while Puako, in a sheltered part of the island's west coast, gets just 10 inches a year. More representative of a southern climate is Honolulu, on the southwest coast of Oahu. It gets an average annual rainfall of 23 inches. In January, Honolulu gets an average of 14 rainy days, with a total of 4.1 inches. Still, rain is intermittent, and there is sunshine almost every day there. (For comparison, New York has 12 days of precipitation in January with a total of 3.7 inches.)",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
LEAD:  Vietnam  Question: Please name any groups sponsoring tours to Vietnam. -M. G. B., New York  Answer: A few tour companies that operate programs in Asia and the Pacific have begun to send small groups on tours to Vietnam. They have been putting packages together since the Vietnamese Government decided last year to allow American tourists to visit.
Vietnam  Question: Please name any groups sponsoring tours to Vietnam. -M. G. B., New York  Answer: A few tour companies that operate programs in Asia and the Pacific have begun to send small groups on tours to Vietnam. They have been putting packages together since the Vietnamese Government decided last year to allow American tourists to visit. Philippine Airlines, working with a tour company in Manila, Philippine Impex International, says it has scheduled monthly departures through next March. Its prices of $2,083 a person (double occupancy) for a 10-day package and $2,823 for 17 days, include round-trip flight from American cities to Manila and then on to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). Hanoi is also visited. The airline says the tours are escorted and rates include visa, hotel accommodations, three meals a day, sightseeing and travel within Vietnam by plane and bus. Two nights are spent at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Manila. Reservations may be made through travel agents or Philippine Airlines (212-575-7854 or 800-554-5444).
Orient Flexi-Pax Tours offers seven- and nine-day tours of Vietnam from Bangkok as an extension of its other packages in the Orient. The seven-day visit focuses on Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi and costs $1,179; the nine-day itinerary also takes in Da Nang, Hue, Dalat and other cities and is $1,659. Domestic flights on Air Vietnam as well as hotels, all meals, sightseeing and guides are included, along with round-trip flight from Bangkok on Thai Airways International or Air France. Orient Flexi-Pax Tours (630 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017; 212-692-9550 or 800-223-7460) says accommodations are comfortable but not luxurious. It prefers to work with travel agents.
Lindblad Travel (Post Office Box 912, 1 Sylvan Road North, Westport, Conn. 06881; 203-226-8531 or 800-243-5657) has scheduled a series of 16-day tours from Seattle, starting in November, that combines Vietnam with Cambodia (visiting Angkor Wat) and Thailand. Price of $2,500 includes flights in Vietnam and Cambodia but not international air fares.  Italian Island  Question: I have tried unsuccessfully to obtain information on visiting Procida in the Bay of Naples. Please give details for the visitor, including accommodations. - M. A. M., Queens  Answer: Procida, two miles long, offers a quieter alternative to its much busier, larger island neighbors of Ischia and Capri. It has attractive rolling landscapes, with much of the terrain devoted to grapes and citrus fruits, and rocky coves and inlets and several beaches. Fishing, rather than tourism, is a major occupation. This volcanic island may be reached by boat from Naples, Pozzuoli, Ischia and Capri. Among hotels is the Arcate (16 Via Marcello Scotti; telephone, 8967120), the largest, with 38 rooms, which has a restaurant and private beach. The Riviera (36 Via Giovanni da Procida; 8967197), with 23 rooms, and L'Oasi (16 Via Ellery; 8967499), 16 rooms, both have a restaurant. Rooms for two cost $25 to $40 a day. Among the island's pensiones is Savoia (32 Via Lavaddera; 8967488).
A list of apartments and small villas for rent the year round can be had from the Tourist Information Office (93 Via Roma, 80079 Procida; 8969624). Procida does not have a telex number but messages may be sent by telex to the tourist office in Ischia Porto on Ischia (telex number, 991464), which keeps in touch.
There are frequent boat services. Naples is about an hour away; a hydrofoil does the journey in 35 minutes.  Mexico  Question: We would like to visit American settlements in Mexico with the idea of perhaps relocating in one of them. Where are they? Are there any sources of information? -F. A. F., Spring Hill, Fla.  Answer: One of the largest concentrations of North American residents is found around Lake Chapala, about 35 miles southeast of Guadalajara. The lake, the largest in Mexico, is on the central plateau, a region favored by many foreigners for its pleasant climate the year round and clean air. The Chula Vista Country Club, which is populated almost entirely by Americans, Canadians and British, the resort town of Chapala and Vista del Largo are among communities there.
Other areas with a substantial colony from the United States include San Miguel de Allende, the colonial town that has attracted Americans since the establishment of an art school there in the 1930's. It now has several cultural institutions. Guanajuato, near San Miguel, has many American residents and so do the areas around the cities of Oaxaca, Morelia and Mazatlan, the port on the Pacific coast. A retirement community modeled after the Sun City areas in Florida and other states and a more expensive country club-style property are planned north of Mazatlan.
One source of information for visitors is the Newsletter on Travel and Retirement published by Lloyd Wilkins (Apartado Postale 31-70, Guadalajara 45050, Jalisco, Mexico). It gives information on cost of living, medical facilities and other topics and reports on specific areas where Americans have settled. The annual subscription is $12 for six issues.
A 1983 book, 'Travel and Retirement Edens Abroad' ($12.95), published by Scott, Foresman of Glenview, Ill., has a section on Mexico. The book has been revised and a 1988 edition, to be published in conjunction with the American Association of Retired Persons, is scheduled to appear next January. 'Fielding's Mexico' ($12.95) and 'Mexico' in the Insight Guides series ($15.95) will probably be useful to someone planning an exploratory trip.  New Hampshire  Question: Do you know of any small inns in New Hampshire where we could play tennis on the property? - B. B. K., New York  Answer: Among several are the Dana Place Inn (20 Pinkham Notch Road, Jackson, N.H. 03843; 603-383-6822), which has two hard-surface courts, and the Franconia Inn (Easton Valley Road, Franconia, N.H. 03580; 603-823-5542), with four clay courts. Another is the Inn at Crotched Mountain (Mountain Road, Francestown, N.H. 03043; 603-588-6840), two clay courts.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Domestic Travel Insurance  Q. We are planning a motor trip to the West, which involves no advance or nonrefundable payments, so we do not need trip cancellation insurance. However, we would like insurance that would cover medical evacuation and other serious needs. -- Beatrice Riback, White Plains
A. Before shopping for medical coverage for your vacation, you should check with the company that provides your regular medical insurance, or the employee benefits office of your employer. Your policy is likely to cover medical treatment anywhere in the country and may include medical evacuation; ask about ""medical transportation."" For example, according to the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, which represents the 73 Blue Cross and Blue Shield companies, some Blue Cross policies do cover travel by land, sea or air to the nearest treatment facility.
There are some companies that sell traveler's insurance for medical care separately from trip cancellation coverage. The coverage is secondary; that is, it covers expenses that other medical insurance does not. Examples are for covering a two-week trip; insurance is available for longer and shorter periods.
One such company is Travel Assistance International, 1133 15th Street, N.W., Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20005; (800) 821-2828. Medical coverage for the two of you (that is, family coverage) is $75 for 9 to 15 days. The policy provides up to $15,000 for medical care, with a $75 deductible, with no limit on the amount for evacuation.
Another is Travel Guard International, 1145 Clark Street, Stevens Point, Wis. 54481; (800) 782-5151. This company's medical plan is $39 a person (or $78 for two) for up to 15 days. The coverage is $15,000 in medical costs and $20,000 for emergency evacuation.
Trip cancellation insurance is included with the medical coverage offered by Access America, 600 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10163; (800) 284-8300. For family coverage for domestic travel, the cost is $69 for 9 to 15 days, for $4,000 for medical treatment, $1,000 for medical transportation and $600 for trip cancellation.
Another company is Tele-Trip, Mutual of Omaha, 3201 Farnam Street, Omaha, Neb. 68131; (800) 228-9792. There are a variety of plans offered; all options with medical evacuation also include trip cancellation. The cost for such coverage for a family is $105 -- $5,000 for medical treatment for accident, $50 a day for hospital care for sickness, $25,000 for evacuation, plus $1,000 in cancellation coverage, plus flight insurance, and baggage and life insurance -- or $194, for $10,000 in coverage for accident, $50 a day for hospitalization and $2,000 for cancellation. On the Canals of Wales
Q. We would like to take a trip on the canals in Wales. Can we get information? -- Marian M. Kirchkoff, Palmyra, N.J.
A. There are two canals chiefly used by boaters in Wales. They are both very narrow, and are plied by narrowboats, which have a beam of only seven feet. The going is slow: boats travel 4 miles an hour, and must stop to go through locks. The boats can be self-piloted or ""hotel boats"" with a staff who pilot the boats and cook for the passengers.
One of the canals, in the north, is the Llangollen Canal. The canal, 46 miles long, goes into the mountains of Wales, and passes through tunnels and along aqueducts, one 1,007 feet long and 120 feet above the River Dee. In the south of Wales is the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal. The canal, about 33 miles long, passes through the Brecon Beacons National Park and the Usk Valley.
One company that arranges narrowboat rentals on these canals is UK Waterway Holidays. Its American representatives are Ambassador Travel, (800) 234-8040 and Le Boat, Post Office Box E, Maywood, N.J. 07607; (800) 922-0291. According to Le Boat, on the Llangollen Canal, hotel boats start at $660 a week in the off season and $816 at peak travel season in summer; prices include all costs except for drinks. Self-piloted boats on that canal start at $722 a week for up to four people, and at $1,100 in high season. On the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal, hotel boats start at $660 in low season and $816 in high season; the company does not have self-piloted boats there.
Only self-piloted boats are booked through Blakes Vacations, 4916 Dempster Street, Skokie, Ill. 60077; (800) 628-8118. A boat for up to four people starts at $720 a week in low season, and $1,180 in summer. On this size boat, one sleeping room doubles as living room and sometimes kitchen; foursomes often take a boat for six to eight, the company says, starting at $825 to $1,350 depending on season. Portugal in February?
Q. Are pousadas and tourist attractions open in Portugal in February? What is the weather like? -- Alexia Hood, Douglas Manor, Queens
A. Winters are mild on the coast of Portugal. For example, in Lisbon, high temperatures in February average 59 (and often go into the 70's) and lows average 47. This is the rainy time of year, with an average number of 12 rainy days in February. Faro, on the southern coast, has an average high temperature of 61 degrees in February and a low of 49, but like the rest of the area, is drier, with only 7 rainy days. The north and central inland sections are much higher and are cooler in winter: Braganza, in the north, for example, has an average high of 51 and a low of 33 in February.
According to an American company that books the Government-run inns called pousadas, they are open year-round. With the exception of the Pousada do Castelo in Obidos, with only seven rooms, reservations are not usually needed except a few days ahead. Most attractions are open all year, though hours may be shorter in winter. Washrooms in First Class
Q. In my experience, airline personnel in first class rarely stop passengers in other parts of the plane from using the washrooms in the first-class cabin. What is the airlines' policy on this? -- Francine Myers Pilloff, Beachwood, Ohio
A. An informal sampling of airlines indicates that it is their policy not to allow business- or tourist-class passengers to use the restrooms in the first-class cabin. It is the responsibility of flight attendants to monitor the use of the washrooms, and they are instructed to discreetly tell passengers not in first class to use the toilets elsewhere. American Airlines, for example, says that on international flights, attendants put a sign on curtains blocking the entrance to the first-class cabin instructing non-first-class passengers to use washrooms to the aft. Passengers who see others using the washrooms should mention it to flight attendants, and perhaps later address complaints to the airline's customer service department.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"No Headline
Balloon Festivals
Q.
Can you inform me of any hot-air balloon festivals taking place this fall in the Northeast? How does one get a ride in one of the balloons? -- Chris Tighe Jr., Kew Gardens, Queens
A. Here are some balloon festivals. At all of them, those who attend can arrange private flights directly with the balloonists. The length of flights is usually 30 to 60 minutes.
The Adirondack Balloon Festival takes place Sept. 17 to 20 at the Warren County Airport, in the town of Queensbury, just south of Lake George, N.Y. One hundred balloons are expected, including the Santa Maria, owned by the Forbes family (the festival will be dedicated to the late Malcolm Forbes), and balloons in the shape of the head of the Statue of Liberty, the Liberty Bell, a pink elephant, a polar bear, and Mickey Mouse. The cost of private flights is set individually but is generally $125 a person or more. Festival admission is free. Information: (800) 365-1050.
In Mansfield, Mass., about 30 miles south of Boston, the Mansfield Balloon and Car Festival will be held Sept. 25 to 27. There will be 50 balloons taking part and about 800 antique cars will be displayed. Balloon rides will be $150 a person. Admission is $5 a day; $2 for those 16 and younger. A three-day family pass is $15.
The Fox 43 Balloon Classic takes place Oct. 17 and 18 on the Chocolate Field by Hershey Park in Hershey, Pa. The event features flights by 51 balloons and a display of 300 antique cars. Rides with the balloonists are $150 a person. There is no admission fee, but parking is $3 a vehicle. Information: (717) 845-3288.
The Shawnee Ballonfest is from Oct. 16 to 18 at the Shawnee Inn at Shawnee-on-Delaware, Pa., at the Delaware Water Gap, with 25 balloons taking part. Private rides are $175 a person. Admission Oct. 17 and 18 is $8; $6 for seniors and $3 for children 4 and younger. On Oct. 16, when there is only one balloon launch, at 4:30 P.M., admission is $3; $2 for those 4 and younger. Information: (717) 421-1500.  Hiking in Patagonia
Q.
I would like visit Argentine Patagonia and do some hiking and camping (but not mountain climbing). When is a good time of year to do this? Are there organizations that organize such trips? -- Reto
J. Schneider, Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.
A. Trips to Patagonia are best made in the summer in the Southern Hemisphere, which is winter here; in our late fall and early spring, the area is less crowded with vacationing South Americans and conditions, though cool, are still suitable for hiking. Here are some companies that offer hiking trips there. Each trip's cost, for one person and based on two people sharing a room (or tent), includes accommodations and all or most meals.
Mountain Travel Sobek, 6420 Fairmount Avenue, El Cerrito, Calif. 94530, (800) 227-2384, arranges two all-camping (except for lodges at the beginning and end of the trip) tours. One, 17 days, includes a 10-day trek in the Torres del Paine National Park, on the Chilean side of Patagonia, with three days' strenuous backpacking (otherwise, gear is carried by horses). The trip starts and ends in Santiago, Chile, and the cost is $2,395, not including air fare between Santiago to Punta Arenas on Patagonia, which is about $250. Upcoming departures are Oct. 16 and 30, Feb. 5 and March 5. The other, rated moderately strenuous, is 16 days, and features 3 days of hiking each in Torres del Paine park and, on the Argentine side, Glacier National Park; gear is carried by horses. The cost is $2,295 a person. Departures are Oct. 23, Nov. 6 and 20 and Jan. 22, Feb. 5 and 19 and March 3. The company also offers a 23-day trip, $3,395, in which participants stay in lodges and have the option of day hikes. Departures are Oct. 23, Nov. 20, Jan 15 and Feb. 5.
Wilderness Travel, 801 Allston Way, Berkeley, Calif. 94710, (800) 247-6700, has several Patagonia itineraries. The basic trip, 24 days, consists of 12 days of camping -- including 5 each in the Torres del Paine and Glacier National Parks -- and the rest in hotels or lodges. Upcoming departures are Dec. 6, Jan. 7 and Feb. 11, and the cost is $2,695, including air fare between Buenos Aires, where the trips begin and end, and Punta Arenas. A backpacking trip to Patagonia, in the Torres del Paine park and a section along the Tyndall Glacier previously closed to travelers, is 16 days, with departures Nov. 20, Dec. 5, Jan. 1 and Feb. 2. The company also schedules an 18-day natural history trip with all nights in hotels, with departures in September, October, November, February and March. The cost is $2,295.
R.E.I. Adventure Travel, Post Office Box 1938, Sumner, Wash. 98390, (800) 622 2236, offers shorter trips, 12 days. Included is five nights camping in Torres del Paine National Park. The cost is $1,595 a person, not including air fare between Santiago and Punta Arenas. Departure dates are Dec. 16, Jan. 23 and Feb. 17.
Overseas Adventure Travel, 349 Broadway, Cambridge, Mass. 02139, (800) 221 0814 or (617) 876-0533, organizes a 16-day trip that includes a variety of conveyances and accommodations. There are six nights of camping in the Torres del Paine National Park, plus rafting on the Rio Gray, and a cruise of Last Hope Sound with daytimes exploring the forests and glaciers and nights on the ship. This season's prices are not yet set; the cost for 1991-92 was $2,895, not including $250 for air fare between Santiago and Punta Arenas. Departure dates are Nov. 21 and Dec. 19, and Jan 16, Feb. 6 and 27.  Paris Antique Fair
Q.
When is the big antique show held at Le Bourget airfield near Paris? -- Virginia Hull, Jacksonville, Fla.
A. This year's Foire Internationale de la Brocante et des Antiquaires will be held at Le Bourget on Sept. 17 and 18, with about 600 dealers taking part. Admission is free with a carte d'acheteur (buyer's card), which may be clipped from La Gazette, a weekly magazine about antiques, available the week before the fair at many newsstands. If you are elsewhere in Europe the week before, these magazines will also carry the card: Antiques Trade Gazette (Britain), Art Antiques Auctions (Belgium), Ilgionale dell'Arte and Antiquaria (both Italy). In any case, cards will also be available from the fair's organizers by calling 48.75.43.44. The fair's hours are 6:30 A.M. to TK on Sept. 17 and 6:30 A.M. to noon Sept. 18.  Weather on Crete
Q.
We plan to spend time on Crete in April. What weather are we likely to have? -- N. Marciniec, Gloversville, N.Y.
A. April on Crete is very pleasant, but not quite beach weather. The average high temperature in April is 68 degrees and the low is 56. There are four rainy days with 0.8 inches of rain.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Euganean Hills of Italy
Q. I am going to Padua, and would like to take a day trip to the Euganean Hills to hike and visit villas and gardens in the area. Can you suggest some sites? -- Lauren Kenney, Rochester
A. Since Roman times, the Euganean Hills, about 10 miles southwest of Padua, have been celebrated for their lush vegetation and hot springs, around which dozens of spa resorts have been established. In 1989, the 72-square-mile area, including 15 towns and 81 hills, was declared a regional park.
You can explore the hills by following one of the 14 walking trails that thread the landscape. Trekking information can be had from the Ente Parco, Ca'Emo, via San Stefano Superiore 39, Monselice, telephone (39-0429) 784-589.
A few villas and other buildings in the area are open to the public, and it is best to call in advance because most have irregular hours.
The frescoes by the Dutch painter Lambert Sustris in the monumental 16th-century Villa dei Vescovi, via dei Vescovi 4, Luvigliano di Torreglia, can be admired only from mid-March to mid-November. The villa also closes from July 15 to Aug. 15. Admission is $4.75 (at 2,090 lire to the dollar). For information, call (39-049) 521-1118.
The parklands surrounding the 17th-century Villa Barbarigo in Valsanzibio di Galzignano Terme (a few miles south of the Villa dei Vescovi), are also closed during the winter months. The villa is not open to the public, but the formal Italian-style gardens are. They include a box-hedge labyrinth, fountains, fish ponds and statuary. Admission is $6. Information: (39-049) 913-0029.
The 13th-century Castello Cini, via del Santuario 11, in Monselice on the southern slopes of the Euganean Hills, houses a large collection of 15th- and 16th-century furniture and  paintings as well as a rare armory. Admission is $4.75. Information: (39-0429) 72931.
The splendid Benedictine abbey of Praglia, (39-049) 990-0010, founded in the 12th century, can only be visited by appointment. Admission is free.
The 14th-century poet Petrarch chose to end his days in the Euganean Hills. Today his house in the town of Arquà Petrarca, about 20 miles southwest of Padua, is a museum with mementos of the poet, including the chair in which he is said to have died and a mummified cat, which legend says belonged to him. Casa del Petrarca is on the via Valleselle, (39-0429) 718294; admission is $2.85.
The Azienda Promozione Turistica di Padova in the central Galleria Pedrocchi in Padua, can provide further information. The number is (39-049) 876-7927, fax (39-049) 650794, www.padovanet.it/apt/.
New Orleans Literary Fete
Q. When is the Tennessee Williams festival in New Orleans this year? What are some of the special events? -- Patrice Cummings, Indianapolis
A. The 15th annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival will be held from March 28 to April 1. Readings, theatrical and musical performances, literary workshops and walking tours are among the events likely to attract a total of  8,000 or more participants. Most events will take place at Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré, 616 St. Peter Street, and elsewhere in the French Quarter, where Williams wrote 'A Streetcar Named Desire' in the 1940's.
Among the writers who will conduct workshops and lead discussions are Philip Caputo, Mary Gordon and Jennifer Moses. Michael York will read from Williams's 'Two-Character Play' at the festival's gala event, which begins at 7 p.m. on March 29 at Le Petit Théâtre; and the Voodoo Macumba Dance Ensemble will perform at the House of Blues on Decatur Street, on March 31. On April 1 at 2:30 p.m., at Le Petit Théâtre, Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson will discuss their friendship with Williams.
Two-hour walking tours and bus excursions focus on New Orleans literary figures, jazz, black history and gay heritage.
Tickets range from $5 to $45. Walking tours are $20. The Tennessee Williams Scholars' Conference on March 29 and 30 is free. Various combination passes are also available. To order tickets, call TicketWeb, (800) 965-4827 or visit www.tennesseewilliams.net, the festival Web site. Information: (504) 581-1144.
Taking the Kids to Paris
Q. I am taking my 5- and 7-year-old sons to Paris in the spring, and I would like some suggestions on outdoor activities. -- Margery Hechter, Richmond, Va.
A. There are many engaging outdoor activities for young children in Paris during the warmer months.
The city's parks, for example, are  a welcome refuge; many have rides, playgrounds and other attractions.  The Jardin des Tuileries, for example, operates a carousel, a trampoline and donkey rides, and in the summer, is host to a larger amusement park. Information: (33-1) 40.20.90.43.
A ride on the Ferris wheel, which was set up in the Place de la Concorde in recognition of the year 2000 offers an unparalleled view of Paris. It will remain in place through June. The hours are 11 a.m. to 12:15 a.m. (until 12:45 a.m. on Friday and Saturday); a ride costs $4.25, $2.80 for children (at 7.08 francs to the dollar).
Paris's two zoos are another option. The Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes, in the Fifth Arrondissement along the Seine, is within the walls of the Jardin des Plantes. One of the oldest zoos in Europe, its buildings date back to the 1890's. It is known for its large aviary and collection of predatory birds. The Ménagerie, 57, rue Cuvier, is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Admission is $4.25, $2.80 for children.
At the Zoo de Vincennes, animal exhibits include 13 giraffes from Chad and lemurs from Madagascar. The zoo is at 53, avenue St.-Maurice  in the 12th Arrondissement and is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Admission is $5.65, $4.25 for children.  Information: (33-1) 44.75.20.00.
The Jardin d'Acclimatation, within the Bois de Boulogne, is a 50-acre  park west of the city. The garden, originally opened in 1860, has an amusement park, puppet and movie theaters, a Chinese tea house and a model farm and vegetable patch.  Open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., until 7 p.m. from June through September. Entrance is $2. Information: (33-1) 40.67.90.82.
Among the Web sites with suggestions in English for children's activities are www.paris-touristoffice .com; www.parisdigest.com; and www.visit-paris.com/kids.
SUZANNE MacNEILLE",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Air Price-Fixing Settlement
Q.
What are the details on the price-fixing settlement for people who flew on American, Delta, United and USAir between January 1988 and June 30, 1992? -- Margaret Dietz Meyer, Ithaca, N.Y.
A. Those airlines agreed on June 22 to pay about $450 million to passengers who bought a ticket for domestic travel between Jan. 1, 1988 and June 30, 1992. On July 15, Continental Airlines also agreed to take part in the settlement, adding about $8 million to the package.
Those who think they qualify for a share of the settlement should write to Airline Antitrust Litigation, Post Office Box 209, Philadelphia, Pa. 19107, giving an address where you can be reached. Do not send your receipts or used air tickets, but do keep them in order to proceed later.  The settlement is subject to approval by a Federal Court in Atlanta; a hearing is expected no sooner than October. After that, potential claimants will be given information on what to do.
The class-action suit contended that the airlines used the computerized listings of the Airline Tariff Publishing Company, which the carriers own, to control prices. Pitts Carr, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, estimates that the suit covers 10 million customers.
Most of the settlement, if it is accepted, will be in the form of vouchers that can be used on any of the five airlines for up to 10 percent of the price of a ticket and 20 percent of round-trip flights costing less than $100, according to Mr. Carr. The vouchers will be good for three years from the date of issuance, which Mr. Carr said should be by mid-1993. About $50 million of the settlement will be set aside for administrative costs. Any of that money left over will be distributed in cash if the amount is substantial enough, according to Mr. Carr.  Bus Tours of the Southwest
Q.
Are there bus tours that take in Las Vegas, Santa Fe, Taos, the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon this September? -- Esther Zembow, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.
A. A number of companies offer bus tours in the Southwest, but few of them cover all the places that interest you. Generally, Santa Fe and Taos are part of itineraries that mainly cover New Mexico and often Colorado, while the other sites are on tours that visit the Grand Canyon and southern Utah. All of the tours are fully escorted by guides, and the prices, for one person based on two sharing a room, include hotels and, unless stated otherwise, all meals. The tour companies' phone numbers are included for information, but the companies prefer that travelers reserve through travel agents (there is no difference in cost).
Tauck Tours, (800) 467-2825, offers a seven-day Canyonlands tour that starts in Phoenix, and finishes in Las Vegas. Included are Sedona, Ariz., the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, including a flyover and a raft trip on the Colorado; Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks. The trips, given April through October, are $1,185. A New Mexico tour, eight days, starts in El Paso and ends in Albuquerque, visiting Santa Fe and Taos, among other places. The tour is offered April through October and costs $1,120, including all but two meals in Santa Fe.
Maupintours, (800) 255-4266, offers an eight-day itinerary called Arizona-The Canyons, starting and finishing in Scottsdale. Included are the Petrified Forest, , Canyon de Chelly, Monument Valley, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, the Grand Canyon and Sedona. This tour, offered in May, June, September and October, costs $1,225. The 12-day Southwest Indian Lands begins and ends in Albuquerque and includes Santa Fe, Second Mesa, Hubble Trading Post, Gallup and Acoma Pueblo. The cost is $1,598. (The company has no tours that include Las Vegas.)
Mayflower Tours, (708) 960-3793, offers a National Parks of the Southwest itinerary, which starts and finishes in Las Vegas. The 10-day tour takes in the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, Monument Valley; a trip on the Durango & Silverton narrow-gauge railroad, and Mesa Verde, Arches, Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks. The cost is $1,089 and includes seven dinners. The next departures are Aug. 12 and 19 and Sept. 2 and 9. The Las Vegas Holiday, eight days, starts in Scottsdale, Ariz., and finishes in Las Vegas, and includes Tucson, Phoenix, Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon. The trips are offered year round, and the cost is $689, including four dinners.
Collette Tours, (800) 832-4656, offers an eight-day Arizona and Utah Canyon Country tour that starts in Scottsdale and ends in Las Vegas. Stops includes Sedona, Oak Creek Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Lake Powell, Monument Valley and Canyonlands, Arches, Capitol Reef, Bryce and Zion National Parks. The tour, $699 to $939 depending on dates, is offered March to mid-December and includes 13 meals. A nine-day Colorado National Parks tour, from Albuquerque to Denver is given through October Stops include Santa Fe, Taos Mesa Verde, Aspen, Vail and Denver. The price is $999 to $1,159 depending on dates.  Paris Air Show
Q.
How can I get tickets for the air show at Le Bourget airport near Paris? When is it held? -- Emily Ehm, Barrington, Ill.
A. The Paris Air Show is held every other year; the next will be June 11 to 20, 1993. On weekdays the show is open only to those in a related trade -- government and military officials or representatives of the airline industry or a related filed. However, on weekends -- June 12 and 13 and 19 and 20 next year -- the public may attend, and view elaborate air shows.  Tickets are sold in the United States by International Trade Exhibitions in France, 2300 Clarendon Boulevard, Suite 310, Arlington, Va. 22201; (703) 522-5000. The company will not know ticket prices until late this year and will not have tickets until February. Those interested can write to or call the company before then and will be notified later, but the company recommends calling in February as there is no limit on the number of tickets. Prices for weekends for the 1991 show were $6 a day. The Rain in Port of Spain
Q.
In what months do Trinidad and Tobago have the least rainfall? -- J. Kordak, Cromwell, Conn.
A. The driest months are February, with an average of 10 rainy days and a total of 1.6 inches; March, with 9 rainy days and 1.8 inches, and April, with 9 rainy days and 2.1 inches. Also relatively dry are January, which though it has an average of 14 rainy days has a total of only 2.7 inches, and May, with 12 rainy days and 3.7 inches. By comparison, New York's driest month, November, has 9 rainy days and a total of 3 inches. Trinidad and Tobago is wettest between June to November; August is the rainiest month, with 23 rainy days and 9.7 inches.
Correction:  August 16, 1992, Sunday
An answer in the Q & A column on Aug. 2 about bus tours of the Southwest misstated the telephone number for Tauck Tours in some copies. It is (800) 468-2825.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q/A
Baltic Sea Cruises
Q. Would you have a list of lines that cruise the Baltic Sea this summer? I am interested in small ships, holding not more than 200 people. -- Averill Q. Mix, Los Gatos, Calif.
A. Choosing one of the small ships that ply the Baltic allows one to enter small harbors and dock by the city center. There is not a wide choice, but here are three options.
Radisson's elegant Song of Flower, with 172 passengers, offers a one-week Stockholm to Copenhagen cruise on July 3 (and a reverse trip July 10), stopping at Helsinki, St. Petersburg and Tallinn. Prices  range from $2,995 to $5,670. Information: (800) 285-1835, www.rssc.com.
The 200-passenger Kristina Regina, a family-owned and -operated ship now under renovation, offers an interesting itinerary from Helsinki to Copenhagen June 4 to 15. Stops include St. Petersburg, Tallinn, Riga, Klaipeda in Lithuania (a rare stop on Baltic cruises), Gdynia (which includes a tour of Gdansk), Warnemunde and Lubeck; optional tours to Berlin and Vilnius. Prices range from $2,099 to $3,099, with air fare from New York. Information: (800) 688-3876; www.eurocruises.com.
And if price is no object, the luxurious 208-passenger Seabourn Pride offers a 14-day cruise June 8, July 6 and Aug. 3 from London to Copenhagen, stopping at Oslo, Odense (Denmark), Stockholm, Tallinn, St. Petersburg and Helsinki, with prices from $12,500 to $15,716. Information: (800) 929-9391; www.seabourn.com.
Day Tours in Rome
Q. I will be visiting Rome in February. Could you give me the names of companies that offer day tours of the city? -- M. C., Rutland, Vt.
A. A number of companies offer basic tours of Rome's most famous landmarks. Appian Line, for example, offers a three-hour daily tour led by a multilingual guide that includes the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona and St. Peter's Basilica, for $25, at 2,200 lire to $1. A trip to the Vatican museums is $34. Groups are limited to 50 people; pickup from downtown hotels is included. Call (39) 06 48786604;  www.appianline.it lists a number of other Appian Line Rome tours.
For budget travelers, the Rome transit authority has set up the 110 line, a city tour bus that takes in many of the city's monuments. Tickets, which cost $6.80, can be bought at the Termini railway station or directly on the buses, which leave the station every half hour from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. You can get on and off as you wish. There is no tour guide, but pamphlets with information about the sites in English and Italian are distributed free, and the Web site, www.atac.roma.it, shows the itinerary. Call (39-06) 46952252.
And for a more personal touch, Scala Reale, a team of architects, historians and archaeologists (mostly American), specializes in small groups and tailors private itineraries on request. For a $20 registration fee,  an orientation walk of one to two hours looks at some of the city's lesser-known sites. An intensive four-hour walking tour ($45.50) covers classical Rome's public places and private homes, including the Roman Forum, the Palatine Hill and the Colosseum (for groups of no more than six); a more relaxed three-and-a-half-hour exploration of the Renaissance and Baroque sites in the historic center ($36) includes the Pantheon, Campo de' Fiori, the Jewish Ghetto and medieval and Renaissance churches. Contact  Scala Reale at (888) 467-1986; in Italy at (39-06) 474-5673; fax (617) 249-0186; www.scalareale.org.
English Garden Tours
Q. My husband and I are planning a trip to England next spring. How can we find a tour that takes us to exceptional gardens? -- Suzanne Coppel, New York, N.Y.
A. Garden tours in England are plentiful, and a number of the best are planned to coincide with the annual Chelsea Flower Show (May 22 to 25 this year), which draws garden lovers from all over the world, and the glorious sweeps of rhododendron and azaleas in bloom at this time.
Expo Garden tours, for example, is offering six tours that include the flower show this spring. A nine-day tour of gardens in Cornwall and Devon (April 27 to May 6) takes in the 17th-  and 18th-century Gardens of Heligan and the magnolias and camellias of Caerhays Castle, both near St. Austell; subtropical gardens at Tresco Abbey in the Scilly Isles; Castle Drogo, designed by Edwin Lutyens, at the edge of Dartmoor; and Knightshayes Court, a National Trust garden north of Exeter. The cost is $3,958, including round-trip air fare from New York, all breakfasts and five dinners. Five other garden tours are set for May, with visits to some of the great gardens of England such as Hidcote Manor near Chipping Campden, with its lovely garden 'rooms,' and Rosemary Verey's Barnsley House Garden, with a lavish laburnum arch, in the Cotswolds; Sissinghurst, Vita Sackville-West's 1930's romantic garden in Kent; Hever Castle in Sussex, with a four-acre Italian garden; Upton Grey in Surrey, designed by Gertrude Jekyll; and Hampton Court Palace in London. Most tours include some private gardens as well.
Expo Garden Tours, 33 Fox Crossing, Litchfield, Conn. 06759; (800) 448-2685; fax (860) 567-0381; Web site: www.expogardentours.com.
Lucas & Randall, with two spring garden tours May 16 to 25 and May 18 to 25, combines visits to extensive classical landscape gardens with smaller, more intimate ones, and adds sightseeing too. Highlights include Hever Castle, Sissinghurst, Sheffield Park in East Sussex, Stourhead in Wiltshire, Wisley in Surrey and Exbury, near Southampton, with sightseeing in Tunbridge Wells, Arundel and Winchester. The cost (land only) is $2,495 for the eight-day tour with breakfast and most dinners; a 10-day tour is $2,895.
Lucas & Randall European Tours, 225 30th Street, Suite 300, Sacramento, Calif. 95816; (800) 505-2505; www.lucasandrandall.com.
And one company that specializes in small groups (between 6 and 21 people), with stays at country inns and manor houses, is Coopersmith's, founded in 1984. Visitors are often taken to private gardens rarely seen, even to those of such well-known horticulturalists as Rosemary Verey and Christopher Lloyd. This spring,  garden tours are scheduled in East Anglia (May 19 to 27), the West Country (May 23 to June 4) and Devon/Cornwall (June 9 to 21). Prices (land only) from $2,895 to $3,995, including breakfast, some lunches and most dinners.
Coopersmith's, Post Office Box 900, Inverness, Calif. 94937, (415) 669-1914; www.coopersmiths.com.
FLORENCE STICKNEY",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
I recently changed a large amount of money in dollars into euros in the United States. On arriving in Europe, I discovered that I could have saved myself a lot of money by changing the dollars there. Is there a way to carry out foreign exchange transactions in the United States without being gouged?
Allen Scott, New York, N.Y.
To find out whether you will do better at home or when you arrive, you need to make comparisons between similar institutions. It is easiest to ask how much in foreign currency you will get for $100, after all charges. For example, on Aug. 25 the American Express office at Herald Square in New York sold £1 for $2, or £50 for $100 (plus a $3 charge for the transaction), while American Express at Victoria Station in London gave a rate of $1.93 to £1 (£51.75 for $100) with no commission fee. I recommend prepaying as many travel expenses as you can, like hotels and car rentals, or getting guaranteed dollar rates before you leave.
Banks and currency exchange offices make their profit from the spread between the buy and the sell rate (but don't expect to get the cross, or interbank, rate you see in the financial pages). The buy rate is the rate at which the bank will buy your dollars and sell you euros; the sell rate is the rate the bank will pay to buy dollars. The narrower the spread, the better the deal. You may pay a commission of around 1.5 percent. Avoid double commissions by, for example, never changing dollars to, say, Swiss francs in another country, where you are generally charged a commission for each transaction between currencies.
You can get cash in local currency at an A.T.M. at the official rate minus about 1 percent, depending on your bank or card company and the color of your plastic. You can usually draw up to $500 a day.
Several readers are concerned that their United States credit cards do not work, or are discriminated against, abroad. For example, Lawrence Bond, who lives in Paris, writes: 'Recently, lastminute.com in France refused to accept my Visa platinum card, issued on a U.S. bank, for a ticket on US Airways from Paris to the United States. They would only take a French Visa card.'
Airline and travel sites officially say they often refuse foreign credit cards for phone and online bookings to help prevent credit card fraud. But new security safeguards should eliminate that concern. However, you can always book by phone and show your card at the desk when you pick up your ticket at the airport.
ROGER COLLIS
Q & A",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Seeing Australia by Bike
Q.  I am traveling to Australia in February. Do you know of any bicycle touring companies there, including Tasmania? -- Daniel J. Pelletier, New York, N.Y.
A.  Advances in cycle technology have brought cycling, both as a racing sport and as an active pastime, back to prominence in Australia over the past decade, according to the Australian Tourist Commission. Judging from the number  of touring clubs, special events and operators, Australia is something of a cyclist's nirvana.
Victoria and New South Wales, with their larger populations and more extensive road networks, are the most active cycling states. But Tasmania, with  rich agricultural country and historic country houses, is an active cycling state, too.
For the individual planning a tour, the commission recommends ""Cycling Around Sydney,"" published by the Bicycle Institute of New South Wales, Post Office Box  272, Sydney, New South Wales 2001, Australia.
The institute has a number of other books available.
The following organize and sell tours:
Centennial Park Cycles, 50 Clovelly Road Randwick, New South Wales 2000, Australia; telephone (61 2) 398 5027, fax (61 2) 398 8138.
Mount 'N' Beach Safaris, 1 Plunkett Street, Naremburn, New South Wales 2065,  Australia; (61 2) 9958 8685, fax (61 2) 9958 6451.
Youth Hostel Association, Post Office Box 5276, Sydney, New South Wales 2001, Australia; (61 2) 267 3044, fax (61 2) 261 1969.
Paddy Pallin Kosciusko Adventures, Snowline Caravan Park, Kosciusko Road, Jindabyne, New South Wales 2627, Australia; (61 64) 562 922, fax (61 64) 562 836.
Bicycle Victoria, G.P.O. Box 1961R, Melbourne, Victoria 3001; (61 3) 328 3000, fax (61 3) 328 2288.
Brakeout Cycling Tours, Post Office Box 427, Kingston, Tasmania 7051, Australia; (61 02) 291 999, fax (61 02) 298 019.
Tasmanian Expeditions, 110 George Street, Launceston, Tasmania, Australia; (61 03) 34 3477, fax (61 03) 343 463.
Fact sheets and brochures about cycling in Australia can be obtained from the Australian Tourist Commission, 2121 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angeles, Calif. 90067; (310) 552-1988, fax (310) 552-1215.
Christmas in East Anglia
Q.  I am interested in spending the Christmas and New Year's holidays in the  Lowestoft-Yarmouth areas of East Anglia, England. Do you know of any inns or cottages where I could make a reservation? -- Mary G. Ball, Pine Beach, N.J.
A.  The local tourist-information centers at Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft publish brochures listing accommodations in those areas.
They can also offer general guidance on places that would meet individual requirements, although they will not make specific recommendations.
For Lowestoft call (44 1502) 523000, fax (44 1502) 539023, or write to the Tourist Information Center, East Point Pavilion, Royal Plain, Lowestoft, Norfolk NR33 0AP, England.
Great Yarmouth can be reached at (44 1493) 846345, fax (44 1493) 846332, or at Town Hall, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk NR30 2PX, England.
You might also consider Southwold, 12 miles south of Lowestoft on the coast.  It is a charming, sedate and very pretty resort that has its own information center. It can be reached at (44 1502) 724729, which is both the phone and the fax, or at Town Hall, Market Place, Soutwold, Norfolk IP18 6EF, England.
The British Tourist Authority publishes a free booklet called ""Stay at an Inn,"" and its section on East Anglia lists several places near Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth, inland and on the coast.
The booklet includes maps with references for each place listed. The B.T.A. is at 551 Fifth Avenue, Suite 701, New York, N.Y. 10176; (212) 986-2200 or (800) 462-2748 outside New York City.
The East Anglia Tourist Board publishes what it calls a short-breaks brochure, listing places to stay and area attractions.
It can be reached at Toppesfield Hall, Hadleigh, Suffolk IP7 5DN, England; (44 1473) 822922, fax (44 1473) 822922.
The Theater in Toronto
Q.  I will be spending a week in Toronto in April. How can I obtain theater information for that time so I can buy tickets in advance? -- Natalie H. Aronsohn, Rockville, Md.
A.  There is no single published list of Toronto's 44 theaters, according to  the Metropolitan Toronto Convention and Visitors Association, which adds that one of its travel counselors would be able to tell you about individual theaters over the phone.
Productions that are running now and are expected to be running next year include ""The Phantom of the Opera"" at Pantages Theater, (416) 872-2222, ""Forever Plaid"" at The New Yorker Theater, (416) 872-1111, and ""Sunset Boulevard"" at the  Ford Center for the Performing Arts, (416) 872-2222.
By Feb. 1 a travel counselor will have information about April productions.
At this point they include ""Three Tall Women,"" by Edward Albee, due at the Royal Alexander Theater, (416) 872-1212, from April 9 to May 18, and ""A Little Night Music,"" by Stephen Sondheim, at the Canadian Stage Company from April 8 to May 11, (416) 368-3110.
The visitor association, which is offering Value Plus Packages until April 30 that include accommodations and entertainment selections, including theaters, can be reached at 207 Queens Quay West, Box 126, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5J 1A7; (800) 363-1990.
A double room costs from $38 to $107, calculated at 77 American cents to the  Canadian dollar. Tickets, which the association books for you, are available at  regular prices.
Asia in December
Q.  I will be on a cruise from Singapore around the Indonesia area and Hong Kong in December. What will the local weather be like? -- Jean Cater, Dover, N.J.
A.  For most of the trip it will be simply hot and wet, finishing on a generally dry note.
In Singapore maximum highs will be a sticky 87 degrees and lows an equally sticky 74. Precipitation will be at its highest of the year: a soaking 10 inches.
Temperatures will be equally high in Jakarta and most other parts of Indonesia, a country where there are really only two types of weather: fine and  sunny or cloudy and wet. Unfortunately you will be there for the latter, with average rainfall in Jakarta, one of the country's drier places, around eight inches in December. (It could be worse: in January and February it gets to 11.8  inches.)
Hong Kong will offer a little respite. Average highs will be 68 degrees and lows 59. But precipitation will be at one of its lowest levels of the year: a paltry 1.2 inches.
TERENCE NEILAN",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:  Going to Cuba
Going to Cuba
Question: Is it possible for an American tourist to travel to Cuba on an American ship and a United States passport? If so, where would one get a visa? - H. T. M., Greenwich, Conn.
Answer: Travel by Americans to Cuba is possible, subject to United States Treasury regulations. While the United States Government has not banned travel to Cuba, citizens and residents are forbidden to spend American money there - or foreign currencies obtained by converting dollars. Violation of the law can result in a fine of $10,000 or up to 10 years' imprisonment or both. The regulation is waived for government officials, family visitors and certain professional researchers. Travel may be authorized for visitors wishing to participate in public exhibitions or performances, provided they obtain a license to spend money from the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control. The Treasury says neither tourism nor business travel can be authorized.
A leaflet called 'Tips for Travel to Cuba' is available for $1 from the Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C. 20402.
There is no passenger service by ship, and travel agents who book people on freighters say they know of no cargo vessels that carry passengers to Havana. However, the Cuban Consul in Washington, Walfredo Garciga, says that private boats may dock at Marina Hemingway in Havana for three days without the need for passengers to have visas, although they must have Cuban documentation for the boat. The State Department discourages such visits because if a boat has a breakdown or any sort of mishap the department cannot provide assistance; there is no Coast Guard agreement between the two countries.
There is no scheduled air service from the United States, but there are charter flights twice a week between Miami and Havana, and Cubana Airlines has scheduled service to Havana from Mexico City and Montreal.
The Cubans say the only documents an American needs to visit is a United States passport and a Cuban visa. Visa applications are processed by the Cuban Interest Section -which serves as an unofficial embassy - at 2630 16th Street N.W., Washington D.C. 20009 (202-797-8518). An official said visas were usually issued within a few days on payment of a $24 fee.  Coast of Maine
Question: I am looking for a place to train for an August attempt to swim the English Channel. It is impossible to get accurate answers about sea temperatures from resort areas. What is the average ocean temperature in July in Rockport, Me.? - A. H., Albuquerque, N.M.
Answer: Figures prepared for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a Federal agency, do not include any sea temperatures taken at Rockport, but a comparison of those at Bar Harbor, about 50 miles to the northeast (as the crow flies), and Portland, 70 miles to the southwest, give a good indication. Temperatures recorded over several years show that at Bar Harbor in July the water ranges from 50 to a high of 67 degrees. Generally it's in the mid to upper 50's during the month. At Portland, the range is 52 to 70, with an average of around 60.  For the Disabled
Question: My mother and I love to travel, but she now uses a wheelchair, and she will not fly. Do you know of tours for disabled people to suit us? -R. A. F., Staten Island
Answer: Many travel companies now organize tours for the disabled. Some of their tours involve flying, but agencies can help the disabled to plan trips by bus, train and car. One group that provides programs to suit specific needs is Accessible Tours, a division of Directions Unlimited (720 North Bedford Road, Bedford Hills, N.Y. 10507; 914-241-1700 and, outside Westchester County, 800-533-5343). Lois Bonanni of Accessible arranges driving vacations with specially-equipped car or with car and driver. She organizes tours to Europe, where, she says, catering to disabled travelers is more advanced than here.
Al Miller Travel (602 Essex Street, Lynn, Mass. 01901; 617-599-5113), a travel agency, also does vacation planning for the disabled. The owner, Al Miller, who uses a wheelchair himself, has sent many clients to Disney World and Lake George, N.Y., among other places, as well as on cruises. A major organizer of package tours since 1970 is Flying Wheels Travel (143 West Bridge Street, Post Office Box 382, Owatonna, Minn. 55060; 800-533-0363 or, in Minnesota, 800-722-9351). Destinations this year range from the Grand Canyon to Hawaii and Australia, and there are cruises.
Around and About Travel (931 Shoreline Drive, San Mateo, Calif. 94404; 415-573-7998), a newsletter for the handicapped, acts as a clearing house of information and ideas, and offers details about tours and independent travel. A list of tour operators and travel agencies is available for $5 from the private, nonprofit Information Center for Individuals With Disabilities (20 Park Plaza, Suite 330, Boston, Mass. 02116; 617-727-5540). The center's fact sheet on vacation planning also costs $5. (Both free to Massachusetts residents.)  Scottish Games
Question: I am interested in taking a train from London to Scotland for some of the Highland Games activities. How long are they; where are they held? - N. M., New York, N.Y.
Answer: Highland Games gatherings are held in various parts of Scotland from June through September. Usually they are one- or two-day events. The most celebrated is the Braemar Royal Highland Gathering held at Ballater near Balmoral Castle, Queen Elizabeth's summer home. The event, in which kilted members of clans from all over Scotland compete in sports and dancing, will be on Sept. 3. Admission costs range from about $3.75 (calculated at $1.88 to the pound) for standing areas to $17 for a grandstand seat. Reservations and information are available from the Bookings Secretary, Balcriech, Ballater, Aberdeenshire AB3 5SB, Scotland (telephone, Ballater 0338 55377).
Among other major games are the Argyllshire Highland Gathering in Oban, Strathclyde, Aug. 23 to 25, and the Cowal Highland Gathering in Dunoon, Strathclyde, Aug. 26 to 27.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
The Joan of Arc Tower
Q. Is the Tour de Jeanne d'Arc in Rouen, where Joan of Arc was imprisoned, open to the public? -- Nicolina Tack, Madison, Wisc.
A. The Joan of Arc tower is the sole remnant of a medieval castle where Joan was imprisoned in 1430 during her trial. It and the other important sites related to her in Rouen, on the Seine, 70 miles northwest of Paris, are around the Place du Vieux-Marche, the old town center.
This is where Joan was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431, and traces from the fire are still visible on the ground, as are marks from the tribunes set up for her judges. About 20 years ago, a 65-foot Cross of Rehabilitation was installed to commemorate this spot, on the northern edge of the plaza. A small gallery of drawings and signs tracing the history of Joan and of the Place du Vieux-Marche stands beside the Jeanne d'Arc church, built in 1978 with Renaissance stained-glass windows saved from St. Vincent Church, destroyed in World War II.
The castle tower is open to visitors. It has a small Joan of Arc exhibit, with objects from the period and from the original castle. Admission to the tower is about $1.35, at the rate of 7.3 francs to the dollar, and free for those under 18. The tower is open from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and from 2 to 6 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday and Sunday from 2 to 6:30 p.m. Information: (33-2) 35.98.55.10.
The Musee Jeanne d'Arc, 33 Place du Vieux-Marche, houses waxwork scenes from Joan's life, from her childhood in Domremy to her death. It also displays several models of the 15th-century Place du Vieux-Marche and historical objects.
The museum is open from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 1:30 to 7 p.m. mid-April through mid-September, and 10 a.m. to noon and 2 to 6:30 p.m. the rest of the year. Admission is about $3.50, $1.75 for those under 18 and students. Information: (33-2) 35.88.02.70 or www.jeanne-darc.com.
The tourist office in Rouen, perhaps the best source of information on how to organize a small walking tour of the town, is at 22 Place de la Cathedrale, and is open daily. A free brochure in French and English, 'In the Footsteps of Joan of Arc,' is available to guide visitors.
The office also has a roster of accredited bilingual guides for group tours of Joan of Arc sites and of the winding cobbled streets of Rouen's medieval quarter. You can reserve guided tours, about $90, through the tourist office, (33-2) 32.08.32.40, or go to www.mairie-rouen.fr/gb/tourism for more information.
Getting to Newfoundland
Q. I'd like to visit my grandfather's birthplace, near Bonne Bay on the western (French) coast of Newfoundland. Is it better to fly into St. John's and drive across the island, or take a ferry? Is there public transportation? -- Susan Stockwell Yates, Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y.
A. Newfoundland is not the easiest place to reach, and you'll have to weigh time and cost in deciding how to get there. The best source of information is the province's tourism information line, (800) 563-6353.
There are no nonstop flights from New York to Newfoundland; you must go through Toronto or Halifax to St. John's, the provincial capital. According to Travelocity.com, the lowest published fare recently has been $637 round trip on Canadian Airlines, (800) 426-7000, or Air Canada, (888) 247-2262.
Marine Atlantic, (800) 341-7941, runs four or five ferries daily from North Sydney, Nova Scotia, to Port-aux-Basques, in southwest Newfoundland, about 180 miles from Bonne Bay. A high-speed catamaran leaves at 10:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m., making the trip in under three hours. Another ferry, taking about twice as long, leaves at various times depending on the day. Both ferries cost about $13.50, at 67 cents to the Canadian dollar, plus $42 a car.
There is also a 15-hour ferry to Argentia, on the southeast coast, about 65 miles from St. John's, should you want to visit the capital and drive the 350 or so miles across the island. This ferry leaves North Sydney on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8 a.m.
According to the tourist office, the only mass transit on Newfoundland is the DRL bus line, (709) 738-8088. It charges $25 for the three-and-a-half-hour trip from Port-aux-Basques to Deer Lake, near Bonne Bay, and $50 from St. John's to Deer Lake.
Hostels in Macedonia
Q. I am interested in biking and hiking in western Macedonia, especially around Lake Ohrid. Do you know of any youth hostels or similarly inexpensive accommodations? -- Nick Simmons, Madison, Wisc.
A. While Macedonia is a frontier for American travelers, the area around Lake Ohrid has been a popular vacation destination for years. Lakes Prespa and Dojran also are developing as summer resorts, and the mountains around Mavrovo attract winter sports enthusiasts.
Foreign tourism in this former Yugoslav republic is still in its infancy, though, so there isn't a lot of travel information available. The Macedonian Youth Hostel Association is an associate member of Hosteling International (www.iyhf.org), but reaching the office in Skopje, the capital, where there is a 26-room hostel, is a bit like playing roulette. The address is Prolet 25, 1000 Skopje; phone (389-91) 239-947, fax (389-91) 235-029.
Another source of information is  the Croatian Youth Hostel Association, Savska cesta 5-1, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia; (385-41) 482-9294, fax (385-41) 482-9296. According to the Croatian association's president, Goran Richembergh, Macedonia is generally safe for travelers and English not uncommon.
The Mladost Hostel, (389-96)21-626, is on the road to Struga, two miles from Ohrid. It is open all year and charges about $3.50 for a bed and breakfast. The hostel is next to the Magnus Hotel, (389-96) 21-671, which has 38 rooms, a restaurant and its own beach. The Magnus charges about $24 a person, and reservations can be made through the hostel association.
A rare source of information about Macedonia in the United States is Ohrid Travel, 264 Parker Avenue, Clifton, N.J. 07011, (973) 340-3210, fax (973) 340-9124. The owner, Vera Svrgovska, said hotels in the Lake Ohrid area are bargains but fill up quickly in the summer. She pointed to the recently renovated 131-room Palace Hotel, (389-96) 260-440, fax (389-96) 35460. It is right on the lake in Ohrid and has two restaurants. Rooms, priced in German marks, cost $24 to $33 a person, with breakfast, at 2 marks to the dollar.
For more information on the country, see www.vmacedonia.com.
RAY CORMIER",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Duty-Free Items
Q. Recently on returning from Turkey I was charged duty on a rug I had bought but told that jewelry could be brought in duty-free. Could you clarify duty-free allowances for Israel, Egypt and Turkey? I have heard there are exemptions for products from developing countries. -- Bruce Shipman, Roxbury, Conn.
A.  A number of items made in developing countries may be brought into the United States duty-free under the Generalized System of Preferences or G.S.P. This system was established in 1976 to encourage commerical importers to buy various items from about 130 countries and thus stimulate jobs and development in those places. Individual travelers can benefit as well, and can be exempted from paying duty on some goods.
Turkey, Egypt and Israel are among the countries designated as part of the system.
Textiles -- which include rugs -- are ""import sensitive"" and thus are not covered by G.S.P., according to Dan Shepherdson of the trade representative's office,which sets customs guidelines, so travelers have to pay customs duty. Jewelry, however, is excluded from duty, except for gold ""rope"" necklaces and mixed link necklaces, both from Israel.
Among other kinds of goods exempted, if they come from one of the countries on the list are: baskets of bamboo, willow or rattan; cameras; candy; chinaware, vases and statues; earthenware or stoneware other than household ware available in sets; wood, rattan or plastic furniture; games; jade and precious and semiprecious stones, cut but not set; musical instruments; paper; pearls, loose or temporarily strung and without clasp; perfume; radio receivers, except for use in motor vehicles; records and tapes; silver flatware and tableware; skis and ski equipment; tape recorders; toys, and wood carvings. To be clasified duty-free, items must be bought in the country where they were made. There are a variety of exceptions, and travelers may wish to get more information about specific goods from a customs office or the United States Embassy or Consulate in the country they visit.
Travelers are still entitled to bring into the United States, free of duty, $400 worth of articles ($1,200 from the United States Virgin Islands, American Samoa or Guam and $600 from most Caribbean countries) in addition to goods exempted under G.S.P. If you bring in goods worth more than $1,000, customs may require a certificate of origin, also called Form A, which is issued by the seller. Goods that may otherwise enter duty-free under G.S.P. are still banned if they are restricted by other rules, such as those forbidding trade in endangered species.
A free pamphlet, ""G.S.P. and the Traveler,"" listing G.S.P. countries and exempted goods, is available from customs offices.  Spending a Semester at Sea
Q.
There used to be a ship that traveled in international waters with college students and professor, called Semester at Sea. Is it still operating? -- Rose M. Fishkin, Janesburg, N.J.
A.  The Semester at Sea program is still afloat. Its academic sponsor is the University of Pittsburgh. Twice a year, 500 students from colleges around the country along with 40 adult students spend 100 days circling the globe aboard the Universe. The fall semester begins Sept. 12, with the ship sailing from Vancouver, British Columbia, and stopping at Kobe, Japan; Shanghai; Keelung, Taiwan; Penang, Malaysia; Madras, India; Mombasa, Kenya; Cape Town (visitng South Africa for the first time since 1983); Salvador, Brazil, La Guaira, Venezuela, and ending at New Orleans. The spring semester begins Jan. 28 in Nassau, Bahamas, then stops in Venezuela, reverses the fall itinerary, and finishes in Seattle. Participants spend about 55 days at sea attending classes and 45 days in port doing field work.
The program is described as the comparative study of civilizations and societies. There is a required multidisciplinary course giving an overview of the regions visited. Students also choose from a variety of courses and examine those areas in the context of the cultures on the ship's route. Adult students may audit classes or take them for credit.
The Universe is a former cargo ship fitted out with classrooms, cafeteria, dormitory-style cabins, student union and athletic and recreational facilities.
Tuition, room board and passage is $11,295 a person with two in a standard cabin. Financial aid is available. More information: Semester at Sea, University of Pittsburgh, 811 William Pitt Union, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15260; (800) 854-0195 or (412) 648-7490. Inventors Museum in Akron
Q.
I have heard of a new museum on inventors and inventions in Ohio. I am a board member of the New York Society of Professional Inventors, and I and our members would be interested in any information. -- Nat Levenberg, New York, N.Y.
A.  Ground is to be broken this winter in Akron for a new home of the National Inventors Hall of Fame. The hall and a museum, to be called Inventure Place, is due to be completed in the fall of 1993 at University Street and Broadway in downtown Akron. The museum will feature an 80-foot-high ""Great Wall"" with five tiers of exhibitions telling the story of invention, a gallery with interactive displays and a 250-seat theater.
The National Invention Center has raised $10 million toward the $47 million needed for the museum. More information: National Invention Center, 80 West Bowery, Suite 201, Akron, Ohio 44308; (216) 762-4463.
For now, the hall of fame remains in the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Arlington Va., in the lobby of Crystal Plaza Building 3, 2021 Jefferson Davis Highway; (703) 557-3341. Exhibits on some of the 94 inductees can be seen weekdays between 8:30 A.M. to 5 P.M. Monday to Friday. Among the inductees are Eli Whitney, Samuel F. B. Morse, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Henry Ford and more recently the inventors of the videotape recorder, the cardiac pacemaker and the laser.  A Cafe Drink in Berlin
Q.
I read July 10 in ""New LIfe in Cafes of Eastern Berlin"" about visitors drinking beer, wine and whisky. Do cafegoers no longer drink a concoction called Berliner Weisse? I believe it is a mixture of beer and raspberry syrup. -- H. Hartnett, Sparta, N.J.
A.  Berliner Weisse is a beer with a low alcohol content (2.5 percent, about half the usual in a German beer) and a sour taste. It is still consumed in Berlin cafes and pubs. Normally it is ordered as Berliner Weisse mit Schuss (Berliner Weisse with a shot), which means that it is mixed with a little raspberry syrup to reduce the sourness. On hot days, people also drink it plain. Other variations include adding apple juice or Campari.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
I have heard horror stories of passengers with a confirmed reservation who have been bumped from overbooked flights when they arrive at the airport in good time. How likely is this to happen, and what can one do if it does? -- Jeremy Woolfe, Brussels
It's down to the law of averages catching up with you. Bumping, or 'involuntary denied boarding,' happens because airlines typically oversell flights by up to 50 percent to compensate for people who fail to turn up.
For instance, Judith Goldberg of Tel Aviv writes: 'I flew Austrian Airlines  from Tel Aviv to Delhi, via Vienna. When I arrived at the transfer desk, two and a half hours before the Delhi flight, I was told I had no seat reservation, the flight was overbooked, and I would be wait-listed -- no matter that I had paid months in advance and was joining a tour. Austrian did give me a hotel for the night and paid for a night at my hotel in Delhi.'
The United States Department of Transportation requires airlines to first ask for volunteers if a flight is overbooked. This may be conducted as a kind of auction at the gate, usually for cash or travel vouchers plus travel on another flight. If you are bumped involuntarily, airlines must pay you $200 if they can't get you to your destination within two hours of your original arrival time on domestic flights and four hours on international flights. If the delay is longer, you are entitled to up to $400 plus overnight expenses and a refund on your ticket.
The European Union has similar rules that apply to all passengers (whether or not they are residents of a European Union country) who have a confirmed reservation and who have checked in on time for a flight to or from any airport in the European Union (including French overseas territories) on an airline based in the union.
If a flight is overbooked, airlines must call for volunteers to give up their seats in exchange for a ticket refund and 'agreed benefits' including a free onward flight. If you are not a volunteer, you are entitled to 250 euros (about $328 at $1.31 to the euro) for a flight up to 1,500 kilometers (932 miles), 400 euros for a flight of up 3,500 kilometers (2,175 miles) and 600 euros for longer flights, along with a ticket refund and a free flight back to your starting point.
There's no sure-fire way to avoid being bumped. But it helps to reconfirm with the airline, get a preassigned seat (it's always a bad sign if you can't), turn up early at the airport, get your luggage aboard and be a member of the frequent-flier program, particularly at an 'elite' level.
ROGER COLLIS",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
English Garden Tours
Q. I am interested in taking a garden tour through England next year. Can you give me names of companies that arrange such tours? -- Ruth L. Grossman, White Plains
A. Most British garden tours are offered in spring and early summer, as by late July most blooms have peaked and hotel rooms are harder to find, according to John Bradfield of Lucas & Randall European Tours. Many tours include the Chelsea and Hampton Court flower shows in May and July. The following companies offer detailed itineraries on their Web sites. Prices generally include most meals and are land only, double occupancy. Most companies set dates for next year at the end of July and most plan the same or similar tours at a slight price increase. (And most still have space for additional visitors on this year's tours.)
Lucas & Randall, in Sacramento, Calif., (800) 505-2505, www.lucasandrandall.com, offered three English garden tours this year, including a 12-day tour of the West Country this month, when roses are at their peak ($3,595), and a 10-day tour in Kent, Sussex and the Cotswolds in July, with sightseeing in London and the Hampton Court Show ($2,995).
Coopersmith's, in Inverness, Calif., (415) 669-1914, www.coopersmiths.com, also offered three English tours, including a 13-day tour of West Country gardens and the Chelsea Flower Show for $4,295, and a nine-day tour of the gardens and estates of Dorset in late July for $3,195.
Expo Garden Tours, in Litchfield, Conn., (860) 567-0322, www.expogardentours.com, offered five English tours, from a nine-day tour in May in the Cotswolds ($3,198) to 10 days in Wales this month ($3,868).
For a wider range of options, you might choose one of the many tours offered by British companies. Gentle Journeys, based in Sherborne, Dorset, offers a seven-day Parlors and Potagers tour ($1,652) and a nine-day trip to see Houses and Gardens of the Movies ($1,926) in September. Also available are day trips from London: to celebrated Sissinghurst, created by Vita Sackville-West and Sir Harold Nicolson, and another garden (often with a tour and talk by the owner) on Tuesday and Sunday, or to the Cotswolds on Wednesday; each trip is $100. Information: (44-1935) 815924 or (800) 873-7145 or www.gentlejourneys.com.
Sisley Garden Tours offered a spring tour this year that included the Chelsea Flower Show and two eight-day summer tours, one in the Cotswolds, the other in the southwest, including the Eden Project and the Hampton Court Show; each costs $1,910. Tours are booked through the travel agent listed at www.sisley.co.uk.
And Brightwater Holidays, in Fife, Scotland, offers 29 garden tours throughout Britain this year. A four-day tour of gardens in Suffolk in July is $382; three days at the popular Eden Project in Cornwall (various dates) is $433. Information: (44-1334) 657155 or www.brightwaterholidays.com/uktours.
Museum Listings
Q. I am looking for a resource that lists European art museums, their addresses and a brief description of their collections and current and upcoming exhibitions so I can plan my travels accordingly. -- Gerald Johannes, Atascadero, Calif.
A. There are a number of such resources, mainly those with virtual galleries and information on artists, but the best one for your purposes might be Artcyclopedia, at www.artcyclopedia.com. The Web site was launched in 1999 by John Malyon, a software developer and art enthusiast in Calgary, Alberta, primarily as a guide to artists and their works (you can search by name, artwork or museum or by movement, medium, subject or nationality).
But there is also an index of hundreds of museum sites around the world. Click on France, for example, and you are presented with links to 37 museums throughout the country; a click on Germany brings up 67. Alternatively, you can click on Art Museums by Name/Place. Entering 'Bordeaux,' for example, calls up three of the city's main art museums. The database includes only those museums with Web sites.
Home Exchanges
Q. My son and his family, in Seattle, are interested in a home-exchange vacation in New York. Are there agencies for such exchanges? -- Bernice Rosen, New Brunswick, N.J.
A. There are dozens of home-exchange services available today, with online listings supplementing or supplanting the thick directories that were once common. The idea of swapping homes originated in the 50's with a network of European academics. Metropolitan areas are in greatest demand; Helen Bergstein of Digsville.com says New York is, in fact, the top choice among her membership. Home exchanges are flexible and often include extras like cars, says Karl Costabel of HomeLink, one of the first exchange organizations. Details are worked out by the partners in the exchange; the organizations posting the listings act simply as clearinghouses.
The system works this way: You pay an annual membership fee, generally between $25 and $70, which allows you to list your property and search the agency's database; you contact prospective house swappers by e-mail. The site may allow nonsubscribers to scan some listings, but usually the contact information is accessible only to members. For an extra fee, some agencies will conduct a search for you. Most sites offer tips on successful exchanges and include first-person testimonials. Many listings are flexible, with such comments as 'available anytime' and 'open to destination.'
HomeLink, based in Tampa, Fla., (800) 638-3841, www.homelink.org, was founded in 1953. Web-only membership is $70 a year. Full membership, which includes three full-color directories, is $110. In the United States section, listings are separated by state, then by ZIP code; maps are included. HomeLink includes more than 11,000 listings worldwide, more than 3,000 in the United States.
Digsville.com, based in Lyndhurst, N.J., (800) 856-9059, www.digsville.com, was founded in 1999. Membership is $49.95 a year. Most listings have color photos and full descriptions of the property and neighborhood. About 4,000 listings.
HomeExchange.com, in Santa Barbara, Calif., (800) 877-8723, www.homeexchange.com, dates back to 1991. Listings are detailed, often with photos. A $49.95 annual fee is required to post your property, though nonmembers can view listings and contact members free. About 6,000 listings.
FLORENCE STICKNEY
Q & A",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q/and A
Walking in Iceland
Q.Are there any local walking-tour operators in Iceland that one can deal with directly by mail or after arriving in Iceland? -- Leonard Weiss, Brooklyn
A.Here are some possibilities.
Embla Eco Adventures, Skolavordustigur 21A, IS-101 Reykjavik, Iceland; (354) 511 4080, fax (354) 511 4081; www.embla.is. Hiking tours run by Embla, founded in 2000, tend to be short, unless they are customized. The 2.5-mile Hot Spot tour, for example, includes a two-and-a-half-hour walk of moderate difficulty, both uphill and downhill on uneven paths near the Hengill Volcano, and is reached by a four-wheel-drive minibus. Departures: Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday at 2 p.m. Cost for 2004 is $64, at 81 kronur to the dollar.
Small groups are a specialty at Isafold Travel, which has been in business since 1997. The agency is at Sudurhraun 2B, IS-210 Gardabaer, Iceland; (354) 544 8866, fax (354) 544 8869; www.isafoldtravel.is. Starting 100 miles east of Reykjavik, hikers on the five-day Landmannalaugar-Thorsmork trip cover 6 to 12 miles a day on a moderately difficult route. Cost for 2004, based on six to eight participants: about $1,000, which includes a guide, all meals, sleeping in a sleeping bag at huts and at a hotel on the last night. Departures are planned for June, July and August; the dates for 2004 have yet to be set.
If you prefer to sleep in a hut or your own tent and to provide your own food, try the Iceland Touring Association (Ferdafelag Islands) Morkinni 6, IS-108 Reykjavik, Iceland; (354) 568 2533, fax (354) 568 2535; www.fi.is. The nightly charge for a hut is $10 to $15 for members and $14 to $21 for nonmembers. For camping in your own tent, it's $6.20 for members, $7.40 for nonmembers. Annual memberships, valid for applicants and their families, are $48. On a scale of one to four, the popular five-day Landmannalaugar-Thorsmork tour is rated three boots if you carry your own gear over the 34-mile route. (Four is the most demanding.) If your gear is transported, the hike is rated two boots plus. The cost is $344 for members, $381 for nonmembers, including two meals, transportation, a guide and lodging in a hut. You can opt for an upgrade, which includes more meals and luggage transport.
More information about Iceland is available at (212) 885-9700 or online at www.icelandtouristboard.com.
Pipe Bands of Scotland
Q. We are planning a one-month stay in London in April or May and would like to include one or more bagpipe competitions in Scotland. How can we find a calendar of such events? -- L.D., Hampton Bays, N.Y.
A. You will have to wait until October, which is when the Royal Scottish Pipe Band and Association publishes its calendar on www.rspba.org. Competitions usually attract 30 to 150 bands, each made up of 25 to 30 pipers and drummers.
Traditionally, the competition season starts on the second Saturday in May, in Dunbar, and ends on the first Saturday in October, in Houghton le Spring.
For the period you have in mind one date has been fixed: the Scottish Championships, one of the five major pipe band championships, will take place on May 22 in Dumbarton. The usual schedule -- note that it can vary -- calls for competitions on the second Sunday in May in Gourock; and on the last Saturday in May in both Enniskillen and Bathgate, in Northern Ireland.
Ian Embelton, chief executive of the Royal Scottish Pipe Band Association, explained that in a competition the eight winners (one in each grade) are determined by scores awarded by a panel of four. Two judge piping, one judges drumming and one judges how well the musicians perform together. The single criterion for winning, he said, is musical ability.
Admission cost is decided by local organizers and sponsors. It can even be free, as last year's Scottish Championships were. But it is unlikely to exceed $8, based on $1.63 to the pound.
Japan's Villas and Palaces
Q. Does one still need permission to visit the Imperial Palace in Tokyo and Katsura Villa in Kyoto? -- Nancy McAfee, Pepper Pike, Ohio
A. Yes, prospective visitors still have to apply to the Imperial Household Agency for admission to those sites; applications are accepted as early as three months in advance. A passport or other ID is also required for the tours, all of which are free. An interpreter who is a Japanese citizen can accompany visitors at household agency sites.
In Tokyo, tours of the Imperial Palace grounds -- the residential parts are off limits -- are given Monday to Friday at 10 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. and run 75 minutes or more. They are given in Japanese, and foreign visitors get a brochure in English.
Reservations can be made by calling (81-3) 3213-1111 (extension 485 and 486), and applications should be submitted at least a day before a visit. They are accepted Monday to Friday, from 8:45 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The palace's 52-acre East Gardens, where pink cherry blossoms and azaleas bloom in spring and irises bloom in early summer, are open daily from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.; last entry at 3 p.m. The nearest subway stations are Otemachi and Takebashi.
Tours at sites administered by the household agency are given Monday to Friday and on some Saturdays; they last an hour or more.
Katsura Villa in Kyoto, Japan's capital until 1868, was built in the early 17th century as a country home for a Japanese prince. Understated and elegant, the villa is set amid landscaped gardens, overlooking an artificial pond. As visitors make their way along a steppingstone path, they are greeted with a hint of something new at each turn. It may be a bridge or a teahouse or an arbor or a roughly hewn gate, says Steve Beimel of Esprit Travel. Official tours are given at 10 and 11 a.m. and 2 and 3 p.m.
Tours of Katsura, Sento Imperial Palace (11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.) and Shugakuin Imperial Villa (9, 10 and 11 a.m. and 1:30 and 3 p.m.) are limited to groups of four people at a time.
A 50-minute English-language tour of the Kyoto Imperial Palace is given at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Monday to Friday and some Saturdays. Nearest subway stop: Imadegawa.
Applications for sites in Kyoto are accepted from 8:45 a.m. to noon and 1 to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday at the Imperial Household Agency, Kyoto Gyoen 3, Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto; telephone (81-75) 211-1215; www.kunaicho.go.jp/eindex.html.
If a trip is arranged through such companies as Absolute Asia, (www.absoluteasia.com) or Esprit Travel and Tours (www.esprittravel.com), they can handle the applications for you.
PAUL FREIREICH",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
We are planning a trip to the Netherlands (Amsterdam and nearby towns) and Belgium (Brussels and Bruges). Should we buy rail passes and, if so, where? -- Linda Garb, San Rafael, Calif.
Whether a pass is worthwhile depends on how many train rides you want to take. The distances you are traveling are fairly short compared with the distances you might be covering in, say, France or Germany. So a round-trip ticket between Brussels and Bruges can cost as little as $44 (second class) and $66 (first class); between Brussels and Antwerp, $30 (second class) and $54 (first class). But a pass is a good way to make sure you can get on any train and not worry about buying each ticket.
Consider a Benelux Tourrail Pass for travel in the three Benelux countries -- Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands -- sold by Rail Europe (www.raileurope.com) and available in both classes. Passes cost $176 (second class) and $263 (first class) for five days of unlimited rail travel in all three countries during one month. Two people traveling together pay only $132 (second class) and $197.50 (first class) each.
Tourrail Pass holders have the right to buy discounted 'passholder' fares on both the Eurostar train between Brussels and London, and on French TGV high-speed trains connecting Brussels with the main cities in France.
You must buy passes before leaving the United States at www.raileurope.com/us/rail/passes/benelux--tourrail--pass.htm or by telephone at 888-382-7245 (though the wait can be long in summer).
Rail Europe is currently offering 50 percent off one-way full fares on the Thalys high-speed train that connects France with many cities in Belgium and the Netherlands. For example, the second-class fare between Brussels and Amsterdam, normally $66, is reduced to $33; first class is reduced from $105 to $53. Such tickets must be bought before Aug. 14 for travel before Aug. 31. Serious savings are on fares between cities in France and Belgium or the Netherlands. The normal one-way full-fare Paris-Brussels ticket costs from $163 (first class) or $105 (second class), compared with the promotional fares, from $82 (first class) and $53 (second class).
Several readers say they are weighing the pros and cons of train travel and car rental in Western Europe. While rail provides speed and comfort between main cities, driving of course offers flexibility. One might compromise by riding the train for long distances, say Brussels to Avignon or Marseille, then renting a car to explore.
ROGER COLLIS",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Sacred Music Festivals
Q. How can I find out about two musical events next year -- the Fez Festival of World Sacred Music in Morocco and the Sacred Voices festival in London -- mentioned by Jon Pareles in The Times on June 21? -- Adolph Paul, Milwaukee
A. In reporting on the 1998 festival in Fez, Mr. Pareles said, 'the audience is snowballing for spirituality and the music that expresses it.' He described 'a series of concerts that encompassed whirling dervishes from Turkey, Greek Byzantine chants, Javanese gamelan, Irish chants, Iraqi classical maqam, Andalusian Jewish songs, American spirituals, Spanish medieval cantigas, Indian ragas and Sufi songs from Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan.'
The program for the fifth annual World Sacred Music Festival, planned for May 29 to June 5, has not been set, but it will presumably be similar in scope. The best source for information is probably the official travel coordinator for the festival in the United States, Sarah Tours, 1803 Belleview Boulevard, Alexandria, Va. 22307; (800) 267-0036, fax (703) 765-7809; its site on the Internet is www.morocco-fezfestival.com.
Sarah has put together a festival tour leaving New York on May 27 and returning June 8. Besides attendance at festival events, the tour includes visits to the Medina of Fez and Marrakesh, and excursions to the hot springs of Moulay Yacob, the Sidi Ahmed al Barnoussi shrine and to the Roman ruins at Volubilis. Prices, with choices of three-, four- or five-star hotels, are $4,285 to $5,355 a person, double occupancy, including business-class air fare from New York. Extensions to the Sahara or Spain are available.
The 16th annual Music Village festival, scheduled for June 23 to July 11, will have as its theme Sacred Voices, according to Carolyn Axtell, administrative coordinator of Cultural Co-operation, the group planning it. The full schedule is not yet ready, though some events will be free, including open-air concerts in parks on weekends, Ms. Axtell said. There will also be weekday concerts and workshops.
The festival expects to feature singers from around the world, presenting music as diverse as that of Southern Baptists, Brazilian Candomble believers, Tibetan Buddhists and Lebanese Maronites.
For information, contact Cultural Cooperation, Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Street, London E1 6LS; (44-171) 247-8808, fax (44-171) 247-8809.
A South Pacific Tour
Q. My wife and I plan to visit Australia and New Zealand for three weeks. What are your suggestions to see and how to get around? -- Bernard P. Gropp, Summit, N.J.
A. Since Australia is about the size of the United States minus Alaska, and New Zealand is bigger than all but a few states, there are myriad choices. But Renata Gombac of the Australia Tourist Commission and Clyde H. Farnsworth, a former Times correspondent living in Australia, agreed on several must-sees. These include Sydney, with its famed opera house and Harbour Bridge, the Great Barrier Reef and rain forest in the northeast, and Ayers Rock, one of the most sacred sites for Aborigines.
They also differed somewhat. Ms. Gombac suggested an itinerary would take you to New Zealand for a week and two weeks in Australia, starting in Melbourne. From there, you would fly to the Red Centre region for a taste of the Outback and a visit to Ayers Rock. Then, it would be on to North Queensland for several days around Palm Cove to visit the rain forest, the Undara Lava Tubes and the reef. Finally, you would head for Sydney and its outlying areas, like the Hunter Valley wine region or the Blue Mountains.
Such a tour would start at $3,875 a person in low season (April to August) and about $500 more peak. It is available from Swain Australia Tours, (800) 227-9246.
Other places Mr. Farnsworth suggests are Alice Springs in the Red Centre desert; Tasmania and the former penal colony at Port Arthur; Adelaide, noted for its literary and music festivals, and rugged Kangaroo Island, 'a microcosm of what Australia must have been before the Europeans came.' And he expresses a special fondness for Perth and Fremantle, on the west coast.
Train travel in Australia is quite good, but for long distances you might want to get a Qantas Airways Boomerang Pass -- a minimum of two vouchers for travel within or between three national zones and New Zealand -- $175 within a zone, $220 between zones. The airline says it saves money on flights of more than an hour, and offers flexibility. The pass must be bought before getting to Australia. Call (800) 227-4500 for details.
Discussing New Zealand's North Island, Anna Sinnott, East Coast manager of the New Zealand Tourism Board, suggested visiting Auckland's wharf area, seeing the Maritime Museum and Kelly Tarlton's Undersea World, and taking a Pride of Auckland cruise, then going to Rotorua, the home of the Maori people, to see the thermal springs and the Agridome, with its sheep shows.
On the Alpine-like South Island, she recommended touring Queenstown, taking a jet boat river ride, and visiting the Fiordland, including an excursion to Milford Sound.
For more information, contact the Australian Tourist Commission, (805) 775-2000, fax (805) 775-4448, or at www.aussie.net.au/, and the New Zealand Tourism Board, (800) 388-5494, fax (212) 832-7602, or www.nztb.govt.nz/.
Side Trip to Majorca
Q. I will be going to Barcelona on business and I would like to take a short trip afterward to Majorca. Can I arrange to get on a small group tour? -- Linda E. Goodman, New York, N.Y.
A. Groups usually go to Majorca as part of broader tours, according to Jordi Castello of the New York office of El Corte Ingles Travel, a large Spanish agency. He does not know of a tour specifically from Barcelona to Majorca.
But Mr. Castello says a customized trip to Majorca is easily arranged. His company can book the half-hour flight from Barcelona to the island and a hotel, where you can buy single-day tours. You could also rent a car and visit the pearl factories and island's natural wonders, from the famed beaches to the surprisingly wild northern Sierra.
El Corte Ingles is at 500 Fifth Avenue (42d Street), Suite 1730, New York, N.Y. 10110; (212) 944-9400, fax (212) 944-9827. For general information, contact the Tourist Office of Spain, 666 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10103; 265-8822, fax (212) 265-8864.
RAY CORMIER",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Day Trips From Heathrow
Q.
I have a nine-hour layover at Heathrow, and would like some tips on where to spend an afternoon without going into London proper. I'd prefer an activity that involves some walking. And please include information on public transportation. -- Sydney Lyle, Rochester
A.  There are many lovely places near Heathrow where you can stretch your legs. The following sites are about 30 to 45 minutes from the airport and are easily accessible by public transportation.
The Royal Botanic Gardens, a few minutes' walk from the Kew Gardens subway station on the westbound District Line, was originally two royal estates, which George III merged in the late 18th century. The site is now a 300-acre center for science and conservation with greenhouses, galleries, follies, a museum and a collection of more than 30,000 plants. You'll find gardens devoted to bluebells, roses, rhododendrons and azaleas; stands of sweet chestnut, juniper and Japanese cedar, as well as greenhouse gardens devoted to alpine, tropical, rain-forest and temperate species. The gardens open at 9:30 a.m.; closing time varies from 3:30 to 6:30 p.m., depending on the season. Admission is $8, figured at a rate of 62 pence to the dollar.
Richmond-upon-Thames, also on the District Line, is one subway stop beyond Kew Gardens. The pretty, prosperous London suburb, with its central Green surrounded by 17th- and 18th-century houses is fun to explore, especially for architecture buffs. Among the noteworthy buildings are the late 19th-century Richmond Theater (on the Green); the 18th-century stone Asgill House at the end of Old Palace Lane; the Museum of Richmond in Old Town Hall on Whittaker Avenue (admission is free); and the early 18th-century Maids of Honor Row, a collection of four three-story houses, built to house the Maids of Honor who attended the Princess of Wales during the time of George II. Nearby is the 2,358-acre Richmond Park,  home to herds of red and fallow deer.  Information: (44-181) 940 9125.
Another option is Windsor Castle, one of Queen Elizabeth II's three official residences. You can visit St. George's Chapel, the State Apartments, Queen Mary's Dolls House, as well as the castle's precincts. Hours are 9:45 a.m. to 4 p.m.; admission is $17.
Signs for subway and bus stations at Heathrow are clearly posted. If you travel after 9:30 a.m., the most economical option for getting to Kew Gardens and Richmond-upon-Thames is to buy a one-day unlimited London Travel Card -- good for buses and subways -- for $5.35.
For transportation to Windsor take the No. 191 or 192 bus from the  station at Heathrow. A round-trip ticket costs $7.25.
Budget Lodgings in Belem
Q.  Can you give me the names of some inexpensive, atmospheric accommodations in Belem? I'd like to keep the price to $50 or under. -- Jonathan Levy, Brooklyn
A.  You won't have a hard time finding atmospheric lodgings in Belem, capital of the northern Brazilian state of Para. In fact, large portions of this 384-year-old port city at the mouth of the Amazon River are loaded with a distinctive Brazilian-colonial ambience -- from the narrow streets lined with blue-tiled, Portuguese-style buildings to the bustling market selling everything from Amazonian fish and manioc flour to medicinal herbs and religious potions.
The Parque dos Igarapes, about four miles from downtown, has 15 bungalows set on 40 acres of Amazon forest. The rustic bungalows, built of wood and straw, are air-conditioned; a double room with private bath is $50. The hotel is at the mouth of the Ariri River and guests have access to canoes, as well as a swimming pool, volleyball court and soccer fields. The hotel is at Kilometer 7 of the Augusto Montenegro Road; telephone (5591) 248-1718, fax (5591) 248-6910.
The Manaca Hotel, in the pleasant suburb of Nazare, is a renovated old house with 16 rooms. It is decorated in a colonial style, with tropical hardwood furniture. The rooms have air-conditioning, private baths, telephones and television sets. Doubles, including breakfast, are $35. The address is 1645 Travessa Quintino Bocaiuva. Information: (5591) 222-6227.
Guest rooms at the Hotel Central, at 290 Avenida Presidente Vargas (Belem's main street), have gorgeous wooden transoms on the windows, 14-foot ceilings and a bathroom with original 1930's tiles. Doubles are $30. Information: (5591) 241-8177.
Left Bank Tours
Q.  I'm going to Paris for the first time and want to take a walking tour of the Left Bank. Can you help? -- Sandra Liever, Portland, Ore.
A.  Organizations offering guided tours of the Left Bank are plentiful. Unless otherwise noted, the companies below offer tours in English as well as in French.
Decouvrir Paris has many tours of Parisian neighborhoods and buildings. Traditional Left Bank tourist haunts like St.-Germain-des-Pres are covered, but Decouvrir Paris also visits less well-known neighborhoods like La Butte aux Cailles, an ethnic neighborhood with Russian and Alsatian enclaves, in the 13th Arrondissement. Tours last 90 minutes and cost $7.50 (figured at a rate of 6.72 francs to the dollar), plus additional entrance fees, when applicable. Information: (33-1) 47.89.41.68.
Paris a Pied, which is based in Minneapolis, has a Left Bank tour that lasts three hours and covers a lot of ground, passing through the Mouffetard quarter, the Pantheon, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Sorbonne and and Cluny. This tour costs $45 and includes a coffee break. Reservations: (800) 594-9535. Information is also available at www.parisapied.com.
Claude Marti has been leading walking tours in Paris for six years. He is certified by the Culture Ministry, which gives his groups access to many courtyards and interesting interiors normally closed to the public. Mr. Marti's tours range from the winding Mouffetard quarter in the Fifth Arrondissement to the renovated neighborhood around the new Francois Mitterrand Library, in the 13th Arrondissement. Tours are in French only; they last two hours and cost $7.50. Information: (33-1) 40.31.56.06.
You might also refer to the weekly publication Pariscope, sold at newspaper kiosks. It gives a day-by-day listing of walking tours under the heading 'Promenades.' Recent examples included a tour of the St. Sulpice Quarter and the Montparnasse Cemetery.
SUZANNE MacNEILLE",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Visiting Iran
Q. I am a 50-year-old woman who has wanted to go to Iran for many years. As an American, my concern is safety. What advice do you have regarding such a trip? -- D.F., Boston
A. While there are no restrictions on travel to Iran for Americans, a State Department warning urges 'U.S. citizens to consider carefully the risks of travel to Iran,' saying the actions in Iraq 'have increased the potential threat to U.S. citizens.' Without diplomatic relations with Iran, the United States uses the Swiss Embassy in Tehran to protect its interests there.
Kelly Shannon, a department spokeswoman, said that 'more than a few' Americans have needed the Swiss Embassy's help in Iran, but that she could not estimate the number of incidents. You can find the latest State Department warnings on the Web at travel.state.gov.
Generally, though, it appears that tourists have not been targets of violence or threats. Elaine Sciolino, who is the Paris bureau chief for The Times and has reported from Iran many times in the last two decades, says little has changed since her account of a tour she took there for the Travel section in 1999. The bottom line, she says, is that tourists can feel reasonably protected, though her article made it clear that the experience of traveling in Iran is not for everyone.
She noted that the group of women she was with suffered 'uncomfortable incidents when perfect strangers told us we were misbehaving.' But they were also welcomed openly and warmly by many Iranians.
Bill Berkley, a journalist teaching at Columbia University, said a 16-day trip to Iran last month was 'a delight,' and 'I was surprised at how wide open it was to an American.'
Traveling with a guide and driver, he was advised by his guide to tell strangers who approached him that he was Canadian, but the guide introduced him to friends and associates as American. 'I had no feeling at all of being watched,' he said.
Geographic Expeditions of San Francisco, (800) 777-8183, www.geoex.com, plans two 24-day tours to Iran next year, in April and September, but also customizes tours. 'I don't think it matters whether you travel there alone or not, security is not an issue,' said Carolyn McIntyre, the regional director for Geographic Expeditions. She said women who visit can wear pants, if under a long coat, and a subdued head scarf.
Cyrus Behesti, president of Cyrus Tours in San Jose, Calif., (800) 332-9787, www.cyrustravel.com, agreed with Ms. McIntyre's assessment, saying that in four years of arranging travel to Iran, he has yet to hear of a client's being victimized. He said his trips used local guides from arrival to departure.
Bestway Tours and Safaris in Burnaby, British Columbia, (800) 663-0844, www.bestway.com, offers three package tours to Iran. But about half of its Iran business is customized tours, said Chi Pham, the tour manager, with the majority of participants over all being women and Americans. If people have concerns about safety, she puts them in touch with others who have taken a trip to Iran to discuss the experience.
Absolute Asia, in New York, (800) 736-8187, www.absoluteasia.com, which handled Mr. Berkley's trip, arranges custom travel only. Lane Nevaras, the sales manager, concedes that Iran is for experienced travelers, but added that 'sometimes women do more there, because they can mingle with Iranian women.'
And he offered this advice: if you are truly anxious about going to a particular place, choose another.
Rijksmuseum Renovations
Q. I have heard that the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is undergoing renovations and some parts are closed. How much of the collection will be on view this winter? -- Joan Austin, Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.
A. The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the Netherlands' largest museum and home to many masterpieces of the 17th century, closed early this month to begin a renovation of the main 19th-century building and other construction lasting until summer 2008. But yesterday, more than 400 of the museum's greatest 17th-century holdings were to go on display in the Philips Wing in the exhibition 'The Masterpieces.'
Though just a small sampling of the museum's holdings, the exhibition will have 15 works by Rembrandt, including 'The Night Watch,' all four of the museum's Vermeers, and works by Jan Steen and Frans Hals. Also on display will be doll houses inlaid with tortoise shell by Petronella Oortman and Petronella Dunois, Delftware, silver by Lutma and the Van Vianen brothers, and historical objects.
Planning is under way for other 17th-century works to go on tour, including to the United States. Some works are at other Dutch museums, including the Rijksmuseum on the Maas, in Maastricht; the Rijksmuseum Twente, in Enschede; the Drents Museum, Assen; and the Hague Historical Museum.
The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, at Jan Luijkanstraat 1, is open daily except New Year's Day. Admission is about $11 at $1.25 to the euro, and free under age 19. Information: (31-20) 674-7047 or www.rijksmuseum.nl.
New Year's Eve in Dublin
Q. My wife and I will be in Dublin for New Year's Eve. Do you have any suggestions for an Irish celebration? -- R.J.R., Huntington, N.Y.
A. Most Dubliners see in the new year at home parties, according to Catherine McCluskey, spokeswoman for the Dublin Tourist Center, Suffolk Street, Dublin; (353-1) 6057-7753, www.visitdublin.com. But a lot of them head to pubs to enjoy Guinness and traditional Irish music, she said.
The biggest traditional event is the ringing of the 19 bells at Christ Church Cathedral, near Eden Quay. Crowds gather outside -- often with warming liquids -- to literally ring in the new year. Information: (353-1) 677-8099 and www.cccdub.ie.
The Holiday Inn Dublin City Center, 99-107 Pearse Street, (353-1) 677-0340, www.holidayinndublin.ie, is featuring a cabaret show by the Irish balladeer, piper and composer Finbar Furey, after a wine reception and dinner at 7:30 p.m. Dancing will follow. The cost is $92 a person.
A pub with traditional music -- including the Merry Ploughboys, a ballad group, and Riverdance-style dancers -- is Taylors Three Rock, Grange Road, Rathfarnham, (353-1) 494-2999 and www.taylorsthreerock.com. The show follows dinner at 8, for $68 a person.
You can find dinner-dances at the Berkeley Court Hotel, Lansdowne Road, Ballsbridge, (353-1) 665-3211 ($160 each), and Jurys Ballsbridge Hotel, Pembroke Road, (353-1) 660-5000, www.jurysdoyle.com ($75 to $105).
RAY CORMIER
Q & A",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Wine Tours in Chile
Q.
Are there wine tours in Chile? -- Walter Tillow, Collingswood, N.J.
A.  Two wineries in central Chile, both within an hour's drive of Santiago, offer free tours. They are Concha y Toro and Undurraga, set in a rich valley with vineyards and fruit orchards. Concha y Toro, founded in 1883, actually has 10 vineyards throughout central Chile. Its showcase vineyard is at a former hacienda in Pirque, about 18 miles southeast of Santiago, and is open daily from 10 A.M. to 1 P.M. and 3 to 6 P.M. A souvenir shop sells wine by the glass, and another shop, closed Monday, sells wine by the bottle. While tours are available in several languages, it is advisable to call at 850-1407 or 850-0007 to arrange for an English-speaking guide if you need one.
The Undurraga winery, founded in 1885, is in Talagante, 21 miles southwest of Santiago. It is open Monday to Friday from 9:30 A.M. to 3 P.M. Visitors are shown around by Pedro Undurraga, one of the owners, who is fluent in English. Visitors are shown the process of bottling and labeling.  There is also a visit to the winery's park, known for its variety of South American trees. The winery recommends a call a day ahead of a planned visit at 817-2346.
Travel companies in Santiago offer tours to the each winery (but not to both in one tour), by private car with a guide fluent in most languages. One company is Tour Service (696-0415). Its tour of the Concha y Toro winery also takes in the neighboring Cajon del Maipo region (the canyon of the Maipo River) in the lower slopes of the Andes. The cost is $57 for the car, which will hold up to four. One tour leaves Santiago at 9:30 A.M. and returns at around 2 P.M. Another leaves Santiago at 2 P.M. and returns by 6 P.M. The tour of the Undurraga winery costs about $61 and also includes a walk through Pomaire, known for its ceramics and other crafts. Two other Santiago companies with similar tours are Turismo Cocha (698-3341) and Expor Travel (698-5241). The Mystery of Point Baker
Q.
On an Aeroflot flight from Leningrad to Kiev our tickets were written as Leningrad-Point Baker. There was great confusion in Leningrad about Point Baker and we almost didn't get on the Kiev flight. No one I have asked since knows what Point Baker means. Is it some kind of code? -- Gloria Charney, Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
A.  Point Baker is no code but a real place in southeast Alaska. It does have an airport, but gets flights from places like Ketchikan and Whale Pass, and certainly not from Leningrad. The probable explanation for Point Baker's appearing on your ticket lies in airport codes, the three-letter combinations that appear on luggage tags and are entered in computers when writing plane tickets.  Your flight from Leningrad was to one of Kiev's two airports, Borispol, code letters KBP. Point Baker's code is KPB. Your ticket was written by your travel agent, who may have transposed the last two letters. If she had, the computer would have printed Point Baker instead of Kiev on your ticket. Your agent said that your tickets, with a number of stops, were complicated, so she wrote the fares on them manually rather than using her computer. Therefore, the computer would not have indicated that Leningrad-Point Baker was unlikely or impossible. In any case, your name was on Aeroflot's list of passengers, and you did get to Kiev.  Scotland on Foot
Q.
We would like to take hikes in Scotland and spend nights in hotels or country inns. Do you know of companies that organize such hikes? -- Eugen E. Pacher, Pattenburg, N.J.
A.  There are a number of British companies that offer such walks in Scotland with overnight stays in inns, hotels, bed and breakfasts or even a castle. Luggage is usually moved from one lodging to the next by motor vehicle. Walks generally cover 8 to 14 miles a day; the difficulty varies, depending on the hilliness of the region and the condition of trails. Here are some of the companies. To call them from the United States, precede the number with 011-44. When calling within Britain, precede the area code (listed in parentheses) with a zero. Prices are per person based on two in a room and include lodging and, unless noted otherwise, all meals.
English Wanderer, 13 Wellington Court, Spencers Wood, Reading RG7 1BN, England; telephone (734) 882515. This company has three tours in Scotland: six nights in the Tweed Valley, for $850 (prices at $2 to the pound), starting June 1, Aug. 3 and Aug. 31, with two nights at each hotel; seven nights in the Scottish Highlands, using the same hotel throughout, starting June 22, July 13 and Sept. 7, for $1,064, and six nights on the Isle of Skye, starting June 29, July 20 and Sept. 14, $774. The second two can be combined.
Countrywide Holidays Association Birch Heys, Cromwell Range, Manchester, England M14 8HU; (61) 225 1000. This company owns a castle in Perth, and guests, who stay there, have a choice of two walks of 8 to 10 miles a day. The cost from Easter to May 25 is $378 a person a week or $57 a night; May 26 through September, $390 a week and $55.50 a night. There is a small charge for each walk. Last year a full week's worth was $36.
The Wayfarers, Braithwaite, Keswick, Cumbria, England CA12 5TN; (59682) 570, or 166 Thames Street, Newport, R.I. 02840; 401-849-5087. A six-night Scots Borders tour, about $1,360, leaves July 15 and Sept. 2. Lodging is in inns, bed and breakfasts or private homes.
British Coastal Trails, 150 Carob Way, Coronado, Calif. 92118; 800-473-1210 or 619-437-1211. This company has two Scotland tours, which can be combined. Each is seven nights, starting and finishing in Edinburgh, staying at inns and covering just six to seven miles a day: a tour along the border and into Northumberland, leaving May 25, July 6 and Aug. 31, and a Highlands tour, June 1, July 13 and Sept. 7. Each is $1,395 a person, which does not include lunch, usually taken at pubs along the way.
A map folder called ""Walking,"" with a list of tour operators, can be obtained free at the British Tourist Authority, 40 West 57th Street, New York, N.Y. 10019. If requested by mail, enclose a self-addressed envelope with 45 cents postage.  Dining on Ortolan in France?
Q.
We are planning a trip to France. For years I have wanted to taste the game bird called ortolan. Which restaurants serve it? -- David Billings, Morristown, N.J.
A.  None. Ortolan is a tiny bird native to the southwest of France and are traditionally roasted and eaten in one bite, head, beak, bones and all. They are such a delicacy that their number has dwindled, and since 1979 the French Ministry of Environment has banned the hunting of ortolan.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Biking in France
Q.  I am planning a bicycle trip with friends through the foothills of the French Pyrenees. We would like to rent 18-speed mountain bikes with racks to accommodate panniers for our clothes. Rentals in such cities as Toulouse, Tarbes, Pau or Bayonne would fit the bill. -- Gerald Stillman, Maplewood, N.J.
A.  Of those cities mentioned, neither Pau nor Bayonne seems to have a bike rental store, but you will find one in Billere, about a mile west of Pau, and two in Biarritz, five miles west of Bayonne.
All the following stores, which unless specified otherwise rent 18-speed bikes with luggage racks, said it was a good idea to rent as soon as possible because they often deal with large groups in the summer.
Toulouse: A2L, 54 Rue de Cimetiere St.-Cyprien, 31300 Toulouse, France; telephone 61.59.33.99, no fax. Rates are $20 a day, calculated at 4.78 francs to the dollar, and $125 for two weeks. A security deposit of $210 is required in cash or by check in francs.
Biarritz: Capdeboscq, 16 Avenue Jaulerry, 64200 Biarritz, France; 59.24.13.64, no fax (ask for the owner, Gerard Capdeboscq). Rates are $17.75 a day, $146 for two weeks. Call at least 48 hours in advance to insure getting a bike with a baggage rack. A piece of identity, usually a driver's license, is required as a security check.
Sobilo, 24 Rue Peyroloubilh, 64200 Biarritz, France; 59.24.94.47, no fax. Rates are $12.50 a day, $125 for two weeks. A $210 security deposit is required and it can be put on a credit card.
Tarbes: Cycles Labbe, 11 Avenue Bertrand Barere, 65000 Tarbes, France; 62.93.00.57, fax 62.51.35.82. Rates are $21 a day or $157 for two weeks. A deposit of $315 or $420, depending on the value of the bike, is required. Credit cards accepted.
Billere: Pedegaye, Boulevard Charles de Gaulle, 104140 Lons, France; 59.32.48.74, no fax. Rates are $21 a day, $104 for two weeks. A security deposit of $210 is required, either on a credit card or by check in francs.
Arette: Pierre Tillous Velos, Arette, 64570, France; 59.88.90.61, no fax. Rates are $16.75 a day, $157 for two weeks. They will ask to see a driver's license, or, if you arrive by car, they will ask you to leave it behind. Karen Blixen Museum
Q.  I finally have the opportunity to go to Copenhagen and I want to visit the Isak Dinesen (Baroness Blixen) house. When are the house and grounds open? -- Janet M. Roberts, Philadelphia
A.  The house, home to Karen Blixen for most of her life, was opened as a museum in 1991. Called Rungstedlund, the house is in the town of Rungsted, 15 miles north of Copenhagen.
The writer, using the name Isak Dinesen, was the author of books that included ""Seven Gothic Tales,"" ""Winter's Tales"" and ""Last Tales."" Born in the house in 1885, from 1914 to 1931 she was a resident of Kenya, where she lived on and later managed a coffee plantation. It was from her experiences there that in 1937 she wrote ""Out of Africa,"" later a successful film.
The museum, (45 42) 57 10 57, fax (45 42) 57 10 58, is open 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. every day from May 1 to Sept. 30; 10 A.M. to 5 P.M. on Wednesday and Friday from Oct. 1 to April 30 and 11 A.M. to 4 P.M. on Saturday and Sunday the rest of the year.
Admission is $5.50, calculated at 5.4 kroner to the dollar; children under 12 are admitted free.
To get there from Copenhagen take a train to Rungsted; the museum is a five-minute walk from the station.
Trains leave every 20 minutes from Copenhagen and the one-way fare is about $6. San Diego Lodgings
Q.  My husband and I visit San Diego a couple of times each year and usually stay with relatives, but so as not to become burdensome I would like to rent a small studio with a kitchenette or stay at a bed-and-breakfast in the Balboa Park area or La Jolla. Can you help? -- Florence Bloom, Roosevelt Island, N.Y.
A.  For bed-and-breakfast information you should contact the Bed & Breakfast Directory for San Diego, Post Office Box 3292, San Diego, Calif. 92163, (619) 297-3130 or (800) 619-7666. The 20-page directory lists information on 30 homes and inns throughout San Diego County, renting from $49 to $350 a night, with weekly and monthly rates available. Call (619) 299-1564 for information or send $3.95 for the directory.
In the Balboa Park-Hillcrest area, there are at least two options:
Park Manor Suites Hotel, 52 Spruce Street, San Diego, Calif. 92103, (619) 291-0999 or (800) 874-2649, fax (619) 291-8844. The hotel, which is opposite Balboa Park and the zoo, has 80 units, including studios, all fully furnished with kitchens. Rates, which include Continental breakfast, are $69 a night for two people, $400 a week and $1,100 for a month.
Sommerset Suites Hotel, 606 Washington Street, San Diego, Calif. 92103, (619) 692-5200 or (800) 356-1787 in California, fax (619) 299-6065. Studios, all with fully equipped kitchens, rent for $69 a night for two people, $62 a night on a weekly basis and $1,650 a month with tax.
In La Jolla you could try La Jolla Cove Suites, 1155 Coast Boulevard, La Jolla, Calif. 92037, (619) 459-2621 or (800) 248-2683, fax (619) 454-3522. Studios at this oceanfront establishment rent for $95 to $120 a night ($125 a night after May 26). Weekly rates are $743.75. Rates for a 30-day month are $3,187.50; a 31-day month is $3,293.75.
For a detailed list of rental properties throughout San Diego County write for a free copy of the San Diego Official Visitors Guide, to the San Diego Convention and Visitors Bureau, 401 B Street, Suite 1400, San Diego, Calif. 92101; (619) 232-3101, fax (619) 696-9371. All those listed are members of the bureau. River Cruising in Europe
Q.  We will be aboard the Queen of Holland in June going from Amsterdam to Vienna on the Rhine and Danube. Can you tell us what the weather will be like then and also what the evening attire will be aboard ship? -- Ann. H. Sharko, Bernardsville, N.J.
A.  You can expect weather conditions to be remarkably similar along your route, with highs in the mid- to high 70's and lows in the low to mid-50's. Precipitation on average varies from a low of 2.3 inches for June in the Amsterdam area to 4.9 inches in Munich, which will be the site of one of your planned excursions.
In Vienna, which is in the driest part of Austria, with conditions similar to those found in southern Germany, the average highs in June are 73 degrees and the lows 56. Precipitation averages 2.6 inches.
Evening attire, according to Sea Air Holidays of Stamford, Conn., which puts the tours together, will be informal. TERENCE NEILAN",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:  John Muir Trail
John Muir Trail
Question: I plan to hike the John Muir Trail in California this summer with my two children and my father. Do you know of any pack companies that hire out mules to carry provisions for extended periods? - C. C. L, Easton, Pa.
Answer: Experienced hikers say it would take about two months to hike the entire John Muir Trail, the 200-mile path that follows the crest of the Sierra Nevada from Yosemite National Park to Mount Whitney in Sequoia National Park. A couple of commercial packers there express doubt that any outfitter would rent mules without one of their own experienced packers' going along. Usually outfitters either provide everything needed for a long trek - mules, packers, camping equipment, food - or supply camping equipment to backpackers who carry it themselves.
One outfitter said it might be possible to rent burros, which are easier to handle than mules, but slower and smaller. Mules are preferred, and on a mountain camping trip, with tents, food and utensils carried, one mule per person is usually needed, he said.
One of the guide services near the trail is Mammoth Lakes Pack Station, Post Office Box 61, Mammoth Lakes, Calif. 93546 (619-934-2434), which also has a station at McGee Creek, about 15 miles south of Mammoth Lakes. It supplies mules, packers, guides and all necessary equipment. The service's options include group trips of three to six days along a section of the trail, and customized trips for family or other small private groups. It also does what it calls spot trips, providing mules and packers for people with their own gear who want to camp by a lake or some other spot and then be collected at the end of their stay. Another option is the dunnage trip, a shuttle ride to a particular spot on the John Muir Trail.
Often a packer and a cook-guide goes along with a group, the packer's mules carrying all the camping and other equipment supplied by the service. All hikers need to take along are sleeping bags. The mules graze in the evenings, and they carry some grain for themselves. These trips generally cost $100 to $150 a person a day for small groups, $100 a person a day for larger groups. Once on the trail, trekkers don't have access to any towns, although Red's Meadows, which has a store and cafe, is accessible from the route. Most people hiking along the trail do about six or seven miles a day. Another service is the Bob Tanner Pack Station, Post Office Box 395, Mammoth Lakes, Calif. 93546 (619-873-3928 and, from early June, 619-934-2345). For a trip with mules, packer, food, and camping and other equipment, rates are around $100 a person a day.  The Hermitage
Question: Is it true, as we have heard, that the Hermitage in Leningrad is to be closed for extensive renovations? We are going to the Soviet Union in July. - D. R., Grosse Pointe Park, Mich.
Answer: Soviet officials say emphatically that there is no plan to close the Hermitage. They do concede that restoration work is often going on and that visitors sometimes find a wing closed for repairs or maintenance. The Hermitage houses one of the leading collections of European paintings and sculpture, thousands of drawings and engravings, tapestries and furniture, as well as collections of art from India, China, Egypt and other countries. The museum has about 3.5 million visitors a year.  Paris Opera
Question: We are interested in attending performances at the Paris Opera. How can we get a schedule and then reservations? - D. K. O., Wichita, Kan.
Answer: The old Paris Opera - a new one is scheduled to open next season - does not have a booking service in this country, so people eager to get tickets must either write directly to the theater or ask a travel company with a representative in Paris to approach it. The address to write to for information or reservations is Theatre National de l'Opera, Service Location par Correspondance, 8 Rue Scribe, 75009 Paris, France (telephone 47.42.53.71). A self-addressed envelope with an international reply coupon should be enclosed. The old Opera's last full season, alternating with ballet performances, continues until mid-July. (The French Government Tourist Office, 628 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10020; 212-757-1125, can provide the schedule.) In September the theater is due to reopen with dance only. Opera will be presented at the new Opera de la Bastille, where inaugural concerts celebrating the bicentennial of the French Revolution will be presented on July 13 and 14. The plan is to commence the first opera season there in January 1990, but dates and programs are not yet available, and a ticket office has yet to be established.  Rail Route
Question: What is the best way of going by train from Oslo to Switzerland, passing through Copenhagen and the Black Forest in West Germany? - D. W., Longboat Key, Fla.
Answer: The most direct route is from Oslo to Copenhagen, where you change for Hamburg, and catch a train from there to Basel, Switzerland. The Hamburg-Basel train passes through the Black Forest. From Basel, Swiss Federal Railways provides good nationwide service.
Starting from Oslo, the traveler has the choice of taking a ferry to Copenhagen or catching the Copenhagen train, which runs down the coast of Sweden, via Goteborg, and is carried by ferryboat across to Denmark. There are day and night services. Traveling time is about 10 hours. The traveler doing the whole leg to Copenhagen by ferry would sail with D.F.D.S. Seaways, a Danish company; the crossing taking about 16 hours. The Copenhagen-Hamburg-Basel journey takes about 13 1/2 hours. From Hamburg the train goes through Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, and Offenburg and Freiburg, which are in the Black Forest. There isn't a night train on the Copenhagen-Hamburg route, but there are both day and night trains between Hamburg and Basel.
One-way train fares, Oslo to Basel, are about $200 in second class and $400 in first. Sleeping accommodations are extra. It would pay a passenger traveling first class to buy a 15-day Eurailpass, which allows first-classs travel. It costs $320.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q. & A.
Halloween by the Bay
Q.  We will be in the San Francisco area at the end of next month and would like information on any Halloween festivities. -- Marcella Dugan, New York, N.Y.
A.  When it comes to celebrating Halloween, San Francisco refuses to play second pumpkin to any other city. The main event in the city itself, Halloween San Francisco, is moving this year to the Civic Center after 16 years in the Castro District, the city's gay community. If it's anything like previous years, the costumes should range from the outrageous to the spectacular. And it's all free. Call (415) 777-5500.
The goblins and ghosts don't stop at the city limits. Half Moon Bay, a small oceanside town 20 miles to the south, considers itself pumpkin patch to the world. The orange gourds are grown all around the town, and on Oct. 13, the Great Pumpkin Weigh-Off starts the Halloween festivities. One word of caution, though: If you're thinking of joining the many entrants who come from all over the western United States to see who has grown the heaviest pumpkin of 1997, don't even bother unless yours is over 600 pounds.
The 27th annual Half Moon Bay Art and Pumpkin Festival follows on Oct. 18 and 19. There are haunted houses to scare yourself silly (and with its many Victorian homes, Half Moon Bay provides a happy haunting ground), pony and hay rides and displays of works by area artists. The event is so popular that the town's population of 10,000 can swell to 30 times that number. Call the Half Moon Bay Chamber of Commerce at (415) 726-8380.
One event that is definitely for adults only is the Exotic Erotic Ball, a San Francisco party that has grown from 1,000 participants when it started a decade ago to 10,000 last year. Like the Halloween parade, it is also moving to a new site this year -- the Fashion Center San Francisco, at Eighth and Townsend. It draws costumed participants in various forms of dress and undress -- proving that people's inhibitions seem to diminish when they are wearing masks.
The ball is Oct. 25 from 8 P.M. to 2 A.M. Tickets are $48.75 a person, including handling charges, from (800) 225-2277. For information, call (415) 567-2255.
Honolulu Apartments
Q.  We are going to be in Honolulu for five weeks starting in early December. We have a motel reservation for the first week at $79 a night, but would like to rent an apartment for the remainder of our stay, thinking this would be cheaper. Since we won't have a car, we would like to be near the beach and public transportation. What can you suggest? -- Robert Butow, Seattle, Wash.
A.  First, don't tell your friends where you'll be spending December, unless you want to make them extremely envious.
Second, reserve quickly because the holiday period is one of the busiest in Hawaii.
Third, try calling a real-estate agent. Discovery Bay Realty, 1778 Ala Moana Boulevard, Honolulu, (808) 946-3370, fax 946-3369, has studio apartments that average about $2,000 a month, without a balcony but close to the beach, during the December-March period, which is the most expensive. That averages out to about $65 a day, a savings over your $79-a-night motel room. Apartment rentals are not exempt from the 10.17 percent tax that will be added to your hotel bill. Discovery Bay does require a $1,000 refundable security deposit.
Sykes & Sykes, Century Center, Suite 2203, 1750 Kalakaua Avenue, Honolulu, (808) 941-6672, fax 941-1172, has one-bedroom apartments near the beach for about $1,800 a month. A $500 deposit is required and there is a cleaning fee of $60 to $120 for each rental.
You could also call Rentals Illustrated for a copy of their free booklet listing ads from individual homeowners and townhouse owners, although these will probably be more expensive. Call (808) 949-3686.
A longer list of apartment-rental agencies is available from the Hawaii Visitors Bureau, 2270 Kalakaua Avenue, Suite 801, Honolulu 96815, (808) 923-1811. When calling, ask for the information office.
On the Case
Q.  My husband and I are great fans of the Inspector Morse series on PBS's 'Mystery.' In November, we will be visiting Oxford, where the series is filmed. Are there any tours that specialize in sites associated with the television show? -- Birute K. Vitenas, Holmdel, N.J.
A.  It wasn't Scotland Yard that solved this who-does-it, but another English organization -- the British Tourist Authority.
According to the B.T.A., Inspector Morse Walking Tours leave from the Oxford Information Center -- in the same building as the Old School pub, near the bus station -- on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 1:30 P.M. The tour, lasting two hours, follows in the footsteps of the detective created by Colin Dextor, who lives in Oxford. The tour costs $7.60 ($7.85 by credit card), $5 ($5.30 credit card) for ages 5 to 12. Prices are calculated at $1.69 to the pound. Reservations are recommended, and can be made by a check payable to Oxford City Council.
Regular tours visit at least one Oxford college as well as other locales associated with the show, like the Turf Tavern, which is in just about every episode, and the Pitt Rivers Museum, which contains the dagger used in the episode 'The Daughters of Cain.'
Unfortunately, these tours are conducted on a regular basis from February through October only. The two of you can still hire a private guide in November, but you'll have to pay a lot more. There are, however, added benefits with the added cost.
For a private tour for two similar in length to the regular tour, you will have to pay about $85. But, according to Ruth Ward, one of the Morse tour guides, you will have access to many more Oxford colleges (like Brasenose, which apears as Lonsdale College in the show), which the larger regular tour groups cannot enter. Call Marion Owen at the Information Center, at (44-1865) 250 551, to book a tour.
Visa and Mastercard are accepted for bookings. Card information or checks should be sent to The Tours Assistant, Oxford Information Center, the Old School, Gloucester Green, Oxford OX1 2DA. If you cannot book ahead, the tourist center recommends that you call to reserve a place as early as possible on the day you plan to take the tour. The information center opens at 9:30 A.M. on tour days.
JOSEPH SIANO
Q. & A.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Hiking the Appalachian Trail
Q.
Are there organized walking tours of the Appalachian Trail? -- Virginia Hammel, San Francisco
A.  The Appalachian Trail runs 2,144 miles between Maine and Georgia, and hiking the whole trail would take four to six months. There are 31 clubs that maintain the trail, and each organizes hikes in its section. These are usually day hikes, but sometimes they involve weekends or longer, according to the Appalachian Trail Conference, the umbrella organization for all the clubs. When you know which area you wish to hike, you can find the right club through the conference, at Post Office Box 807, Harpers Ferry, W. Va. 25425; (304) 535-6331.
One of the most active clubs offering guided hikes is the Appalachian Mountain Club with headquarters at 5 Joy Street, Boston, Mass. 02108; (617) 523-0636. Its hikes range from two to eight nights and use the Appalachian Mountain Club hut system along the trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The hikes are offered at easier (three to five miles a day), moderate (four to seven miles) and challenging (five to eight miles, often above tree line) levels. For example, a four-day Presidential Traverse in the White Mountains, including lodging in huts, daily breakfast and dinner, and transportation to and from trailheads, is $285 for nonmembers of the club and $265 for members. Two four-day hikes, the Western and Eastern Huts Traverses, can be combined for $725 for nonmembers.
If you are thinking about trekking the whole trail, Warren Doyle of George Mason University in Virginia offers five-day Appalachian Trail Institutes. Participants learn about what to expect on the trail and cover such topics as what food, clothing and equipment to take, how to send and get mail along the way and the emotional demands of making such a long trek. They take a series of loop hikes, gradually adding to the weight they carry. The $200 fee includes lodging in bunk beds in cabins, and all meals. Mr. Doyle says that only about 10 percent of those who set out to hike the whole trail finish, but those who first take his institute have a 75 or 80 percent completion rate.
More information: Warren Doyle, Appalachian Trail Institute, George Mason University, 13220 Yates Ford Road, Clifton, Va. 22024; (703) 830 9252. Apartments in Tokyo
Q.
I frequently travel to Tokyo and would like to avoid the high cost of hotels. Do you have the names of places to stay in apartments in Tokyo for a week or two? The area around the Palace would be best. -- Susan Stanton, Greenwich, Conn.
A.  The rather posh district around the Imperial Palace contains mainly luxury hotels and few apartment hotels, according to the Japan National Tourist Office. There are several apartment hotels in Tokyo that rent furnished apartments by the day or week, all in locations near trains or subways that make travel to the Palace District convenient. Here are some that have daily or weekly rates. Unless stated otherwise, prices are for one person.
Crystal Village, 1-18-1 Arai, Nakano-ku, Tokyo, Japan; telephone 388-7625. There are eight locations in the Nakano area, with prices starting at $135 a week.
Tsukasa Weekly-Monthly Mansion, 6-6-4 Koyama, Sinagawa-ku, Tokyo, Japan; 784-0631 for weekly rentals. Prices start at $144 a week.
Sky Court Shimotakaido, 1-1-13, Shimo-Takaido, Tokyo, Japan; 323-4411. Rates start at $54 a night.
International House Ojima, 2-38-15 Ojima, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan; 636-2277. Apartments start at $47 a night for one person and $70 for two.
Chalet Yayo, 3-21-5 Kami-Ikebukuro, Toshima-ku, Tokyo, Japan; 916-7118. Prices start at $292 a week.
In the suburb of Kawasaki, near a Japan Rail station is Sky Court Kawasaki, 12-9-2 Minamicho, Kawasaki-ku, Kawasaki-shi, Kanagawa Prefecture; (044) 233-4400. Apartments start at $30 a night. Australian Open Tickets
Q.
Do you information on how to get tickets to the Australian Open tennis tournament? -- John Fitzgerald, Stamford, Conn.
A.  The Australian Open will take place Jan. 13 to 26 at the National Tennis Center at Flinders Park in Melbourne. Ticket prices will be set this summer, and price information will be available from Australian Southern Tourism, 2121 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 1270, Los Angeles, Calif. 90067; (213) 553-6352.
Tickets will be sold beginning in August by Ford Australian Open, care of Bass Victoria, General Post Office Box 762G, Melbourne, Victoria 30001, Australia. Prices will be set in July; last year center court seats ranged from $12 (United States dollars) for the first day to $41 for each of the last four days, when the men's and women's semifinals are held. Series were $143 for days 1 to 10, and $160 for the last four days. There are also passes that allow seating at all courts except center court.
A way to be sure of having center court seats is by taking part in a package tour that takes in the Australian Open. One is offered by Steve Furgal's International Tennis Tours, 11828 Rancho Bernardo Road, Suite 123-305, San Diego, Calif. 92128; (800) 258-3664 or (619) 487-7777. The tour leaves Los Angeles Jan. 12 and returns Jan. 27. Participants first arrive at Auckland, New Zealand, then go on to Sydney, where they attend a performance at the opera house, before going to Melbourne and seeing the final four days of the tournament, as well as the oportunity to play tennis at a local club. The cost is $3,995 a person, including round-trip air, hotels, airport transfers, tennis tickets, daily Continental breakfast and two dinners.
Another package will be offered by Grand Slam Tennis Tours, Post Office Box 5132, 78060 Calle Estado, La Quinta Calif. 92253; (800) 289-3333. The company plans to have three tours, for viewing the early, middle or late rounds of the Open. Prices are expected to be $3,000 to $5,000, the company says, and will include air fare, hotel, breakfasts, one dinner, tennis seats and a city transit pass.
Other companies that will offer packages are Keith Prowse, 234 West 44th Street, New York, N.Y. 10036, (800) 669 8687, and Louis Travel, 19 East 21st Street, Suite 3D, New York, N.Y. 10010; (212) 460-8320. Luggage Storage in Lisbon
Q.
I will be passing through Lisbon on my way to Africa and would like to leave several suitcases at the airport and pick them up on my return. Does the Lisbon airport have a storage service? -- Judith Norman, Madison, Wis.
A.  TAP, the Portuguese airline, has a luggage storage facility at the Lisbon airport. The fee is 85 cents a piece a day.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Bird-Watching in Rio
Q. Are there places in or near Rio de Janeiro where I can do some bird-watching? I would go with a tour company that organizes excursions of a few days or even for an afternoon, but am also willing to venture into a parklike setting by myself. -- David T. Lane, Norfolk, Va.
A. Perhaps the most convenient place for bird-watching in Rio de Janeiro -- and one that you can easily explore by yourself -- is the 339-acre Botanical Gardens. Some 5,000 varieties of tropical plants and trees attract more than 100 species of birds, including flycatchers, cotingas and macaws. The gardens, on the Rua Jardim Botanico, are about a 10-minute drive from Ipanema. They are open daily from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $2. Information: (55-21) 294-6012.
A few miles to the north, the 8,154-acre Tijuca National Park and Forest is home to toucans, parakeets, hummingbirds and other species.  For serious exploration, it's best to take a tour -- people have been known to get lost in the woods, and muggings are not uncommon. Jeep Tours, (55-21) 522-1620, can organize one-day bird-watching excursions. The cost is $35 a person with a minimum of six people. The Tijuca National Park and Forest is open daily, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free.
Outside of Rio, there are numerous areas for bird-watching. For instance, the forests of the 27,181-acre Serra dos Orgaos Park in Teresopolis, a mountain resort 50 miles north of the city, is home to toucans, parrots, hummingbirds, gray-wing cotingas and kinglet kalypturas, among other species. Ricardo Parrini, an ornithologist and guide charges $100 a day per person for a full-day trek through the park. Information: (55-21) 570-3155; e-mail: rparrini@hotmail.com.
One hundred miles north of Rio, is the Itatiaia National Park, which has one of the densest bird populations in South America, with some 400 species living in its 74,131 rugged acres. Focus Tours, based in Santa Fe, N.M., offers a three-day nature tour from Rio for a minimum of six participants, costing $799 a person, including transportation, meals, guide and hotel. Information: (505) 466-4688, fax (505) 466-4689.
France's Picasso Museums
Q. Of the two Picasso museums in France, does the one in Paris have the more extensive collection? -- Martha P. Atkins, Providence, R.I.
A. There are actually three Picasso museums in France, and yes, the one in Paris has, by far, the largest collection. But the two others -- in Antibes on the Cote d'Azur and  in nearby Vallauris -- are well worth visiting.
Picasso, who was born in Spain, spent much of the first half of the 20th century working in Paris. In lieu of paying estate taxes after his death in 1973, his heirs turned over hundreds of Picasso works to the French Government. They may be viewed at the Picasso Museum in Paris, which houses more than 250 Picasso paintings, 1,500 sketches, some 150 sculptures, as well as collages and ceramics.
Among the works you'll find are 'Portrait of Olga in an Armchair' (1917) and 'Pan's Flute' (1923). An exhibition of recently acquired works -- 'From Celestine to Dora Maar, 10 Years of Enrichment at the Picasso Museum'-- runs through Jan. 3. The museum, at 5, rue de Thorigny in the Marais district, is housed in an ornate 17th-century mansion known as the Hotel Sale. Admission is $4.75, $3 for visitors between the ages of 18 and 25, free for those under 18, $3 for everyone on Sunday. Hours are 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.; until 8 p.m. on Thursday; closed Tuesdays. Information: (33-1) 42.71.25.21.
In 1946 Picasso spent several months working in the Chateau Grimaldi in Antibes. The chateau is now the Picasso Museum in Antibes, which has about 300 Picasso works, including 'La Joie de Vivre' (1946), and a fine ceramics display. A temporary exhibition of works by the modern French artist Roger Bissiere, will run through January. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is $4.75. Information: (33-4) 92.90.54.20.
The smaller Musee National Picasso La Guerre et la Paix and the adjoining Musee Magnelli, are in Vallauris, about 10 miles east of Antibes. Picasso retreated to Antibes between 1948 and 1955 with Francoise Gilot, his companion at the time. In 1952, the artist painted a monumental fresco called 'La Guerre et la Paix' on the walls and ceilings of the town's 16th-century chapel (now the museum). The Magnelli displays a collection of Picasso ceramics and Picasso's 1972 painting  'Hidalgo au Colombe,' as well as works by the abstract Italian painter Alberto Magnelli. The museum, on the Place de la Liberation, is open daily from 10 a.m. to noon and from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. (until 6:30 during the summer). Admission to both is $2.50. Information: (33-4) 93.64.16.05.
Sicily-Malta Ferries
Q. Do you have information on ferryboat travel to and from Malta, starting in Sicily? Is advance booking necessary? -- Ellen K. Parrella, Newtown, Conn.
A. Island Seaway and Virtu are among the companies with the most frequent year-round sailings. Reservations are necessary only during the summer, when calling two weeks ahead is suggested.
Island Seaway, a Maltese company, operates from Catania and Reggio di Calabria in Sicily. Ferries leave Catania at 7 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday and arrive in Valletta on Malta at 7 a.m. the next day. A round-trip ticket costs $107. Children between 4 and 12 pay half the fare (free for those under 4). Cars cost an additional $150. The return ferry from Valletta departs on Monday and Wednesday at 8 p.m.
Ferries from Reggio di Calabria leave on Sunday, at 1:30 p.m. and arrive in Malta at 5:30 a.m. Round-trip fare is $134; cars cost an additional $163. Information: (39-095) 325081, fax (39-095) 7159385.
Virtu Ferries, another Maltese company, operates faster hydrofoil boats between the southern Sicilian port of Pozzallo and Valletta. From Nov. 1 to March 14, the hydrofoils  leave Pozzallo on Thursday at 6:30 p.m., arriving in Valletta at 8 p.m.; on Saturday, they leave at 8:30 p.m. arriving at 10 p.m. A connecting bus for the Saturday hydrofoil leaves Catania at 6 p.m. From Valletta there are hydrofoils on Thursday at 7 a.m. and Saturday at 5 a.m. There are more frequent runs during the summer. Round-trip fare is $67. Children between 4 and 12 pay half-price. Information: (39-06) 4817807.
SUZANNE MacNEILLE",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
Regarding your recent advice on how to find the best seats in the air (Q&A, Nov. 19), why not suggest my solution? For years I have bought three adjoining seats in coach and slept like a baby, completely flat. The price is always much less than business class, and you get more real estate. I would add three warnings, however: Never buy the first row in the coach section (the armrests cannot be raised); never buy just two seats; and bring an extra pillow. -- Janys Harvey, Paris
In fact, back in the old days, before business class emerged in the late 1970s and there were only two cabins (first class and economy), travelers used to do just that, except that they tried to get the seats free. The idea was to find an 'empty' flight and get four seats behind the bulkhead so you could stretch out. It was far more comfortable than first class, which had seats that could recline only about 15 degrees.
You may be right when it comes to pricing. British Airways quoted me $476 for a round-trip economy ticket from New York to London for travel in March, compared with $3,868 in business class. I could therefore have bought four economy seats for $1,904, half the business fare. Of course, getting a row of seats would require planning. British Airways, Continental, Delta and Virgin Atlantic are among the major airlines that accept multiple bookings from people who wish to buy more than one seat.
A few more caveats: Booking adjoining seats does not always ensure that you will get them. Airlines, drawing upon reserves of small print, may say, 'We can never guarantee seat assignments' and that 'personnel and computers often reassign seats.' Check aircraft seating plans before you book, and make sure your seats are preassigned and together. I heard of one traveler who found that the two seats he had booked for himself were on either side of the aisle.
Also, be sure that armrests are not fixed in the down position on the type of plane you will be flying. It's best to book directly with the airline and get an advance seat assignment. Bear in mind that certain seats (like those in emergency exit rows) are allocated only at check-in. And always make sure that the airline understands and authorizes what you are doing. You don't want to be faced at check-in with 'Sorry, we have had to split up your party.' Of course, the multiple-seat strategy makes sense only if you are flying nonstop. And, finally, you may find it hard to defend your territory in the case of overbooking.
ROGER COLLIS
Q & A",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
Eskimo Festival in Fairbanks
Q.
We are planning a trip to Fairbanks, Alaska, this summer. Are there any festivals featuring Eskimo culture, including music and dance? -- Judi Benade, Madison, Wis.
A. If you are in Fairbanks between July 15 and 18, you can attend the World Eskimo Indian Olympics. The centerpiece is traditional athletics of Eskimos and other Indians. Among them is the one-foot high kick, in which participants leap and kick a ball that is raised to increasing heights; the ear pull, a test of pain endurance in which facing opponents, with a strip of sinew attached to an ear of each, pull until one of them gives up; the greased pole walk; the four-man carry, in which one person must carry four others who may not touch the ground; the blanket toss, in which teams holding a blanket compete to toss a person the highest, and the knuckle hop, to see who can hop the farthest while stretched out on their toes and knuckles.
There are also Inuit and Indian dance contests, a competition for Queen of the Olympics and awards for the best traditional outfits worn by children. Native arts and crafts are sold at the event.
Preliminaries are held each day from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. and the finals from 4 until past midnight, perhaps until 2 or 3 A.M. (and when spectators walk outside, it will still be light). All the activities take place in the Big Dipper Ice Arena, 19th and Lathrop Streets. Admission is $10 a day; $7 for those 12 and younger or 65 and older. Information: World Eskimo Indian Olympics, Post Office Box 2433, Fairbanks, Alaska 99707, (907) 452-6646. Those in Fairbanks may pick up brochures at 211 Cushman Street.
A one-hour demonstration of the athletic events is offered at 8 P.M. daily between May 18 and Sept. 20 at Alaskaland Theater, in Alaskaland Park on Airport Way in Fairbanks. Admission is $5. Vienna State Opera Tickets
Q.
We plan to be in Vienna Oct. 9 and 10 and would like to go to the Vienna State Opera. How can I find out what is playing there and how to get tickets ahead of time? -- Mary Swayzee, St. Louis
A. At the Vienna State Opera on Oct. 9, ""Der Rosenkavalier"" will be presented, conducted by Leopold Hager, with Gwyneth Jones, Graziella Araya and Ildiko Raimondi singing. On Oct. 10 ""Tosca"" will be conducted by Michael Halasc, with Maria Abajan, Peter Dvorsky and Renato Bruson singing.
Performances at the State Opera sell out quite early, and the Austrian National Tourist Office suggests obtaining tickets as far ahead as possible. To get them directly from the ticket office, you should first send a request, without payment, to the Federal Theater Ticket Offices: Osterreichischer Bundestheaterverband/ Bestellburo, 3 Hanuschgasse, A-1010 Vienna, Austria, at least three weeks before the desired performance. You may also fax your request to (1) 51444 2969. From the United States, telephone numbers should be preceded by (011 43). Within 10 days of receipt, the ticket office will mail a reply. (The best seats are $150, and medium price seats are $40 to $80. The least expensive are about $10.) If you are notified that tickets are reserved for you, you must make payment more than 14 days before the performance, by bank transfer to the account of Osterreichische Bundestheater, account number 1-1131-7 at the Austrian National Bank, 3 Otto Wagner-Platz, A-1090 Vienna, Austria.
Tickets can be picked up in Vienna at the Federal Theater office at 3 Hanuschgasse beginning seven days before the performance until the day before. On performance day, they can be picked up at the opera house.
Tickets can be ordered by telephone, (1) 5131513, using a credit card to pay, but only beginning six days before a performance. Tickets are then picked up at the State Opera box office the day of the performance.
To make buying a ticket easier, the tourist office suggests using a ticket or travel agency in Vienna that can supply State Opera tickets, which will cost 22 percent more than at the box office, plus expenses like calls or mailing. Here are such agencies:
Austrobus, Opernpassage, A-1010 Vienna, Austria, telephone (1) 564312; fax (1) 5872016.
ATT-Travel, 6 Josefsplatz, A-1220 Vienna, Austria, (1) 5124466; fax (1) 5123355.
Cityrama, 1 Borgsegasse, A-1010 Vienna, Austria, (1) 5341330; fax 4341222.
Ticket Office Flamm, 3 Karntner Ring, A-1010 Vienna, Austria, (1) 5124225; fax 5139962.
Ticket Office Hoberg, 3 Schottenring, A-1010 Vienna, Austria, (1) 3197840; fax (1) 3108071.
Ticket Office Holenia, 3 Albertinaplatz, A-1010 Vienna, Austria, (1) 5134467; fax (1) 5123355.
Intropa, 38 Karntnerstrasse, A-1010 Vienna, Austria, (1) 51514225; fax (1) 5124226.
Ticket Office OeVB, Opernpassage A-1010 Vienna, Austria, (1) 5862346; fax (1) 5877142. Battlefield at Agincourt
Q.
Can a traveler find the battlefield at Agincourt where Henry V of England fought the French? What can you see there now? -- Frederick H. Edwards, Amherst, Mass.
A. On Oct. 25, 1415, in the Hundred Years War, Henry V of England and his archers defeated a much larger French Army at Agincourt. Today the battlefield can be visited at the French village called Azincourt. The village of 250 inhabitants is 36 miles from Arras, about 110 miles north of Paris. There, at a small museum visitors can view a video (in English and French) describing the battle, see copies of arms and armor and are given a map with which they can then stroll out onto the nearby battlefield. The area today is overgrown fields with a cleared lawn in which an information table helps visitors visualize the scene in 1415. Several dummies are placed in the fields to indicate the positions of the troops. The museum, telephone 21.04.41.12, is open daily from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M. May through September and 2 to 6 P.M. the rest of the year; admission is $1.85. World Cup Soccer
Q.
Who is selling tickets for the World Cup soccer matches in 1994, especially the games to be held at the Meadowlands in New Jersey? -- Anthony E. Fienber, Newark
A. The World Cup tournament will take place June 17 to July 17, 1994, and matches will take place in Foxboro Stadium near Boston; Soldier Field in Chicago; the Cotton Bowl in Dallas; the Pontiac Silverdome near Detroit; the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.; Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.; the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla.; Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, Calif., and Robert F. Kennedy Stadium in Washington. The schedule will not be set until sometime this summer. To get the schedule and ticketing information when they are available, write to World Cup USA 1994, Post Office Box 1994, Los Angeles, Calif. 90051-1994.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
England With a Driver
Q. Our party of four will be traveling from Cliveden to York, spending some time in the York area, then going to Warwick, and from there to London. Can you advise us how to connect with a car and drivers? -- Carol Slote Bernstein, Tenafly, N.J.
A. Your options include using a chauffeur service for each leg of your trip or arranging for a single tour guide and vehicle to accompany you throughout most or all of your trip. Prices below include V.A.T., insurance and gas but not admission to attractions.
If you decide to drive between cities, Carey Worldwide Chauffeured Services, (44-20) 7235-0234, fax (44-20) 7823-1278, www.carey-uk.com, offers car and driver services. They quote the following prices: Cliveden to York and York to Warwick, $1,058 each leg and Warwick to London, $467 (prices at $1.81 to the pound).
The chauffeur division of the rental company AutoEurope, (888) 223-5555, fax (207) 842-2222, www.autoeurope.com, will provide cars and drivers for multiday travel or city-to-city trips. Drivers usually stay with the vehicle rather than accompanying clients on walking tours. For overnight trips, expect to pay about $1,500 a day, including about eight hours of driving. and driver's expenses.
If you're interested in hiring a driver who is also a professional tour guide, start with the Driver Guides Association; (44-20) 7384-2388, fax (44-20) 7736-4470; www.driver-guides.org.uk. Each member of the association has earned a Blue Badge, a national standard for specially trained guides. Prices vary by destination and itinerary; expect to pay $570 to $850 a day for travel based out of London. If you are hiring a guide for several days, the association estimates a cost of $715 a day (about eight hours or 150 miles), plus $145 a night for the driver's accommodation.
Connoisseur Travel York Ltd., (44-1904) 790-924, fax (44-1904) 782-123, based in York, specializes in escorted tours in the north of England, though the company could also develop a 10-day tour that includes accommodations. A day trip combining a guided tour of York with a visit to, for example, the Brontë Parsonage in Haworth or the medieval ruins of Fountains Abbey costs $634; private visits to stately homes can also be arranged. The cost of a transfer from Cliveden to York is $814 but is only available as part of a longer touring itinerary.
For extended trips, Astral Travels U.K. Tours, (44-700) 0781-016, fax (44-87) 1230-4446, www.astaltravels.co.uk, charges $715 a day (nine hours of driving) plus drivers' accommodations on overnight trips. Drivers are trained guides based in London, so you'll pay extra for pickups or drop-offs outside the city.
Tim Harrison, director of Sheepscombe Tours, (44-1386) 853-769, fax (44-1386) 853-769, www.broadway-cotswolds.co.uk (follow links Chauffeur Drive and Sheepscombe Private Hire Car Services), near Warwick, quotes a rate of $54 an hour to drive between the cities on your route, plus his return. The cost of a multiday trip would depend on your itinerary. The last trip of this sort worked out at around $670 a day, Mr. Harrison said.
Georgia Bus Tours
Q. My wife and I would like to take a five- or six- night deluxe guided bus tour of Georgia in early October. We would be willing to see towns outside of Georgia if that makes the tour more interesting. -- P.B., Glendale, Calif.
A. Tauck World Discovery, (800) 788-7885, www.tauck.com, has a seven-night, eight-day trip departing from Jacksonville, Fla., on Oct. 10. The tour begins with visits to two of the Georgia barrier islands -- Jekyll Island, known for its wildlife and mansions, and St. Simons Island, famous for its beaches and marshlands. The tour spends two nights in Savannah, one night on Hilton Head Island, a visit to the town of Beaufort and finally three nights in Charleston.
Accommodations include the Jekyll Island Club and the Mills House Hotel in Charleston. The tour costs $1,850 a person in double occupancy, including 15 meals but not air fare to Jacksonville or from Charleston. Other departure dates are available.
Starr Tours, (800) 314-8411, www.starrtours.com, has a few seats remaining on its bus tours of Charleston and Savannah Oct. 3 to 8 and Oct. 10 to 15, though they pick up and drop off from locations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The tour spends one day in Savannah, two days in Charleston and an evening in Fredericksburg, Va. Prices are $699.95 a person, double occupancy, including six meals. Other departure dates are also available.
SUSAN CATTO
Q&A",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:  France
France
Question: Is there an organization that arranges home stays with families in France? - P. B., Amagansett, L.I.
Answer: There are a number of such groups, offering minimum stays of from three nights to a week. Most of the groups, which offer reasonably priced accommodations and an opportunity to share in the life of a French family, are designed to place students. Accueil France Famille, whose founder, Francine L. Biette, has been in the field for 35 years, is one of those tailored for adults.
The organization offers home stays in Paris (with either breakfast or breakfast and dinner) and outside Paris (three meals a day). The registration fee, valid for a year, is $40 and rates range from about $175 a week in Paris to $310 a week outside the capital. Visitors, who must be at least 16 years old, are asked to specify their preferences in location and personal pursuits. If they like to play sports, listen to music or laze on the beach, for instance, Accueil France says it will match them with a family that shares those interests. It will also find a family that speaks English if the visitor is unable to manage in French.
More information: Accueil France Famille, 5 Rue Francois Coppee, F-75015 Paris; telephone 45.54.22.39.
Home stays can also be arranged through the French Experience, 370 Lexington Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017 (212-986-1115). The rates (all per person with breakfast, two people sharing a room) are $23 a night with a shared bathroom; $34 a night for a private bathroom and $45 a night with a private bathroom in a centrally situated home. Single rates are $32, $47 and $63 a night. There is a three-night minimum.
Another alternative available through the French Experience is provided by gites, government-approved houses in all areas of France. All are self-contained but many are part of a bigger house or farm, or next door to the owner's residence, so that cultural exchanges with the family are possible.
Rates for accommodations only are $250 a week, with a one-week minimum stay, except in July and August, when the rate goes to $400 to $450 a week with a two-week minimum.
For more information, including a listing of the many home stay and language tuition groups that are designed for students, write to the French Government Tourist Office, 610 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. (212-757-1125) and ask for the 'France Packages and Tours' newsletter.  New Orleans
Question: Can you give me any details about next year's New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival? - A. McC., Leominster, Mass.
Answer: The festival, which will feature about 4,000 musicians playing everything from blues to zydeco, will be held April 27 to May 6. Daytime concerts, a Louisiana food fair and an arts and crafts show will be held each Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Fair Grounds Race Track, five minutes from the French Quarter. Evening concerts will be held every day at a variety of venues.
Next year's admission prices and schedule of artists have not yet been finalized, but a spokeswoman said prices would be comparable to those charged this year. Tickets for this year's Fair Grounds concerts were $7 in advance and $9 at the gate; evening concert prices were $10 to $25.
A brochure listing artists and times of performances will be available soon. Write to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, Post Office Box 53407, New Orleans, La. 70153 (504-522-4786).  Bicycling
Question: My son, who will be 15 next summer, wishes to take a bike tour with people around his own age next July or August. Is there a group that sponsors such trips in low-density traffic areas of New England or Canada? - J. A., Maplewood, N.J.
Answer: A variety of tours for youths aged 14 to 18 in the sort of areas you indicate are offered by American Youth Hostels, a nonprofit group founded in 1934. This year's tours, which will be duplicated next year, included a two-week 'Salty Dog' tour of Cape Cod ($550); a three-week 'Bay of Fundy Loop' around Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick ($550) and a 16-day 'On the Border' ride around Lake Ontario and the Adirondack Mountains in New York ($450). 'Finger Lakes Flyer' was a nine-day jaunt in western New York ($265) and 'Salty Dog' included island hopping to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. These were among a total of 16 tours for youths in the United States, Canada and Europe offered by the association.
The tours are graded A to C, with A representing bicycling over rough terrain and C representing a good trip for beginners. Routes are usually over state or country roads, with bike paths chosen wherever possible. Each tour is accompanied by an adult leader who has completed a leadership training course run by A.Y.H. Accommodations are in either hostels, hotels or at campsites.' Next year's prices are expected to be similar to those of this year, according to a spokeswoman.
For membership information ($10 for a youth aged 17 and under) and a free copy of the Trip Catalogue write to American Youth Hostels, Dept. 858, Post Office Box 37613, Washington D.C. 20013-7613 (202-783-6161).  St. Helena
Question: How can I get to the island of St. Helena by Royal Mail ship? - W. B. R., New Paltz, N.Y.
Answer: The R.M.S. St. Helena is the only regularly scheduled ship that calls at St. Helena, a British possession in the South Atlantic Ocean 1,200 miles west of Africa that is best known as the place of Napoleon's exile. It makes the 4,400-mile trip from Avonmouth, near Bristol, England, six times a year, but because of space limitations it has been almost impossible to book passage on the ship for a couple of year. However, a much bigger replacement ship will be launched on Tuesday and will see service by next June or July. At that time it should be somewhat easier to book a cabin for the two-week trip, which costs $788 each way. Write to Carole Kitchen, Passenger Manager, St. Helena Shipping Company, the Shipyard, Porthleven, Helston, Cornwall, England TR13 9JA.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q and A
LEAD:  Turkey
Turkey
Question: My wife and I are interested in taking an archeological tour of Turkey, visiting: Istanbul, Troy, Assos, Pergamum, Sardis, Ephesus, Labranda, Priene, Didyma, Lycia and Pamukkale. Which agency should we contact? - M. E. B., Houston
Answer: A 21-day tour of western Turkey that goes to most of the places named is scheduled by Archeological Tours (30 East 42d Street, New York, N.Y. 10017; 212-986-3054) on Sept. 22. (Archeological Tours is also doing a similar trip, leaving this week.) Omitted are Assos, near Troy, and Labranda, a mountain site that can be reached only by Jeep. After the flight to Ankara, the tour goes to the Hittite center at Bogazkoy, through Cappadocia and to Didyma, Ephesus, Troy and other Greek cities of Asia Minor before heading for Istanbul, where the last four days, with more touring, are spent. The return flight is from Istanbul. The tour will be led by Mattanyah Zohar, an archeologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem who grew up in Turkey and speaks both English and Turkish fluently. The price of $2,260 (plus about $1,000 for round-trip air fare from New York) includes hotels, almost all meals, all sightseeing, including museums, tour bus and tipping.
The company, which has 22 archeological tours to various parts of the world this year, is doing a 21-day tour of eastern Turkey, departing June 12, and also led by Mr. Zohar. The company points out that tourist facilities in eastern Turkey are not well developed, that this is a strenuous trip and that only travelers willing to accept some discomforts should consider going.
A 16-day program, starting and ending in Istanbul, that includes all the sites mentioned, except Labranda, is available with Pacha Tours, 20 East 49th Street, New York, N.Y. 10017; 212-355-5141 or, out of state, 800-722-4288. There is a tour every month through October, and local guides are provided. But there will be two tours, in June and September, led by Kermit Goell, an expert who has worked on excavations at ancient Turkish sites. Mr. Goell is the brother of the late archeologist, Theresa M. Goell. The land price, with three meals a day included, is $1,990 a person, double occupancy. Round-trip fare from New York to Istanbul is $939 to $1,049.
Pacha, a branch of a Turkish company, will also arrange an independent tour tailored to individual needs. Transportation is by car with either a driver-guide or a driver and guide, and a flight from Istanbul to Smyrna can also be included.  Rafting in Idaho
Question: Can you list the outfitters that have rafting vacations on the Salmon River in Idaho? -G. T. B., Mineola, L.I.
Answer: There are probably two dozen river runners, or outfitters, who operate three- to six-day trips on the Salmon. Travelers can get details of these outfitters and many others in Idaho by writing for a free copy of Idaho Outdoor Experiences, a 144-page directory. It is published by the Idaho Outfitters and Guides Association, Post Office Box 95, Boise, Idaho 83701. The directory lists not only raft outfits but also those doing jet boating, canoeing, kayaking, trail riding, fishing and other activities. Some offer packages that link river trips with riding and staying on guest ranches and various other combinations.  Driving Abroad
Question: Do you know of any book or pamphlet that lists driving requirements and laws in Western Europe? - T. D., Anaheim, Calif.
Answer: Perhaps the most helpful book is the 'A.A.A. Europe Travel Guide' ($8.95), which is among the American Automobile Association publications that is available to nonmembers; not all of them are. The 590-page guide is not limited to information for drivers but combines practical details on a country-by-country basis with driving regulations and tips about gasoline, parking and car rentals. It also gives guidance on major tunnels and passes, and it includes Eastern as well as Western Europe. The book is sold by local auto clubs affiliated with the A.A.A. and at some bookstores, including the Complete Traveller Bookstore in New York (212-685-9007).
A booklet called the European International Road Sign System, which shows the 150 or so international road signs, in color, with explanations of what they mean, can be had by sending $2 to the International Road Federation, 525 School Street, S.W., Washington, D.C. 20024. The federation encourages the construction of good roads. The booklet is also available at A.A.A. clubs, though it is usually issued only to members, who get it free.
Bookstores specializing in travel say they know of no book devoted entirely to advice on driving in Europe, but 'Travel Key Europe' has 25 pages on the subject. Along with hints on such topics as telephones, laundry and value added tax refunds, this book has a driving section that includes the international road signs (in black and white) and information on the rules of the road, speed limits, avoiding speed traps, and seat-belt and parking regulations. The 1988 edition ($10.95) is coming out this month, and the Traveller's Bookstore in New York (212-664-0995) is among shops that will sell it. 'Travel Key Europe,' which is published by Travel Keys (Post Office Box 160691, Sacramento, Calif. 95816; 916-452-5200), covers 33 countries in both Western and Eastern Europe.
It also includes notes on buying and renting used vans, which the author, Peter Manston, says constitute a busy market among some visitors to Europe, particularly Australians, but also a sprinkling of Americans, who want a sleep-aboard vehicle.  Polish Pass
Question: Is there such a thing as a pass for traveling around Poland by train? - J. H. K., Chicago
Answer: Yes, there is a Polrail tourist pass allowing unlimited travel by train. An 8-day pass costs $72 for first-class, $48 in second; a 15-day pass is $84 in first; $56, second. The pass can be purchased at the Orbis Polish Travel Bureau (500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110; 212-391-0844) or, with American dollars, in Poland. Orbis is a Polish-American tour company.",0
Top/Features/Travel/Columns/Q and A,"Q & A
We will be in Europe this summer and would like a pay-as-you-go cellphone that will work in England and other countries. Can we buy a SIM card in Britain that will work in our North American handset?
-- Helen Hatton, Toronto
The simplest option is to buy a basic cellphone, like a Nokia or Motorola, at one of the many retail outlets in Britain like Carphone Warehouse or Dixons; it should cost less than $75. Service providers like T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone are clamoring for your business with pay-as-you-go options. This should give you automatic roaming in Europe and most parts of the world, although not in the United States or Canada unless you have a tri-band phone that works in the United States system. (You may need to register a British address and have a minimum of £50, or $94 at $1.88 to the pound, on the card.)
Many travelers have found it cheaper to buy a local-network SIM card for their GSM handset. Prepaid SIM cards, which give you a local phone number so you pay local rates, typically cost the equivalent of $25 to $40, and you can easily add credit.
Of course, you'll need to give your new number to those who need to know, and the card will expire if not used within six to nine months. But you'll get cheap local calls, and free incoming calls from the United States.
The downside to buying local SIM cards can be coping with the local language, crucial to understanding instructions for adding credit to the card.) A solution is to buy a country-specific or global SIM card with English instructions before you travel, available through sites like SIM4travel.com, 0044.co.uk and gosim.com. You should be able to save up to 80 percent on normal roaming charges by making calls at local rates and receiving most calls free in most countries.
SIM4travel.com sells SIM cards for about $56, and Nokia 1100 phones for $75, and you can buy up to $375 of credit at one time.
You can use your own handset, but it must be 'unlocked,' that is, open to all networks. You can unlock your phone from a specific network at www.activatemyphone.com (from $5.95).
Several readers have shared their experience in buying or renting a cellphone. Randal Tietz in Chicago recommends buying a Nokia phone from TracFone 'that comes with 300 minutes of local air time for $90.'
'The last time I traveled to England,' he writes, 'I bought a Virgin tri-band mobile phone for less than one week of rental. So the next time I travel to Europe, I can get a new SIM card and have a phone to use in the country I will spend the most time in.'
ROGER COLLIS",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"After Fall From Grace, Maradona Starts Over
""Ole, ole, ole, ole, Dieeego, Dieeego,"" shouted the crowd every time he touched the ball.
""Diego Is Silver,"" ""Thank You, Diego,"" read the banners at the River Plate stadium, named for the muddy river it sits next to.
Amid raucous chanting, endless confetti, firecrackers and waves of stomping by more than 70,000 fans that shook the the bleachers, Argentina welcomed its prodigal soccer star, Diego Armando Maradona, back to center stage tonight as the Argentine national team played Brazil to a 1-1 tie.
At least for the soccer fans, the arrest of Maradona in 1991 on cocaine-possession charges, the suspension from international play for 15 months for cocaine use, the pictures of him high on drugs, were forgotten.
""The greatest soccer player in the world has come back,"" said Luis Ibanez, who came hundreds of miles from a northern province to watch Maradona's return.
""As Maradona always says: 'With the face ahead, looking forward, we've got to forget the past. The past is past,' "" said Antonio Ramirez.
But Maradona, a little paunchy and seeming to fade in the second half, gave Argentina's fans only some of what they wanted.
It did not seem to matter. What mattered was that Diego was back, and though he was not everything that Argentines remembered, he often dominated play in the first half and the latter half of the second, just missing a tie-breaking goal with a shot that hit a goal post.
To be sure, he has lost steps. Gone are the lightning explosions of speed, the bursting past defenders. He admitted in interviews this week that at 32, he could not keep up with the 21-year-olds. He seemed at times out of the play, drifting across the field.
But then the magic would return, and the precision passes, the flip of the ball off the feet and the fake so deft it seemed as if he didn't move repeatedly brought cheers from the crowd.
Soccer reporters here say there's little doubt the Maradona of the 1986 World Cup, who as captain of the Argentine soccer team led them to victory, is no longer and will not return. His scoring potential is limited. But as a playmaker he made the Argentine team work through much of the game.
One writer who has followed Maradona as he played for Seville since last September noted he had lost a lot of weight, and instead of only being able to run full tilt for about 20 minutes lasted much longer.
That's how Maradona ran into the stadium, with a soccer ball under an arm, raising his other hand to the crowd on one side of the field. Then he ran to the other side and waved to fans there, almost like a little child greeting everyone on the block after a summer at camp.
Some fans wanted more.
""I think he was 70 percent,"" Fernando Morales said as he left the stadium tonight. ""He needs more play. The two-year layoff hurt him, and he needs time to regain his speed and conditioning.""
Said one sportswriter: ""Neither glory nor a withered brow.""
Many see this as the launching of Maradona's chance to lead the country's team into the 1994 World Cup, which will be held in the United States.
It has been a long road back for the soccer superstar, born into poverty, whose touch with the soccer ball brought him near-overnight fame and wealth and who has struggled since to control the excesses of his personal life.
""This return is for the people who hugged me in the street, who kissed me and helped me out when things were going bad,"" he said at an impromptu press conference on Tuesday when he arrived at Ezeiza International Airport. ""I have a new opportunity and I need to take advantage of it because I don't have many years left in soccer.""
Though his pinnacle was the 1986 World Cup, April of 1991 was the bottom, when, after being suspended from play for a month after testing positive for cocaine in his urine, he was arrested by Buenos Aire police on cocaine possession charges. Some Stunning Pictures
A country that had honored him as its national sports ambassador was stunned at pictures of a Maradona in a drugged stupor. Argentines were pained for months by his court appearances, by his drug conviction in Italy and by another court ruling that he had to pay support for a child he had fathered by a former girlfriend.
With his image tarnished, the public backed off, focusing more on his emotional outbursts, his growing paunch and troubled personal life than his soccer skills.
Trying to polish the image of the national sports hero that fell from grace, the Argentine Football Association awarded him this week the title of the greatest soccer player in the country's history, and the team coach named him captain for the match.
SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Picking A Pool? Play Favorites
ONE of these years, a dashing bunch of outsiders is going to knock the World Cup right out of its orbit. One can always dream. But outsiders in soccer have a way of hitting the crossbar of life, somewhere around the quarterfinals or semifinals.
Based on sheer talent and experience, this looks like another World Cup for Brazil, the perennial champion, the once and future king. The amazing thing about Brazil's dominance -- 5 championships in 17 World Cups -- is that huge numbers of fans do not mope around bars and cafes and dens around the world, rooting for the Brazilians to lose, the way anti-Yankee fans do in American baseball, for example.
No, the Brazilians are loved and respected, and not only for the clusters of fans in their perpetual samba, sashaying around the host nation every four years -- and not only for the women in scant outfits who are the pulchritudinous equivalents of Ronaldo and Ronaldinho.
Once again, Brazil is a given in the 18th World Cup, which begins Friday and continues through July 9. So is Brazil's dogged South American pursuer, Argentina, not as world-pleasing and joyous as Brazil, perhaps, but loaded. Those two nations are the usual suspects, rounded up every four years, worth half a semifinal bracket for those who indulge in Final Four office pools.
That leaves another half of the semifinals. The World Cup has traditionally been dominated by the same small band of powers -- only 7 different winners in 17 Cups -- so the real fun and mischief usually occurs in the first round, when marginal teams terrify or even beat the careless or lackluster favorites. The last World Cup, in 2002, did produce two outsiders, Turkey and South Korea, who managed to reach the semifinals without ever giving the impression of being finalists or champions.
When physical Turkey beat energetic South Korea in the third-place game, the Turks insisted that South Korea share the victory lap, a gesture to the red-clad fans who had cheered on the home team during its gallant run. Both teams deserved their lap because it was likely to be a once-in-a-generation semifinal for each. Turkey didn't even qualify this time, and South Korea is probably going to have to settle for sapping the strength of its three first-round opponents.
The two other semifinalists are likely to come from Europe, in keeping with the long tradition of success by home-continent teams. Brazil remains the only non-European team to win a World Cup in Europe, having done so in Sweden in 1958. (Brazil also won in North America twice, in Mexico City in 1970 and in Pasadena, Calif., in 1994, and once in Asia, in Yokohama, Japan, in 2002. The samba seems to work in any time zone.)
With the World Cup in Europe this time around, Italy is the most logical candidate from that continent, except that its league is being investigated for possible scandals involving favoritism from referees, gambling by players and possible match-fixing. The Italian players could be unnerved by the prospect of Juventus and other powerhouse squads being dropped from Serie A next season. At least, that is the theory of some American fans (the United States plays Italy in its second match).
Italy usually has one stinker in the first round. But the glamour of the World Cup tends to revive demoralized or doubtful players, as it did for Paolo Rossi, the spark of the 1982 championship, who had been reinstated after being implicated in an earlier scandal. Rossi was just glad to be running around in the sunshine. This time, Italy could get its mind off its troubles by reaching the semifinals.
A number of prosperous European nations have reason to dream of a run something like France's in 1998, when everything came together in a home-based championship. I would have chosen England, until Wayne Rooney broke the fourth metatarsal of his right foot in late April. He is hopeful of coming back, but England may have lost its best chance already.
Maybe the Netherlands could get back to the glory of the 1970's. The Czechs had possibilities before injuries hit them recently, but they could still whack the Americans in the first round. There is talk of Sweden coming together at the right time. And then there is Spain, with all that soccer money, all that flair, but never enough grit or purpose to be a semifinalist. One of these years.
Then there is Africa. Sixteen years ago, when Cameroon beat Argentina and frightened England in the quarterfinals, there was anticipation for the future of that continent. Since then, Cameroon, Nigeria and Senegal have had glorious moments, but never enough to reach the semifinals, and this time none of them could even qualify.
Four of the qualifiers from Africa -- Angola, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast, with their outsider coaches and foreign-based stars -- have no experience at this level. Some of them may have their moments in the next few weeks, but none look like semifinalists.
What about the United States? The Yanks might have peaked with their 2-0 humiliation of Mexico in the Round of 16 four years ago, followed by an unlucky 1-0 loss to Germany. The ranking process of world soccer recently put the Americans fourth (they are now fifth). But when it was time for rankings to have some value, for the World Cup draw last December, the Yanks were cynically dropped out of the top eight. But that was probably accurate and surely served the purpose of guaranteeing them two tough opponents in the first round. They got three -- the Czech Republic, Italy and Ghana.
I see the United States possibly earning a tie with one of the European teams if the Czechs are hurt or if the Italians are distracted, and possibly beating Ghana, putting the Americans on the bubble for advancing to the Round of 16.
The recent warm-up matches told me that DaMarcus Beasley and Eddie Johnson had regressed and that the playmakers John O'Brien and Claudio Reyna were rickety. Landon Donovan, who chose not to stick it out at Bayer Leverkusen, is an American marketer's dream and has impressed Manager Bruce Arena with his growing versatility, but cannot be expected to carry the team.
The Americans' best hopes come from European-based old heads like Brian McBride, Eddie Lewis and Kasey Keller going chest-to-chest with Euro teams on their home continent. The Yanks may be semifinalists -- later in the century. Right now it's still Europe's role to challenge Argentina and the thumping heart of world soccer, Brazil.
Sports of The Times E-mail: geovec@nytimes.com",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Argentina Is Tough Test For U.S.
Hoping to show that its conquest of the United States Cup last month was not simply a fluke, the United States national team will try to secure a spot in the quarterfinals of the America Cup Friday night when it takes on the tournament favorite, Argentina, in the final match of the first round.
The United States team, which began the tournament strongly with a 2-1 victory over Chile last Saturday, lost to Bolivia, 1-0, on Tuesday after making silly mistakes and failing to recover from a weak start.
The United States must either tie or beat Argentina to be guaranteed a place in the quarterfinals, but the team could still qualify if it loses to Argentina by one goal while scoring at least one goal. That scenario unfolded tonight after Ecuador beat Peru, 2-1, and clinched quarterfinal spots for Mexico and Colombia.
The United States team is coming off its biggest high since advancing to the second round of last summer's World Cup, having beaten Nigeria and Mexico and drawn with Colombia in the United States Cup. But it faces an uphill battle against powerful Argentina, which won in its first-round matches against Chile, 4-0, and Bolivia, 2-1, and is already a quarterfinalist.
""We have to play very assertively, very aggressively and be able to respond very quickly to whatever they throw at us,"" said the United States coach, Steve Sampson. ""We have to make sure that we are playing as a unit and providing a lot of support for one another because technically the Argentines are truly outstanding. What makes them so good is that they have individuals who can take on one, two or three players and be very dangerous.""
On his way to discuss strategy with his team at dinner tonight, Sampson said that he had designed a game plan that would insure that the United States at least played Argentina to a draw and that he was certain his team could execute that plan. He declined, however, to discuss specifics.
Exactly how the United States fares in the America Cup is expected to determine whether Sampson eventually becomes the permanent national team coach. Sampson, the former coach at Santa Clara University, has breathed new life into the team. Since taking over as the interim coach after the dismissal of Bora Milutinovic last April, he has encouraged the team to play an entertaining, attacking style. Sampson has also been the beneficiary of the return from overseas of the best United States players.
""I wouldn't change a thing,"" he said. ""Players have responded very well.""
""If in fact the federation doesn't want me as their coach, I'll respect that and support the individual that they hire,"" Sampson said, referring to the United States Soccer Federation, which has been trying to hire a coach with more international experience.
""I've had a lot of fun doing this and I'll continue having fun doing this. If they don't think the results have been good enough, I'll respect that and go on.""
Both Sampson and his team admit that they will have failed if they do not advance to the quarterfinals. ""This is a very important tournament because of the caliber of teams that are here and we will be very disappointed if we don't move ahead in the competition,"" said defender Alexi Lalas.
United States striker Eric Wynalda, who scored two goals against Chile, said that the team's confidence had been building in the past year and that it simply needed to cut down on its mistakes.
Argentina has won the America Cup (the South American championship, with the addition of the United States and Mexico) 14 times, and Coach Daniel Passarella has assembled a team composed of the country's top players from Europe and talented young players from the Argentine league.
But the United States team has gained respect in South America for winning the United States Cup, for its early victory against Chile and for its attacking style of play. Outside the Americans' hotel in this small town on the border with Argentina, young fans line up every day to stare in the window as the Americans have coffee in the waiting room and discuss strategy.
""Please, please, I want your autograph, I want your autograph,"" yelled a young woman peering in through the window with her paper and pad.
""We've never had anybody of this caliber here in Paysandu before and we want to see them win,"" she said.  SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Festival Mishaps Can't Dim Lyon's Latin American Spirit
'Terra Latina' is the title of this year's Lyon Dance Biennial, devoted to dance in Latin America. True to form, the three-week event, the 10th since 1984, offers what other major international festivals do not: a concentrated overview of dance in a single country or in theme-related regions.
But atypically, the current festival has been a comedy of mishaps.
A political brouhaha erupted when Jean-Jacques Aillagon, the French minister of culture, canceled plans to meet with Mayor Gérard Collomb of Lyon and to attend performances and the biennial's colorful Sunday parade, which celebrated Latin America.
It wasn't the homemade posters of Che Guevara that would have scared him off the parade, as 4,500 participants from the Lyon area pranced for five hours on the left bank of the Rhone River. A brilliant example of community outreach, led by professional choreographers who had worked in diverse neighborhoods, the event included blind tango dancers and a flurry of feathered warriors on cardboard Aztec floats.
For the minister the problem was rather that local members of Parliament from President Jacques Chirac's party, the U.M.P., objected to Mr. Aillagon's meeting with members of the rival U.D.F. party and with Mayor Collomb, a Socialist.
'Egocentric' was the word used about the U.M.P. politicians by Guy Darmet, the biennial's artistic director, who told a roomful of foreign and French journalists that he was 'in pain.' The sequence of events and the minister's absence had been an insult, he said, to the 600 performers from 12 countries and 36 companies invited to the festival.
Always resourceful, Mr. Darmet announced that he had taken to wearing a Korean jade talisman from the 2000 'Silk Roads' biennial to ward off further bad luck.
A significant earlier blow had been the cancellation of the first two performances of a premiere by the ever-ingenious French choreographer Maguy Marin after one of her dancers broke a rib. Ms. Marin salvaged the work, which was commissioned by the festival, in a performance on Monday. The injured dancer's role was split up among others, and 'Applause Is Not Edible,' her premiere, has turned out to be one of the festival's best pieces so far. Concerned with power games and, by extension, dictatorship, it is a sinister and abstract work of great impact.
The touch-and-go category at the festival also included one rained-out performance by exuberant carnival dancers from Bolivia and Colombia at the outdoor Roman theater on the Fourvière hilltop. Other dancers arrived off schedule thanks to a strike by Air France pilots. To round things off, a press agent for the festival was knocked down by a hit-and-run cyclist.
Although most of these mishaps have been made public, the festival's artistic side has been anything but swallowed up.
A meaningful wrinkle was Mr. Darmet's discovery that his original conception for the biennial had no takers among the groups he invited from Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Cuba and Costa Rica. Colombia was an exception. Essentially, Mr. Darmet asked contemporary dance choreographers to concentrate on a political theme related to life under past dictatorships.
'They weren't interested,' he said. This would be no surprise to anyone who has seen Latin American modern dance in the United States, especially at the American Dance Festival over the years and occasionally in New York. Their focus has been on exploring human relationships, including macho aspects.
And so it has been the same during the biennial's first week when, more than in past years, Mr. Darmet has concentrated on small modern-dance groups rather than on historical panoramas that included big ballet companies (as he did with France in 1988 and the United States in 1990).
Mr. Darmet has invited a few folk groups, including the carnival dancers, who also took part in the parade. The Colombians charmed with their colonial-style courtship dances and a duel between life and death figures. But it was the Bolivians who stole the show in their gold costumes and powerfully accented dance, 'Sambos Caporales.' The women, swiveling in short skirts and high heels, and the men, portraying mine foremen of the past, are from La Paz but are associated with the Oruro carnival elsewhere in Bolivia.
Whatever gallantry existed in the carnival dances was not reflected in the violent relations depicted by the modern-dance groups. The saving grace among many of these choreographers is their interest in exploring new kinds of movement.
Nonetheless, 'The Place of Desire' by Paulina Mellado of Chile had more brutality than invention. By contrast, 'Choreography to Listen To' by Henrique Rodovalho of the Brazilian Quasar company, is a genuine find, in which angular movement, folded and unfolded, becomes highly expressive.
A deserved hit was 'Secreto y Malibú,' a dance-theater piece that examines relationships between two women and the fleeting intrusion of a man. Its choreographers, from Argentina, Diana Szeinblum, Inès Rampoldi and Leticia Mazur, were recently represented at Dance Theater Workshop in New York.
A mixed-media novelty by Raúl Parrao, 'Voyage to the Moon,' was a clever but not sustained production based on the 1902 movie of the same name by the French film pioneer Georges Méliès. The work, which required 3-D goggles, was performed by the National Dance Company of Mexico.
Formalist currents have largely been absent, although oddly, it is a hip-hop group from Brazil, Balé de Rua, that deals most with pure movement.
As for Ms. Marin, she is in a category by herself. In 'Applause Is Not Edible,' colored plastic strips on three sides are pushed aside by eight dancers who walk in and out, stop to glare, have fleeting encounters or fall. Some are dragged away, like torture victims. The action is simple. Yet Ms. Marin's acute timing, Denis Mariotte's music and the dimming lights by François Renard create an image of control and oppression. Here too, human relations are explored. But they are also universalized into a metaphor about societies that devour their own.
CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Floating Below Politics
IRAN had its moment, Finland and Korea too. But at film festivals around the world these days, much of the talk is focused on Argentina and the emerging crop of young directors who have been winning prizes and praise from Berlin and Rotterdam to Toronto and Miami.
That flowering began here in the late 1990's and is still more an art-house phenomenon than a commercial one. Its most recent product is Lucrecia Martel's 'Holy Girl,' which opened in New York on Friday, and hopes to build on the momentum established by Fabian Bielinsky's 'Nine Queens,' a deft crime caper released five years ago (and recently remade by Hollywood as 'Criminal'), and Daniel Burman's poignant comedy 'Lost Embrace,' which had a successful run in the United States earlier this year.
Yet other than their age, their nationality and a proclivity for setting up their production companies in somewhat run-down buildings on the fringes of chic neighborhoods here, the new directors, ranging in age from late 20's to early 40's, don't have all that much in common. They do not share an aesthetic, the way the French New Wave or Brazilian Cinema Novo did, and some of them did not even know one another until they met at film festivals in Europe or North America. 'To call us a movement or something like that would be excessive, because it isn't that yet and I don't know if it ever will be,' Ms. Martel, 38, said during a recent interview at a bookstore and cafe near her home in the suburbs here. 'We've been nurtured by the same crisis, but that's about it,' she added, referring to the recurring political and economic turmoil that has characterized Argentine life for decades.
In both 'The Holy Girl' and her first feature, 'La Ciénaga,' Ms. Martel has shown an ability to make the ordinary seem bizarrely unsettling. In 'The Holy Girl,' the story, which Ms. Martel wrote, moves back and forth between a medical conference at a somewhat tatty provincial hotel and the sexual and religious conflicts experienced by the teenage daughter of the hotel's manager. It is as if 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie' were being filmed by David Lynch or Luis Buñuel, two directors Ms. Marteladmires. On the other hand Pablo Trapero and Adrián Caetano, directors with whom Ms. Martel is sometimes lumped, have a marked realist streak. And Martín Rejtman, who has a parallel career as an Iowa Writers' Workshop-trained author of short stories, makes urbane, wry and slightly off-kilter comedies like 'The Magic Gloves' and 'Silvia Prieto.' Their dialogue-heavy films stand in contrast to Lisandro Alonso's two films, 'La Libertad' and 'Los Muertos,' which are almost wordless, relying on visual imagery for their power.
'I believe that Argentine cinema today is defined more by what it isn't than by what it affirms,' said Mr. Trapero, 33, whose best-known film is probably 'El Bonaerense,' a drama about police corruption released in 2002. 'What we have in common is that many things are excluded from our films, such as the notion of the omniscient discourse of a director who knows the truth and interprets and illuminates it for the spectator.'
Surprisingly perhaps in view of Argentina's turbulent history, there is also an aversion to overtly political themes in favor of more intimate and personal ones. 'Smaller stories and a smaller focus' is the way Mr. Alonso, 29, puts it.
Diego Lerman, for example, was born on March 24, 1976, the same day the Argentine military overthrew the Peron dynasty and ushered in seven years of brutal dictatorship that came to be known here as 'the Process.' His father was a labor leader and his earliest years were spent in hiding, moving from one refuge to another with his parents, a situation similar to that portrayed in 'Kamchatka,' a popular movie by Marcelo Piñeyro released here in 2002. But when Mr. Lerman had a chance to make his first feature at the age of 25, he chose to make the Argentine version of a road movie. 'Tan de Repente' ('All of a Sudden') tells the story of lesbian punks named Lenin and Mao who abduct a shop clerk and end up traveling with her to visit an ailing relative in a provincial city.
'Movies that try to be instructive or enlightening annoy me, because they divide things clearly and simply into good and bad, which is a lie,' Mr. Lerman said. 'Many of the people who criticize the dictatorship now supported it then, so to divide things up that way is a simplification and reductionism that seem to reflect a lack of intelligence.'
Yet the experience of having grown up under military rule is not entirely absent from these filmmakers' work. Ms. Martel, whose movies have been praised as lacerating portrayals of middle-class decadence and hypocrisy, said the impact of those years was reflected more in the underlying ethic and approach to making films than in the subject matter itself.
'During the dictatorship, we were children, living a reality in which the middle class above all denied what was going on, a reality that was sustained with great effort because there was no way to maintain such deceitfulness,' she said. 'To discover all of those falsehoods generated a desire to find truthfulness and credibility, whether in the stories we tell, the way we use dialogue or even in the way we cast actors.'
The film boom here is also a result, if indirect, of the economic crisis that flattened this once-prosperous country in the late 1990's, culminating in the collapse of the economy in December 2001. 'It used to be that in Argentina having a profession like that of a doctor, lawyer or engineer was a guarantee of a certain economic stability,' said Mr. Trapero, who was an architecture student before shifting to film. 'But that guarantee ceased to be true, and for me and a whole generation we decided that if a profession isn't going to guarantee me a future, well, then I'm going to do what I really want to do, which is to tell stories.'
The crisis has also had an unexpected impact on the financing of movies. With money so scarce in recent years, many Argentine filmmakers have ended up looking abroad for support -- whether to the Hubert Bals Fund, affiliated with the Rotterdam International Film Festival; the Sundance Film Festival; or Pedro Almodóvar's production company in Spain, all of which have been active in the resurgence.
Forcing directors to look outside Argentina for money actually has given them more creative latitude than if they were working with production companies based here, many of which are linked to television channels. In addition, since 1994 Argentina has had a so-called cinema law that imposes a 10 percent tax on movie tickets and video sales. The tax is meant to provide money for local productions, but some of the movies that have been most praised abroad have received only minimal support through this system.
'As regards numbers, many films do better in Europe than here,' said Lita Stantic, a veteran director and producer. Daniel Burman, the 32-year-old director of 'Lost Embrace,' goes even further: 'Movies that don't make a dollar here are the ones that sell best abroad.'
Perhaps that is because movies that do well in Argentina tend to be glossy and sentimental, featuring actors who are well-known here, like Ricardo Darín and Norma Aleandro. The newer crop of directors, in contrast, can be unsparingly candid in their assessments of society and behavior, which appeals to sophisticated moviegoers abroad who want to be challenged, as well as entertained. To save money, some of the new crop of directors have shot in black and white, or on weekends. Others (Mr. Trapero in particular) have also worked on each other's films as producers, editors or even cameramen.
One thing that all the young directors here have in common is scoffing at the notion that they are pioneers. Instead they emphasize that Argentina has a strong cinematic tradition, to which they feel connected. Back in the 60's and early 70's, for instance, Leopoldo Torre Nilsson and Ms. Bemberg were writing or directing films outside the commercial mainstream that forced Argentines to confront the contradictions in their society. But that blossoming of talent ended with the 'dirty war' that culminated in the military dictatorship. When democracy returned in the early 80's, filmmakers felt that they 'should talk about important themes, with heroes,' as Mr. Lerman put it. The best example is probably 'The Official Version,' which tells the story of a military officer's wife who discovers that her adopted baby is actually the child of leftist militants who have been made to disappear. It won the Academy Award for best foreign-language film in 1986.
'Coming out of the dictatorship, it was a tricky situation,' Mr. Rejtman said. 'Creating art is not a naïve occupation, and there is a difference between expressing ideas and creating art. My objective is to tell the story but not impose it, which is the opposite of what happened in the 1980's, when all the films were very explicit.'
With foreign producers and festival directors now turning up regularly at festivals here to scout for promising films and directors, everything seems to indicate that the current resurgence will continue and strengthen. For instance, Ms. Stantic, who has come to specialize in first films by young directors, is currently working with Lucía Cedrón, 30, who three years ago won the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival for a short and is now working on her first feature, 'Lamb of God.'
'I sold my film in countries that had bought 'Nine Queens' and so had become curious about Argentine cinema,' Mr. Burman said of 'Lost Embrace.' 'It's like a chain reaction. Once you generate interest in one place, it becomes easier to interest others.'
FILM",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Got Leche?
My first memory of dulce de leche was when a can of it exploded in the kitchen.
This was in Los Angeles in 1979, six years after my father fled Chile, and the only way for him to have dulce de leche to spread on toast was if he made it himself. What had once been a labor-intensive process of stirring milk and sugar over a low flame for half a day until it thickened to the consistency of butterscotch had by then been reduced to a one-step recipe with the introduction of sweetened condensed milk: just boil an unopened can for three hours. The only trick is to make sure the water level doesn't drop too far. But scrubbing the walls occasionally was a small price to pay. A batch never lasted more than a day, and after a while my father would stop bothering with the toast and wander off with the can and a spoon.
In Chile, dulce de leche is better known as manjar, and on a recent trip there I was reminded of its built-in nostalgia. Children eat it sandwiched between cookies and dipped in chocolate, called an alfajor, or slathered in a sugar donut, called a Berlin. So at a recent meal at Agua, the sophisticated Santiago restaurant, it was a surprise to see a dulce-de-leche semi-frío on the menu. Called a 'Nifty,' the semifrozen dessert had a creamy buoyancy that gave it an unexpected delicacy. While diners danced to a Cuban band on the patio, the chef, Cristian Correra, came over to say that even this was a homage, named after a Nestlé ice-cream bar from the '80s. 'I would wait until it almost melted, then I would eat it,' Correra said, explaining that the semi-frío recalled that texture.
Dulce de leche's two essential ingredients are milk and sugar, though now almost every brand adds fructose (for shine) and sodium bicarbonate (for color). Unfortunately, most of Chile's offerings also use chemical preservatives, and they taste like it. Even the most patriotic Chilenos I spoke to admitted that it's different across the Andes, and if I was to taste something pure I would need to go to Argentina, where they are far more serious about their dulce de leche.
This is true at La Paila, in the heart of Argentina's dairy country, which uses only milk from its herd of 700 Holsteins. Twice a day cows are led to the milking shed, which is attached to the plant; the milk slowly caramelizing in the vats upstairs was pasture just a few hours before. When I told the owner, Leslie Widderson -- a first-generation Anglophone with the bearing and the Barbour jacket of an English gentleman -- that the sweet, steamy air pouring out of the stainless-steel vats was intoxicating, he said, 'If you really want a jolt, stir some dulce de leche into your morning coffee and add a shot of brandy.'
In Uribelarrea, a village settled by Basques a century ago, Horacio and Regina Martinez make Cabras del Salado, a dulce de leche with milk from their small herd of Anglo-Nubian goats. Goat's-milk dulce de leche -- which has a cleaner flavor than cow's milk -- is common in Colombia, where it's called ariquipe, and in Mexico, where it's called cajeta, but it's a novelty in Argentina. After tasting the Martinez's velvety dulce de leche, we visited the animals, which came when called and soon were trying to eat the buttons off my jacket. It was like visiting a petting zoo that makes dessert.
Horacio Martinez is an instructor at Don Bosco, an agricultural school where dulce de leche is part of the curriculum. The students pack what they prepare in waxed cardboard containers, which has the same wholesome association as milk in a glass bottle, and sell it in the school store. They also have homey alfajores, each wrapped by hand and tied with a string.
But the most celebrated alfajores in Argentina are from Havanna bakery, which opened in the beach resort Mar de Plata in 1947; you always brought back a box after a trip to the coast. Their great innovation is the Havannet, an alfajor with only one cookie and three times the dulce de leche. It looks like a gigantic Hershey's Kiss, and as with a peanut-butter cup, it divides the world into people who attack it top to bottom or nibble around the side.
Today there are Havanna Cafés all over Buenos Aires, and their colorful display is the first thing you see at the airport duty-free shop. They also sell jars of dulce de leche, which I carefully packed in my carry-on. And when I got home, I didn't even try to make toast; I just opened a jar and grabbed a spoon.
Dulce de Leche
1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk (containing only milk, sugar, glucose and sodium bicarbonate), label removed.
Place the can in a saucepan and cover with water by at least 1 inch. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer and cook for 3 hours, adding water as needed to keep the can submerged. Remove from the water and let cool for at least 1 hour before opening. Stir until smooth. Makes 1 1/4 cups. Adapted from Oscar Schwaner-Bonvallet.
Nifty
(Dulce de Leche Semi-frío)
2 teaspoons (about 1 1/4 -ounce envelope) unflavored gelatin powder
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1cup dulce de leche, at room temperature
1/2 cup toasted almonds, finely chopped.
1. Pour the gelatin into a bowl. In a saucepan, heat 1/4 cup of the cream until steaming and add to the gelatin. Mix and let stand for 5 minutes.
2. Place the dulce de leche in a large bowl and whisk for 1 minute. Strain the gelatin mixture into the dulce de leche and whisk to incorporate.
3. In a medium bowl, beat the remaining cup of cold cream with an electric hand mixer until it holds soft peaks. Fold a third of the beaten cream into the dulce de leche to incorporate and fold in the remaining cream. Pour into 6 -cup ramekins or muffin cups and freeze until solid.
4. To release, dip the bottoms of the molds in hot water. Place each semi-frío on a plate and garnish with almonds. Serve immediately or leave out for 15 minutes for a softer texture. Serves 6. Adapted from Agua.
Panqueque
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs
1 1/4 cups milk
1 tablespoon butter, more as needed
1 1/4 cups dulce de leche
Sugar for sprinkling
1 pint vanilla ice cream.
1. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, sugar and salt. In another bowl, beat together the eggs and milk. Stir in the flour mixture until smooth. Cover and let rest at room temperature for 30 to 60 minutes.
2. Place a 7-inch crepe pan or nonstick skillet over medium heat. Melt 1 teaspoon butter to grease the pan; then ladle in 3 tablespoons batter, tilting the pan as you pour to coat the bottom. When it starts to brown, after about 30 seconds, flip and cook just until firm, 10 to 15 seconds. Use butter as necessary to keep the batter from sticking. Transfer to a plate to cool.
3. Spread 1 tablespoons dulce de leche two-thirds of the way from the bottom to the top of each crepe. Fold the left and right sides over by 1 inches and then loosely roll up the crepe from bottom to top, finishing with the top flap of the crepe tucked under. The rolled crepes can be covered and refrigerated for up to 8 hours.
4. To serve, preheat a broiler and arrange the panqueque on a broiling dish. Sprinkle with sugar and heat until caramelized. Place 1 or 2 crepes on each plate and top with vanilla ice cream. Serves 6 to 12.
NOTE: Good-quality dulce de leche, like La Salamandra, can be purchased at Dean & Deluca or at www.artisansweets.com.
Food: The Way We Eat Oliver Schwaner-Albright, who is based in New York City, writes about food and architecture.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Sapporo Braces Itself For Match
Ichiro Sato looks more like an elder statesman than a potential vigilante. In a blue suit and yellow tie, Sato, a 70-year-old businessman, appears the pillar of the community, a proud member of the local Lions Club. But when it comes to Susukino, this city's entertainment district, he is downright defensive.
The 30-block neighborhood, teeming with bars, cabarets and restaurants, will be ground zero on Friday when Sapporo is host to the most eagerly awaited -- and feared -- match of this World Cup: England versus Argentina.
The game, and the fans here to see it, has been billed as the battle to top all others, two old rivals out for blood and revenge. The teams have figured prominently in each other's World Cup championship runs in 1966 and 1986, and English fans say Argentina robbed their team in the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico City and in the 1998 World Cup in Paris. For additional drama, the countries fought each other in the Falkland Islands 20 years ago.
The game Friday has its own high stakes. Argentina, having won its opening match in Group F against Nigeria, can secure a place in the second round with a victory. England, which tied Sweden in its first game, must at least earn a draw to have a realistic chance of advancing.
With so much history and tension between them, and with English fans having been painted locally as instigators of hooliganism, many Sapporo residents feel cursed that their city was chosen as the host for this match. To counter the thousands of rabid supporters who will accompany their teams here on the northern island of Hokkaido, Sapporo has trucked in thousands of extra police.
The fear of trouble, stoked by the Japanese news media and the local government, also led Sato to mobilize his largely dormant group, Sapporo Hosui, an association of 14 civilians. It patrols casually and keeps an eye on merrymakers in Susukino most nights. Armed with walkie-talkies, small bands of businessmen and residents circle the neighborhood looking out for the occasional drunk or a love spat turned ugly.
Friday, however, will be different. Sato will stay up all night keeping track of the groups by radio. He will also stand guard over his own seven-story building, which is home to 36 bars and nightclubs. Although one-third of the shops will be shut for the night, the most lucrative of the week, Sato plans to help hostesses that are working there get home safely.
Sato's anxiety was raised on Tuesday when drunkards smashed a restaurant window in his building, leading him to board up the remaining glass and brace for more trouble after the England-Argentina match.
'This is our town and we have to protect it,' said Sato, a lifelong resident of the neighborhood who wears his Lions Club pin on his lapel. 'We want to welcome visitors, but after hearing about the potential trouble, it's hard to get excited about the World Cup. In our hearts, we don't want to have to think this way.'
The police, however, must think this way. Groups of four or more officers, many wearing flak jackets and helmets, have circled the busiest neighborhoods the past week on foot and in patrol cars with red lights spinning. The city's boulevards have been wiped clean of potential projectiles, including garbage cans, stray bicycles and vending machines. The city government has reportedly urged barbers to lock up their scissors for fear that thugs will break into shops in search of weapons.
The Home Affairs Ministry also ordered three boats to stand ready in case large numbers of foreigners are arrested and need to be shipped to Tokyo.
'We are taking security measures that can cope with every possible situation,' Katsumi Sumiyoshi, a Hokkaido police spokesman, said.
'Deterrence is one thing, but this is harassment,' said Arudou Debito, a longtime resident and naturalized citizen who was stopped by the police Monday. 'If they are going to be so afraid, why hold the event?'
In fact, the Sapporo police have made only five arrests since the Germany-Saudi Arabia game on June 1, and only one was of a foreigner, who was accused of attempting to scalp tickets.
Traffic in Susukino has been subdued most nights, and contingents of English fans have been boisterous, but little more. Many of the worst potential offenders were not allowed to leave Britain, where the government confiscated the passports of more than 1,000 known hooligans. Another 16 Britons were denied entry at Tokyo's main international airport at Narita.
Sato, however, is not taking any chances. 'We have to stand guard so there won't be any trouble,' he said.
SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"A Tale of National Pastimes Unfolds Down in Argentina
As he barbecued for his guests at his farm on Sunday, the smoke wafting from his pit like a succulent fog, Eduardo Crowder said he would not watch Argentina play the United States in soccer at the Pan American Games. His hobby is sculpting. What interest would he have in a sport where use of the hands is forbidden?
""You must be the only person in Argentina who doesn't like soccer,"" a visitor said to a round of laughter.
If her father was indifferent, however, Valeria Crowder burned with the national flame.
""In our country we have three things,"" said Valeria, who has recently completed her university studies in agronomy. ""God, family and soccer.""
The faithful were rewarded with an uncomplicated 3-0 victory in a match that ended just after midnight today. Early in this hemispheric version of the Olympics, Argentina has collected several impressive victories over the United States, in sports both familiar and unfamiliar, victories that allowed sunshine to poke through the cloud of political, financial, meteorological and organizational problems that has drifted above these Games.
The mayor of this ocean-side resort, Mario Russak, has been linked to a corruption scandal and left office briefly near the end of last year. Though he was not convicted, his popularity appears to be in steep decline, as evidenced by the jeering he received when he was introduced on Saturday night at the opening ceremonies. Russak did not give a welcoming speech to the 7,000 athletes from 42 participating countries, presumably in fear that he would be shouted down by a hostile crowd at World Cup Stadium.
In an election year, the truth remains elusive about how much money has been spent on these Games, with estimates ranging from $150 million to a figure double that. There is concern about whether there will be enough money to pay for security for the entire competition, which ends on March 26.
Rain last week flooded a practice arena for gymnastics and left puddles in the soccer stadium, where there is no drainage system. Diving boards were not installed until three days before competition began. After waiting several hours here for a bus to take them to practice, a group of enraged Brazilian athletes simply sat in the road and stopped traffic in protest. After the 3-0 loss to Argentina, the United States soccer team was left stranded at the stadium for an hour and a half early this morning. Several frustrated swimmers from two unidentified countries commandeered a bus intended for the American team. When another bus didn't show up, 18 Argentine swimmers had to hitchhike 20 miles to the pool.
All of the troubles seemed far away on Saturday, however, when Argentina shockingly defeated St. John's University, the United States representative, by a score of 6-4 in baseball. Baseball is to Argentina what cricket is to the United States. Argentina had never defeated the United States in a baseball game. The Argentine national team had not played a home game since 1988. Until September, cows were grazing on the grass at the national stadium.
But the Argentines scored five runs in the first inning and held on behind the pitching of Lisandro Cordoba, who developed a blister on his throwing hand but was allowed to toss 215 pitches -- 100 more than a major leaguer is generally allowed -- in a desperate, ultimately successful attempt to defeat the United States.
What if the reverse happened in soccer? Vicente Fornasier, an Argentine fan, was asked outside the stadium. What if the United States defeated Argentina at its national pastime? The thought was almost unimaginable.
""I'd cry,"" Fornasier said. ""I'd have to go to the funeral home.""
Soccer is in transition here. Argentina won the World Cup in 1978 and 1986, but its star, Diego Maradona, is in eclipse, having been suspended from the 1994 World Cup in the United States for taking ephedrine, a banned substance sometimes used by athletes as a stimulant.
Since the 1994 World Cup, Alfio Basile has been replaced as the national team's coach by Daniel Passarella, a player on the 1978 championship team. Passarella is a disciplinarian; he has made his players cut their hair and cut back on personal appearances. He has assembled a quick, mobile, unselfish team that had the fans jumping up and down like human popcorn on Sunday night, tossing confetti and streamers, exploding firecrackers and lighting flares in the end zone.
The United States was doomed from the beginning. All of the Argentine players are professionals. The United States under-23 team is largely composed of college players; its first substitute, Jason Moore of Atlanta, is still in high school.
With injuries to its top midfielders -- Claudio Reyna and Brian Maisonneuve -- the Americans could not control the ball. Argentina scored twice on penalty kicks by Marcelo Gallardo. The home side added a chip shot by Ariel Ortega, Maradona's replacement in the World Cup, early in the second half. The victory was easy, if nowhere near as extraordinary as the baseball upset a day earlier.
""I was shocked,"" said Andrea Martinez, who attended college outside of Atlanta and thus may be the only Argentine to have ever performed the tomahawk chop. ""I love baseball, but my family didn't even know we had a team.""  PAN AMERICAN GAMES",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Pressure Builds for Accord At Talks on Climate Change
Negotiators in the Buenos Aires talks on global warming were locked in a last-minute struggle last night to resolve key questions. The matters seemed merely procedural but in reality went to the heart of the politically charged issue of how fast the world can and should move to deal with the prospect of climatic change.
At issue were the shape and pace of the work schedule for putting flesh on the bones of the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement reached a year ago in Japan. Under it, industrialized countries committed themselves to make legally binding reductions in emissions of heat-trapping waste industrial gases like carbon dioxide.
Mainstream scientists say that if the emissions are not reduced, the world's climate could be seriously disrupted in coming decades.
As the Buenos Aires discussions opened on Nov. 2, virtually all major participants said the measure of their success would be the adoption of a work schedule. But as the 12 days of talks went well past their scheduled end of midnight Friday, no accord had been achieved.
The work schedule is crucial because it would govern how soon operating rules are established. Not until then, assuming that the Kyoto Protocol is ratified by the required countries, including the United States, can the protocol take effect.
Late in the day, the conference chairwoman, Maria Julia Alsogary of Argentina, circulated a draft proposal establishing a two-year deadline for fashioning the rules.
As midnight approached, there was cautious optimism. 'I think it's likely we're going to reach closure, but the clock is ticking,' said Dirk Forrister, a member of the American delegation. It was clear, he said, that the deadline would be extended: 'We're going to be going into the wee hours' of this morning.
At Kyoto the industrialized countries agreed to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by an average of about 5 percent below 1990 levels in the next 10 to 14 years. The gases are produced mainly by the burning of coal, oil, wood and natural gas.
The United States' reduction would be 7 percent. Developing countries so far have no specific targets but are required in general to control their emissions.
One of the two operational mechanisms established at Kyoto is called emissions trading. It would allow a country or private company to achieve its cuts partly by buying reductions from a country or company that has reduced its emissions more than required.
In theory, the method's proponents say, that would bring about faster reductions at lower cost. They say this has been proved by an emissions trading system for reducing industrial sulfur dioxide emissions in the United States.
The other arrangement, called the clean development mechanism, is intended to enable rich countries to invest in emissions reduction projects in poor countries.
One example is high-efficiency power plants that emit less carbon. That way, in theory, the poor countries would reap environmental and economic benefits. The investor and the recipient would share credit for the emissions reductions achieved.
One sticking point in Buenos Aires involved which of the two mechanisms should be given priority. Many developing countries, seeing the prospect of reaping new investment in their economies, wanted the rules for the clean development mechanism to be worked out first, on an accelerated schedule, with those for emissions trading completed later.
The United States and other rich countries feared that if the clean development mechanism received first priority, developing countries would refuse to approve rules for emissions trading. Developing countries have been suspicious of emissions trading, fearing that it might be used an excuse for not reducing emissions. The United States therefore insisted that the two mechanisms move ahead on parallel tracks.
As the Buenos Aires session moved into its final hours, the parallel-track idea appeared to be ascendant. Ms. Alsogaray's proposal would require that 'substantial progress' on rules for the operating mechanisms be demonstrated a year from now, with a firm decision in two years.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Argentine Angst Grows as Maradona Tragedy Sinks In
A stunned Argentine public today poured out sympathy for its fallen soccer hero, Diego Maradona, as the country struggled to make sense out of his arrest Friday on drug possession charges.
""He didn't kill anyone, he didn't rape any one, he didn't rob anyone, he just hurt himself,"" said Carlos Bilardo, the coach of Argentina's 1986 World Cup championship team, in an interview published in today's editions of La Nacion. ""He's a good boy, a simple person. He made a mistake.""
""We're dealing with a sick boy and as such we have to help him,"" said Argentine President Carlos Saul Menem. ""What happened to Maradona not only moved but pained the Argentine people, who have him as their idol.""
Marcos Franchi, Maradona's manager, who on Sunday put up $20,000 bail to secure his release from jail, said that the soccer star had told him he had been taking drugs for three months. Maradona was captain of Argentina's national team and of the defending Italian League champion Naples club team.
For many people here, the arrest of Maradona was the dreaded confirmation of what they had been trying to deny since late March, when the Italian League reported finding traces of cocaine in his urine after a game against Bari on March 17. The Italian League then suspended him from play for 15 months on March 29.  Ban Extended by FIFA
Soccer's official governing body, the Federation Internationale de Football Associations (FIFA), extended the suspension worldwide today, saying he would be unable to compete until June 30, 1992. The decision was unrelated to the arrest here and based on the positive drug test in Italy.
Pictures of the arrest, spashed over newspapers and television all weekend, were crushing to the fans, who watched their hero, unshaved and apparently intoxicated, being handcuffed and hustled into a police car. At one moment he appeared with a silly grin; the next with glazed eyes and head lolling.
An estimated 400 people witnessed the arrest, shouted insults at the arresting officers and yelling to Maradona, ""We love you anyway.""
Police officials said the drug investigation was not aimed at the soccer star. Instead the police said their efforts were directed at investigating alleged drug activities of two of Maradona's friends, Ricardo Ayala, 37, and Jorge Perez, 27.
Officials said that began their watch at Ayala's first-floor apartment in the barrio of Caballito, a suburb of Buenos Aires, last Thursday morning when Maradona entered the house and then left. He returned again on Friday. At that point, Federal Judge Amelia Berraz de Vidal ordered the arrests.  Rags to Riches
In a society that seems to struggle to find current-day idols, the 30-year-old Maradona had come to symbolize the rags-to-riches story -- an uneducated boy raised in a shantytown suburb of Buenos Aires, who through natural gifts had risen to the heights of world soccer, and had given Argentina a fresh identity.
In fact ""Dieguito,"" a brightly smiling cartoon character with a splash of black hair, bushy eyebrows and sparkling eye, was used extensively throughout the country in an antidrug campaign and had become a symbol for Argentine youth.
President Menem had appointed Maradona Argentina's national sports ambassador, but stripped him of the position on Friday just before the arrest.
Still, since his return from Italy, public opinion has been overwhelmingly sympathetic. Almost 70 percent of the public considered him an idol earlier in the month, after the final verdict on April 6 by the Italian League to ban him from play.
Until his suspension last month, Maradona had played for the Naples team since 1984 and had helped it win its first two Italian League soccer championships, that country's version of winning the Super Bowl, and an even more prestigious European club championship. He had also been receiving an estimated $2 million a year in salary and three times that in a variety of commercial endorsements.
But relations with the Naples club began to deterioriate as he missed games and training sessions. Eventually he at times was booed by the Italian soccer fans.  SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"New Zealanders Take Fast Track for Adventure
As the 1999 Eco-Challenge adventure race came to a close Friday, a full two days ahead of schedule, the winners had already enjoyed several days of catching up on sleep and stuffing themselves with Argentine beef.
The race was decided at 9:20 a.m. Monday when Team Greenpeace of New Zealand paddled across the finish line on Lake Nahuel Huapi, about 20 miles from Bariloche. The team completed the 197-mile course in a blistering 5 days 33 minutes, finishing on a placid Patagonian summer day that belied the fierce storm two days into the race that divided the leaders from the followers.
This year's Eco-Challenge course, which teams of four competitors traveled by kayak, horse and foot, was almost 100 miles shorter than previous races, to give racers a greater margin of safety in Patagonia's rugged terrain and unpredictable climate.
The race director, Mark Burnett, allotted 12 days for the teams to pass the race's 28 checkpoints, and had estimated it would take the speediest teams eight. Many had strong kayaking and mountaineering experience and, aside from the storm, the weather was mostly on their side. This led to one of the closest finishes ever in an expedition race.
Two other teams paddled close in on Greenpeace's wake: Team Sierra Nevada from Spain came across just 50 minutes later and Team Condor an hour later. Condor, from Bariloche, was met by thousands of local fans lining the beach and chanting 'Bariloche, Bariloche' while firemen let loose their shrill sirens in tribute.
Four other teams finished that afternoon and evening: the largely female American team Atlas Snowshoes/Rubicon; Finland's Team Halti; the 1998 titleholder, Team Vail from the United States; and Foster's Australia.
Of the 50 teams that started the morning of Dec. 1, 34 finished. Seven others lost members with injuries and completed the race unranked. There were only a few medical problems, including a broken ankle, an ovarian cyst that needed emergency surgery and several severely infected blisters.
The Greenpeace team, which is named after the environmental group but has no connection to it, did five days of deep-water kayaking, bushwhacking through thick bamboo and multiple ascents and descents of 10,000-foot-plus mountains and was ready to go around again, said its captain, John Howard.
'We weren't pushing ourselves -- we could have gone faster,' said the 44-year-old Howard, one of the world's premier adventure racers and a well-known character. Howard, who cleans windows at mansions around Christchurch, New Zealand, lives in a bus overlooking the city. He has won every major race, including three Raid Gauloises titles and two previous Eco-Challenge titles.
Rounding out the team were Andrea Murray, 35, a garden designer from Christchurch; her husband, Keith Murray, 38, a doctor; and Neil Jones, 38, a kiwi grower.
The Greenpeace team will take home $50,000 for its victory. Many teams are sponsored, allowing them to be outfitted with the latest gear and clothing, but not Greenpeace. It's a situation Howard prefers. He provided teammates with drugstore shower caps -- lighter than any technical gear -- to keep their heads warm and dry during the three kayaking segments. And it would be hard to forget the sight of team members jumping into a churning river clutching black plastic garbage bags full of their gear as they frantically swam across to pick up their horses for the riding segment.
The talk of the race was the storm that began on the afternoon of the race's second day. Temperatures quickly dropped and winds exceeding 90 miles an hour were recorded at a checkpoint halfway up the Agostini Wall, a sheer rock face that a majority of the teams had yet to ascend when the storm arose. Those who had begun their climb returned to a base camp, where temperatures fell into the 20's overnight. Snow began in earnest at daybreak, and the upper mountain checkpoint was later closed as the fixed ropes were buried by up to a foot of snow. Racers were later sent on a longer, roundabout path to the next checkpoint.
Greenpeace and Rubicon were already far ahead, as were Sierra Nevada, Halti and Condor. Rubicon spent eight hours mostly on the move to stay warm, while Sierra Nevada found shelter in a campground and slept. Greenpeace waited out the storm under a tarpaulin, catching catnaps.
Knowing when and at what point to sleep was important. Greenpeace slept a total of nine and a half hours over five days. But by sleeping mostly on course, not at checkpoints, it fooled competitors into thinking it was barely resting.
'If we're pushing on, they think we're not sleeping,' Howard said.
At checkpoint 23 on 12,000-foot Mount Tronador, a climbers' refuge perched on a glacier 5,000 feet below the summit, racers could stop for a hot bowl of pasta and sleep. Rubicon arrived giddy from sleeplessness and decided to rest before attempting the next glacier crossing. The members zipped themselves into reporters' sleeping bags and shut down for two hours. While they slept, Team Sierra Nevada whizzed in and out, as did Team Condor, and Rubicon fell from second to fourth. But its captain, Rebecca Rusch, said it had given up its lead much earlier in the race by forgoing sleep.
But Rubicon's members were not disappointed, having expected only to be somewhere in the top 10, she said. 'We were really, really psyched,' Rusch, 31, said of their finish. 'It was a near-perfect race for us.'
THE BOATING REPORT",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Sex and Danger Slithering at the Shubert
A fair number of quips about shows for tired businessmen, or at least tired Argentine businessmen, come to mind while watching 'Forever Tango,' which opened on Saturday at the Shubert Theater. The revue has about the same balance of vital tango dancing and music, nostalgia-inducing song and schlock as in its first appearance on Broadway seven summers ago. Conceived and directed by Luis Bravo, an Argentine musician and record producer, 'Forever Tango' has toured the world since, a sultry Latin variation on 'Riverdance.'
But there is real gold for those patient enough to wait for the second act, after the show has sped through a supposed history of tango dancing whose only recognizable vignette is a tacky bordello number early in the evening. The idea there, presumably, is that women began to dance the hitherto all-male tango in earnest when it arrived with the customers after late 19th-century sojourns in the streets and cafes of Buenos Aires. As the tango was taken up by daring middle- and upper-class ballrooms and moved north to the United States and east to Europe, the dance's rough working-class edges were smoothed and its raw sensuality distilled into what pours out across the Shubert stage.
Sex and danger still shimmer like a summer heat wave beneath the surface of the most traditional dancing in 'Forever Tango.' The taut torsos and stylized leg and footwork of Carlos Vera and Laura Marcarie -- he wonderfully thuggish and she sexily deadpan -- say it all in wittily stylized dancing in several numbers.
At the other end of the spectrum from their tantalizingly minimalist razzle-dazzle is the performing of the comic duo Marcelo Bernadaz and Verónica Gardella. They are pure cartoon renditions of an overeager man and an increasingly interested woman. With his misplaced cowlick, Mr. Bernadaz resembles Dagwood of American comic-strip fame. But their lightning-speed, cross-stage backward slithers, rubber bodies and her propeller legs are the true heart of their virtuoso dancing.
Miguel Velázquez had only to begin his crooning for the audience to clap softly with delighted recognition of each song. For those in the audience with no knowledge of Latin popular music, Mr. Velázquez's voice was enough to conjure up potent images of piano bars in imaginary small beachfront hotels of simpler times. The fine onstage orchestra delivered on standards like 'Jealousy' and 'Besame Mucho.' But there was also delicately atmospheric solo piano playing by Jorge Vernieri and, even more important, star turns on the accordionlike bandoneón, performed by Victor Lavallén.
'Forever Tango' was choreographed by its dancers, veteran tango-show and competition performers, who also included Jorge Torres, Marcela Durán, Guillermina Quiroga, Gabriel Ortega, Sandra Bootz, Natalia Hills, Francisco Forquera, Melina Brufman, Claudio Gonzalez, Juan Pablo Horvath and Alejandra Gutty.
FOREVER TANGO
Created and directed by Luis Bravo; choreography by The Dancers; lights by Mr. Bravo; costume design by Argemira Affonso; sound design by Mike Miller; Victor Lavallén, conductor; Jorge Gonzalez, production stage manager. Presented by Jack Utsick Presents/BACI Worldwide, LLC. At the Shubert Theater, 225 W. 44th Street.
WITH: Jorge Torres, Marcela Durán and Guillermina Quiroga; Gabriel Ortega and Sandra Bootz, Carlos Vera and Laura Marcarie, Francisco Forquera and Natalia Hills, Marcelo Bernadaz and Verónica Gardella, Claudio Gonzalez and Melina Brufman, Alejandra Gutty and Juan Paulo Horvath. Singer: Miguel Velázquez. Musicians: Victor Lavallén, Santos Maggi, Jorge Trivisonno and Carlos Niesi.
DANCE REVIEW",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"United States Gives Up Nothing In a Stunning Soccer Victory
In a stunning upset at the America Cup tournament, the United States national team achieved one of its biggest international victories tonight by crushing Argentina, 3-0, and advancing to the quarterfinal round.
The triumph was the first for the United States against Argentina and enriched the chances that the interim American coach, Steve Sampson, widely expected to be replaced in favor of an international coach with more experience, will get the job full time.
Argentina, which won its first two games from Bolivia and Chile to clinch a quarterfinal berth, played the first half with nine players from its second string because it did not want to risk injury to its star players for subsequent rounds.
Still, Argentina wanted to win to avoid playing a fellow pretournament favorite, Brazil, in the next game. So when the second half began, Coach Daniel Passarella brought in several first-string players. Although Argentina had more possession time in the half, the United States came away with a huge victory.
The American midfielder Cobi Jones said, ""This game fits in the top two, along with beating Colombia,"" referring to the team's World Cup victory last year.
""They started to panic when those nine new players were getting whupped by us. But look at those nine new players. They are good enough to start on any national team in the world.""
Indeed, Argentina, which has won the last two of these tournaments for the South American championship and has twice won the World Cup, is regarded as far superior to the United States. Going into the game, the United States was 0-5-1 in games against Argentina.
""They met the challenge of a very strong Argentine team,"" Sampson said. ""I was most proud of the second half, when three of their best players came on the field and we answered that substitution with a goal. That was critical for us.""
The Americans played in a strong and aggressive style from the start tonight, dominating the entire game in front of goalkeeper Kasey Keller. Midfielder Frank Klopas scored the first goal in the 21st minute of play off a corner kick that was knocked back into the middle by Jones. Klopas has scored 11 goals in the last 18 games as a member of the United States team.
To the surprise and dismay of the predominantly Argentine crowd, the United States scored a second goal in the 32d minute when Alexi Lalas fired the ball into the net off a precise pass, again from Jones.
After Argentina put its first unit back on the field, striker Eric Wynalda scored a third goal off a pass from Joe Max-Moore in the 59th minute.
""They still lost, 1-0, to us in the second half,"" Jones said. ""Either way you look at it, we won two different games.""
The United States will play Mexico in the quarterfinals on Monday. The Argentina-Brazil game will be played the same day and the winners of those two games will meet in the semifinals.
The United States and Mexico are competing in the 12-nation tournament by invitation. The United States routed Mexico, 4-0, last month on its way to winning the United States Cup and, in fact, has been on a streak of success, with impressive showings against Nigeria and in a draw with Colombia.
In this tournament, the United States has beaten Chile and lost to Bolivia. Tonight, the Americans were merely seeking to qualify for the next round by playing to win, tie or even lose by a goal as long as they scored. What they accomplished went far beyond that.
SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"DNA Bar Coding Uncovers Secrets of Costa Rican Butterfly
In one of the first uses of DNA bar coding, a new technique for cataloging the planet's species, researchers have uncovered an unexpected richness in the complexity of nature. A long-known butterfly has turned out to be not a single species but 10 different species that live in overlapping territories without interbreeding.
The butterfly, a skipper called Astraptes fulgerator, was first described in 1775 and ranges from Texas to northern Argentina. It has long been considered a single species. But Dr. Daniel Janzen, an ecologist at the University of Pennsylvania, began to have doubts.
One of his lifetime goals is to identify every species of caterpillar in a forested area of Costa Rica known as the Area de Conservación Guanacaste. This requires finding a caterpillar and letting it grow into an adult, since most species so far have been identified from the adult form alone.
In the course of 25 years, Dr. Janzen and his Costa Rican colleagues have raised some 2,500 caterpillars of the Astraptes skipper. The adults looked almost identical, suggesting that possibly they included several different species, but Dr. Janzen could not come up with any reliable criterion for dividing them into distinct groups. Then he heard of the DNA bar coding technique being advanced by Dr. Paul Hebert, a zoologist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, as a means of inventorying the world's species.
The technique depends on decoding the DNA units of just a single gene, but critics argued that it would not yield a clear separation between different species. Dr. Janzen suspected that his skippers would be perfect for testing the technique's power. He tore off one leg from each of his preserved adult butterflies and sent the severed limbs to Dr. Hebert for analysis.
On the basis of the test gene, the skipper collection fell into 10 separate clusters, according to a report by Dr. Janzen, Dr. Hebert and their colleagues in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers conclude that these are 10 different species because significant differences in DNA sequence imply long evolutionary separation. And the 10 clusters correlated with a fact Dr. Janzen had already observed, that the caterpillars of each feed on different species of plant and have a strikingly different appearances.
Why should the adult skippers be almost identical but the caterpillars different? Dr. Janzen said some selective pressure must be forcing the adults to stay the same. His guess is that the skippers' ostentatious color scheme, which includes an iridescent blue splash across the thorax and upper wings, is a kind of mimicry that deters pursuit by birds, a major predator.
The reason is that some butterflies with the blue splash can put on enormous bursts of speed, so that birds do not even try to chase them. Other butterflies have evolved to look like the speedy ones so that birds figure chasing them is a waste of energy. They don't need to be fast, they just need to look fast. 'Once you've got the bird into not bothering with bright blue, it doesn't matter how fast you are,' Dr. Janzen said. 'The caterpillars are living in another world; they are not part of this mimicry ring. So they diverge and the adults stay the same.'
Judging by the rate of change in DNA, Dr. Janzen estimates the 10 skipper species started to diverge about four million years ago, probably driven by a shift in feeding preferences.
'This study has altered our view of a 'species' that has been known to science for more than two centuries,' revealing 'a new layer of biological complexity that needs exploration,' the researchers write.
The study is also positive news for DNA bar coding, an ambitious proposal for identifying the world's species genetically instead of by traditional taxonomy. Taxonomists identify species by features in the whole animal. But there are not enough taxomonists to go around, and their highly specialist knowledge is not easily accessible to others.
The goal of DNA bar coding is to enable any researcher, from a field biologist to a museum curator, to tap into the world's heritage of taxonomical knowledge through analysis of the test gene, a stretch of 645 DNA units called the cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene. The gene is part of the mitochondrial DNA, which lasts far longer than the DNA of the nucleus and is often preserved in dried museum specimens. This means that natural history museums around the world should be able to generate DNA bar codes for many items in their collections, providing a reference database.
Initial field tests of DNA bar coding, like Dr. Janzen's, are showing the value of the technique. 'The bar coding is a tremendous additional tool,' Dr. Janzen said. 'I can predict that this thing is going to go explosive.'
For his self-set task of cataloging every caterpillar in the Costa Rican forest, it could be a godsend. Over 25 years he has identified 6,900 but he reckons he has at least 2,000 more to go.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Japanese Learning, but They Still Lose
It was halftime, and though Japan was already trailing Argentina, 1-0, it was still a seller's market on the road leading to the municipal stadium here.
About 10,000 Japanese fans, some who had paid scalpers more than $1,000 a ticket on Saturday, were already inside and cheering louder than their Argentine rivals. But outside, there were still hundreds of Japanese hoping to find a way into their nation's first-ever World Cup match.
Some were sitting on the sidewalk and holding up crumpled signs in English or French: 'Want ticket,' 'Cherche place.' Others with more energy and hope continued to question any pedestrian they could find. But in the end, supply would not catch up with demand, and Japan would not catch up with Argentina, either.
The goal that striker Gabriel Batistuta scored in the 28th minute today would be the only goal of the afternoon, and it would leave Argentina with 3 valuable points in Group H and Japan with regrets.
'I really don't have any great sentimental feeling about this being our first World Cup match,' said the Japanese coach, Takeshi Okada. 'We all knew that Argentina was stronger than us, but we all believed we still had the possibility to win.'
Argentina had more chances to score today and was much less hesitant to shoot in general, but this was no lopsided match between a South American powerhouse and an overmatched Asian team. Japan's national team is solid, and the influence of the many Brazilians who have played and coached in Japan's domestic league means that Japanese stars like the 21-year-old midfielder Hidetoshi Nakata also know how to please a crowd.
What Japan lacked today was not the ability to defend, pass, dribble or cover ground in a hurry ('they run, run, run,' said Argentina midfielder Juan Veron). Rather, it was the ability to finish, and that is what Batistuta still does as well as anyone in the world, with the possible exception of a Brazilian named Ronaldo.
Since leaving Argentina for the Italian first division in 1991, the 29-year-old Batistuta has scored more than 100 goals for his club, Fiorentina. Though Argentina's coach, Daniel Passarella, chose to leave him off the national team for much of 1997, citing tactical concerns, the perplexed Batistuta ultimately decided against striking back and withdrawing his name from contention. After Passarella brought him back on the team in March, he arrived in Toulouse as his nation's career leading scorer with 38 goals.
He scored his 39th after a forward pass ricocheted off midfielder Hiroshi Nanami and bounced free in the penalty area. Batistuta quickly took control of the ball and, with a ruthlessly efficient swipe of his right foot, pushed it over the outstretched legs of the sliding goalkeeper Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi.
'This is a young team,' Batistuta said, 'and we needed to break the ice.'
Only one of Argentina's starters today was over 30 -- defender Roberto Sensini -- but it is not an inexperienced side. Batistuta, Sensini and midfielders Ariel Ortega and Diego Simeone were all members of the Argentine team that began the last World Cup auspiciously by winning its first two matches. But after Diego Maradona was expelled from the competition after testing positive for ephedrine, the destabilized Argentines failed to win another match.
'It was very difficult for all of us to recover after the shock of Maradona's suspension,' Batistuta said recently.
The Maradona era is finally over in Argentina. For the first time since 1978, he is not playing for his nation in the World Cup. Yet despite all the embarrassment he has caused his country and sport in recent years, there were still adoring banners hanging from the stands in Toulouse, declaring in Spanish, 'Diego thanks for everything' and 'Maradona. There will never be another like you.'
The Argentine who now wears No. 10 is Ortega. Like Maradona, he is small and fast and technically gifted, but despite some flashes today, the moments when he was most reminiscent of Maradona were when he was being hacked or pushed to the ground by the hard-tackling Japanese. But this World Cup is trying to be kinder to creative players than World Cups past, and the Japanese paid for their aggression by being called for 35 fouls and receiving three yellow cards.
The Japanese still have much to learn about the world's most popular game, but they and their enthusiastic fans are clearly learning fast. The last time Japan played Argentina was in January 1995 in the Confederation Cup. It lost, 5-1.
'I think Japan can play better than it did today,' Passarella said. 'But I know that Argentina can play better, too. The first match is often one of the hardest, and we got what we wanted: 3 points.'
Croatia Shakes Off Jamaica
LENS, France, June 14 (AP) -- Robert Prosinecki curled in a left-footed shot from just outside the penalty area in the 53d minute, breaking a 1-1 tie and leading Croatia to a 3-1 victory over lightly regarded Jamaica tonight.
Prosinecki one-touched a free kick toward the end line to himself and lifted a ball that just skimmed under the crossbar at the far corner of the net.
Davor Suker added another in the 69th minute, and Croatia cruised after struggling in the first half. Croatia dominated possession and the scoring opportunities throughout, but Robbie Earle's header from 8 yards as the teams were heading into first-half injury time gave Jamaica renewed hope.
WORLD CUP '98",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Argentina Sent Packing By Persistent Romania
Victory assured, four Romanian players crumpled to the Rose Bowl turf, not in celebration but from sheer exhaustion.
For 90 minutes, they had played soccer the way the Lakers once played basketball, racing end to end, delivering show-time passes and show-stopping goals, one counterattack following another in dragstrip fashion, until finally Romania had outlasted Argentina, 3-2, in the most enthralling game of this World Cup.
This second-round match today provided everything the recent National Basketball Association finals couldn't -- ebullient, insistent offense, dynamic fast-break soccer with creative dribbling, exquisite passing, open-field speed and relentless assault on the goal. There were frenzied stretches, particularly in the first half, when almost every possession seemed to produce at least the threat of the ball ending up in the net.
Each team played without its stars -- Romania without striker Florin Raducioiu (two yellow cards), Argentina without Diego Maradona (drug suspension) and Claudio Caniggia (injured toe) -- but their absences seemed to be liberating instead of inhibiting. Pressing the Ball Forward
Ilie Dumitrescu started at the lone striker for Romania, scoring two goals and assisting midfielder Gheorghe Hagi on the third. Undoubtedly, Argentina would have been less susceptible to the counterattack had Maradona and Caniggia played, but the team showed no hesitancy as striker Gabriel Batistuta, forward Arnaldo Ortega and midfielder Fernando Redondo explored their talents to the fullest in pressing the ball forward.
Romania now advances for the first time to the quarterfinals, to play Sweden, while Argentina, the 1986 champion and 1990 runner-up, makes its earliest exit from the World Cup since 1982.
""This is the greatest moment in Romanian soccer,"" said Coach Anghel Iordanescu, who carried in his hand a cross given to him by an elderly priest. Then, referring to the 1989 Christmas uprising against the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, Iordanescu added, ""This may be the greatest event celebrated by our people since the revolution.""
In the absence of Raducioiu, Iordanescu started six defenders and let Argentina come forward in wave after wave, patiently waiting to counterattack, absorbing 22 shots and taking only 13. This strategy worked smartly against Colombia and the United States, and it worked again today. Tactical Domination
""I don't want anyone to believe the domination of the Argentine team was physical,"" Iordanescu said. ""It was for tactical reasons. We wanted on purpose to let them come over us.""
Dumitrescu, who plays for Steaua Bucharest, the Army team once run by the Ceausescu family, provided both goals in the first half for Romania as it took a 2-1 lead. He is the last of the Romanian stars still playing in the country's domestic league; after today's displaying of afterburner speed, precise shooting, passing and a finishing touch, Dumitrescu will command a high price.
""Bari of Italy wants him,"" said Gheorghe Stanca, a Romanian journalist. ""The transfer fee is $5 million -- $4 million for Steaua, $1 million for Ilie. Now, I think, there is another million for Ilie.""
Before the tournament, a newspaper article saying that Dumitrescu had made the national team only because Iordanescu was the coach had ruffled the star. True, Iordanescu coaches Steaua Bucharest and favors Dumitrescu. But there could be no doubt, especially after today, that he belonged on the national team.
""I talked to him before we left Romania,"" Iordanescu said. ""Psychologically, he was falling.""
Today, he picked himself up. In the 10th minute, Romania was awarded a free kick and Dumitrescu made the shot of the tournament. Standing to the left of the penalty area, at least 25 yards from goal, he accounted for the acute angle with perfect height and arc. Luis Islas, the Argentine goalkeeper, had no chance as the ball hooked like a Bert Blyleven curve inside the far post.
Six minutes later, Batistuta was taken down in the penalty area during a flamenco dribbling maneuver by Romania's Daniel Prodan. Argentina was awarded a penalty kick and Batistuta put the ball inside the left post as Romanian goalie Florin Prunea guessed the wrong way.
Romania made it 2-1 in the 18th minute when Hagi, the tempestuous midfielder, expertly switched the ball from right foot to left and pushed a pass from the right edge of the penalty area on a give-and-go. Dumitrescu pushed the ball into the net in soccer's version of a layup.
""Hagi gave me a genius pass,"" Dumitrescu said.
In the 58th minute, Dumitrescu broke out on a counterattack, dribbling 65 yards down the middle of the field, drew two defenders, hesitated, then pushed a genius pass of his own to Hagi, who was storming in from the right to give Romania a 3-1 lead.
Argentina made it 3-2 on a rebound goal by Abel Balbo in the 75th minute, then, with the game nearing its conclusion, Iordanescu made two risky decisions, substituting for both Hagi and Dumitrescu. On this day, though, every decision turned out to be the correct one.
""It is the first time that we have gotten to this phase, and I am pleased that the two goals I scored will place me in history,"" Dumitrescu said.  WORLD CUP '94",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Preserving, in an Ocean of Grass, a Sense of Infinity
TWO hours southwest of Kansas City, the sky stretches and the land begins to roll. The wooded hills of eastern Kansas metamorphose into undulating plateaus, crowned by an ocean of grass that stands tall to meet the horizon. Driving along Interstate 35, I recognize the signs: a highway marker instructing vehicles to pull over during the burning season, another indicating a warren of cattle pens directly ahead.
Soon I join a caravan journeying into the grasslands beyond the freeway. I have come here to watch the filmmakers Aimée Larrabee and John Altman shoot the final scenes of 'Last Stand of the Tallgrass Prairie' on the ranch of Bill and Maggie Haw in the Flint Hills near Emporia. New York is heavy with snow, but on this February day Kansas is as warm and clear as spring.
I grew up on these plains, some three hours west, where my great-grandfather settled. Opportunity had lured him from Pennsylvania into Apache territory, where he ran cattle on some two million acres along the Mexican border, served under the lawman John Slaughter and kept an eye on Geronimo with a crew that included a man who called himself Jim Lowe, a k a Butch Cassidy. But the sweeter buffalo grass of Kansas beckoned him north in his maturity, and more than a century later my family still lives on this land, in a house that began as a dugout, on a prairie so isolated that the nearest town is 15 miles away.
Friday night on most PBS stations (next Sunday at noon on WNET in New York), 'Last Stand of the Tallgrass Prairie' will tell the story of the people of the grasses and the promise that brought us here.
'No mountain can be as beautiful for me as the far horizon, level as a floor, 20 or 30 miles in the distance,' wrote the playwright William Inge, a native of Kansas. 'The sight fills me with a wonderful feeling of personal freedom, and also with a sense of infinity.'
Ms. Larrabee was introduced to these prairies as a child, when her parents traveled on I-35 and she first spied the Flint Hills: a swath of rolling plateaus strewn with jagged stone -- and thereby saved from the settlers' plows -- that bisect the state from north to south. What distinguishes the Flint Hills from the rest of the Kansas prairie is the tallgrass, reaching upward of eight feet, with a root system that extends into the earth some three times its height. It was to this land of grasses that Coronado, mesmerized by the glint of the sun on their stalks, ventured in 1541 in search of gold.
Still, recalling what inspired her to take on the project, Ms. Larrabee said: 'I only thought the prairies were beautiful. I had no idea of their scientific aspects.'
What she and Mr. Altman conceived as perhaps a dozen location shoots across four seasons evolved into a project lasting five years, as the filmmakers went into the Flint Hills and beyond, interviewing ranchers, scientists and descendants of the American Indians who first laid claim to the land.
With the singer Lyle Lovett as host and the actor Michael Murphy as narrator, 'Last Stand' chronicles the evolution of the North American prairies as a whole -- from their genesis in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains to their destruction with the advent of row-crop farming -- but especially the region of tall grasses at their heart, a land of stark beauty and harsh climate.
The tallgrass prairie, which once stretched across the continent, is today the most endangered ecosystem in North America; less than 5 percent of it remains. We rightly worry about conserving the planet's wetlands, yet a plot of these native grasslands contains more species than a parcel of rain forest the same size. Not only do the grasslands provide a home for a diverse range of animals, from the black-tailed jackrabbit to the bald eagle, and more than 600 species of plants, but they are also integral to the production of fresh air, absorbing some 200 pounds of carbon dioxide per acre annually.
The scientists at the Konza Prairie Research Natural Area near Manhattan, Kan., in the Flint Hills some 70 miles north of the Haw Ranch, have devoted much of the last 25 years to studying the conservation of the tallgrass prairies, around the world as well as in North America, from the steppes of Mongolia to the Serengeti of Africa to the pampas of Argentina. Owned by the Nature Conservancy and administered by Kansas State University, the 8,600-acre site is a testament to what nature has known all along, and to what humans discovered thousands of years ago: in order to survive, the tallgrass prairie needs to be grazed, needs to be burned.
Seventy million years ago, the Rocky Mountains had yet to rise -- creating a shallow inland sea to their east -- and the North American prairies did not exist. But by the time the first humans migrated onto the continent some 12,000 years ago, that sea had dried up, leaving in its wake drought-resistant grasses with buds just below the surface, which expanded as wind scattered their seed, fire destroyed forests and the grazing of prehistoric mammals stimulated their growth.
But maintaining the prairie is no easy feat. In its reduced state, the things that once kept it thriving -- fires, set by lightning, that burned hundreds of thousands of acres, and grazing by vast herds of bison -- no longer take place. Left to their own devices, the grasslands would disappear within 20 years, said Dr. David Hartnett, Konza's director.
The American Indians mimicked nature's patterns, and by setting great fires they lured bison, which craved the newly burned grasses' tender shoots. Later, settlers followed the Indians' example, and the contemporary Flint Hills rancher manages the land's idiosyncrasies with a tried-and-true regimen: burn the dry top-grass in the spring; graze through the summer; allow the grass to lie dormant in the winter. What would seem anathema to standard conservation practices -- the use of fire -- has been proven to maintain the prairie's biodiversity.
As Rose Bacon, a Flint Hills rancher, likes to put it: 'We don't raise cattle. We grow grass.'
IT is stewards like Ms. Bacon who are the heroes in this story of the preservation of one of the nation's richest natural resources. 'We wanted to show that these ranchers are really the saviors of the prairies,' Ms. Larrabee said. 'It comes back to establishing that this is the way the system works. You can work with it, or you can try to change it.
'This is really the story of grasslands worldwide and how best to conserve them, now that it's too late to go back. And we've tried to answer the question we first asked ourselves: 'Why care?' '
TELEVISION/RADIO",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Film; Unseen Yet Seen, A World Of Evil
FROM the moment it was first shown in theaters here, 'Nine Queens,' a modest caper film by Fabian Bielinsky, was a commercial and critical success. But one scene so unnverved Argentine audiences that the film has become a cultural phenomenon, dissected and analyzed countless times in newspapers and on radio and television.
In the scene, a small-time scam artist named Marcos introduces his wide-eyed apprentice, Juan, to an alternate reality, one hidden away in plain sight as they stand on a busy downtown corner. Where Juan sees only a crowd rushing about, Marcos recognizes a universe of con men, car thieves, pickpockets, purse snatchers and other petty crooks, all just waiting for a chance to pounce.
'They are there, but you can't see them,' the cynical Marcos (Ricardo Darín) advises the younger, seemingly naïve Juan (Gastón Pauls). 'That's what it's all about: they are there, but they are not there. So mind your briefcase, your windows, your car, your savings.'
Over lunch here, Mr. Bielinsky, who wrote and directed the film, recalled with a grin: 'Audiences went into the theater without a care in the world and came out looking over their shoulders and with suspicious looks on their faces. It showed them an invisible world they were not aware of but which is all around us, perhaps as close as that guy at the next table.'
With 'Nine Queens,' which opens in New York on April 19, Mr. Bielinsky has engaged in a similar process of deception. On the surface, his film is a crime yarn, portraying 30 hours in the lives of a pair of swindlers who stumble onto the deal of a lifetime: selling a forged set of rare Weimar Republic stamps known as 'the Nine Queens' for nearly $500,000.
Yet 'Nine Queens' has a subtext that has encouraged Argentines to see it as an allegory for the entire get-rich-quick mentality that prevailed here during the decade from 1989 to 1999, when Carlos Saúl Menem was president. Those years of 'pizza and champagne' are now over, but they left a legacy of spiritual and material impoverishment that Mr. Bielinsky found hard to ignore.
'The idea of sudden wealth has always been incorporated into the psychology of the Argentine, but during the 1990's it reached obscene levels and reached into the highest spheres of politics and government,' he said. 'We were forced to be witnesses to impunity and corruption, indifference to the common welfare and absolute frivolity, so of course a movie like 'Nine Queens' reflects that state of affairs.'
After the disintegration of the Argentine economy in December, in fact, 'Nine Queens' seems almost prophetic. But the underlying idea for the movie, Mr. Bielinsky said, 'emerged from my own fascination with the psychology of crime.' Researching the subject, he not only read newspaper articles and interviewed police officers, but also watched American movies about con artists, like 'Paper Moon' and 'The Sting,' and the films of Alfred Hitchcock.
'To my surprise, though, my principal source of information turned out to be people who had been victimized themselves by scam artists,' he said. 'Friends, relatives, friends of friends, all of them had stories to tell me about being ripped off themselves or knowing someone who was. As a result, every one of the scams you see in the movie is taken from real life, with the exception of the Nine Queens, which I invented myself.'
Mr. Bielinsky finished the script in 1997 and then tried for more than a year to sell it. 'Producers just didn't get it,' he said. 'The film industry here doesn't go in much for genre pictures. They're good with dramas, or small intimate pictures about relationships, but tend to think of genre pieces as something prohibited for Argentina.'
Mr. Bielinsky, 43, also had to battle what was seen as a lack of experience. Though he had written the screenplays for several feature films, directed short films based on stories by the Argentine writers Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar and worked as an assistant director on some 400 commercials and several full-length films, 'Nine Queens' is his debut as a director.
IN 1998, however, he got his break when he entered the script in a contest and placed first among nearly 350 entries, thereby guaranteeing himself a production deal.
'Nine Queens' was shot with a budget of only $1.3 million, modest even by local standards. So Mr. Bielinsky made certain the cast had plenty of rehearsal time, to assure that no time would be wasted once filming got under way.
'Many of the scenes were filmed in the street, among pedestrians and daily life, almost as if we were carrying out a raid or pulling off a heist,' Mr. Darín recalled. 'We'd drive up somewhere, jump out of a van, shoot the scene and leave, which made us realize how good it was that we were already so well prepared.'
Released in 2000, 'Nine Queens' won just about every award for which it was eligible, from the Argentine Film Critics Association (best picture and six other prizes) and at the MTV Latin America People's Choice Awards. To Mr. Darín, that response confirmed the wisdom of Mr. Bielinsky's decision to focus on plot and character and leave any moral lessons implicit.
The cast, though, always knew that Mr. Bielinsky had a larger point to make. 'When people ask me how I prepared for my role, I like to tell them that I studied Argentine politicians, who are capable of telling the most bold-faced lies with a straight face,' Mr. Pauls said. 'My character does on a small scale what they do on a large scale: he's a small fish, and they are sharks.'
Mr. Pauls also said 'there is a lot of David Mamet in this movie.' But Richard Peña, program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which showed 'Nine Queens' in its New Directors/New Films series last year, noted that for all its awareness and embrace of international influences, the movie retains a distinctly Argentine sensibility.
' 'Nine Queens' is an excellent cinematic example of a certain River Plate tradition of paranoid narratives, of which Borges is just one example,' he said. 'A society looks normal on the surface but is run by corrupt secret societies and secret deals, with a conspiratorial atmosphere that leads you to ask who is real and who is just playing a role.'
During the filming, the relationship between Mr. Darín, 45, and Mr. Pauls, 30, echoed the master-and-disciple bond between their characters. Though Mr. Pauls comes from a family of filmmakers, he has been an actor for only eight years and often looked to Mr. Darín for guidance.
'Darín has a real showboat role with great speeches but is able to be both hard and elicit pathos at the same time,' Mr. Peña said, 'while Pauls has to be very subtle, to transmit a sense of quiet power and to show that he is not just a dupe, that there is something going on behind those very innocent eyes.'
Mr. Darín also appears in the sentimental 'Son of the Bride,' nominated this year for the Academy Award for best foreign language film, in the role of a harried, middle-aged restaurant owner forced to reassess his life after a heart attack.
For his part, Mr. Bielensky has received proposals to remake 'Nine Queens' in countries as diverse as the United States, France, Germany, England and Spain. He will probably sell the rights, he said, but made it clear that he does not want to get involved with any remakes himself.
'From the moment they called me to tell me, 'You've won the contest, we're going to make your movie,' I've had nothing but one stroke of good luck after another on this project,' he said. 'I'm still overwhelmed because everything has been ideal. But if I did it over again, it would be like standing in the same place. I hate to abandon this feeling of complete happiness and start something new, but I'm afraid that it's time to move on.'
Larry Rohter is chief of the Rio de Janeiro bureau of The New York Times.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"DiMarco Is in Spotlight, but All Eyes Are on Woods
The imposing presence of Tiger Woods at major championships has become almost as reliable as Old Faithful. So it was hardly a surprise today when the talent of Woods erupted, sending tremors of applause through the pine trees at Augusta National Golf Club.
Chris DiMarco still had the lead, but Woods had the world's attention. Shooting a six-under-par 66, in a high-performance round that included eight birdies and two bogeys, Woods pulled within two strokes of the lead in his quest to win the Masters and become the first player to  win the four professional major championships consecutively.
While that alone would make this weekend compelling, many of the world's best players have also taken their place on the leader board. Phil Mickelson, David Duval, Lee Janzen, Mark Calcavecchia, Ernie Els and José Maria Olazabal were all within five strokes of DiMarco, putting even more pressure on the leader, who is trying to become the first Masters rookie to win since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979.
Facing the greatest opportunity of his career, DiMarco shot a second-round 69 to finish at 10 under par (134), two strokes ahead of Woods and Mickelson, who were tied for second place. Five players were in a logjam at seven under -- Janzen, Duval, Angel Cabrera of Argentina, Toshi Izawa of Japan and Steve Stricker. Three more contenders were tied at six under -- Calcavecchia, Olazabal and Kirk Triplett, while Els and Darren Clarke were five under par, setting up a third round in which the jockeying for position will be important and intense.
DiMarco will be paired in the final group on Saturday with Woods, and the surprise second-round leader has never played in a tournament with the world's No. 1 player. So far, the pressure of the big stage has not fazed the 32-year-old DiMarco, whose only PGA Tour victory came at last year's Marconi Pennsylvania Classic.
But DiMarco will face another test in the third round on Saturday -- looking Woods in the eye, with the Masters championship as the ultimate prize.
'He's got to play the course, too, and he's got a lot going this week,' DiMarco said of Woods. 'The way he plays, with the pressure that's on him, is amazing. That's all that anybody has talked about, four majors. He's going to be playing for that. Just watching him, he is such a momentum guy. He is all business. I'm going to try to do the same thing. I don't think there will be much chitchat going on out there, I can promise you that.'
Many players let their shot-making do the talking, as Woods, Izawa, Duval and Calcavecchia all shot 66, tying for the low round today. It was another picturesque day at Augusta, with little wind and plenty of birdie opportunities. The cut at one-over-par 145 tied the Masters record, which had been equaled three other times, most recently in 1995.
Teeing off at 10:12 a.m., Woods's game heated up with the afternoon temperature, electrifying the fans as his name climbed higher and higher up the leader board. Starting the day at two under par, five strokes behind DiMarco, Woods made two crucial birdie putts that built momentum -- a 10-footer at No. 3 and a 15-footer at No. 4. Then, after a three-putt bogey at No. 16 dropped him to six under par, Woods closed with a birdie-birdie finish, hitting a superb sand wedge approach shot to 4 feet to set up a birdie at No. 17, and another sand wedge approach shot to 8 feet that set up his final birdie putt at No. 18.
Thirty-six holes from possibly winning his sixth major, including five of the past six, Woods tried to focus on the job at hand.
'It will be challenging, and it will be fun,' said Woods, who had the same scores in the first two rounds (70-66) this year as he did when he won the Masters in 1997. 'But there's so much golf to be played, jockeying for position coming down the stretch. We have many more shots we need to play.'
Perhaps nobody got more out of today's round than Mickelson, who persevered through a turbulent day with birdies, bogeys, mental mistakes and superb shots. Mickelson made a costly double bogey at the par-3 No. 12, when he spun his tee shot off the green and into Rae's Creek and dropped to five under par. But Mickelson recovered by making birdies at the next two par-5 holes -- Nos. 13 and 15, then added another birdie at the par-3 No. 16 by making a 6-foot putt. Not done with his heroics, Mickelson ended his day with a magnificent par save from a bunker at No. 18, when he hit a deft shot out of the sand and converted a 15-foot putt.
Seeking his first major at age 30, Mickelson hoped the lessons he learned in the past would lead to a green jacket in the near future.
'Having the mistake happen on 12 was important, because first of all I can recover, and second of all, I'm going to be aware and do my best not to have that happen again,' said Mickelson, who will be paired with Stricker in Saturday's next-to-last group. 'It was difficult playing No. 13 and No. 15 knowing that I had to birdie just to get those two shots back, but I was fortunate to do that. I am excited to have an opportunity to win this golf tournament. I don't think there has ever been a better opportunity for me to break through and win a major.'
So the weekend held special possibilities, including a possible final-round pairing of Woods and Mickelson, ranked No. 1 and No. 2 in the world, on Sunday.
'I hope that we have an opportunity to go head-to-head Sunday,' Mickelson said of Woods. 'I think that would be fun.'
But there were many other contenders in position to make a statement. And with the tournament only at the halfway point, the second-round leader said he was confident that he would not be intimidated.
'Before Woods and Duval were Woods and Duval, they had to get there somehow, right?' DiMarco said. 'Maybe this is my week to get there.'
CHIP SHOTS
Those who missed the cut included DAVIS LOVE III and COLIN MONTGOMERIE.
GOLF",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Never Mind Language. Excess Is Easy to Translate.
Daniel Veronese's 'Women Dreamt Horses,' one of the four plays in the Buenos Aires in Translation festival running at P.S. 122 through Nov. 19, begins with a 'Blech!'
A frail-looking woman (April Sweeney) opens her mouth to talk and vomits all over herself. The five other casually dressed characters onstage stare blankly as she composes herself and then vomits again. After racing to the bathroom, she washes her mouth, returns and repeats the whole messy process about a dozen or so times.
This kind of absurd excess should prepare you for the rest of the festival, which includes, by my count, three dysfunctional families, two incestuous relationships, multiple murders, a topless retarded girl, wrestling sisters, boxing brothers, a few head locks and at least two characters losing their lunch.
Two years ago, when it was announced that the Australian-born Vallejo Gantner was taking over as artistic director of P.S. 122, he said he wanted to create more cross-cultural exchanges between this East Village institution and the rest of the world. By presenting (along with creative producer Shoshana Polanco) this ambitious series -- which pairs Argentine writers with American directors -- he has succeeded in making the downtown scene a little less provincial, even if the artistic results are mixed, at best.
A variety of styles is on display, ranging from the farcical ('Panic') to the dreamily melodramatic ('Women Dreamt Horses'); from a multimedia drama in which the past keeps intruding on the present ('Ex-Antwone') to a futuristic fairy tale ('A Kingdom, a Country or a Wasteland, in the Snow').
What these dramas share, for the most part, is a dark, often violent worldview expressed with aggressive, crude and highly physical staging. Jean Graham-Jones translated all four shows, and his verbose work can occasionally sound off-key. ('I'm not indifferent to your drama' a character in 'Panic' says.) One gets the sense that the directors are often trying to overcome the language and cultural barriers with rough and tumble stagings. The idea being: You don't need a translator to explain vomiting.
'Women Dreamt Horses' is a caustic play about three brothers and their failing family business, set at a dinner party gone wrong. In the hands of the director, Jay Scheib, it breaks out into fight night at P.S. 122. And the bruising (and bruised) actors aren't playing around with stylized shadow boxing. Their swings connect. Bettina (Zishan Ugurlu) slaps her husband, Roger (Jorge Alberto Rubio), on his bald head so many times that it sounds like applause, and he returns the favor with a bull rush that must have knocked her breath away.
Once again Mr. Scheib, whose past productions include a 'Medea' told in reverse narrative order, will not be accused of conceptual subtlety, but his show does have a kind of visceral energy and anger, and it's not out of keeping with the script. 'You know what I'm realizing,' Bettina says in a line that seems like the inspiration for the entire production. 'Violence is the topic of our times.'
'A Kingdom, a Country or a Wasteland, in the Snow,' by Lola Arias, a post-apocalyptic drama about a terrible family secret, also begins with a grappling match. The sisters Lisa (Andrea Moro Winslow) and Luba (Hayli Henderson), who live in a chilly wasteland with their parents, toss each other across the stage with abandon.
The sibling rivalry heats up when, while hunting for rabbits, the sisters find an orphan boy whom they see as husband material. This development worries their father (James Lloyd Reynolds) whose guilty face indicates that he knows something about the orphan that he's not telling us.
Ms. Arias, whose writing has a tactile, sensual quality, sneaks in images of fetuses and drowning idiots to prepare you for the horrors to come. And even if the play's shocks are hardly original, the director, Yana Ross, finds clever ways to stage them.
'Ex-Antwone' -- a fragmented dream of a play by Federico León, who is described in the program as a protégé of the experimental theater legend Robert Wilson -- takes place in the present, but just barely. Antwone, played moodily by Miguel Govea, seems stuck in his memories, which keep intruding on his day with his girlfriend, Stella (performed with wide-eyed warmth by Liz Dahmen), who provides what seems to be the sole comfort in his life.
Neither of these characters comes alive quite like the woman on the television set hanging above them, Antwone's shifty-eyed mother (Corrine Edgerly). This paranoid nag hectors him throughout the show. It's an exuberant hoot of a performance that could explain a lifetime of neuroses.
Perhaps the most disappointing show was Rafael Spreglburd's 'Panic,' a tedious two-hour farce produced with the Theater of a Two-Headed Calf (and directed by Brooke O'Harra), about a vulgar family scrambling to find a key to unlock a safe-deposit box that belonged to the patriarch who recently died.
It starts as a promising parody of horror movies, with the requisite violins and stark lighting, but quickly broadens its sights to, well, just about anything in pursuit of zaniness (a cop dressed like a stripper, incest played for laughs). There might be a cutting satire of bourgeois family values somewhere inside this lackadaisically paced production, but if so, it's lost in translation.
The festival continues through Nov. 19 at P.S. 122, 150 First Avenue, at Ninth Street; (212) 352-3101.
THEATER REVIEW
Correction:  November 16, 2006, Thursday  A theater review on Monday about the Buenos Aires in Translation festival, at Performance Space 122 in the East Village, referred incorrectly to the translator of the festival's four plays. The translator, Jean Graham-Jones, is a woman.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Winning Ugly, Losing Ugly, Just Plain Ugly
LEAD: GOOD thing the television ratings have been so low back in the States. Otherwise, instead of having the World Soccer body worrying about the United States World Cup program for 1994, we might have the opposite problem of some lawmaker trying to ban the World Cup like so much controversial artwork.
GOOD thing the television ratings have been so low back in the States. Otherwise, instead of having the World Soccer body worrying about the United States World Cup program for 1994, we might have the opposite problem of some lawmaker trying to ban the World Cup like so much controversial artwork.
What self-respecting American parent would take Matthew and Pam and all the other 9-year-old soccer players in the United States to a World Cup final like the 1-0 victory by West Germany over Argentina yesterday?
The game ended with the charming tableau of the Argentine coach trying to keep his players from jumping the referee.
Since the Argentine coach, Carlos Bilardo, and the Mexican referee, Edgardo Codesal, are not only both medical doctors but even practice the same specialty, gynecology, one could call this intervention professional courtesy.
But there was nothing courteous about some of the Argentine players swarming around Codesal.
All those United States sports teams that brag about 'winning ugly' have a long way to go before duplicating this game.
West Germany totally outplayed Argentina but still won ugly since it could not score a goal with a moving ball, but needed a somewhat dubious penalty call.
Then again, Argentina lost ugly, since its main strategy seemed to be going for the penalty-kick shootout at the end of 120 minutes, and then having the lights go out and winning the game on the flip of a coin.
The losers had two players kicked out of the game, one for a hard leg tackle, the other for a neck tackle right out of professional wrestling.
The winners scored the only goal on a penalty kick that stemmed from heavy pressure on officials to call fouls that didn't used to be fouls.
All in all, it was one of the drearier final matches in any sport. This was world-wide ugliness, the end of a four-year preparation by Italy, which generally did a fine job as host, and a two-year qualifying tournament.
Still, the right team won. A boxing judge would have noted that the West Germans had 16 separate scoring chances and Argentina had only one.
'We would have kept playing patiently,' said that famous American, Franz Beckenbauer.
'We would have scored a goal in overtime. But we played a full 90 minutes and it is just too bad that Argentina didn't produce anything. It was a non-game, really. They tried to destroy the game. But you cannot choose your opponent.'
Beckenbauer said this without any apparent malice. It was just the truth.
Argentina came into this tournament suspect. Its great player, Diego Armando Maradona, did not have one goal left in him in his final appearance in an Argentine uniform. And the Argentines came into this game with four players already banned for previous infractions.
There were more infractions to come. In the 64th minute, Argentina's Pedro Monzon had the distinction of being the first player in 14 World Cup final games to be ejected via a red card. Monzon's crime was raising his foot during a tackle of Jurgen Klinsmann, not the worst tackle ever perpetrated by humankind, but the wrong foul in the wrong place.
Before this tournament, the referees were warned to enforce the rules. Some officials were sent packing for missing fouls that the high poobahs believed had been committed.
Codesal had to be somewhat of a hard-liner to have escaped the periodic purges by the World Soccer body. So he flashed a red card at Monzon, and Argentina had to play a man down for the duration.
At that, the Argentines seemed quite capable of digging in their heels and hoping for a blackout.
But at the 84th minute, the new hardline came up again when Roberto Sensini jostled Rudi Voller in the penalty area. Surely it was a penalty kick in a suburban soccer league for 9-year-olds, but these are tough guys.
Anyway, Codesal called the penalty kick, and then had to dance away from a mad swarm of Argentine players. His common Spanish language allowed him to know what the Argentines were saying to him, and he flashed a yellow warning card at one of them.
Andreas Brehme made the penalty kick to put everybody out of their misery. But at the final whistle, the Argentine players swarmed the referee again.
'I tried to calm down the players,' said Bilardo, who never criticizes calls on the field. 'Some players got upset. They lost their cool.'
It was exactly the kind of sordid scene that American critics of soccer come to expect. The game is better than that. And the World Soccer body is right in trying to discourage the cheap, cynical foul. The new look may have some consistent results in the next quadrennial, when it is the United States' turn.
And that brings us back to Joe Bob Beckenbauer, that good ole boy from the New York Cosmos. There are reports that Beckenbauer is coming to the United States to lend a level of credibility to either the marketing or development wing of United States soccer. He would be welcome in either. Asked if he is coming to the United States, Beckenbauer controlled his words the way he used to control the entire field as a player. He said he had not been approached, 'officially' being the key word. He said the United States knew his telephone number. And he said he would not coach. He did not deny anything.
There is still some time for the United States to have credibility in soccer, instead of merely trotting out Henry Kissinger to sing for his supper. A big-timer like Beckenbauer, with his poise and experience, would help the United States upgrade its act for 1994. It might also help eradicate the memory of yesterday's bummer, in case anybody was watching.
SPORTS OF THE TIMES",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"On Barely Getting By in Argentina
Nidia Quiroga (right): 'You see me here digging through the garbage -- what else can I say? I have to choose between feeding my children or clothing them. If they don't have clothes, they can't go to school. My husband is too old to work now; he's in his 50's. In this country, once you reach 40 or 50, it's just time to die. And children are supposed to stop growing when they're 6 or 7. Today it's impossible to get milk for a baby! It takes me an hour, but sometimes I walk to the office of social services to see if they can help me. They never have anything. Now there are going to be elections. But why should we waste our time and energy to go and cast a vote? To elect another delinquent to office? There are times when I want to pick up and go, just pack everything up and leave here. I don't know where to.'
Sandra Romero (center, back): 'We were just waking up in the morning. The kids were having their milk. We have a permit to run a soup kitchen here. For about two years, we were able to keep it going, and we fed 120 children once a day, outside on our patio. But it's impossible now because we don't have the resources even to feed ourselves. Nobody has an income. Some parents, I've learned in the past year, are very selfish. They can't buy their children milk, but they always have a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of wine. I don't want to judge anyone, but it's the little ones who really need the nutrition. The kids still come sometimes and say, 'Sandra, will you give me some milk?' It breaks my heart.'
Ana Laura Perez (center): 'It's crazy to think that I live in a small, modest home. I don't have a car, and I've lost all my savings, but I'm still in the top 10 percent of the income bracket in Argentina -- just because I have a job and I haven't had my salary reduced. It's not that I'm not optimistic about the future for myself or my children. But it's very hard to find rational strategies to protect ourselves from the increasing crime and violence. One can be patriotic but not in an illogical way. There's a strong tendency in European immigrant families like mine to really take root here. But I tell my children that someday we might go to Europe, reversing the path that my great-grandparents took when they came here. For me, it's not only a real possibility but a desire.'
interviews by Susan Gotthelf
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 9-1-02: WHAT THEY WERE THINKING",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"World Cup '90;   Support for Maradona From an Opponent
LEAD: In the four games Argentina has played to reach the quarterfinals of the World Cup, Diego Maradona has become the most abused player in the tournament. Opponents have fouled him at the appalling rate of almost 10 times a game, or once every nine minutes.
In the four games Argentina has played to reach the quarterfinals of the World Cup, Diego Maradona has become the most abused player in the tournament. Opponents have fouled him at the appalling rate of almost 10 times a game, or once every nine minutes.
Refik Sabanadzovic thinks that is hardly necessary, and certainly not a tactic he intends to use Saturday, when Yugoslavia plays the defending champions in Florence. Later in the day, Italy plays Ireland in Rome, and on Sunday West Germany and Czechoslovakia play in Milan, and Cameroon plays England in Naples.
The winners advance to semifinal matches in Naples on Tuesday and Turin on Wednesday, with the final to follow the next Sunday in Rome.
Defender Disapproves
In Florence, the responsibility of marking Maradona will fall chiefly to Sabanadzovic, a 24-year-old defensive midfielder on one of the surprise teams of the tournament. In an interview today at the team's hotel, about 30 miles northwest of Florence, he expressed disapproval at the way some teams have marked Maradona, with flying elbows, pushing, shoving and vicious tackling to disengage him from the ball.
'I will do everything I can to stop him correctly,' Sabanadzovic said through an interpreter. 'I was covering Emilio Butragueno in our game with Spain and found no need to foul him. It is possible to be a defensive player without fouling. I didn't receive a yellow card against Spain, so why should I receive one against Argentina?'
Yugoslavia is one of several teams whose presence this far into the tournament has raised a few eyebrows. After an opening loss to West Germany, Yugoslavia has steadily played better, beating Colombia, a weak United Arab Emirates team and then, in the second round, Spain on two goals by Dragan Stojkovic, the second in extra time.
Coach Criticized
Yugoslavia's success has become a vindication, of sorts, for its coach, Ivica Osim, who has endured unmerciful criticism from Yugoslav journalists who objected to most of the players Osim selected for the team.
Rather than satisfy parochial interests by picking the stars of the Yugoslav club league, players well known to the local journalists, Osim sought the best players available. He found nine of them under contract to club teams in Western Europe, and seven of them became starters.
'The problem was, the journalists never travel, so the only players they knew were the local ones,' said Dan Tana, a restaurateur in Los Angeles, a soccer club director in London and, during the World Cup, an aide to the team from his native country.
While the criticism has stung the coach, it has had a different effect on the players.
'With the Yugoslavian press attacking me, the players, everybody, there was big pressure on them for each match,' Osim said today. 'They felt they had to prove themselves as players. Their individual play became more important than the team. Now that they have proved themselves, they have improved the team. They are playing much better and have only the pressure of the importance of each match.
'Of course, if we lose on Saturday, the journalists will turn against me again. I expect that.'
Argentina should provide the Yugoslavs a better measure of their improvement. The defending champions are beginning to find the form they appeared to have misplaced earlier in the tournament, when they lost to Cameroon and tied Romania. In their second-round game, they were outplayed by Brazil until late in the contest, when Maradona beat three defenders and sent a brilliant pass to Claudio Caniggia, who kicked the ball in for the game's only score.
After the game, the Argentine players spoke of being suddenly rejuvenated, more expectant than ever of becoming the first team since Brazil in 1962 to win a second consecutive world championship.
Alive and Dangerous
'We're not dead,' Maradona said. 'We're very much alive, and when we're alive, we're dangerous.'
And nobody is potentially more dangerous than Maradona.
'Maybe he's not so fast as years ago,' Sabanadzovic said. 'But he knows more than he did years ago. What he can do with the ball is magic. He's still the best.' The most emotional game of the weekend is likely to be the one that follows, Ireland against Italy in Olympic Stadium in Rome.
Like the Yugoslavs, the Irish were not expected to be playing this late in the month. After all, in 12 previous attempts to reach even the final 24 they failed. Yet, throughout the month, they have demonstrated a remarkable tenacity, forging a style predicated on disrupting the flow and rhythm of their opponents.
This could be scary for the Italians, who with speed and quickness superior to all their opponents, are the only team that has not given up a goal. Yet the Irish consume speed and blunt quickness with disguised zone defenses that seem to invite offensive thrusts. Then, the Irish players seem to be everywhere at once, forcing mistakes and intercepting passes.
It was suggested to Jack Charlton, the cigar-smoking Englishman who coaches the Irish, that the team might alter its strategy against Italy in deference to all the Italian speed.
'Why should we?' he said after Ireland beat Romania to reach the quarterfinal, the 17th consecutive match his team had not lost. 'We have to impose our game on them, and let them work out what to do about us.'
Problems for Cameroon
The Indomitable Lions of Cameroon, the darlings of the tournament, have run into a critical problem with England next. Four starters are ineligible because of an accumulation of yellow cards: Andre Kana Biyik, Victor Ndip Akem, Emile Mbouh Mbouh and Jules Denis Onana.
'I don't know how we can overcome this,' said Valery Nepomniachi, the Cameroon coach. 'We don't have that many talented players.'
One player who is available, as a substitute as always, is Roger Milla, whose two goals beat Colombia in the last game.
No matter what Cameroon does, the team's success has alredy had a profound impact on African soccer. Joao Havelange, the president of FIFA, soccer's world governing body, said earlier this week that Africa would gain a third team for the 1994 tournament, to be staged in the United States.
The English, who advanced by defeating Belgium on David Platt's 119th-minute goal, do not expect to have Bryan Robson, their playmaker, back for the game. He returned home early in the week to receive treatment for an injured Achilles' tendon.
West Germany, which is widely seen as an almost certain finalist, will also be without a key player against Czechoslovakia. FIFA denied an appeal by Rudi Voller to invalidate the red card he received during West Germany's 2-1 victory over the Netherlands.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Sports of The Times; Silly Kick Will Haunt England
GLENN HODDLE hears the word in Eng land  'vendetta.' He calls it 'a horrible expression.'
The English coach has had to live 12 years with the emotion of being on the field when Diego Armando Maradona punched the ball into the net for the cynical Hand of God goal that still haunts England, unabated.
'More than revenge, I dream of turning the score back to zero,' Hoddle said the other day. 'That was the most bitter defeat in my career.'
Now England has another ghastly memory, the penalty-kick shootout that ended with Argentina on top last night, 4-3, after a 2-2 tie in the World Cup. As it was, the spirit of Maradona hunkered down over the foothills of the Alps. The cynical chicanery and the glittering skill of Maradona were renewed in his absence.
One goal per side was produced by an egregious flop, but then there was a dazzling 50-yard run and a crisp goal worthy of the stubby old master -- committed by an 18-year-old with a big grin, Michael Owen, playing in his first World Cup.
Owen dominated this game for a half, and might have won it with his natural moves and unnatural poise. However, he was effectively taken out of the game by a teammate, who drew one of the more stupid red cards in this World Cup of mandated mass ejections.
In the second minute of the second half, with the score already tied, Diego Simeone, the Argentine captain, fell heavily on David Beckham, grinding his hand into Beckham's back, as soccer players are wont to do. Beckham, on the ground, retaliated with a backward kick, but he foolishly did it with Kim Nielsen, the Danish official, standing right there.
In 1986, the referee missed the flailing left hand of Maradona and permitted the goal that won a quarterfinal game. This time, Nielsen, under orders to keep law and order, waved a red card, tossing Beckham out of the game. A yellow warning card would have more than sufficed.
The display of authority meant England would play 1 hour 13 minutes a man short. It also meant that Owen's wonderful darts and dashes were finished, because he had to stay home and help on defense.
The two teams wobbled to a 2-2 tie, and then they indulged in the only humane tie breaker known to man, the penalty-kick shootout, as haphazard as buying a lottery ticket down at the local stationery store.
The English fans went out into the dewy mountain night, outside the walls and gates, where phalanxes of police and dogs and horses and chemical sprays awaited any lager louts who crossed the line.
There was a history to this game, this rivalry, this resentment, this 'vendetta,' the word Hoddle hates. This was not just some random soccer pairing, some Denmark-Nigeria game. This was a reverberation of the nasty little episode in 1982, called the Falklands War by the British and the Malvinas War by the Argentines. Their soccer encounter came on June 22, 1986, in Mexico City, when Maradona punched in one goal with his hand and scored a second with a glorious hipper-dipper run through six or seven British defenders. Argentina would go on to win the World Cup.
Argentine fans still chanted, 'Argentina without Maradona is like a dance without women,' but his scandal-addled career is over.
'We want to be original,' said Daniel Passarella, the Argentina coach and Maradona's  1986 teammate. 'We won't do a Maradona. We'll do our best to practice fair play.'
The English coach also was on the field that day in 1986.
'It was an even game until Maradona scored with a hand ball,' Hoddle recalled this week. 'Without that, Argentina would not have won. Sure, the second goal by Maradona was extraordinary, but he never would have scored that killer goal if the score had been 0-0.'
Hoddle also recalled how he and Maradona happened to be called in for the random drug testing after the game: 'We didn't talk, as I remember, but we shook hands. I remember standing next to me was Terry Butcher, and he was in another state.' Butcher wanted to strangle Maradona, in fact, but somehow refrained.
'It took me two or three days before I could find any serenity,' Hoddle said. 'I was on vacation when Argentina played Germany in the finals. I saw the game at the beach with 11 Germans, and I don't have to tell you who I rooted for.'
Hoddle will have to watch the World Cup on the tube again this year, thinking about the bit of mutual foolishness that took Michael Owen and England out of the World Cup.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Blessed Restraint
Lucrecia Martel, director  Amalia, the watchful, sullen-looking teenage heroine of 'The Holy Girl,' is intermittently fascinated with the religious idea of vocation. In the midst of her awkward age, subject to the usual moods and mysteries of female adolescence, she seems to be listening for the voice of God in the hissing radiators and clattering furniture of the hotel where she lives with her mother. Amalia's prayers may or may not be answered, but there is no doubt that her creator, Lucrecia Martel, has found her calling as one of Argentina's -- and the world's -- bravest and most original filmmakers.
'The Holy Girl,' which mesmerized audiences at the Cannes and New York film festivals last year (and which opens theatrically later this month), is Martel's second feature film. Like its predecessor, 'La Ciénaga' ('The Swamp'), it takes place in Salta, the province in northwestern Argentina, not far from the Bolivian border, where Martel, 38, grew up. Far from the cosmopolitan bustle of Buenos Aires, Salta, at least in Martel's imagination, bears some resemblance to the American South as rendered in the fiction of Carson McCullers or the young Truman Capote. Seen though the eyes of curious, sensitive, vaguely discontented children, it is a place of family secrets and repressed emotions, its atmosphere at once languorous and feverish, where gothic shadows fall on the dull routines of daily life.
Terrible things do happen in these movies (Martel's next project will be a horror film), but at the same time nothing much happens at all. She takes the material of melodrama -- family dysfunction, violated innocence, sexual recklessness -- and pares away the lurid details, favoring obliqueness and subtlety over histrionics. At times, the films seem to be composed of scenes that other, less disciplined filmmakers would have edited away or never filmed at all. Their central stories emerge in retrospect, as a succession of whispered conversations, and oblique images coalesce, at the last moment, into an indelible pattern.
Watching 'The Holy Girl' or 'La Ciénaga,' you sometimes feel as if you are spying or eavesdropping, piecing together secret messages from incomplete information. Your eye travels to the edge of Martel's frames (which are meticulously composed so as to appear haphazard), and your ear strains after noises emerging from an unseen source. This experience, like those undergone by her characters, is unsettling and intense, as your emotions outrun your comprehension. It is a form of suspense that is more like ecstasy, a word that, fittingly enough, has both a sensual and a spiritual meaning. Amalia is, in the end, a mundane creature, but the title of 'The Holy Girl' is not altogether ironic. In observing this girl and those around her struggle with their worldly problems, Martel lifts them -- and us -- into a state of heightened perception that deserves to be described as grace.
A. O. Scott
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 4-10-05: PAGE TURNER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"MEN'S VOLLEYBALL: For Home Crowd, It's Payback Time
The United States team showed Argentina what it can do when it has a cheering, flag-waving crowd on its side, sweeping Argentina by 15-7, 15-8, 15-11 at the University of Georgia to improve to 2-0.
When these teams played in the 1995 Pan American Games in Mar del Plata, Argentina, got an emotional lift from its partisan crowd and beat the Americans twice.
Brazil, which had already lost to Argentina, was upset, 15-11, 15-13, 15-8,  by Bulgaria at the Omni. In a Group B game, the Netherlands overpowered Russia,  15-9, 15-9, 15-9.
(AP)
ATLANTA: DAY 5 -- ROUNDUP",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"U.S. Team Is Big On Hype, Not Results
Down by 20 points before halftime, dumbfounded by a former Temple University point guard in need of work, 12 N.B.A. players and their tortured coach were shockingly outplayed by a team from another continent tonight.
A bunch of ambidextrous, unfazed players from Argentina thumbed their noses at the American stars, took the game to the United States and won, 87-80, in the world basketball championships.
It was the first loss by N.B.A. players in international competition -- a streak going back 10 years and 58 games -- and it came before 5,623 fans at Conseco Fieldhouse, which seats 18,345.
In the heartland of hoops, with even Reggie Miller unable to bail his team out, the Argentines delivered, picking the Americans' pride and panache clean at midcourt.
'It's an embarrassment,' said point guard Andre Miller, who scored 14 points. 'It's obviously an embarrassment. We're supposed to be the so-called superstars, representing the U.S.A., and we didn't even lead the whole game.'
Indeed, this was not the product of some foreign 3-point binge, some fortuitous bounce at the buzzer, or an officiating travesty, à la Munich 1972.
Argentina never trailed, led by 52-32 a minute before halftime, and took 14 fewer 3-pointers than did the United States. Argentina outmuscled, outpassed and outshot a United States team that looked more poorly constructed as the game wore on.
Without a dominant presence down low and with spotty perimeter shooters, the United States team is big on athletes but short on height and balance.
A brave new basketball universe was always rumored to be out there, ever since Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and the Dream Team took their skills and their lore to Barcelona, Spain, in 1992 and gave the rest of the world something to emulate. But never had reality set in so hard, the notion that someone on another continent could actually beat, let alone rout, N.B.A. players.
'The symbolic importance is, it's a great game,' United States Coach George Karl said. 'It's a game the world has fallen in love with. In this time of feeling poorly and awful, there's a part of me that's a celebration of basketball. It's a game that a lot of countries love and we must accept the challenge to compete stronger and better.'
At the end, Emanuel Ginobili, a 6-foot-6 shooting guard drafted by the San Antonio Spurs whom most of the world has yet to hear about, went hard to the basket for layups against Ben Wallace, the N.B.A's defensive player of the year, sneaking in left-handed shots off the glass.
Jermaine O'Neal, Elton Brand and Wallace, the main big men for the United States, combined for only eight rebounds tonight. For Argentina, Fabricio Oberto and Ruben Wolkowyski combined for 18.
Karl elected to keep the team's top scorer, Paul Pierce, on the bench for a long stretch after the United States drew to 68-60 at the end of the third quarter. Not even a hobbled Reggie Miller, the Indiana Pacers star who has had so many big games in this building, was a factor against a more determined and dangerous team.
The United States will meet Yugoslavia in the quarterfinals Thursday night, while the Argentines will meet Brazil. And though the Americans could still maintain their supremacy by winning the next three games -- and the gold medal on Sunday in the final -- the dike broke tonight.
Pepe Sanchez, the former Temple point guard who spent time with the 76ers and the Hawks, negotiated his way around Baron Davis, finding teammates all evening. He hit 4 of 6 shots and contributed four assists.
A wild faction of fans clad in the country's colors of light blue and white began chanting: 'Vamos, Argentina! Vamos! Vamos!' (Let's go, Argentina! Let's go! Let's go!)
Luis Scola, an Argentine forward who contributed 13 points, gathered his teammates and began jumping up and down as the final seconds wound down.
The United States weathered two close calls in the last two years in international competition. Lithuania came within a missed 3-pointer at the buzzer of toppling the United States in the 2000 Olympic semifinals in Sydney, Australia, before falling, 83-81. And the United States needed overtime to beat Brazil in the 2001 Goodwill Games.
The United States was 5-0 in this tournament before losing tonight.
Some in the Argentine news media were comparing the victory to Argentina's World Cup victory in 1986, when Diego Maradona scored the legendary Hand of God goal. 'I would say this is the Argentinian revolution,' Sanchez said. 'You like that?'
If anything, it underscored the fact that many of the league's best players were simply missing and sorely needed. Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady and other players chose not to compete. And two of the best players on the American team, Jason Kidd and Ray Allen, begged off with injuries shortly before the competition.
How did a team that includes seven players who have been N.B.A. All-Stars collapse before a little-known group of players? The players had no answers. Pierce finished with 22 points and shot 7 of 16. As a team, the United States shot 37.5 percent. Lost on defense, unable to find cutting Argentine players, the Americans started whining to the officials before finally getting back on track too late.
At the final buzzer, with the Argentinian contingent celebrating and USA Basketball officials shaking their heads in disbelief, some of the American players turned to walk toward the locker room.
But Antonio Davis and Reggie Miller made sure they gave the team from Argentina their proper respect for pulling off the biggest international upset since a team of United States college players was shocked by the Soviet Union at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea.
'We didn't want this to happen,' said Raef LaFrentz, a reserve forward for the United States. 'We didn't think this was going to happen. Nobody did.'
BASKETBALL",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"After Second Test, Maradona Is Out of World Cup
Diego Maradona, the Argentine superstar with a history of fabled play on the  soccer field and drug use off it, was abruptly removed from World Cup play today because he had tested positive for five variants of ephedrine, a stimulant banned by soccer's international governing body.
The decision was announced at a news conference here six hours before Argentina played Bulgaria at the Cotton Bowl, losing 2-0. Maradona's appearance  tonight would have been a record 22d World Cup appearance for the 33-year-old Maradona, the team captain. He almost single-handedly led his country to a World Cup championship in 1986 and sparked the team again four years later when Argentina reached the tournament's final game, losing to West Germany.
While his age and a 15-month suspension for cocaine use in 1991-92 had led many to predict that he would not be a major factor in this tournament, Maradona scored a goal and an assist in first-round victories over Greece and Nigeria, and showed some of his dazzling dribbling form of old.
The decision to remove Maradona from World Cup play was technically made by the Argentine soccer federation, which apparently spared itself any further sanctions with the action. FIFA, soccer's world governing body, said it would reserve a decision on any further punishment of Maradona until after the World Cup ends.
Argentine team officials said at the news conference that he would have no public comment. However, Maradona later spoke to Channel 13 of Buenos Aires, saying: ""They have retired me from soccer. I don't think I want another revenge, my soul is broken.""
His teammates were reported to be telling each other they must ""win it for Diego,"" but they were defeated by the Bulgarians and dropped from first to third in their group.
Although ephedrine is an ingredient in some over-the-counter sinus medicines  and Maradona reportedly told his team's trainer he used it for minor allergy symptoms, a FIFA official said Maradona could not have taken one medicine.
""Maradona must have taken a cocktail of drugs because the five identified substances are not found in one medicine,"" said Michel d'Hooghe, a doctor and a  member of FIFA's executive committee.
FIFA listed the five banned substances in Maradona's test as ephedrine, phenylpropanolamine, pseudo-ephedrine, non-pseudo-ephedrine and methylephedrine. Neither FIFA nor the American organizing committee would say exactly how much of the substances had been detected.
But d'Hooghe said there was no single medical product available that would contain all five drug derivatives. And, he said, ""Whatever way he there is of taking it, it is forbidden under the doping regulations of FIFA.""
Ephedrine and its variants are commonly used by asthmatics and hay-fever sufferers to help clear the respiratory system, but taken in greater concentrations the drug can also be used as an adrenaline-like stimulant, to increase energy or to lose weight. Maradona had lost at least 26 pounds in preparation for World Cup play.
The tests were administered after the Argentina's 2-1 victory over Nigeria in Foxboro, Mass., last weekend, in which Maradona played the entire game. He and another Argentine player were randomly selected afterward for drug tests. Maradona's positive sample prompted FIFA to have his second sample analyzed at a U.C.L.A. laboratory in Los Angeles. It also came out positive.
Victory Over Nigeria Remains
FIFA said apparent use of the drug by one player was not enough to warrant a challenge to the game's outcome.
""If two players had been found guilty,"" said Joseph S. (Sepp) Blatter, FIFA's general secretary, ""FIFA probably would have changed the result.""
Although Argentina and Nigeria qualified for the second round of the tournament, a reversal of Saturday's result could have significantly altered their seeding and next-round opponents.
The suspension marked the third time a player has been thrown out of World Cup play for violating doping regulations. In 1974, Ernest Jean-Joseph of Haiti  was suspended for a sustance that was not publicly identified, and in 1978, Willie Johnston of Scotland was sent home for using another stimulant, fencamfamine.
Maradona's suspension stunned the soccer world and prompted havoc in Buenos Aires, where one television newscaster called the development ""total madness, an absolute disaster.""
Luis Vinker, a sports editor at Clarin, Argentina's largest circulation daily, said in a telephone interview that reaction in a poll his newspaper conducted today indicated people were more sad than angry. ""People are in shock, they can't believed this has happened,"" he said, ""but mostly they are sad.""
A Renewed Status
For Maradona, this World Cup was supposed to offer a chance for redemption after years of controversy over drugs, run-ins with the police, even the weight  gain that undercut his superstar status.
Before leaving for the United States, he had told the Argentine news media: ""I am tired of all those who said I was fat and no longer the great Maradona. They will see the real Diego at the World Cup.""
Maradona was handed a worldwide suspension by FIFA from April 6, 1991, to June 30, 1992, after he tested positive for cocaine while playing for Napoli of  the Italian League.
He left Italy just after the test and has never returned, though he is now on trial there in absentia on drug charges. He had legal and financial problems in  Argentina as well, and also faces a lawsuit from a group of Argentine reporters  who said he injured four of them when he fired an air gun in a fit of rage as they gathered outside his home near Buenos Aires last February.
The FIFA president, Joao Havelange of Brazil, said at the news conference that he was distraught to relay the announcement.
""I love all these players as if they were my children or grandchildren,"" he said. ""But, we cannot lie, and the medical facts don't lie, and we have to accept the truth.""
WORLD CUP '94",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Supreme Court Roundup; Copter Search Without a Warrant Is Upheld
LEAD: The Supreme Court ruled today that the police do not need a search warrant to conduct low-altitude helicopter searches of private property.
The Supreme Court ruled today that the police do not need a search warrant to conduct low-altitude helicopter searches of private property.
The 5-to-4 decision allowed Florida prosecutors to use evidence garnered by a police helicopter that flew 400 feet over a greenhouse in which marijuana plants were visible through a partly dismantled roof. The ruling overturned a decision by the Florida Supreme Court, which had held that the flight was an unconstitutional search.
The decision today was an extension of a ruling three years ago, in which the Justices permitted a warrantless search by an airplane flying at 1,000 feet. The rationale then was that since aircraft commonly fly over private property at such altitudes, no one could reasonably expect property visible to the unaided eye from such a flight to remain shielded from view.
Since low-level helicopter flights are a less common occurrence, the question for the Court today was whether a landowner could reasonably expect privacy from that type of aerial intrusion. No Majority on Rationale
While five Justices agreed that the flight was constitutionally permissible, there was no majority agreement on a rationale.
Justice Byron R. White, in a plurality opinion joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy, relied primarily on the fact that the flight was within the airspace legally available to helicopters under Federal regulations.
While fixed-wing aircraft may generally fly no lower than 500 feet, there are no lower limits for helicopters. 'There is no indication that such flights are unheard of in Pasco County, Fla.,' Justice White said. He also noted that the flight had revealed 'no intimate details' of life on the property.
In a separate opinion, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor agreed that the search was constitutional but said Justice White's opinion placed too much emphasis on the fact that the helicopter was in legal airspace. Flights at lower altitudes than the 400 feet in this case, she said, 'may be sufficiently rare that police surveillance from such altitudes would violate reasonable expectations of privacy despite compliance with F.A.A. air safety regulations.'
In a dissenting opinion, Justice William J. Brennan said that under the plurality's approach, 'the expectation of privacy is defeated if a single member of the public could conceivably position herself to see into the area in question without doing anything illegal.' He said there was a 'lack of any meaningful limit' to the type of search the opinion would authorize.
Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Thurgood Marshall and John Paul Stevens also dissented in the case, Florida v. Riley. The Court also took these actions today: Tanker Operators Lose Suit on Bombing Raid The Court ruled that the Liberian owner and operator of an oil tanker could not use the Federal courts to sue the Government of Argentina for the tanker's loss in a bombing raid in the 1982 Argentine-British war in the Falkland Islands.
The decision, which was unanimous in most respects, overturned a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York. That court ruled that the ship's operators were entitled to invoke the jurisdiction of United States courts, even though the United States was not involved in the case, because the Federal courts are authorized to hear certain international disputes.
The Justice Department had urged the Court to overrule that decision on the ground that there would be 'substantial adverse foreign policy consequences' to opening Federal courthouses to such cases. In an opinion by Chief Justice Rehnquist, the Court agreed with the Justice Department that a Federal law, the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, barred this type of lawsuit. (Argentine Republic v. Amerada Hess). Court Refuses to Hear Vanessa Redgrave Appeal Without comment, the Court refused to hear an appeal by Vanessa Redgrave, the British actress, of a lower court ruling that dismissed her lawsuit against the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The lawsuit stemmed from the symphony's cancellation, in 1982, of a contract calling for Miss Redgrave to narrate several performances in Boston and New York. The actress has been an outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights, and the symphony said it received threats of violence and a possible riot if she appeared.
Miss Redgrave received a $27,500 fee for the broken contract but had sought potentially far higher damages under a Massachusetts civil rights law. But the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled last August that the law did not permit courts to second-guess 'the aesthetic judgments of artists,' a reference to the symphony's argument that it had the right to cancel the concerts as a matter of its own 'artistic integrity.' (Redgrave v. Boston Symphony).",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Argentina Beats Yugoslavia
LEAD: Argentina's unlikely path in the World Cup took another fortuitous turn today as the defending champion withstood a courageous team from Yugoslavia and stultifying heat to win on penalty kicks and advance to the semifinals Tuesday in Naples.
Argentina's unlikely path in the World Cup took another fortuitous turn today as the defending champion withstood a courageous team from Yugoslavia and stultifying heat to win on penalty kicks and advance to the semifinals Tuesday in Naples.
This was winning at its most tedious, and in so many ways, typical of the kind of tournament the South Americans have been having, surviving as much as succeeding, hardly reminding anyone of their predecessors of four years before.
Oh sure, there's Diego Maradona, who basks in his reputation as the world's best player. He hasn't been this month and wasn't again today, when a poor bit of his strategy nearly wrecked his team before it won on penalty kicks, 3-2, after a scoreless tie.
Final Kicks Fail
Sergio Goycochea, the Argentine goalie, stopped Yugoslavia's last two penalty kicks.
The victory came in the worst way for a soccer team: through the parade of kicks that succeed or fail as much by luck as by anything else.
The Yugoslavs, playing with a one-man disadvantage for the last 89 of 120 minutes, tried to step up the pace at times. The Argentines didn't, and the overall effect was like a couple of heavyweights, fatigued and spent, bashing each other in the final stages of a big match.
For the winners, though, the style and outcome were merely variations on a theme. After winning the tournament four years ago in Mexico, the South Americans have stumbled and stammered, just getting by.
They lost to the upstart Cameroonians to open the tournament. They beat a bad Soviet team. They tied the Romanians, who were better than anyone thought. Then, after Brazil outplayed them nearly the entire game, they won, 1-0.
Not Like in Mexico
'Even the game against Cameroon, we had to play our best,' Maradona said today. 'I didn't think it was going to be so difficult to get to this point in the tournament. In Mexico, it was so much easier.'
For much of the game today, the Argentines seemed formless, and worse, highly susceptible to the Yugoslavs' incursions down the wings, deep into the corners. In the first few minutes alone, Yugoslavia had several scoring chances off well-placed centering passes.
Then came a critical play: Refik Sabanadzovic, the defender marking Maradona who had promised he would not need to foul him, brought him down from behind with a sliding tackle and was given a yellow card of caution from the referee, Kurt Rothlingsberger of Switzerland. Sabanadzovic protested and drew a red card, and was sent off.
Fifty-nine minutes remained in regulation time alone.
While both teams adjusted, the effect was minimal. Argentina still had problems getting the ball through the midfield, and Yugoslavia, which seemed to create many more scoring opportunities even with a man down, left them unfulfilled.
A Nullified Goal
Toward the end of the 30-minute extra time, Argentina appeared to have broken through. After Tomislav Ivkovic, the Yugoslav goalkeeper, stopped a shot from the right, the ball popped free, and Jorge Burruchaga played it into the nets. It appeared to hit his upper body, and Rothlingsberger called a hand ball, which nullified the apparent goal.
'I did not hit the ball with my hand,' Burruchaga said later, pointing to his left hip. 'It hit here.'
That was the closest either team got to scoring until the extra time ended. That brought on the penalty kicks. Jose Serrizuela of Argentina was first, and he sent his kick past Ivkovic into the nets. Dragan Stojkovic followed, and he boomed one toward Goycochea. But the ball bounded off the crossbar.
The next two shooters succeeded, which brought Maradona to the spot, 12 yards from the goal line. Ivkovic easily caught Maradona's lazy, left-footed chip shot to the goalkeeper's, and when Dejan Savicevic netted his attempt, the tally was even, 2-2.
But just as luck seemed to favor the Yugoslavs, as Pedro Troglio sent his shot bouncing off the right post, it ran out for them for good. Goycochea stopped Yugoslavia's final two efforts with diving saves to seal the victory.
WORLD CUP '90",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Maradona Lets Feet Talk for Him
The twists and turns are not as lightning-quick as they were in 1986, when he almost single-handedly led Argentina to its second World Cup triumph. He is still a little pudgy despite losing 26 pounds and upgrading his physical condition. And throughout the world, the soccer player once most widely written about has been written off.
But the magic of Diego Armando Maradona is still visible, and, to the chagrin of his critics, he figures to be a factor in this World Cup.
After a 15-month suspension from international soccer in March 1991 for testing positive for cocaine, Maradona's soccer career took a deep dive. The player who had been the game's best striker fell into a deeper abyss when he was dismissed by three clubs, fired a pistol at reporters, was thrown out of one country and denied entry into another. Maradona Gets Ignored
As the start of the World Cup approached, Maradona, 33 years old, was ignored throughout the world in those magazine and newspaper special pullout sections previewing the tournament. Skeptics considered him to be just a mere shell of his glory days -- in Spain with Barcelona, in Italy with Napoli and in Argentina with a World Cup triumph in 1986.
They should have been at Foxboro Stadium here Tuesday afternoon to witness the first game of his fourth World Cup.
In Argentina's 4-0 trouncing of Greece, Maradona proved that he is still the general who dictates the pace of the game. He is the man in the driver's seat, the one who dictates whether the game is played in low gear or in overdrive. He demonstrated that best in the 59th minute with a marvelous move down the right side in which he accelerated with the ball, then decelerated and accelerated again.
""I'm letting my actions speak for themselves,"" Maradona said when asked his opinion about those who claimed he wasn't ready for the World Cup. ""I answered that question on the field.""
And it was his left foot that did most of the talking despite the shadowing by Panagiotis Tsalouhidis of Greece. He might lack some of the lightning in his moves, but there is still thunder in Maradona's left foot. He demonstrated it in the 60th minute, when his curving shot from the edge of the penalty area found the upper left corner of the Greek goal. The Biggest Factor
Sure, Gabriel Batistuta scored three goals and Maradona had only one in the triumph over Greece, but Maradona was the biggest factor in the game. He drew six of the first eight fouls committed by the Greeks. He was physically and mentally sharp. His technical and tactical moves were reminiscent of the days that made him the game's biggest name.
""Maradona is still a magician, the natural leader for Argentina,"" Alkis Panagoulias, the Greek coach, said after his overmatched team's loss. ""He didn't do too much, but it's very much obvious that he was the inspiration of his team.""
In the 82 minutes he played, Maradona looked physically and mentally sharp. His coach, Alfio (Coco) Basile, made sure that Maradona heard the praise from the crowd by taking him out of the game with eight minutes left.
""I found the applause and cheers from the public extremely satisfying,"" Maradona said through an interpreter. ""I felt happiness. Happiness for my father and my wife.""
Along with Maradona and Batistuta, another hero for the Argentines was Luis Islas, making his World Cup debut as goalkeeper. The 28-year-old Islas plays for Indepediente and is very popular in Argentina because he is one of few players on the team that play in his native country.
""It was the happiest moment of my life,"" Islas said after waiting for eight years for his chance to get his first start. ""I was patient, I worked hard and I was ready.""
Islas was a reserve in 1986 when Argentina captured the World Cup in Mexico, and he refused to be a reserve again four years ago in Italy. That decision cost him because it gave Sergio Goycochea the opportunity to play after Nery Pompidou broke his leg in Argentina's second game.
Now, with Maradona getting his form back as quickly as you can say Diego, look for Islas, Batistuta, Claudio Caniggia and the rest of Argentina to be near a position to play in the championship game of the World Cup for the third tournament in a row.
WORLD CUP '94",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"A Sassy Appraisal of the Sexes; An Argentine Cartoonist Articulates Women's Hopes and Fears
At book fairs all over Latin America these days, the heavyweight novelists who have dominated Spanish-language literature for a generation are no longer the star attraction. More often than not, fascinated readers in search of autographs are flocking to an intense, 40-ish woman with spiky, punkish blond hair, a dark, raspy voice and just one name: Maitena.
The name means 'the most beloved' in Basque, and to legions of women across Latin America the cartoonist Maitena has become a cherished friend and advocate. Working first through a syndicated comic strip and now in two best-selling series of books (compilations of the comic strips) that together have sold nearly a million copies worldwide, she has articulated their hopes and fears with wit and compassion.
'Women are not all the same, but the same things happen to us,' Maitena (pronounced my-TAY-na) said during an interview at her apartment here. 'I talk about solitude, separation, falling in love, anguish, failure, success, children, universal themes that everyone experiences.'
Maitena's admirers regard her as a cultural phenomenon that simply could have not existed 15 years ago. Louise Mereles Gras, editorial director of the Mexican edition of Marie-Claire magazine, talks about 'a generational transition' of mores and values occurring throughout the region that finds expression in Maitena's work.
'Hers is a unique voice in Latin American society, looking at women's issues with a sense of humor, humanity and frankness, and touching on topics that are not usually talked about,' said Ms. Mereles Gras, 32, whose magazine publishes Maitena's work in Mexico and the United States. 'I don't, for example, see my mother or my aunt buying her books. She appeals especially to a younger crowd, women under 40 who identify with her and the way she breaks the mold.'
A typical Maitena comic strip enumerates the types of 'Men you have to leave before it is too late.' or offers 'Six brief but suspect reflections' on breasts. Though her audience is primarily female, the popularity of her biting, satiric appraisal of the sexes and their relations increasingly cuts across gender lines, as Latin American men, too, have begun to parse her comic strips for clues to the female psyche.
'Spontaneous and direct, Maitena doesn't aspire to be a mirror reflecting reality,' Quino, the Argentine cartoonist who is the creator of Mafalda, a Little Lulu-like character popular throughout Latin America, wrote in the introduction to her first book. 'On the contrary: she grabs hold of reality, mirror and all, and throws it at our heads.'
Maitena, whose full name is Maitena Burundarena, was born here in 1962, the sixth of seven children in a family of striving professionals. Her mother is an architect of Polish descent; her Basque father was a conservative academic who served as minister of education in the last of the military governments to rule Argentina in the early 1980's.
'There would be nine of us seated at the table, and I was placed at the far end, with the little kids,' she recalled of her family life. 'The only way to get my father to pay attention to me was to say something interesting or funny or so noteworthy that he'd have to take me into account, and so that's what I did.'
At 17 she rebelled against her upbringing by getting pregnant and giving birth to a daughter. She married a year later, and at 19 had a son.
When asked why she married so young, she replied, 'Because he understood my jokes.' She then waits two beats just as a stand-up comedian would, and delivered her punch line: 'Unfortunately, that's the only thing about me that he understood.'
The marriage lasted until she was 24, though, and was followed by several years of what she described as 'sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll,' which left an abiding affection for punk music and fashion. Forced to earn a living, Maitena began working as a graphic designer, drawing for whoever would hire her, a woman trying to make her way in what was then a man's field.
Early on, Maitena gained a certain notoriety here as the designer for erotic magazines with names like Sex Humor. But she also illustrated textbooks and a pamphlet explaining a new constitution.
'At the time I did that, it was important to me, like an apprenticeship for what I am doing now,' she said of the erotic cartoons. 'I learned the freedom of daring, of being able to call up things from my own interior, and that gave me the background I needed so that when I began to recount things about women, I already knew how to be sincere.'
In 1993 a leading women's magazine here, Para Ti, invited her to draw a weekly cartoon strip. Five years later, with her appeal expanding and eager for a new challenge, she began drawing a daily strip for La Nación, the most traditional and conservative of Argentina's daily newspapers.
Eventually the success of the comic strips led to proposals to publish her panels in book form, which quickly became best sellers. There are now two books in the 'Striving Women' series and five in what has become known as the 'Mujeres Alteradas,' or 'Altered Women' series, the word alterada meaning not only changed but also agitated, disturbed, upset or irritated.
'To me an altered woman is one who has all of these battlefields open at the same time,' Maitena explained. 'We've got work, men, maternity, our body, our friends, our mothers, a whole bunch of things, and that's what puts us in an altered state, in which we can go from euphoria to a depressed crying jag in 15 minutes.'
More recently Maitena's comic strip and books have also gained her a following in Europe, with translations into French, Italian, German, Greek and Dutch. 'It all takes place in Buenos Aires, but it could just as well be Paris, Madrid or Rome,' said a review of the 'Altered Women' series published in the French newspaper Libération.
In the United States, Spanish speakers have access to Maitena's work through the Mexican edition of Marie-Claire and her books. But she has not yet not broken through to the larger English-speaking public and does not seem obsessed with the idea of doing so.
Rather than aggressively pursue the opportunities that are coming her way, Maitena has chosen to scale back and enjoy her success. She and her husband, Daniel Kon, formerly the manager of Soda Stereo and other Latin American rock groups, have for the past two years divided their time between their apartment here and a house in a small seaside village in Uruguay 'where relations are based on one's personality and not on fame,' she said.
'There's a bit of fleeing from the world in living there, but it's because we've found a life that appeals to us,' she explained. 'It's a fishing village. I have my own garden. I can cook for myself. I make ceviche and sashimi. I walk on the beach for an hour every day and play with my daughter,' Antonia, who is 4.
'Anything that wrenches me from my routine right now is not of interest to me,' she added. 'They've offered me film scripts to write and animated films to draw, but I'm not going to change my life for that. Who says the better you're doing the more you have to work?'",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Lilliputians Gaining Stature at Global Extravaganza
Despite its reputation as the most popular international sporting event, the World Cup remains a private, exclusive club. In 72 years of this quadrennial tournament, only seven nations have won a championship. The title is akin to a soccer ball kicked around among elite friends.
That is why the first World Cup played in Asia has been stunning for its unpredictability. Past champions like France and Argentina have already been sent home. Gone also is Cameroon, the African power picked by many as a semifinalist. Joining the list of premature exits was Portugal.
Meanwhile, Senegal, in its World Cup debut, advanced to the quarterfinals today. South Korea, which had never won a match in five previous appearances, has galvanized a nation with its ravenous play. Japan also received its first promotion to the knockout phase of the tournament. Even the United States, which lost all three of its games in 1998, reached the second round.
'The gap between the bigger and smaller nations has been getting smaller in recent years, but this has been quite a surprise,' Michael Laudrup, an assistant coach for Denmark, told reporters in Japan.
Numerous opinions have been offered to explain the upsets, many related to the exhausting schedules that the world's top players face with their professional clubs in Europe's top leagues. Many of these players appear to be tired after long club seasons in England, Italy, Germany and Spain, and they lack sufficient World Cup preparation with their national teams.
For instance, the French midfielder Zinedine Zidane, considered by many to be the best player in the world, plays for Real Madrid in the Spanish League. Real Madrid won the Champions League, Europe's top club tournament, on May 15, and his French team opened the World Cup on May 31. That gave France precious little time to develop the elegant, cohesive play that brought it the World Cup championship in 1998.
After his team was shocked, 3-2, by the United States, Portugal Coach Antonio Oliveira said, 'With our players in the European leagues, we only had two weeks to prepare.'
Players grow tired after professional seasons that now run nearly year-round. Midfielder Luis Figo of Portugal, the reigning world player of the year, was clearly exhausted by halftime of the game against the United States. Like Zidane, he had played with Real Madrid in the Champions League final. The world's elite players generally participate in two matches a week in commitments to their league and national teams. This can be draining. A soccer match lasts 90 minutes, nearly twice as long as an N.B.A. game. Each team is allowed three substitutions a match, and a player cannot return to the game once he has gone to the bench. There is no such thing as taking a breather, as there is in football.
Fatigue can make players more susceptible to injuries. Zidane suffered a torn thigh muscle in a tuneup match against South Korea and missed France's first two World Cup matches. Les Bleus exited meekly, failing to score a goal in three matches.
An eternal tug of war exists between club teams and national teams for the services of players. While it remains an honor to play for one's national team, the club teams pay the players million-dollar salaries. Clubs are reluctant to have their assets risk fatigue or injury with their national teams. Real Madrid was so bold as to object to Zidane's playing at less than full health in the World Cup.
'My attitude is, with the national team players, we're borrowing someone else's players,' United States Coach Bruce Arena said. 'They're not our players.'
Stars on the top European club teams participate in so many important matches during their league seasons that the World Cup may not seem as special to them as it may to players from the United States and Senegal, who perform on lesser professional teams, the American captain, Claudio Reyna, said.
'They play in so many big games, week in and week out, this is just another big game to them,' Reyna said. 'When you are playing for a title on a weekly basis, it's probably a bit strange getting up for it, and having that little extra for the World Cup.'
South Korea has only two players on European club teams. Most of its roster competes in a domestic league or in Japan. The South Koreans have been training together for several months, as opposed to several weeks. It showed in their fitness and their teamwork as they surrendered only one goal (to the United States) in three matches of group play.
'They could win a track meet right now, they're so fit,' Arena said.
While league play can be draining, professional experience has been critical in developing talent for the lesser-known soccer countries. Twenty-one of the 23 players on Senegal's World Cup team play professionally in France. While it was a shock to everyone when the West African nation defeated its former colonial ruler in the World Cup opener, it was no surprise to the confident Senegal players.
'No one had confidence in our team, but I always believed we would do it,' said El Hadji Diouf, a Senegalese forward, after his team's 1-0 victory over France, the defending champion.
In 1990, when the United States qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 40 years, it was a team composed essentially of college players. Before its match against Italy in Rome, Coach Bob Gansler went over the Italian roster, listing each player's position and contract, goalkeeper Tony Meola said. 'Their team was worth $120 million,' Meola said. 'Our entire soccer federation was worth $1.5 million at the time.'
Twelve years later, all of the Americans are professionals. Twelve play in Europe, and the rest in Major League Soccer.
Of course, it would be vastly premature to dismiss all of the world's elite teams. Italy, Germany and England are still in contention. Brazil, the only four-time champion, has played wondrously in attack, and its rejuvenated star, Ronaldo, has collected four goals in three matches.
'The longer the tournament goes, I think it favors the stronger countries that have the elite players,' Arena said. 'As they move forward, I think they'll get better. The problem is, can they move forward?'
SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Argentine Has Had Better Days At a Major
It was another random moment in men's tennis, and as a result, David Nalbandian will not be providing his home nation, Argentina, with a welcome distraction from its troubles at this Grand Slam event.
Last month, Nalbandian became one of the most surprising Wimbledon finalists in history in a tournament that has more history than any other. Yesterday at the United States Open, his attacking baseline game, sturdy legs and higher profile were not enough to win even a set against Sargis Sargsian.
At the All England Club, Nalbandian celebrated his semifinal victory by throwing his head back and shouting with delight into the moody sky over London. Against Sargsian, after watching an ace get past him early in the third set, he threw his head back and muttered a series of oaths.
'It was not one of my best days,' the 16th-seeded Nalbandian said after his 6-1, 6-4, 6-4 loss. 'Actually, I think it was one of the worst of my life, and I certainly never played worse this year. But I guess everybody has their good days and bad days, and part of being a grown-up is to accept that.'
Fans of men's tennis certainly have to accept it. Yesterday's upset artist is tomorrow's upset victim, and while that is a clear reflection of the prevailing depth, it is also a way to disorient the audience.
'I think what we do need more of is the best guys doing well consistently,' Patrick McEnroe, the American Davis Cup captain, said when asked what might help stir interest in the men's game in the United States. 'I think that has been a problem for the men's game this year.'
If only the fans could be certain of who the best players are. Thomas Johansson of Sweden made the leap from solid professional to Grand Slam winner by taking the title at the year's first major, the Australian Open. He has not won another ATP Tour event and is not playing here because of an injury. In the last seven Grand Slam events, only Lleyton Hewitt has been a finalist twice, and Hewitt, who beat Nalbandian at Wimbledon and is the only man who bears a resemblance to commander in chief, was beaten in the first round in Toronto last month and won only one round in Indianapolis this month.
No wonder there was an audible absence of buzz when Nalbandian took the court yesterday. The Grandstand, the third biggest of the Open's three show courts, was barely half-full when Nalbandian, the grandson of an Armenian immigrant, played an Armenian who came to the United States and won the N.C.A.A. men's singles title at Arizona State.
A woman in the fourth row with her salt-and-pepper hair in a bun was much more interested in her crossword puzzle than the recent Wimbledon finalist, and it is doubtful that what she saw between clues yesterday piqued her curiosity. Looking heavier, slower and more irritable than usual, Nalbandian, who won the junior title here at age 16 and reached the third round last year at 19, could not get his groove back.
'I think every player sometimes plays really bad,' Nalbandian said. 'Sampras and Agassi. Many players lose. Why can't I lose?'
He can, and he did, and it was hardly the first time since Wimbledon. The day after losing in straight sets to Hewitt on Center Court, he left for Switzerland to play in a clay-court event in Gstaad. He lost to Andrei Pavel in the first round, then lost in the first round again the next week in Croatia.
After he had reached the Wimbledon final, there was a party in Unquillo's streets, and friends carried his father, Norberto, down the Avenida San Martin on their shoulders. The family celebrated by roasting a goat. When Nalbandian returned home to a hero's welcome, he was presented with a racket that was considerably larger than he is. It now stands at the entrance to Unquillo: a year-round testimony to his tennis success in a town with five courts.
'Three clay, two hard,' he said.
Which means no grass, and he certainly did not look like a grass-courter against the big-serving Sargsian, sometimes parking himself as much as eight feet behind the baseline to return.
Near the end of the match, Nalbandian windmilled his arms toward the crowd in an attempt to generate some support, some energy, some hope. He got a loud cheer in return but despite controlling the ensuing point, he could not ride the small, isolated wave, dropping to one knee after a botched volley and looking quite a bit older than 20.
Four points later, Nalbandian smacked a backhand long, raised his racket menacingly as if to bounce it off the court but settled for shaking Sargsian's hand instead. It has still been a summer to remember, but this was definitely a summer day to forget.
TENNIS",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Foreign Abducters Held To Be Liable in the U.S.
LEAD: In a decision applauded by human rights activists, a Federal district judge here has ruled that officials of foreign governments can be sued in American courts for the abduction and presumed killing of political opponents.
In a decision applauded by human rights activists, a Federal district judge here has ruled that officials of foreign governments can be sued in American courts for the abduction and presumed killing of political opponents.
The judge, D. Lowell Jensen, ruled last month that these abductions are subject to the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act, which gives foreigners the right to bring suit in American courts for violations of international human rights law committed in their own countries.
International human rights activists said that expanding the statute to include 'disappearances' would help assure that this country does not become a safe haven for the henchmen of fallen despots.
'They cannot make the U.S. a retirement home because they will have to answer for their actions,' said David Cole, staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City, which helped bring the case. A separate crime of torture was recognized by the Federal courts as actionable under the statute in 1980. 'Distinct Method of Terror'
'The international community sees it as crucial that causing disappearances be recognized as a distinct violation of law because it has become a distinct method of terror,' Mr. Cole said.  Judge Jensen's ruling came in a civil suit brought against Carlos Guillermo Suarez-Mason, a former Argentine general who was arrested in the United States in 1987 and deported to Argentina last May on a fugitive warrant charging him with murder.
Mr. Suarez-Mason, who was known by prisoners as 'el Senor de Vida y Muerte,' the Lord of Life and Death, commanded troops accused of kidnapping and torturing thousands of Argentine civilians, who then disappeared, in seven years of military rule beginning in 1976.
The case was brought by Alfredo Forti, who now lives in Washington. He charged that his mother disappeared after being illegally arrested.
Judge Jensen held that the civil violation of 'causing disappearances' was comprised of two elements: abduction by state officials or their agents and official refusal to acknowledge the abduction or to disclose the fate of the detainee.
Whether the same principle will be extended to former heads of state is a question that is now before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit here.
In a case brought against Ferdinand E. Marcos, the former Philippine president, the Federal District Court in Hawaii ruled that a foreign sovereign is immune from liability for crimes, including torture, that are commited as an 'act of state.' The case has been pending for over a year.
THE LAW",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"OBSERVATORY
Unlocking the Amber
An insect or a plant trapped in amber, the fossilized resin of trees, is a delight to behold. But it can be a nightmare to study.
The amber can be broken open, exposing the surface of the animal or plant, and scanning electron microscopy can be used to reveal surface features. But studying internal structures -- for instance, by cutting a thin cross-section of tissue for viewing in a transmission electron microscope -- is extremely difficult. The ancient tissues tend to crumble to dust. So only fragments have been examined in this way.
Now researchers at the Free University of Berlin have produced complete cross-sections of a twig of swamp cypress that was embedded in Baltic amber 45 million years ago. Their technique, revealed in Proceedings B of the Royal Society, was to use the ancient resin in combination with a modern one to stabilize the tissues.
The researchers left the twig in the amber, allowing them to cut a 1.5-millimeter slice without destroying the plant tissue. They put one end in a drop of a liquid resin called ERL, which was drawn up into the twig tissue by capillary action.
When the ERL hardened, the twig was cut into thin slices for viewing in both light and electron microscopes, revealing the fine structures of cell walls, nuclei and organelles within the cells.
The researchers say these are the oldest and best-preserved internal tissues from amber yet reported. The technique, they add, can probably be used with insects as well.
A Deep-South Dinosaur
It was found in sedimentary deposits, not amber, and in Patagonia, not the Baltic region, but another fossil is making news. It's the remains of a new deinonychosaur, those meat-eating dinosaurs better known as raptors.
The animal, Neuquenraptor argentinus, was about six feet long and had the curved claw, presumably for ripping flesh, that is a distinguishing feature of raptors.
But the most remarkable thing about the find, reported in Nature by scientists from the Argentinian Museum of Natural Sciences and Ohio State, is the location. It's the first Southern Hemisphere raptor -- and since South America split from North America and Asia 90 million years ago, it's an indication that raptors roamed farther and wider than previously thought. The scientists suggest that deinonychosaurs were probably distributed globally at the beginning of the Cretaceous period, about 145 million years ago.
A Niche Organism
The cyanobacteria are a curious bunch, and among them one species, Acaryochloris marina, is curiouser still. It is the only known photosynthesizing organism that uses the d variant of chlorophyll as its principal means of capturing energy from light. Chlorophyll a is the main photosynthesizing pigment in most other plants and algae.
Chlorophyll d uses light at near-infrared rather than visible frequencies. So one lingering question about A. marina, which was discovered a decade ago in the tropical Pacific, has been where it lives and how it can thrive, given its odd light requirements.
Dr. Michael Kühl of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues have solved the mystery. A. marina, they report in Nature, lives in the shade.
One clue to their discovery was that A. marina was first isolated from extracts of small invertebrates that encrust coral reefs. These invertebrates, called didemnid ascidians, are known to contain other cyanobacteria in symbiotic relationships, so the researchers examined the ascidians to see whether A. marina was living inside them as well.
They didn't find A. marina-type organisms inside, but rather outside, in a thin biofilm. What's more, this thin film was only on the ascidians' underside. Analysis of the ascidian tissue showed that it strongly attenuated visible light but allowed near-infrared light to pass through.
So A. marina, the researchers say, has found a remarkable niche, growing in biofilms underneath another organism that acts as a light filter, allowing A. marina to make efficient use of its unique light-harvesting process.
What's Good for the Grouse
Populations rise and fall all the time, but when separate populations of the same species rise and fall in unison in a region, ecologists really become intrigued. It's long been proposed that weather and climate play a role, but the underlying mechanisms have been hard to determine.
Now, Dr. Isabella M. Cattadori and colleagues have shown that there is, indeed, something about the weather that synchronizes populations of red grouse in northern England. But they've also demonstrated that the effect is an indirect one, with a third party -- an intestinal parasite -- involved.
Dr. Cattadori, now a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State, studied the red grouse while on a fellowship in Scotland. Game birds like grouse are convenient to study in Britain because large hunting estates have kept long-term records to estimate populations.
The researchers collected data from about 100 estates in northern England that showed similar annual fluctuations in numbers. 'Even though the estates are managed independently, their shot data had the same sort of patterns,' she said. 'So there had to be something intrinsic in the populations.'
Dr. Cattadori then examined the populations and the climate. 'We found that the climatic data were very well in synchrony during summer but not winter,' she said. 'So summer was probably more important than winter in affecting the populations.'
Breeding occurs in summer, and red grouse are known to be infected by a worm that affects fertility. So Dr. Cattadori built models to compare two hypotheses: that the weather affected grouse numbers directly, or that it affected the parasite populations, which in turn affected the birds.
Each model fit the data well, Dr. Cattadori said, but the one using only climate wasn't biologically correct. 'It showed that if it rains a lot, it's good for the grouse,' she said. 'We know that's not true.'
But the parasite model made sense. It showed that a dry, warm spring followed by a cold, wet summer kills worms, while a wet spring followed by a warm summer produces lots of worms.
Dr. Cattadori said the work, published in Nature, carries a bigger potential message, about climate change and events like emerging diseases and pest outbreaks. 'We may find that these phenomenon are caused by climate and taking place in a synchronized way,' she said.
Observatory",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Argentina Sees Conspiracy Behind Maradona's Fall
It's a plot.
For Argentina, those are words have echoed through much of its history as an  explanation when ""bad"" things happened to ""good"" people.
For the military governments of the 1970's, international outcry over human  rights abuses were considered a plot by terrorists outside the country to discredit the Argentine military. Earlier in the century, Jews were plotting to  take over the Patagonia, in what was called the Andean Plan. More recently, to explain periodic sharp public criticism, President Carlos Saul Menem has said that there is a media plot, backed by Communists, out to get him.
And now, the news that Diego Maradona tested positive for banned medication has Argentina again raising the banner of conspiracy, or complot, as they say in Spanish.
On Thursday, the 33-year-old Maradona, who has a history of cocaine use, was  withdrawn from World Cup play by the Argentine delegation after tests found five derivatives of the drug ephedrine.
""The theme of a plot is very Argentine because it excuses your own guilt,"" said Jorge Lanata, a columnist for the daily newspaper Pagina 12. ""If Argentines confront reality, they have to face the fact that they are responsible for what  is happening. It is much easier to place the blame on others. If there was a conspiracy, then we are not responsible for anything. It is a typical symptom of the Argentine sickness. All the world is conspiring against 30 million Argentines. That is crazy.""
A telephone survey of 200 people in Buenos Aires by the newspaper found that  nearly 60 percent believed Maradona and the Argentine team were the victims of a plot. Barely 10 percent said they were mad at Maradona and more than 50 percent  said they felt sorry for him.
And for the country where a common saying is, ""We're the best, but they don't let us become the best,"" the fall of Maradona has many pointing fingers rather than looking inward. The fingers have pointed to Maradona's personal dietitian,  his training team, to soccer's international governing body.
""I don't agree with the historical Argentine view of a conspiracy, but I believe there is a conspiracy against Maradona,"" said Osvaldo Soriano, an Argentine writer, who questioned the fairness of the draw that chose to take a urine sample from Maradona, as one of two Argentine players, after its match with Nigeria. ""Maradona has made a lot of people mad at him and he had some bills to pay.""
Indeed, the stunning fall of Maradona seems to have many of the tragic elements that play to the Argentine national character and that the country, despite more than three years of spectacular economic growth and stability, has  yet to move beyond.
Among those are a sense that the powerful are outside of the law, and almost  an admiration for those who take a cavalier view of rules and regulations. Even  though many Government officials in the last three years have been accused of corruption, none have yet been convicted.
Much of the country's history is involved with pardoning those who have transgressed the law. Lanata said that since the early 1800's, the Argentine Government has instituted 26 general amnesties.
""We have inbred in this society a sense that you don't have to play by the rules,"" said a prominent local banker, who asked not to be identified. ""I feel very sorry for Maradona as an individual, but for Argentina, maybe this will inject a sense of discipline and help us realize that if we are to be part of a  group of mature countries we have to respect rules and how the game is played.""
There has been an unmistakable surrealism about Maradona and his comeback after being banned from international soccer play for 15 months in 1991 for cocaine use. Before the tournament began, an overweight Maradona and the Argentine national soccer team were disparaged by the public, playing poorly and standing little chance of winning.
When Maradona appeared in the World Cup trim and energetic and Argentina won  its first two matches, the team was among those considered able to win the championship. Overnight euphoria set in.
""We believe what we want to be is what we are,"" said Lanata. ""Menem says we are the First World. No. We want to be the First World. What we are is what we are and if we don't realize that, we are confusing reality with desire.""
Still, much of the country mourned the fate of its once brilliant superstar.  Today, Economic Minister Domingo F. Cavallo, and Interior Minister Carlos Ruckauf both voiced support for him.
""From that sad encounter with Colombia,"" wrote Soriano in an article today, referring to a 5-0 drubbing of Argentina in last year's qualifying round, ""Diego has made everything possible: the qualifying, the great beginning. Now, it is no more and we are left in the hands of other gods.""
WORLD CUP '94",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"To the Rescue of Goliath
Suppose you are a Goliath bird-eating spider, the largest known spider on earth, now or ever. Imagine your chagrin when in 1980 an amateur collector in Argentina finds a fossil declared by experts to be that of a spider nearly three times as large. They give this misbegotten piece of rock the grand title of Megarachne -- giant spider -- and you are left in distant second place.
You seethe in malice for 25 years and it seems no one cares. But then, who should come riding to your rescue but Paul Selden. Yes, Paul Selden no less, the president of the International Society of Arachnology. Dr. Selden has doubted from Day 1 that Megarachne was a true spider. Recently a second Megarachne-like fossil was discovered at the same site in Argentina as the first. Dr. Selden, an expert on fossil arthropods at the University of Manchester, was invited to compare the two.
His suspicions were immediately confirmed. On seeing the impostor's cuticular mucrones and raised lunules, he reports in Biology Letters, he recognized it as not a spider but a eurypterid, and a rather puny one at that. Eurypterids were highly aggressive marine scorpions, some more than six feet long, that in their long ago heyday killed just about anything they wanted to.
So now your rightful position as biggest thing on the World Wide Web has been restored. But wait, there is a fly in the ointment. You would like the title of Megarachne for yourself, or at the least for Dr. Selden to strip it from the usurper. But he refuses!
'Although its name is anomalous, it has to keep it,' he said of the fossil nonspider. Under zoological rules of nomenclature, names cannot be taken back.
'Even if you find a bird and call it a horse, it can't be changed,' Dr. Selden avers. The only way out is if he should judge that Megarachne belongs to some already named species of eurypterid such as Woodwardopterus, a step he is not yet prepared to take.
It's more than enough to send you into a deep, bleak, bird-crunching rampage.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"After an Epic Meltdown, an Argentine Soccer Star Is Remade on TV
In his prime, Diego Maradona was the greatest soccer player of his generation. Now, after a lost decade in which the Argentine star generated headlines mainly for his drug abuse and misbehavior off the field, he is reinventing himself as a television showman.
Since August, Mr. Maradona has been the host of a live, weekly 21/2-hour show called 'Ten's Night.' The name refers both to Mr. Maradona's uniform number and the starting time of the program, a gaudy hodgepodge of television genres mixing talk show, game show, variety show and even reality show elements, with a dollop of ESPN's 'Sports Center.'
Mr. Maradona is almost never off-camera, apparently one of the main attractions for a viewing public that has followed his every step and misstep since he first emerged from the slums here some 25 years ago. The magazine Gráfico has gone so far as to call his program 'the most important television show in the world,' a typically reverential description in line with the nicknames, like 'God' and 'the Golden Child,' that Argentines have bestowed on him.
'The real show was to be able to finally contemplate a Diego Maradona who is whole,' the critic Marcelo Moreno wrote in the daily Clarin after the first broadcast. 'We have learned to fear and suffer for him, for what has happened to him and for what might happen to him.'
Mr. Maradona, who turned 45 on Sunday, led Argentina to a World Cup victory in 1986 with a slashingly exciting and creative style of play that made him as renowned an international sports celebrity as Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordan. But he became a heavy user of cocaine while playing in Italy in the early 1990's, was suspended after failing a drug test, never quite regained his spectacular form and retired for good in 1997 after a coaching stint.
In recent years, as Argentines watched and worried, he largely drifted. Though he published a best-selling tell-all autobiography in 2000, called 'I Am the Diego,' he has been in and out of various drug detoxification centers, mainly in Cuba, where he became a friend and outspoken supporter of Fidel Castro.
Just last year, after his weight ballooned to about 300 pounds, Mr. Maradona was hospitalized here after a heart attack said to have been caused by cocaine use and overeating, and doctors said he had nearly died. But he had a gastric bypass operation in March, and has lost more than 110 pounds to get back to something resembling his playing weight.
As a player, Mr. Maradona, who once fired a compressed-air rifle at pesky reporters, had a reputation for being uncooperative in interviews and for agreeing to talk only if handsomely paid. But he appears to have learned a lot about the art of the interview, and in his move from answering to asking questions has proved surprisingly deft, adopting a style probing and humorous.
During each program, Mr. Maradona interviews one of his half-dozen guests, most of whom come from Latin American show business or sports, for a segment called 'Mano a Mano.' On his first show, it was his Brazilian rival Pelé, but on Oct. 17, using video tricks, Mr. Maradona interviewed himself and frankly discussed his drug use, his rehabilitation, an illegitimate child he fathered in Italy and his political beliefs.
Tonight, Mr. Maradona's interview segment will be with Mr. Castro, who spoke with him in Havana last week. During the interview, Mr. Maradona calls the Cuban dictator 'a god' and President Bush 'a murderer,' and vowed to lead demonstrations against Mr. Bush when the president arrives in Argentina for a conference with Latin American heads of state next weekend.
'Bush disdains us, he walks all over us, and yet we have to be at his feet,' Mr. Maradona said in an interview with Cuban state television. 'We don't want that story, we have to repudiate his presence.'
He has also tried his luck as a singer and dancer, with mixed results. Though he has has trouble carrying a tune, his natural athleticism serves him well on a dance floor, and any lapses have tended to be lost in the sea of silicone and hair extensions employed by the female dance troupe that accompanies him.
For Argentines, part of the appeal of 'Ten's Night' is the presence of Mr. Maradona's family and the constant soap opera drama that clings to them. His parents sit in the invited live audience of less than 200, along with some of his brothers and sisters, and his two teenage daughters are down on the floor of the stage of the program with his ex-wife, Claudia Villafane, who divorced him last year after 15 years of marriage.
Mr. Maradona has not hesitated to use his show to try to recapture his former wife's heart, and gossip magazines here are full of talk of a reconciliation. With cameras rolling and eyes misting, he calls her 'the love of my life,' apologizes to her for his drug use and sexual infidelities and has also granted her an important role in producing the program.
The reasons for Mr. Maradona's willingness to expose his private life and personal failings been the subject of unceasing speculation.
'Maradona has always been on display, and has a history of saying whatever he thinks, even if that might shock or offend some people,' Pablo Codevilla, director of the program, said when the issue was raised during an interview here. 'He's accustomed to being on exhibition, everyone knows his personal history, and so this is not difficult for him.'
Mr. Codevilla was the only executive associated with the program or its network, Channel 13, who was made available for an interview, and the network would not allow a photographer on the program's set. An interview with Mr. Maradona was also scheduled, but was canceled, without explanation, one hour before it was to take place.
Since it went on the air in August, 'Ten's Night' has dominated its Monday night time slot, with ratings reaching as high as a 40 share. It is also broadcast in other countries with strong soccer traditions, among them Spain, Mexico and Italy.
Ratings have declined somewhat recently, as the stock of local celebrities for him to interview has been exhausted and the program's novelty has worn off. But ratings are still running in the mid-20's, with occasional peaks into the 30's when an especially interesting guest shows up.
Mr. Maradona initially signed to do a cycle of 13 programs, and plans to take a rest when his contract expires. According to press accounts here, he receives about $30,000 per program. But Mr. Codevilla said that Channel 13 was eager to have him back as soon as possible and on whatever terms he likes.
'It's all depends on Maradona,' he said. 'To have someone like him, with a personality as strong as his, is not something ordinary for television. He is a historical figure, a true idol who has put his whole life and soul into this program, so we have to take care of him in the manner which he deserves.'",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Waking Up Early Isn't the Answer
The Southern Cross is a bright, easily found constellation, in Argentina as much as anywhere else, but nowhere near bright enough to land a sullen three-pound brown trout by. So although it was startling to hear the four-wheel drive van start up, the reason was quickly clear, as its headlights swung onto the water, and the fish could be beached, unhooked and released.
Another day in Patagonia had ended with some furious fishing at dusk.
Throughout this February trip, the late fishing was best. The Mallejo River offered mostly open water, little shielded from the sun, and the water was pretty warm. The landscape, even to the Andes in the distance with their snowcaps, was like Montana, and the daytime fishing often as slow as it can be in those states in the equivalent late August. But it picked up almost every evening, both on the Mallejo and later on the Traful, a more varied river with fast runs and rocks and pocket water.
Whatever the morning or midafternoon had been like, the last half-hour almost always produced a good fish, sometimes with a dry fly, but often with streamers.
Even when the fish were not biting, the scenery was spectacular. There were all kinds of birds. The Andes were always in sight. Up near the mountains, most of the fishing is done from lodges, or estancias. Some are hearty, like San Huberto on the Mallejo, and others luxurious, like Arroyo Verde on the Traful. We would fish in the morning, follow a hearty lunch with a siesta, and have dinner quite late after fishing until dark.
This particular day on the Mallejo had been typical. A few fish in the morning, though nothing very big. Mostly small rainbows.
But after a long, sluggish afternoon, brown trout started feasting on a sudden caddis hatch in the last half-hour before dark.
In the twilight, it was hard to see a little fly, and I kept missing strikes. So after 20 minutes, Carlos Sanchez, Argentina's top guide with Pathways, a Spartanburg, S.C., travel company, called for a change in tactics.
He pored over my fly box and tied on a big bushy tan dry fly of no identifiable design, about size 8. And he suggested that I take advantage of the 50-yard stretch where fish were rising by not making repeated casts, but letting the fly settle into the soft current and then just walking along the bank with it as long as the drift stayed true.
Good advice. Before I had walked 10 yards on my first cast, a big brown took the fly and took off, deep and determined, with two long runs upstream and one down before I had much control of him.
But now it was pitch dark, and landing him and unhooking him presented a different sort of challenge. I wondered where Carlos had gone, until I heard his van start up, and the headlights helped me figure out what I was doing.
Another morning, we drove up to the source of the Mallejo, Lake Tromen, which is almost on the Chilean border. We were looking for big brook trout. We saw some under the boat but never raised any, and instead stalked rainbows we could see feeding along the shoreline. Casting a sink-tip line from a boat, I took five rainbows up to 6 pounds, using a size 6, double-hooked Woolly Bugger.
The Traful probably has fewer good fish but some bigger ones than the Mallejo. Over the mantle at the lodge is the silhouette of a 31-pound landlocked salmon that Ernie Schwiebert took a couple of years back. I took none that big, indeed no landlocked salmon at all. But I lost a big brown of at least 5 or 6 pounds when he threw the hook after 10 minutes, and landed several between 2 and 3 pounds.
There was not much in the way of hatches on either river, and so little need for patterns to match local insects. Ordinary American patterns worked well: Elk-Hair Caddis, Royal Wulff, Adams, and various types of Woolly Buggers. One day, I raised, and lost, two big browns on hopper imitations, even though there were no grasshoppers on the water.
It was much like fishing good water in the American West, except for the isolation. We didn't see other fishermen; indeed our company was usually Magellan geese and an occasional hare.
OUTDOORS",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"FOOTLIGHTS
NEWS  Home for Homage
The coming attraction at the Globe Theater beside the Thames River in London is the world's largest exhibition devoted to William Shakespeare. That was the word yesterday from Britain, where the $10.5 million combination of museum and theme park is to be opened on Thursday by the Oscar-winning actress Judi Dench. The show, which is expected to attract as many as 400,000 people annually, will enable visitors to compose a sonnet with a quill pen, witness swordplay, see Shakespeare's will and even put their own voices into a prerecorded scene from a Globe production.
In Collaboration
Emblematic of fervent faith, 20 rare sculptures and paintings and 55 documentary photographs from the Hispanic Society of America will be exhibited beginning on Thursday at the American Bible Society on Broadway at 61st Street. 'Images in Procession: Testimonies to Spanish Faith' examines the relationship between the believer and sculptured images as demonstrated in Spain in religious processions. The show, through April 29, includes paintings from Latin America and New Mexico to document the continuation of the tradition of religious processions in the New World.
Argentine Ways
Spring will be in the air when Buenos Aires comes to New York from today till March 26. The event is 'Celebrate Buenos Aires!' at the World Financial Center. This festival is centered around 'Buenos Aires 1910: Memories of the World to Come,' an exhibition of more than 500 objects and images that illuminate the city's life, social conflict and unrest, as well as the Centennial Celebration of 1910. 'Celebrate Buenos Aires!' begins at 8 tonight with a performance in the center's Winter Garden by the tango singer Susana Rinaldi. Coming events include performances by Ballet Argentino.
Sidewalks of New York
Using a hand-held 35-millimeter Leica camera, Ben Shahn (1898-1969) roamed the streets of New York in the 1930's, capturing images of places like Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side and  the Bowery. These powerful works of Social Realist art served as Shahn's inspiration for paintings, drawings, prints, posters, murals and other projects that promoted reform. Beginning on Saturday, more than 150 of these photographs, as well as ink drawings, mural studies and other relevant material, will go on display at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. 'Ben Shahn's New York: The Photography of Modern Times,' drawn from Harvard's collections, continues until April 30.
LAWRENCE VAN GELDER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"The Solitary Life and Interesting Diet of an Argentine Woodcutter
What is to be learned from the days-in-the-life-of saga 'La Libertad'? Well, that an armadillo apparently doesn't have much fat.
It's an assumption we can make based on the wiry, lean physique of Misael, the protagonist of a picture whose director, Lisandro Alonso, has described it as a blend of fact and fiction. Those with a low tolerance for animal dismemberment should be warned that Misael tosses the tail-flailing mammal on an open fire, cleaning and grilling it the way most of us would a chicken breast.
Don't look for the clause claiming that no animals were harmed during the making of this film, which plays tonight at the New York Film Festival. 'La Libertad' was produced in 'Dolby Digital in selected theaters,' however, so you won't be spared any audio of the scraping of Misael's knife over the armadillo's shell.
'Libertad' is as watchable as any documentary of a skilled practitioner busy at his craft, be it brain surgeon or, in this case, tree trimmer. It takes place in the interior of Argentina, the Pampas, following Misael, the woodcutter, as he chops down trees or trims them.
He cuts quickly and cleanly. And for the first 20 minutes of the 73-minute film, not a word is spoken. We get a loud, jangly burst of electronica over the opening credits. And then, with the exception of whatever comes out of Misael's radio, not another piece of music is heard.
There's not much dialogue, either. Misael converses a little with a trucker who drives him around for a short while as they deliver logs. And during a chunk of that drive, Misael sits in the bed of the truck with a very well-behaved doggie; the pooch doesn't even look up at the camera, let alone bark.
'La Libertad' is even circular: it starts with Misael chewing away wordlessly on a meal and ends with him eating, too. The only difference in the end is flashes of lighting in the distance.
We can assume that the freedom Mr. Alonso alludes to in the title of the terse, demanding 'La Libertad' has its price: desolation and loneliness. Who can tell, though? Maybe that's just what Misael needs. ('Libertad' seems linked to Iranian cinema, with its focus on everyday realism, and to the Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami in particular, though Mr. Alonso said in a news conference that Iranian film wasn't the inspiration for this debut feature.)
The forest in which Misael works is so verdant it looks edible; the cinematography captures the colors with a photographic edge, realistic rather than muted.
Mr. Alonso keeps the camera on his subject for long takes, and it's a movie of a man in action. By the end, we've no more idea of who Misael is than we did at the beginning. It's the purest definition of a human being: he is what he does, and the film succeeds in that way, too. Inscrutable and exterior, it could be the simplest definition ever of pure cinema. The cats at Cahiers du Cinéma would love 'La Libertad.'
A former Cahiers cat, Jean-Luc Godard, waxed rhapsodic about the pleasure he got from the companion piece on this double bill, the short film 'That Old Dream That Moves,' when he saw it at the Cannes International Film Festival last spring. That guaranteed that every aficionado in attendance would dash off to take a peek.
The director Alain Guiraudie's leisurely French language tale (it's subtitled) of the end of an era plays a few games with the audience. It starts with what looks like a pickup; a young man waits expectantly on the street, slyly questioning each fellow who passes his way.
It turns out that he's on the prowl for the manager of the factory that sits in the back of the shot. The plant is closing down, and the questioner is a young machinist brought in to disassemble the manufacturing apparatus.
His quiet presence disrupts the plant's elegiac last days. It's tough to avoid the obvious machine/sexuality metaphors, as the machinist, who is more direct and masculine than any of the others, cruises the timid tease of a manager.
The imagery is clear as a bell, and 'Dream' is very well acted. Mr. Guiraudie has coordinated each scene to fit into his playful commentary on the unraveling of conventional roles of masculinity.
'Dream' is almost preternaturally well organized; it's as if he was out to make the most entertaining monograph on male behavior ever made. (Perhaps it's the well-oiled delivery that Mr. Godard found so enchanting.) 'That Old Dream That Moves' is an apt and urbane -- though slight because of its rigidly worked-out nature -- juxtaposition to the bleak, pastoral directness of 'La Libertad.'
LA LIBERTAD
Written and directed by Lisandro Alonso; in Spanish, with English subtitles; director of photography, Cobi Migliora; edited by Martin Mainoli and Mr. Alonso; music by Juan Montecchia; produced by Hugo Alonso. Running time: 73 minutes. This film is not rated. Shown with Alain Guiraudie's 'That Old Dream That Moves' as the double feature 'Men at Work' tonight at 6 at Alice Tully Hall, at Lincoln Center, 165 West 65th Street, Manhattan, as part of the 39th New York Film Festival.
WITH: Misael Saavedra (Woodcutter), Humberto Estrada (Foreman), Rafael Estrada (Foreman's Son), Omar Didino (Wood Buyer) and Javier Didino (Gas Station Attendant).
Film Festival Review | 'La Libertad'",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"2 Artists Follow Muses to Success in Argentina
When the singer and songwriter Kevin Johansen moved back here in 2000 after living for a decade in New York, all his Argentine friends were aghast. 'Why are you here?' he recalls them asking incredulously. 'Are you crazy?'
True, it would be another year before the economy here would collapse and five presidents would hold office during two weeks of political chaos. But the warning signs were already discernible, and Argentines were leaving the country in search of opportunities abroad, not returning to settle down.
'Talk about timing,' Mr. Johansen, 39, says now. 'But I needed a breather from New York, I am married to an Argentine and I realized that I can write songs anywhere, so I thought, 'Let's try it and see what happens.' '
Three years later Mr. Johansen, an American, has a hit CD in Argentina called 'Sur o No Sur.' He is being singled out by critics here for his inventive lyrics, and he has just finished a successful national tour that culminated in a sold-out show at a theater on what he calls 'the Broadway of Buenos Aires.' On Thursday he is scheduled to perform a solo set at CB's 313 Gallery, at 313 Bowery, at Bleecker Street, next to CBGB in the East Village, and then he is to join his band, the Nada, later this month to tour in Spain.
To his utter surprise that CD's most popular track is a quirky pop ballad in English, 'Down With My Baby,' which he describes as 'Barry White and Leonard Cohen meet Nirvana.' Chosen as the love theme for 'Resistiré,' or 'I Will Resist,' a popular prime-time soap opera here, his song is played constantly on the radio and in nightclubs, and when he played it at his recent Buenos Aires show, audience members sang along.
Mr. Johansen is not the only American enjoying artistic success here after having cast his lot with this country in crisis. A highly praised novel published in Argentina recently is 'Flores de un Solo Día,' or 'Flowers of a Single Day,' by Anna Kazumi Stahl, a Louisiana native, also 39, who first arrived here 15 years ago not speaking a word of Spanish, and now, like Mr. Johansen, writes in that language.
Even more curious is that though Mr. Johansen and Ms. Stahl do not know each other, their work addresses many of the same issues. Both, as might be expected of émigrés working in a country and a language not initially their own, are fascinated by what Ms. Stahl describes as 'the experience and sensation of national identity and belonging.'
'Flores de un Solo Día' is the story of Aimée Levrier, who owns a flower shop here, and her mother, a Japanese-born ikebana artist who is mute. Their orderly, settled life is thrown into confusion when Aimée is notified of an inheritance, which forces her to go to New Orleans to confront the carefully hidden secrets of her family's dark, tangled past.
Writing in La Razón, a national newspaper, the critic Luis de la Peña said that Ms. Stahl 'shows herself to be an extraordinary narrator in Spanish.' The novelist and critic Ricardo Piglia compared her to Vladimir Nabokov, commending her for having achieved 'the feat of being transparent and mysterious' and showing a 'mastery of the poetics of estrangement.'
Ms. Stahl teaches American and world literature for a joint program with Lincoln University College and Gen. San Martín National University here and has worked as a translator. 'I guess that what I'm trying to talk about more than anything else is the question of the components of identity and how we end up putting them together,' she said. 'I'm interested in the stories of people who choose to leave and install themselves somewhere else -- how you do that, why you do it and whether you can do it.'
Mr. Johansen, born in Alaska to an American father and an Argentine mother, addresses those same issues directly in the title track of 'Sur o no Sur,' a pun derived from Hamlet's soliloquy that Mr. Johansen translates as 'To South or not to South.' As a violin plays mournfully in the background, he sings of displacement and longing:
I leave because I can't make it here
I come back because there is no hope
I leave because here they take advantage of me
I come back because there they throw me out
I'd like to stay here at home
But I no longer know what that is.
Mr. Johansen's parents divorced before he was in grade school, and he lived with his mother, a literature teacher, in San Francisco in the early 1970's. But he spent his teenage years here with his mother during the brutal military dictatorship, and after high school he played in a series of rock 'n' roll bands before leaving for the United States 'to reconnect with my North American roots.'
During the decade he spent in New York, Mr. Johansen worked as a movie video salesman, a bartender and waiter, a bilingual tour guide at the United Nations and as a doorman at a Manhattan tango club. Like many musicians before him, he also found a home at CBGB.
Ms. Stahl's background is equally complicated, though without family ties to Argentina. Born in Shreveport, La., she grew up in New Orleans, where she spoke Japanese at home with her mother, an immigrant from Japan, and English with her father, an architect of German descent, while always 'feeling slightly outside the loop' as she and her brothers shuttled from Roman Catholic school to ikebana classes to the high school track team.
'I never felt like the United States was 100 percent my home,' she said.
She came here in 1988 to research a graduate school thesis about writers in exile. Urged by a Spanish-language instructor to write short stories in that language, she ended up winning second place in a student competition here and was spotted by a publishing house literary evaluator. That led to 'Catástrofes Naturales,' her collection of short stories published in 1997.
Critics have traditionally argued that Spanish, more so than English, lends itself to a florid vocabulary and to ornate sentences. But Ms. Stahl said she finds it to be exactly the opposite: 'Perhaps because I am a Southern writer' in English, she said, she is more direct and disciplined and less flamboyant, 'cautious, with short sentences,' when she switches to Spanish.
'Like any good Southerner, I get attached to the words and all the resonances and so everything gets a little bit embroidered,' she said.
Writing in Spanish, on the other hand, 'took everything away from me except primary colors,' she explained, adding, 'It's not that I was necessarily working on a smaller canvas than in English, but I was working with fewer elements, and therefore every stroke had to be a stroke that counted.'
'Flowers of a Single Day,' her first novel, was nominated for the Rómulo Gallegos Prize, one the most prestigious for Spanish-language literature, and is to be published in Ms. Stahl's English translation by Harcourt next year.
Mr. Johansen, in contrast, considers himself truly bilingual and writes lyrics in English and Spanish, sometimes bouncing from one language to the other in the same song and tossing off puns as if they were party favors. But he finds it difficult to explain how he decides to pair a song with a language.
'Usually a melody or a line of a lyric will come,' he said, 'but beyond that I really don't know how it happens. I always say that some day I'd like to learn a foreign language, like French or Portuguese, because the two languages, English and Spanish, are really just one for me.'
Musically, Mr. Johansen also likes to mix genres, describing himself with tongue in cheek as a musical 'degenreate.' He has released two albums since returning here, and both are world music, with individual songs that mix Spanish flamenco with Colombian cumbia or Dominican bachata with Argentine milonga, but which also contain traces of tango, American folk music and even reggae.
Despite the severity of Argentina's national crisis, Mr. Johansen and Ms. Stahl say they intend to stay on. Mr. Johansen says he has enough songs written to make another record, and Ms. Stahl has begun a second novel, also set here, with a character who is a translator working with Japanese material.
'I didn't come down for material or economic reasons, so my project is more alive than it was before,' she said. 'My experience of this place is that there is always flux, and as a writer that is inspiring and energizing.'",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Dinosaur Embryos Show Detailed Fossilized Skin
For the first time, paleontologists have found fossilized embryos of dinosaurs so well preserved that their delicate skin has survived in mineralized form, providing a glimpse of reptilian scales in patterns bearing a family resemblance to the skin of modern-day lizards.
The embryonic dinosaur skin was one of several important discoveries made a year ago by a fossil-hunting expedition working in the parched northern Patagonian badlands of Argentina. Everywhere the paleontologists looked over an area more than a mile square they saw gray fossilized eggs, whole or in scatterings of shell, lying on the surface or buried to depths of 16 feet. They could hardly take a step without crushing egg shell fragments under foot.
The nesting site was found by scientists from the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan and the Carmen Funes Museum in Neuquen, Argentina. They announced the discoveries yesterday in a news conference at the American Museum. More detailed descriptions appear in a report in this week's issue of the journal Nature and an article in the December issue of National Geographic magazine.
'Finding embryo bones is rare enough, but finding the tissue of embryos is truly spectacular,' said Dr. Luis M. Chiappe, a research associate at the American Museum and a leader of the expedition.
The paleontologists said the nesting site was about 70 million to 90 million years old, in the last epoch of the Age of Reptiles. A preliminary analysis by geologists indicates that the egg clusters were laid in the flood plain of ancient streams that sometimes overflowed, burying the unhatched eggs in layers of mud that protected them from scavengers and decay.
The eggs were about six inches in diameter, and each one would have had the volume of a dozen chicken eggs. Some of them, Dr. Chiappe said, were quite close to hatching. The baby dinosaurs would have started life a mere 15 inches long and grown to an adult size of up to 45 feet long.
One embryo had 32 tiny teeth that reminded paleontologists of sauropods, the giant plant-eating dinosaurs with long necks and tails, huge bodies and four elephant-shaped legs. A familiar sauropod is Apatosaurus, often called Brontosaurus. But Dr. Chiappe said the teeth and scale patterns of the Patagonian embryos suggested that they were related to a different type of sauropods known as titanosaurs.
Dr. Rodolfo A. Coria, director of the Carmen Funes Museum, said the embryo discoveries had opened 'large doors that had been closed for years' and should yield important insights into the physiology and growth rates of sauropod dinosaurs.
The discoveries, Dr. Chiappe said, were also remarkable because they were the first dinosaur embryos found in the Southern Hemisphere and the first known embryos of sauropods. Paleontologists look forward to finding and studying more southern specimens to broaden their understanding of dinosaur evolution, which until now has been based almost exclusively on fossils from the Northern Hemisphere. And the fossil hunting has been especially rewarding in recent years in the relatively unexplored Patagonia.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Sports of The Times; Sick Minds Transcend All Borders
THIS is not just about soccer. Let us make this clear. This is about a society run wild, a society so crazed with drugs and money and power and guns that it enables the wipeout of an athlete who dared represent his country, the nation of Colombia.
Until we hear otherwise, the assumption is that Andres Escobar was gunned down in Medellin early yesterday morning for the sin of wearing the national colors, for daring to take chances in front of millions, for valiantly and professionally diving after a twisting loose ball, for not being able to stop it from rolling into his own goal. The blame belonged to the entire Colombian team, for allowing the United States to score -- and disgrace -- Colombia a week ago Wednesday. Then Andres Escobar was killed, and that is sick.
Now this World Cup has double scandals, a murder of a player plus the ultimate disgrace of Diego Armando Maradona, the pampered son of the Pampas, who got caught with illegal drugs in his system. Is this how the 1994 World Cup will be remembered? Soccer does evoke high passions. Sometimes a fan will kick out the television or heap abuse on his team after a bad World Cup. Will this hideous murder be an excuse for Americans to fear or revile this sport?
Even before yesterday's high-scoring game between Germany and Belgium in the drizzle of Soldier Field, this was an upswing World Cup because of rules jiggered to encourage more offense. There were smashing performances by old powers like Brazil, encouraging performances by newcomers like Nigeria and gallant performances in defeat by nations like South Korea.
In some ways, this World Cup does not have the ambience of World Cups I attended in soccer-friendly nations of Spain, Mexico and Italy. But there have been no hooligan sightings near any game, and the lakefront and stunning skyline of Chicago have made a memorable site for any game.
It would not be appropriate for Americans to cluck about the brutality surrounding soccer or the viciousness of a Latin American drug culture. After all, our football-loving country knows about scandal and crimes of violence.
Plus, our sons and our daughters, our brothers and sisters, our baseball heroes and our stock clerks and our doctors and our lawyers and our desperate poor and maybe the person next door have access to the white powder from Colombia. They are producing it for us. It's a boom industry. And once in a while, people get a little flushed with power, feel a bit rowdy, back in the home office of our drug suppliers. It's a small world, so let us not be overly pious about what happened in the streets of Medellin.
Assuming that Andres Escobar was killed because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time in goalmouth, let us then note that the lowlife who ordered the killing and the lowlife who did the killing (if they are two separate persons) do not even know the game.
The United States, the lowly United States, the soccer-deprived United States, was putting immense pressure on Colombia, which had been puffed up as one of the favorites of this tournament. Squabbling among themselves, refusing to spread the ball around, the Colombians bullheadedly tried to take the ball down the middle of the U.S. defense, and the Americans were prepared for this tactic. They wisely punched it back downfield and counterattacked, to set up speedy Ernie Stewart to chase the ball down.
Andres Escobar, wearing the No. 2 of a right defensive back, was protecting the goal while goalkeeper Oscar Cordoba was roaming to his left to try to stop John Harkes. The ball came flashing across the middle, and Escobar slid across to block it, but it glanced off his body and into the middle of the goal. Ten days later, some villain pumped bullets into that body.
Was it wounded national pride that caused such an act? Had somebody gambled his hard-earned drug money on Colombia? Who knows? In Colombia, it is all intertwined. The goalie before Cordoba, Rene Higuita, went to prison because he was too friendly with Pablo Escobar, the Jefe de Todos Jefes of Colombia drugs, and when Pablo Escobar was finally hunted down and killed, Higuita was out of prison, but also out of soccer. It's tough to be a soccer player there.
They held a moment of silent prayer for Andres Escobar before yesterday's Germany-Belgium game, and defenders continued to take their chances in front of the goal. The game went on. We cannot allow ourselves to be beaten by killers, even ones we support.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Maradona to Return to Argentine Soccer
DIEGO MARADONA will sign a contract before the end of the week to return to professional soccer with an Argentine team, his agent said yesterday.
The agent, MARCOS FRANCHI, in several broadcast interviews in Buenos Aires, said the Argentine first division teams Argentinos Juniors and Newell's Old Boys are ""firm candidates"" to obtain the 33-year-old.
Franchi said a third team, San Lorenzo de Almagro, ""still has a possibility"" of signing Maradona, who returned to Argentina last June after a season with Spanish club Sevilla and said he was retiring for good.
Maradona was captain of the Argentine national team that won the World Cup in 1986 and finished second in 1990. (AP)  SPORTS PEOPLE: SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"In Argentina, Struggling To Survive A Depression
'The Marriage of Figaro' has been performed many times at the venerable Teatro Colón, but the premiere of the latest production last month came with a twist that reflected the hard times here. Because the collapse of the Argentine economy in December has meant periodic shortages of paper, no program was available for the opera's opening night.
'Neither you nor the artists nor I deserve this,' Emilio Basaldúa, the Colón's artistic director, told the crowd that evening. Audiences at later performances have been getting a program, but one whose production cost is one-quarter that of the past; it is made of coarser paper, with six photos of performers to the page, rather than two.
As Argentina struggles to survive a four-year economic calamity that in statistical terms is now the equivalent of the Great Depression in the United States, the impact on the nation's cultural life is felt in every way and at every level. Cultural producers are not only scrambling to try to do more with less, they are being forced to rethink the role, function and nature of culture in Argentine society.
The easiest way to measure the crisis in the arts is in terms of opportunities lost and events canceled. Popular music artists ranging from Rod Stewart to the jazz guitarist Mike Stern have called off shows here, for example, and the sparkling new Buenos Aires Museum of Latin American Art has had to cancel a pair of major exhibitions, one featuring works by Roy Lichtenstein and the other Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.
'Those shows were extremely expensive and had to be suspended because they were beyond our operating and financial capacity,' said Marcelo Pacheco, who became director of the museum in June after his predecessor resigned. 'I'm not averse to high-impact shows, but not if they consume two or three years' worth of my budget.'
But the situation here is even more complicated. In the words of Marcos Aguinis, a prominent author and a former culture minister, 'the paradox of Argentina today is that in spite of the crisis, culture continues to resist, and that even without money you continue to have expositions, conferences and other activities.'
So while bookstores are closing, sales at the recent Buenos Aires book fair were up by 25 percent over last year. Corporate sponsors for arts events have dried up, but the employees of an abandoned plastics factory have turned it into a cultural center offering plays and tango shows. And though 20 percent of the nation's 155 cultural magazines have ceased publication, traditional folk music forms like murgas and candombe are reviving. 'In times of extreme crisis such as this, people have a greater inclination to participate and to do things that establish an identity,' argued Jorge Telerman, the culture secretary for the city of Buenos Aires. There is a feeling here, he added, that since 'our culture is the only thing left to us, we can't afford to lose it.'
Since its opening nearly a century ago, the Teatro Colón has been Argentina's symbol of culture. But to keep the theater's programs running since Mr. Basaldúa took over as artistic director last October, 'one month before the country exploded,' as he put it, he has had to confront situations that would be unimaginable to directors of similar institutions in other countries.
In late April the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill opera 'The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny' was being presented, precisely because 'Buenos Aires was the city in the real world that most resembled Mahagonny at that time,' Mr. Basaldúa said. But the government had just ordered all banks closed indefinitely, no money was available anywhere, and the Colón ended up simply throwing its doors open to the public and offering the last performance free.
A month earlier, demonstrators had broken into the theater and disrupted a show, responding to rumors that President Eduardo Duhalde and an elite group of the rich and the powerful decked out in jewels and furs were in attendance. In reality the theater was offering a concert at discount prices intended to attract middle-class patrons who might otherwise no longer be able to afford tickets.
The Colón's plans for the rest of this season remain unchanged, including a production of Alban Berg's 'Wozzeck' at an abandoned factory. With the value of the peso having dropped from parity with the dollar to as low as four to the dollar, Mr. Basaldúa said his problem is not this year's program but next year's.
'How can you possibly negotiate contracts when you don't know how much a peso is really worth?' he asked. 'We are working from day to day.'
At the moment Mr. Telerman is confronting a similar problem for the same reason. He received $10 million just before the collapse for the expansion of the Museum of Modern Art, but now finds that construction companies refuse to make bids on the project because they do not know when or how they will be paid.
Buenos Aires remains one of the few Latin American cities close to fulfilling Unesco's recommendation that 5 percent of government budgets be directed to culture. But that spending is now way down in dollar terms as a result of the devaluation: from $145 million to $34 million for the city, Mr. Telerman said, and $45 million to $10 million at the Colón.
The 'immense distance between the reality of the crisis and the image of Buenos Aires as a city under siege,' hasn't helped either, Mr. Pacheco said. Museums abroad have become more cautious about lending works following Sept. 11, and street disturbances earlier this year, which have largely ended, made Argentina appear dangerous and drove insurance rates beyond the country's ability to pay.
With it difficult to attract or afford foreign artists, some of the gap has been made up by Argentine artists living abroad who want to help. Daniel Barenboim, for instance, agreed to perform the complete cycle of Beethoven's sonatas at the Teatro Colón from July 27 to Aug. 10 for 'a fee that is symbolic, a fraction of what he could be earning elsewhere,' as Mr. Basaldúa put it.
'The money is not the important factor for me in this case,' Mr. Barenboim said in a telephone interview from Germany. 'This has to do with the fact that I was born there, that both my parents were born there, that I still have relatives and friends there, that I went to the Colón often as a child and that my first musical memories are there.'
Hoping to increase revenues, the Colón has stepped up efforts to rent out its opera sets, and has recently done so to companies in Brazil and Spain. It has also opened its doors to popular music artists like the Argentine rock star Gustavo Cerati, who performed recently with the National Philharmonic Orchestra in a show that dismayed some traditionalists but drew widespread critical praise. The Colón's management has also taken advantage of the crisis to revise generous labor contracts negotiated in 1978. The Colón remains 'an island of artistic perfection in a country in ruins,' said Pablo Batalla, the theater's financial director, who also argues that political stability and artistic quality are not directly related. 'The best of Greek classical theater was performed when the gates of Athens were about to burn,' he said. The crisis also appears to have had the beneficial effect of forcing a new realism on Argentina's intellectuals and cultural elite. Many illusions have had to be discarded, the most pernicious of which may have been that Argentina had more in common culturally and politically with Italy or Spain than with neighboring countries.
'Argentina, and Buenos Aires in particular, has always felt it was expelled from Europe and obliged to be anchored in Latin America,' Mr. Pacheco said. 'But that fiction, and the image we constructed of a country that wanted to be what it was not, cannot be sustained any more. Now, for better or worse, we are forced to be interested in the place that we are really a part of.'
ARTS ABROAD",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Argentina Outlasts Short-Handed England
It began as a game tense with history and the possibility of violence and ended as the longest and most compelling match of the 1998 World Cup.
From sly nastiness to cramping desperation, Argentina and England played on valiantly tonight through regulation and two 15-minute periods of overtime. With the score tied at 2-2, they extended their second-round match as far as it could go -- to the breathless drama of penalty kicks.
British fans were singing the tune from 'The Great Escape,' and for long stretches it appeared that England might somehow prevail despite playing with only 10 men for the final 73 minutes. Michael Owen was the youngest player on the field at 18, but he was also the most dominant, scoring a goal for England with his brilliant speed and drawing a penalty that produced the other.
But England has grown accustomed to heartbreakingly premature exits. It had the potential winning goal disallowed in the 81st minute because of a wickedly thrown elbow. And as this World Cup advanced to penalty kicks for the first time, Britain again succumbed, 4-3, just as it had lost on penalty kicks to Germany both at the 1990 World Cup and at the 1996 European championships.
The end tonight came on the fifth round of penalty kicks, when midfielder David Batty telegraphed his attempt to slot the ball inside the left post. Carlos Roa, the Argentine goalkeeper who had not previously allowed a goal in the tournament, dived so confidently to his right that he had to reach back slightly to stop Batty's shot.
Exhausted and exhilarated, Argentine players began removing their jerseys and waving them as they raced downfield. Some tried to climb the fences that separated them from their delirious fans.
Argentina now advances to the quarterfinals on Saturday in Marseilles to meet the Netherlands, the team it defeated in the final in 1978, while England must contemplate another early departure.
'It seems to be a jinx,' said the assistant coach Raymond Clemence. 'But we know what the rules are.'
After the failed penalty kick, fighting broke out at the far end of the field, where English and Argentine fans sat in uneasy proximity, but the disturbance appeared to be quickly contained. There were reports of fans and local youths brawling in the streets after the game, with store windows broken and cars damaged. Arrests were made, but the police could not say how many, and about 10 people sustained minor injuries.
In an effort to contain another outbreak of hooliganism, some 1,500 policemen were on duty in this industrial town in the Loire Valley. Earlier in the day, a 25-year-old Englishman identified as a 'Category C' soccer hooligan was spotted by a British police officer and arrested.
The match was not shown on giant television screens in the town squares. However, local bars did serve alcohol until 11 P.M.
By that hour, the game was just edging into the tautness of overtime.
Players on both sides knew that this game might mean everything in soccer terms. England prevailed over Argentina, 1-0, in the 1966 quarterfinals and went on to win the World Cup. Argentina won, 2-1, in the 1986 quarterfinals en route to a World Cup title as Diego Maradona scored the famous handball goal known as 'The Hand of God.'
Tonight's outcome was largely decided, not on the Hand of God, but on the foot of English midfielder David Beckham.
Two minutes after halftime, with the score tied at 2-2, Beckham was shoved down from behind by Diego Simeone of Argentina. Still lying on the ground, in full view of the Danish referee, Kim Nielsen, Beckham kicked Simeone in the back of the right leg, drawing a red card and an immediate ejection. It no doubt also drew immediate dejection from his fiancee, Posh Spice of the Spice Girls.
'We are absolutely distraught,' said England's coach, Glenn Hoddle. 'The sending off cost us the match. I'm not afraid to say that.'
The kick was not vicious, but Nielsen had signaled in the first 10 minutes that he would tolerate no untoward play. Twice he awarded penalty kicks on plays that arguably did not deserve penalties.
In the sixth minute, England goalie David Seaman rolled into Simeone in the penalty area, and Gabriel Batistuta converted the penalty kick for his fifth goal of this World Cup and ninth over all, one more than Maradona. Batistuta dedicated the goal to his day-old son, Joaquin, and performed a rock-the-cradle dance in celebration.
Four minutes later, Owen went sprawling in the penalty area after a slight collision with Roberto Ayala, and Nielsen awarded another penalty kick. Alan Shearer converted for England and tied the score at 1-1.
With Beckham gone, England was forced to constrict its defense and play for penalty kicks or a counterattack by Owen. In the 16th minute, the teen-ager had shredded the Argentine defense, taking a pass with his right foot near midfield, running past the jostling Jose Chamot, feinting to his left, moving to his right around Ayala and slamming the ball back to his left into the net for a 2-1 lead. It was a breathtaking goal, but with 10 men, England reduced its risk-taking, and Owen's chances became limited.
Still, England nearly won. Nine minutes from the end of regulation, defender Sol Campbell headed in a corner kick, but the goal was disallowed after Shearer clearly threw an elbow at Roa.
Daniel Passarella, the Argentine coach, substituted for both Batistuta and his other forward, Claudio Lopez, in the second half, and went for the kill, but Argentina stubbornly kept trying to attack the middle of the English defense instead of exploiting the flanks.
'That's probably why we didn't score,' Passarella said.
Argentina had cleverly tied the game at 2-2 only seconds from halftime on a free kick. Batistuta stepped over the ball as a decoy, midfielder Juan Veron pushed the ball around the defensive wall, and Javier Zanetti stunned England with a left-footed blast into the net. But no additional goals were forthcoming until the penalty-kick phase.
'With England on the defensive, the match didn't seem winnable,' Veron said. 'But our never-ending battle was finally rewarded.'
And England was again sent home achingly early.
'It's very difficult,' said forward Teddy Sheringham. 'We played our hearts out. It's hard to believe we're done.'
WORLD CUP '98",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Eichmann's Captor, in Fact and Metaphor; A Spy Turned Artist Found a Fugitive, Then Found His Subject
He will forever be known as the man who captured Adolf Eichmann. But more than 40 years after he snatched that fugitive Nazi off a street in Argentina to face judgment in Jerusalem for directing the mass murder of Jews, Peter Zvi Malkin is making a new mark as the man who captured Eichmann on paper.
As an artist Mr. Malkin long used his gift for drawing and painting as a cover for his operations for the Israeli secret services, including his 1960 Mossad mission to kidnap Eichmann. Now his work has been collected in a two-volume set of images that memorialize his time in Argentina, family members he lost to the Holocaust and a rainbow world of vibrant humanity.
'For me painting is like an operation,' he said, speaking of spy work. 'The most difficult thing is the idea.'
Now in his vigorous 70's with the build of a fireplug, he lives in the East 30's in Manhattan and keeps a studio on the Lower East Side. In an interview he proudly leafed through the new books, which reproduce about 175 of his vividly colored expressionistic paintings, many made while he stalked and guarded Eichmann.
Many of his works cry out with his prose poems and letters from his children in English and Hebrew, the words boldly printed over images of maps, foreign guidebooks and telephone book pages, a pentimento of distant and vanished worlds.
Some of his work, with strong planes of color and black outlines, recalls Georges Rouault, but Mr. Malkin said: 'I'll tell you the truth. I didn't know who is Rouault.' Rather, he said, he was influenced by stained glass images in Argentina's churches.
Critics in Israel, Europe and Latin America have praised his work. The Jerusalem Post called him a 'naïf of formidable powers.'
He also received a rave review from New York's most venerable prosecutor. 'He's an extremely talented artist, and he did some of his work under the most difficult and trying circumstances, when guarding an all-time murderer,' said Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, who is also a fan of Mr. Malkin's undercover work.
The first volume, 'The Argentina Journal,' has previously exhibited work mostly from a 1960 South American guidebook that Mr. Malkin covered with paintings and drawings on the Eichmann mission. One is a pencil portrait of Eichmann over a map of South America.
'You paint?' he said Eichmann once asked him, having caught a glimpse of his makeshift sketchbook. Breaking a ban on chitchat with the prisoner, Mr. Malkin, who speaks seven languages, said he replied, 'Yes, I play with paint.' The two ended up carrying on a stilted dialogue of sorts, Mr. Malkin recounted in his 1990 book, 'Eichmann in My Hands,' written with Harry Stein.
The companion to 'The Argentina Journal,' called 'Casting Pebbles on the Water With a Cluster of Colors,' has new work: images of lovers, crowd scenes and still lifes superimposed on pages of a small atlas. It was inspired, Mr. Malkin wrote, by the Jewish tradition of casting bread upon the water 'to give, asking nothing in return but to be blessed.'
He began preparing the books after meeting the woman who became his editor, Patricia G. Ambinder, in 1995. To accompany the Argentina pictures, he wrote some 60 essays in Hebrew and translated them into English, which she then edited. 'He's probably the most humane man I've ever worked with,' Ms. Ambinder said, 'which is why he's able to do superhuman things.' (The books, published by VWF Publishing, are sold at $90 a set through www.peterzmalkin.com or through major online booksellers.)
Mr. Malkin (who also goes by Malchin, the name he was given at birth) said he spent 27 years in the Israeli secret services, ultimately as operations director and often under the cover of a traveling artist. Even today, with Mr. Malkin long out of intelligence work, his studio in a housing project at the easternmost end of Grand Street abutting the F.D.R. Drive seems suspiciously clean and orderly, but, he said, he indeed works there nights producing the canvases that are all over. 'By dirty doesn't show you're a good painter,' he said. His snooping taught him to leave places immaculate, he said: 'In the secret service, it's not how you go in, it's how you go out.'
He was born in British Palestine around 1929 and within a few years traveled twice with his parents back to their birthplace in Poland in an ultimately futile effort to rescue his married older sister, Fruma, and her family. They later perished in the Holocaust, along with 150 of his other relatives, Mr. Malkin said.
As a schoolboy, he wrote, he was recruited into the Haganah, the underground army fighting for a Jewish nation. He fought in the war for independence in 1948, he said, and later joined the country's secret service, then called Shin Beth, specializing in safecracking and explosives.
'I never killed anybody in my life,' Mr. Malkin said. But he led many operations he will not discuss, saying only, 'I helped get information.'
Among his proudest exploits, he said, was obtaining a list of former Nazi rocket scientists working for Egypt. He said he once eavesdropped on a meeting of Arab officials by hiding under their conference table. He was picked up or arrested about 40 times, he said, always talking his way out of trouble.
After an initially discounted 1957 tip exposed the whereabouts and alias of Eichmann, the Mossad leader Isser Harel sent a commando team of Mr. Malkin and six others to Buenos Aires to bring Eichmann back alive.
During surveillance around the suburb of San Fernando, where Eichmann was living as Ricardo Klement, Mr. Malkin had lots of time, he said, to fill his guidebook with images in water colors, acrylic and even the makeup that was kept on hand to disguise Eichmann when they caught him.
'I spent a lot of time in churches,' he said, showing the paintings of stained glass windows. 'If you go to a synagogue, someone is always asking if you're alone, if you're married. In a church in a hundred years no one would ask.' He also painted local people and the safe houses his team had prepared, members of his lost family and even a schematic of the kidnapping plan.
'It was like a race between me and the pictures,' Mr. Malkin said. 'I wanted to finish covering the Argentina pages before I left.'
In May 1960 Mr. Malkin, wearing gloves out of revulsion over touching Eichmann, grabbed him as he got off a bus near his home. Fellow agents bundled him into a waiting car and sped him to a nearby safe house, where Mr. Malkin often sketched while guarding him. Eichmann, drugged and disguised as a hung-over airline steward, was soon smuggled to Israel aboard an El Al jetliner. After a four-month trial the next year, he was found guilty of crimes against humanity. He was hanged and cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the Mediterranean.
The story was told on television in 1996 in 'The Man Who Captured Eichmann,' with Arliss Howard as Mr. Malkin and Robert Duvall as Eichmann.
Mr. Malkin said he retired from Mossad in 1976 to devote himself to painting, lecturing and private security work. 'I'm out of the secret service business for sure,' he said. 'But I help.'
One of those he helped was Mr. Morgenthau, who in the late 1970's was investigating two rogue C.I.A. agents, Frank Terpil and Edwin P. Wilson, who were suspected of selling weapons and explosives to the Libyans and Ugandans. Wary of going to the C.I.A., Mr. Morgenthau said he approached Mossad and was put in touch with Mr. Malkin. 'He gave us some very, very valuable information,' he said. The two C.I.A. men were later convicted, but Mr. Terpil fled to Syria, then Cuba.
Mr. Morgenthau said he in turn helped Mr. Malkin get his green card. Mr. Malkin has since been naturalized while retaining Israeli citizenship. He goes back and forth to Israel, where his wife, Roni, lives. One of their sons, Omer, a financial consultant, was in the World Trade Center's south tower on Sept. 11, 2001, and narrowly missed the attack when he left his office to meet his father, who was a few blocks away.
In a Chinatown restaurant, where he was being interviewed, Mr. Malkin reached for the check. A reporter grabbed it first. Mr. Malkin snatched it away good-naturedly. 'I shoot you if you do that,' he said.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"FOOTLIGHTS
NEWS
Tango Shrine  Argentina plans to turn the home of the revered singer Carlos Gardel into the country's first tango museum. A spokesman for the Culture Department of Buenos Aires says that the house, in the center of the city where Gardel lived in his youth, is to be restored to 'reflect the way of life in the quarter in the 1920's.' When his songs became fashionable in Europe, Gardel, who died at 44 in a plane crash in 1935, brought the tango into vogue in Argentina, where the sensual dance had been rejected by the upper classes. The Culture Department spokesman said it was hoped that the museum would open by the end of next year.
Doing Evil  Sometimes it's good to be bad. That surely is the case with Steven Berkoff, whose excursion into Shakespearean evil at the Public Theater last month drew critical accolades and sold out Joe's Pub. So his 'Shakespeare's Villains: A Master Class in Evil' is coming back. Mr. Berkoff's one-man revel among rotters like Iago and Macbeth and Richard III will return on Jan. 10 for a three-week run at the Public's Anspacher Theater. Mr. Berkoff, who has played a villain or two himself ('Beverly Hills Cop'), says, 'The villain lets loose the dark inferno of the imagination by sharing his secrets with us and begs us to understand him by wooing us with his devious charms.'
Back in the U.S.S.R.  As the Soviet Union recedes into history, an exploration of art and power during the Stalin era provides the impetus for the American Symphony Orchestra concert at 8 p.m. tomorrow at Avery Fisher Hall as part of Lincoln Center's Great Performers series. Led by Leon Botstein, the three works that make up 'Forgotten Patriotisms: Music as Political History,' were written when the arts were expected to glorify Stalin. The compositions are Prokofiev's 'Zdravitsa' ('Hail to Stalin'), Shostakovich's Symphony No. 2 and Nikolai Miaskovsky's Symphony No. 6. Richard Wilson will give a preconcert lecture at 6:30 p.m. at the Stanley Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center.
Paper Trail  In historical order, the lineup includes Leonardo, Raphael, Rubens, Francois Boucher, William Blake, Ingres and Seurat. They are the creative forces among the 80 masterworks on paper, some of them in the United States for the first time, that go on view at the Frick Collection today and remain through Jan. 25. On loan from the National Gallery of Scotland, 'The Draftsman's Art: Master Drawings From the National Gallery of Scotland' includes portraits, nudes, landscapes and historical subjects by European artists from the 15th through the 19th century.
LAWRENCE VAN GELDER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Expanse of America Found in Argentina
I left spring for autumn in a single day. It was disorienting at first, even heartbreaking, going from daffodils and warmth to yellowing poplar and chill. But when T.S. Eliot wrote that 'April is the cruellest month,' he wasn't on a fishing trip in Argentina. Although autumn can be equally cruel as spring, 'mixing memory with desire,' the sentiment is less potent in beautiful fall weather on a trout stream.
It's misleading, of course, to call any stream in Argentina a trout stream, because there are no native trout in the Southern Hemisphere. The trout were introduced by the British more than 80 years ago, then other species came from North America, and trout are now part of the exquisite landscape of Patagonia.
My host, Wayne Nordberg, invited me to the 430,000-acre Estancia Tecka, owned by Don Federico Ochoa and his wife, Dona Elena, in the Andes' foothills. The ranch is a world in itself; half the size of Rhode Island, it is a two-hour flight and a long car ride southeast of Buenos Aires. Along to enjoy the fishing were a former United States treasury secretary (Robert E. Rubin); a concert pianist and band leader; a money manager; a fly-shop owner; and a health care consultant.
In the midst of our isolation, a synergy began to develop among disparate people.
The first night of conversation by the fireplace focused on our careers, where we lived and what we were planning to plant in our gardens. By the fourth day, we had shared emotional details of our lives and were all good friends, and we vowed to stay good friends.
The bonds made on the stream were as tight as the grip that a place like this can have. The air was so crisp, the sky so blue, the bird life so abundant, the whole so inspiring. As we fished the Corcovado, a largish river with rainbow trout (from California), we saw condors, flamingoes, teal, geese, coot, swans, widgeon, grebes and caracaras (handsome raptors). It was memory mixed with jet lag that produced the most delicious of disoriented sensations. Only when the haze of sentiments cleared could I focus on the other side of the story. It occurred to me when I heard what I thought was an airplane, and looking up saw that the sound was from a crested caracara's wings cutting the air.
Here we were, Americans, on perhaps the largest private ranch in Argentina. There are only a handful of ranches this big in the United States, and much of the West is being overpopulated by villages of 10,000-square-foot homes. Some among us, though capitalists, lamented the Aspenification of the American West. So we come here to experience what much of the American West was a hundred years ago: a pristine frontier.
Lately, concerned and wealthy Americans have been buying large ranches in Patagonia, and attempting to keep them open and wild, as if to say to the Argentines: Don't make the mistakes we've made. But such parenting is being met with mixed opinions.
Some Argentines feel that by tying up the land the Americans are tying up the resources that could lead to recovery for Argentina, which is, in one of our fishing guide's words, 'broke, broke, broke.' Maddeningly, though the country is rich in natural resources, its people do not necessarily benefit from the wealth. According to Argentine law, anything beneath the ground -- gold, oil, natural gas -- belongs to the state.
In any case, it is not clear if one country can learn from another's mistakes, and the Argentines just might have to make their own. But maybe not. Recently, in the nearby town of Esquel, 82 percent voted against mining a hillside for gold. The voters seemed to understand the long-term value of open land. That is a good sign.
One night, Rubin asked, 'Will it last, or will it become New Jersey?' At which point Nordberg, a New Yorker who is from New Jersey, rolled his eyes and smiled. But it wasn't a bad question.
I left early to return home for things that seemed important but now no longer do. A ranch hand drove me back to Esquel, and the song that was playing reinforced my feelings. It was Kenny Rogers singing, 'Promise me son, not to do the things I've done.'
OUTDOORS",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Argentina Captures Its First Soccer Gold
Argentina won the men's soccer tournament Saturday to claim its first Olympic gold medal in any sport in more than half a century.
Carlos Tevez scored the only goal after 15 minutes as Argentina beat Paraguay, 1-0.
The silver was Paraguay's first medal in any sport. Italy won the bronze Friday by defeating Iraq, 1-0.
Argentina won its third Olympic soccer medal. It finished second to Nigeria in 1996 and to Uruguay in 1928.
Argentina controlled the game but did not win comfortably because it could not add a second goal even after two Paraguay players were expelled. In winning all seven of its games in the Olympics, Argentina outscored its opponents by 19-0. Tevez, with eight goals, was the top scorer in the tournament.
A nation of 39 million people, Argentina had not won a gold medal since Tranquilo Cappozzo and Eduardo Guerrero won the double sculls in Helsinki in 1952. It added a second gold medal on Saturday when its men's basketball team defeated Italy in the final, 84-69.
The basketball final in the indoor hall closed the action at the main Olympic campus on Saturday. The soccer final opened the day at the main stadium next door at 10 a.m.
Such an early hour does not appeal to players, and evidently it does not appeal to fans. Although the attendance was announced as 41,000, which would have meant the stadium was half full, empty seats greatly outnumbered fans.
Although Argentina took an early lead, for much of the first half it seemed as if the players were trying to wake up. When they did step up a gear, they were able to create scoring chances almost at will but squandered nearly every one.
Paraguay collected seven yellow cards and two reds during the game, and all but one was for fouls against Tevez, striker Mauro Rosales or Andres D'Alessandro, an elusive and creative midfielder.
Tevez, a short, stocky striker who plays for Boca Juniors in Buenos Aires, has become the latest young Argentine star to be compared to another stocky former Boca player, Diego Maradona.
On Saturday, Tevez showed the Maradona-like ability to mesmerize defenders even when standing still. He scored with Maradona-like speed of thought and impudence. A cross from the right clipped a defender and suddenly dipped in flight. While two defenders hesitated and goalkeeper Diego Barreto bent to catch the ball, Tevez reacted. He sprinted in front of Barreto and squirted the ball into the empty goal.
But there are differences, too. Where Maradona was built like a barrel, Tevez is more of a box, and unlike Maradona in his youth, Tevez seems to be carrying some spare weight. Tevez is also slightly taller, 5 feet 7 inches to Maradona's 5-5.
Tevez is right-footed. And he is wasteful.
Though the Paraguayans knew that Tevez was the chief threat, he seemed to find space at will, and D'Alessandro and Kily Gonzalez found him with accurate passes nearly every time. Even when he had company, Tevez showed an uncanny ability to shed defenders.
According to the official match statistics, Tevez had seven more shots on goal, and while most were on target, none had quite enough venom to beat Barreto.
SUMMER 2004 GAMES -- SOCCER: MEN'S FINAL",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Cosmic Ray Sources Sought
SCIENTISTS have known since 1938 that the earth is bombarded by particle showers that have energies so high as to defy explanation. On Friday, 19 nations agreed to make a collective effort to find an answer.
The decision was taken at a meeting near San Rafael, Argentina, at which participants selected Millard County, Utah, as a site for observing high-energy cosmic rays hitting the Northern Hemisphere. Last year the consortium chose a site near Mendoza, Argentina, for study of Southern Hemisphere cosmic ray showers.
Cosmic rays consist of photons of gamma rays and of particles of various kinds, including entire atomic nuclei. The highest energy rays are produced by particles traveling at energies greater than 1020  electron-volts.
Dr. James W. Cronin of the University of Chicago, winner of a Nobel Prize in Physics and the main organizer of the two-hemisphere project, said that although particles with ultrahigh energies have been detected, their sources remain a mystery. 'The sources that we discover will have to be objects with unique properties,' he said. 'No known astrophysical objects have the properties required to produce cosmic rays of such high energies.'
When a particle of immense energy hits the earth's upper atmosphere, it is annihilated and its energy is transmitted to a cascade of secondary particles streaming earthward. These, in turn, collide with other molecules in the atmosphere to produce more cascades. Such showers reach the ground in the form of blue Cherenkov light, which can be detected by photoelectric detectors.
Each of the two new Auger observatories (named for the French physicist Pierre Auger, who discovered high-energy cosmic rays in 1938) is expected to cost $40 million, and the 150 institutions participating in the project hope to begin observing soon after the year 2000. Each site will be about the size of Rhode Island, within which huge water tanks spaced six-tenths of a mile apart will serve as detectors.
The enormous size of the detector arrays will make it possible to track cosmic ray particles accurately enough to pinpoint the direction from which they came.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Argentina's Coach Knows Way to Ultimate Prize
He is a man on a mission, so it is easy to forget that Daniel Passarella of Argentina has won two World Cups.
The first came at home in 1978, when Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, head of the military junta that was responsible for the disappearances and deaths of tens of thousands of Passarella's countrymen, triumphantly handed him the trophy.
'If I'd known then what was happening, I wouldn't have played at all,' Passarella, the captain of that team, has said.
The second came in 1986, when he was on the Argentine roster, but because of an illness, only got to watch from the bench.
Today Passarella is the Argentine national technical director and coach. There is an eight-foot fence around Argentina's training base in L'Etrat. He has decided to keep distractions to a minimum as the team prepares for Tuesday's second-round match against England, in what is viewed as a grudge match. The English will never forget Diego Maradona's handball that became a goal in the 1986 quarterfinals.
'I didn't sleep for four days afterward,' said England's coach, Glenn Hoddle, who played in that match.
Argentina, a foreboding mix of polished veterans and gifted youngsters, is clearly the favorite against England. Argentina has not given up a goal in its last eight matches, and with the midfielder Juan Veron, who excels at organizing; the midfielder Ariel Ortega, who excels at creating, and the striker Gabriel Batistuta, who excels at scoring, its strengths are hardly on the back line alone.
'We are gathering strength,' Passarella said after his team defeated Croatia to win Group H.
Only two other men have won World Cups as players and coaches: Mario Zagallo of Brazil and Franz Beckenbauer of Germany, but Passarella already shares a continent with Zagallo and a nickname with Beckenbauer.
At home, the stylishly dressed Passarella is known as El Kaiser. At age 45, he is as focused and unflinching a coach as he was a central defender in a fine career that took him from the Argentine club River Plate to the Italian First Division.
He was a high-scoring defender, in part because he often took penalty kicks. But he is best remembered for his intensity, and it is telling that he received a red card in the club match intended to honor his career.
When he took over the national team in 1994, the squad had just been through a divisive experience at the World Cup in which it had started brilliantly and then self-destructed after Maradona tested positive for the ephedrine, a banned substance sometimes used as a stimulant, and was suspended from the tournament. Passarella, who had coached River Plate to three Argentine titles, took over with the intention of emphasizing rigor and professionalism. But what would become the biggest conversation piece at home and abroad was Passarella's decision to ban long hair.
Not everyone acquiesced. Fernando Redondo, one of the world's finest defensive midfielders, refused to cut his hair for the cause, and though Passarella has since ended the ban (just look at Batistuta now), he and Redondo have yet to reconcile.
Passarella did irritate Batistuta, Argentina's career leading scorer with 46 goals, by leaving him off the team for much of 1997 and choosing to rely on Hernan Crespo and other young players he had coached at River Plate and at the Olympics in 1996, where Argentina won the silver.
Dropping Batistuta ignited a thousand arguments in the streets and cafes of Argentina, but there was no arguing with the results. With its star striker, Argentina had only 10 points in seven matches and was in third place in the South American qualifying race. Without him, Batistuta would go on to defeat Colombia in Colombia and finish first.
But Passarella did not leave Batistuta off his World Cup team, and 'Batigol' has responded with four goals in three games in France.
WORLD CUP '98",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"A Victory Not Quite The Stuff Of Dreams
For any other basketball team in the world, the margin of victory would have  been considered more than comfortable. But the words margin of victory are the curse of the Dream Team, part of an unreachable standard it has been assigned to reach.
The United States men's basketball team's 96-68 victory over Argentina tonight looked and sounded as expected at the finish, with a flurry of American  dunks punctuating a noisy night in the Georgia Dome. But Argentina, led by Juan  Espil's 27 points, trailed by just 2 points at the half and was still within 5 points with 16 minutes 55 seconds to play.
David Robinson led the United States with 18 points and Shaquille O'Neal had 13. But the overwhelming defense and the efficiency that were taken for granted, merely because some of the National Basketball Association's best players had agreed to give up a few weeks of their summers, was missing for much of the night. And most significantly, so was the look of fear in the eyes of their opponents.
Perhaps helped by a 10-minute loss of half the arena's lights, Argentina succeeded in making the Americans appear uncomfortable and edgy for much longer  than anyone expected.
The lights went out with 12:35 to go in the first half and Argentina leading  by 15-14. Stuart Ashe, the site manager for basketball, said that an engineer caused half of the lights to go out when he hit a wrong switch. The light was restored at first by the use of a backup system. This would not be the last American mistake of the night.
At the time, the capacity crowd had reason to believe that the 10-minute delay was the only way to slow the Dream Team for that long a period. During the pre-Olympic tour, which felt more like a post-Games victory tour than a preparation for a serious competition, the Americans spoke of an overwhelming defensive presence that would become a trademark.
Instead, the United States suffered a series of breakdowns that allowed Argentina to slow the pace, stay close and neutralize the crowd.
Hanging around was a concept that did not apply to the team that won the gold medal at Barcelona. The first United States Olympic basketball team with N.B.A.  professionals won its eight games by an average of 43.8 points, with the closest margin of victory being the 32-point gold medal decision over Croatia.
Tonight the Dream Team was winning by 2 points at halftime. Its breakdowns were particularly hard to explain because they came against a nation that has never finished better than fourth in an Olympic tournament, and has not taken part since 1952.
The combination of fear and reverence held by the rest of the field in 1992 seemed a distant memory in the first half tonight. Juan Espil, a 6-foot-3-inch forward, scored 20 points by halftime. The Americans committed 14 turnovers in the half, with just 8 assists. But perhaps the most surprising achievement by Argentina was its ability to score 8 of its 13 first-half field goals in the paint. Robinson, Hakeem Olajuwon and O'Neal, three of the finest centers in the  N.B.A., did not establish much of a fear factor tonight.
Not that the struggle bothered the ticket holders. During the brownout, the crowd amused itself by searching for celebrities, and cheering Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was spotted in the semi-darkness. There had been little talk of competition, until now. On Thursday, during a packed news conference, Robinson was asked if the game against Argentina would seem more like a practice.
""I don't know,"" he said. ""Our practices are pretty good.""
Suddenly, one could ask if the practices have been good enough.
In an earlier game between teams with medal hopes, Lithuania overcame the loss of its three best players -- Arvydas Sabonis and Sarunas Marciulionis to fouls and Arturas Karnishovas to an ankle injury -- and 33 points by Croatia's Toni Kukoc to survive in a potentially pivotal 83-81 double-overtime victory.
Rimas Kurtinaitis, a 6-4 guard and, at 36, the oldest player on the Lithuania roster, scored 9 of his 12 points in the last 2:57 of the second overtime. His 4-point play, a 3-point shot from the left side and a foul shot, gave Lithuania  a 78-77 lead.
Three foul shots by Kukoc, who played with a broken thumb on his shooting hand, put Croatia ahead by 2 points with 2:44 to go. But failures on the next two possessions gave Lithuania its chance.
ATLANTA: DAY 2 -- BASKETBALL",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Where Ginóbili Goes, Foreign Legions Follow
UNLIKELY a development as it is, Manu Ginóbili needn't score another point or pilfer another pass in the N.B.A finals to remain a legend in the mind of Carlos Delfino.
From where Delfino sits, in street clothes at the end of the Detroit bench, Ginóbili is a whirling, bruising, levitating go-to god of the game. Like Mike is Manu.
'He is someone everyone who loves or plays basketball in Argentina is looking at,' Delfino said before Ginóbili picked up in the first quarter last night where he left off in the fourth quarter of Game 1, launching the Spurs to a 97-76 victory and a 2-0 finals lead last night at the SBC Center. 'Because he has been the main guy for the national team, the gold medal in the Olympics, people are following him in the newspapers, wherever he goes.'
Exhibit A is the path Delfino, 22, took to his rookie season in Detroit: he left Argentina in 2000 to play in Italy for Reggio Calabria, the team Ginóbili had just departed. Two years later, Delfino moved on to Bologna, where Ginóbili was probably the best player in Europe.
'And just when I got there, Manu came here,' said Delfino, who, like Ginóbili, is a 6-foot-6 guard.
As an N.B.A. rookie, in a supporting role to Tim Duncan, Ginóbili won a championship ring. Delfino, while on the injured list, was hoping to become the second Argentine player to flash the jewelry, but Ginóbili is crashing the dream by certifying himself as Duncan's co-star and an irresistible force of nature in the minds of the American audience, the way he is in Delfino's.
'The guys -- even Coach Larry -- ask me, 'How do you guard him?'' Delfino said. 'It's not easy, because Manu is so creative, so unpredictable.'
Already there are backroom suggestions -- whispered, so as not to be construed as un-American -- that Ginóbili is at least as desirable a commodity as the likes of Kobe Bryant. 'Anybody that's watched the playoffs would look at Ginóbili and say, you know, they should be talking about Ginóbili like everybody who is talking about Dwyane Wade,' Pistons Coach Larry Brown said.
Brown, a clever man, perhaps was calculating that the burden of heightened individual expectation might be of valuable defensive assistance. Ginóbili , a wily southpaw, countered, 'I don't think I am so impossible to guard.' Then he went out in the first quarter last night and spread himself across the box score like Mr. Fantastic.
A 3-point shot from the left wing to open the scoring. Penetration off the dribble against Tayshaun Prince for a kickout to Bruce Bowen for another 3. A steal and soft lead pass to Tony Parker for a fast-break basket. Boxing out Prince for an offensive rebound foul. A lefty flip to Nazr Mohammed on a pick-and-roll for a drive and conventional 3-point play.
By the end of the third quarter, Ginóbili had not missed a shot and had made all four of his 3's. When the Pistons rallied from 23 points down to within 8 in the fourth quarter, Ginóbili hit two free throws, made a lunging steal, penetrated and hit Bowen for a backbreaking 3-pointer. After Game 1, Ginóbili said, 'I am not going to score 26 points every game.' He was right.
He had 27 last night, 7 assists and a hand in too many hustle plays to count. Prince, the man he started out guarding, had more fouls, 4, than points, 3. The love affair with Ginóbili's adopted American city, steamy San Antonio, continued.
Here, his shaggy-haired image is everywhere. Black Spurs jerseys and shirts with his name on the back dangle from racks in even greater numbers than for the soft-spoken Duncan, who generally eschews attention. It makes sense that San Antonio, with its large Mexican influence, would take to a South American player whose first language is Spanish, but what about the rest of this huge country, which so often yawns when pitched a player with an unfamiliar passport?
By virtue of a hybrid game that mixes jaw-dropping athleticism with a journeyman's work ethic, speculation abounds that Ginóbili, the recent ESPN the Magazine cover boy, can be the first foreign-born player to get the hardcore sell. But can the N.B.A., with its television ratings sagging, rebuild its fan base, in part with imported goods?
While the league resorted yesterday to bragging about how Game 1 television ratings bettered the 2003 Spurs-Nets series (and apparently any 1950's series, including Rochester and Syracuse), we could be missing a bigger global picture: the N.B.A. also claimed roughly 10 times the Game 1 viewers worldwide as the 11 million it counted in the United States. There's no place like home, but appraising the business solely from the American vantage point may be shortsighted, given the likelihood of many more foreign players following their heroes here, as Delfino has Ginóbili.
According to Brown, Delfino could already start on several N.B.A. teams. His Olympic teammate Andres Nocioni is a valuable contributor in Chicago. Next year, the Spurs are hoping to have the Argentine forward Luis Scola, whose draft rights they hold, and also have their eye on another Argentine, Fabricio Oberto.
Asked if the growing Argentine presence is a validation of the Olympic gold, Ginóbili said: 'I don't think that the national team bases its success on individuals. I think it's an example of how to play like a team, behave like a team, help each other out even if you have that kind of talent.'
Two games from the title, he might as well have been talking about the Spurs.
Sports of The Times E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Grand Finale Today
LEAD: After a grand month of play, along with hooligans, penalty kicks, Italian flags and young men's faces painted in their national colors, the 1990 World Cup ends Sunday with a championship match in which West Germany is favored to defeat the team it lost to in the 1986 final, Argentina.
After a grand month of play, along with hooligans, penalty kicks, Italian flags and young men's faces painted in their national colors, the 1990 World Cup ends Sunday with a championship match in which West Germany is favored to defeat the team it lost to in the 1986 final, Argentina.
While this is not the final envisioned by millions of Italians, whose passion for their team turned to anguish and tears in the semifinals, it brings together the world's most successful national teams of the last 16 years. Since 1974, one or both of them has been in every World Cup final. West Germany played in the previous two and three of four; Argentina in two of the last three.
Yet just as Italy and its worshippers anticipated a final with more local flavor, so too did many others, who watched in amazement as the defending champions flirted with elimination every step of the way on their dizzy odyssey through the tournament. In retrospect, it seems apparent that the more the Argentines suffered, the better they played.
A Host of Distractions
The distractions included an opening-day loss to Cameroon; a suggestion by President Carlos Saul Menem of Argentina that the lineup be changed; five subsequent lineup changes by Carlos Bilardo, the coach; a broken leg suffered by the goalkeeper, Nery Pumpido, in the second game; a third-place finish in the group after the first round; a recurring ankle injury to Diego Maradona, and the vituperative reaction of many Italians toward Argentina for ending their dream with penalty kicks last Tuesday night.
For the championship game, which will be televised in New York on TNT and Channel 41 starting at 2 P.M., Argentina must play without four regulars, who have been ruled ineligible for disciplinary reasons.
That should give West Germany a significant advantage, unless the mercurial Maradona lives up to his reputation as the world's best player and carries his team to what would surely be considered a major upset and the game of his life. It is not inconceivable.
In the Spotlight
With the possible exception of Salvatore Schillaci, the striker who scored winning goals in five games for Italy, no player has commanded more attention with his actions than the 29-year-old stocky Argentine, the star of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, where he scored five goals.
While Maradona's tangible accomplishments in this tournament include only the centering pass that set up Claudio Caniggia's goal that defeated Brazil, 1-0, in the round of 16, and the penalty kick that sealed the victory over Italy, his mere presence has been the critical factor in Argentina's advance. No matter the level of his game, Maradona has been impossible to ignore. The fact he was the most fouled player in the tournament speaks volumes.
Even away from play he has drawn unusual attention to himself, from admonishing officials for a disciplinary system that would allow his team to play so short-handed in the final to scuffling with the police, as he did on Friday, during an incident involving his brother.
New Game Plan
Mercifully for the West Germans, they have to contend with him only on the field, albeit better than they did four years ago, when Jorge Burruchaga's goal off a pass from Maradona in the 84th minute won the game, 3-2. As a result, the West Germans intend to alter their previous tactics of intense concentration at the expense of allowing other players more room to maneuver.
'We won't do that again,' Franz Beckenbauer, West Germany's coach, said after a recent practice. 'We'll shadow Maradona, but we won't forget the others.'
The others have been a constantly changing pattern this time, and it changes again without Ricardo Giusti, who received a red card in the victory over Italy, and three others: Julio Olarticoechea, Sergio Batista and Maradona's favorite target, Caniggia, who received a second yellow card in the same game.
While Beckenbauer expressed concern over their eventual replacements, citing their eagerness to excel, Bilardo has been forced to juggle the part of his lineup that has been most suspect, the midfield. As five goals in six games suggest, Argentina's offense has not performed well. The West Germans have scored 14 times.
The West Germans have experienced no such turbulence, only occasional discomfort, like playing to a draw with Colombia in the first round, a sluggish second half in the quarterfinal victory over Czechoslovakia and the usual trepidations of surviving penalty kicks to beat England in the semifinals.
Otherwise, Beckenbauer has had only to channel his players' energy and confidence in the right direction.
'West Germany is the stronger team, and we intend to prove it,' he said. 'All my players are fit and ready to play.'
Still, the presence of Diego Armando Maradona, who has acknowledged this will be his final World Cup, seems to skew the most reasonable of equations.
WORLD CUP '90",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"More Mischief From Maradona
Just five months after ending a forced absence from professional soccer, DIEGO MARADONA's latest actions have placed his future with Seville in serious doubt, the club chairman, LUIS CUERVAS, said yesterday in Madrid.
Maradona angered Seville officials last weekend when he returned from an match in Argentina and just hours before the club's game. After a listless performance, the striker flew back to Argentina early Monday without permission from the club.
Cuervas said the dispute might be resolved when Maradona returns today and the matter is discussed. (AP)  SPORTS PEOPLE: SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Argentina Defeats Portugal to Reach Final
Argentina clinched a place in the final for the first time in 68 years as Hernan Crespo scored both goals in a 2-0 semifinal victory over Portugal in Athens, Ga. It will be Argentina's first trip to the final since 1928, in Amsterdam, where they lost to Uruguay. Argentina will meet either Brazil or Nigeria in Saturday's final. The second semifinal is today, and Portugal will play the loser Friday for the bronze medal.
(Reuters)
ATLANTA: DAY 12 -- SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Sports of The Times; A Great Time And a Better Friendship
THEY have moved well beyond their fantasy-come-true in a haven called Golden State, when they unlocked the Iron Curtain to build a friendship and an opportunity in the wild and capitalist West. Donn Nelson and Sarunas Marciulionis remain tethered, though, a bicultural statement about good will, sports and the best time of their lives.
International basketball competitions are the stage for their reunions, on the bench of the Lithuanian national team.
'I told Sarunas when I made the commitment that I was in for the long haul,' Nelson said yesterday after Lithuania defeated Argentina, 81-77, in overtime at Madison Square Garden, the near-empty site of the Goodwill Games basketball tournament.
Ted Turner's first Goodwill Games in 1986, and his sending of the Atlanta Hawks to the Soviet Union two years later, quite possibly contributed to their meeting in the first place. It was before the crash of Communism in Eastern Europe that Nelson began recruiting the Soviet star Marciulionis to play for his father's team, the Warriors of the California Bay Area, and after Lithuania's independence that Marciulionis lobbied his country's federation to bring Nelson on as assistant coach.
Close friends by 1992, they went to the Olympics in Barcelona, Spain, and to the bronze medal stand. Mixing politics with sport, they stirred the passions of every Lithuanian by defeating the Russians in the game that small country loves most. Marciulionis merely calls that victory 'the greatest moment of my life.'
He was the shooter and Nelson was support, but even before the Olympics, they were a team, promoting the cause and raising some cash, which in the process produced a cachet. Lithuania rocked the Olympics, sponsored in part by the Grateful Dead.
'We had been doing every speaking engagement we could get, for $50 or $75,' Nelson said. 'Someone wrote a story in one of the Bay Area papers, and a couple of the Grateful Dead members read it and called to say they wanted to help.'
Marciulionis said he'd never heard of them, but he went with Nelson to their concert, where he was introduced to the fashions of the tie-dyed nation. In Barcelona, the hottest merchandise at the basketball venue was the splashy Lithuania warm-up shirt with the skeleton on the front, which in Europe remains essential to the look of the true Lithuanian fan.
Who can forget Marciulionis roaming the medal stand and ordering his teammates to slip on the tie-dyed shirts, infuriating the company that paid to have its logo on the team's uniform? Too bad, he said. In contrast to their rich peers from the National Basketball Association, the Lithuanians' Olympics were not about corporate fidelity but were instead a pledge of renewed national allegiance.
Nelson, of Swedish and German descent, did not have to be Lithuanian to participate in the spraying of Champagne on the country's former President, Vytautas Landsbergis, in a dramatic locker room scene. He did not have to be fluent in the language to join in the singing of the anthem with Landsbergis, Marciulionis and the others, tears running down all their cheeks. Nelson knew he'd hit a note he would likely never reach again if he spent a dozen more lifetimes in sports. He knew at that moment a part of him would always be with Lithuania, his adopted country, home of his very good friend.
'My wife is Swedish and every summer I go back to Lithuania, I drop her off,' Nelson said. 'It works out.'
In two years, he is scheduled to slide into the seat of his father -- same name, less one 'n' in Donn -- as head coach of the Dallas Mavericks. But he expects to remain an assistant to Jonas Kazlauskas or whoever is coaching the Lithuanian team. He promised Marciulionis, who retired a couple of years ago to run Lithuania's modest pro league, that he would stick with the program 'in good times and bad.'
This is a young, star-less Lithuanian team, feeling its way when basketball's global expansion seems to have flattened from the dizzying summer of 1992. Croatia, the silver medalist in Barcelona, did not even qualify for next month's world championships in Greece, an event devalued by the N.B.A.'s lockout and resulting player-inspired pullout.
'Almost sacrilege,' is what Nelson calls this job action, though he admits his perception is skewed because of his relationship with Marciulionis, the ultimate player-patriot. And then, Lithuania's best player, center Zydrunas Ilgauskas, won't be playing in Athens either. He's a Cleveland Cavalier free agent, afraid to risk injury and lose a windfall that Marciulionis's pioneering helped make possible.
This is progress, apparently.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"A Uniter Not a Divider
When Michael Ballack arrived here as a 7-year-old soccer prodigy in 1983, with East Germany entering its dying years, the city was named Karl-Marx-Stadt. Eventually, Ballack moved into an apartment built for socialist privilege, with hot running water and central heating.
Sixteen years after German unification, the apartment block where Ballack lived is crumbling, half empty and scheduled for demolition, residents said. Ballack is long gone, his early promise having blossomed into the role of captain of the German national team, which faces Argentina in the World Cup quarterfinals Friday in Berlin.
That such visible figures as Ballack and Chancellor Angela Merkel are eastern German suggests both how far the country has come in uniting and how far it has to go before the so-called wall in the head of identity politics disappears like the Berlin Wall, academics and soccer experts said.
To many Germans, Ballack, soon to be 30, is simply an outstanding midfielder, deft with both feet and his head, adept at attacking and defending, perhaps the only truly elite player on the national Mannschaft, which the German team is known as.
For others, who consider the former East-West divide, Ballack is more complicated: His socialist upbringing has either made him ideal to marshal the collective aspirations of a team or left him lacking the individual assertiveness required of a leader. He is either selfless or egotistical, a consummate professional or a mercenary too interested in money. He recently signed for a reported $11 million a year to join Chelsea, the English club champion, after the World Cup.
At least everyone can agree that with his dark hair, firm jaw and thick 6-foot-2 physique, Ballack is handsome in a romance-novel kind of way. He is so important as a player that when he missed the World Cup opener with a strained muscle, his injury was reported in the news media as 'the country's calf muscle.'
'This is a sign of progress,' Pierre Gottschlich, a political scientist at the University of Rostock, said of Ballack. 'Think about it as a game played on certain levels. We've gone from the first level, where everybody thinks of him as East German, to the second level, where some see him as East German and others don't, and we're getting to the next level, where it doesn't matter at all. Probably in another 10 or 20 years, we'll get there.'
In a sense, Ballack is a human kaleidoscope, his personality shaped and reshaped by perceptions that seem to fall roughly along geographic and generational lines.
Particularly for western Germans, it does not appear to matter much that Ballack is from eastern Germany. Many of those interviewed said they did not know or did not care. After all, the Berlin Wall has been down for 17 years.
Dieter Jütting, a sociologist and a soccer expert at the University of Münster, noted that three others on the World Cup roster were eastern Germans; that starting forwards Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski were born in Poland; and that Coach Jürgen Klinsmann lived in Southern California.
'Football is a global sport,' Jütting said. 'Any connection to hometown or village -- there is no more connection.'
In Chemnitz and elsewhere in eastern Germany, though, the connection to Ballack seems to matter a great deal for many. Part of it is pride in a local boy who made good. But the appreciation for Ballack also seems related to the difficult transition many eastern Germans have experienced since unification and to a much-discussed nostalgia about old times in the east, known as ostalgie.
A huge bust of Karl Marx still sits in the center of this former industrial city, which was renamed Chemnitz in 1990. Downtown has been renovated but has a somewhat empty feel. Chemnitz, population 244,496, faces the same problems as many eastern cities -- unemployment at 20 percent and a loss of 20 percent of its residents since unification in 1990.
'For the self-confidence of eastern Germans, which doesn't exist, it is quite important' that Ballack succeeded at a high level, said Joachim Müller, 53, coach of the F.C. Chemnitzer soccer club and one of Ballack's youth coaches. 'He grew up here and was educated here and he made it.'
Beate Neuss, a professor of international politics at the Technical University of Chemnitz, said that eastern Germans were regularly told by the Party of Democratic Socialism, the former communists, that unification made them second-class citizens.
'It's good to have someone on top,' Neuss said of Ballack and Merkel, the chancellor.
Yet sometimes a soccer player is only a soccer player. As Ben Heber, a 14-year-old decathlete, trained Tuesday at the same Chemnitz sports club that produced Ballack, he said of Ballack's eastern heritage: 'We were born after reunification. It doesn't matter at all.'
Heber wore a hat of the English soccer team, and said he liked Ballack because 'he is the German Beckham.'
Ballack's view of himself in the context of East and West is seldom expressed, German reporters said. He did say recently to Neues Deutschland, formerly the communist party's official newspaper, that he saw no nationalistic danger in the flag-waving and joyful patriotism that has accompanied Germany's advance to the World Cup quarterfinals.
'In the host country, it has to be this way,' Ballack said.
He is among the last generation of athletes trained in the highly efficient East German system, which was based on sports schools and was focused mainly on Olympic sports for propaganda reasons. A country of 16.7 million challenged the United States and the Soviet Union for supremacy in winning gold medals.
And though East Germany's Olympic achievements have been largely discredited in the West because of state-sponsored doping, many eastern Germans view sport as having provided validity to the former communist state. Its greatest soccer victory came in a 1-0 defeat of West Germany, the eventual champion, during the 1974 World Cup.
Ballack 'is our brother,' said Dieter Gog, 66, a retired teacher from the eastern city of Fürstenwalde. 'In East Germany, industry was not so good. For the world, East Germany had sportsmen.'
Since East Germany's dissolution, many eastern soccer clubs have struggled to remain competitive, given a lack of financing, corporate sponsorship and management skills in the chaotic switch to capitalism. Last season, no eastern teams participated in the top flight of the German Bundesliga (although Cottbus has won promotion for next season). Promising eastern players are often snapped up by richer western clubs as teenagers, coaches said.
The perennial champion among East German clubs, Dynamo Berlin -- which was supported by the Stasi, or secret police, and was reviled for manipulating the outcome of games -- sank so low after the Wall fell that it resorted to selling microwave ovens and scooters to earn cash, according to news accounts.
By 1997, Ballack had left Chemnitz, where he had been sent to train as a boy from his hometown of Görlitz. He signed with the western German club Kaiserslautern and eventually went to Bayern Munich, where he won three Bundesliga titles over the past four years.
At the 2002 World Cup, Ballack led an unspectacular German team to the final, where it lost to Brazil, 2-0. His goal on a header eliminated the United States, 1-0, in the quarterfinals, and he committed a necessary foul to preserve a semifinal victory against South Korea, even though he drew a second yellow card and disqualification from the final.
For some, this notion of placing the team above himself is rooted in Ballack's socialist upbringing and makes him a perfect captain of the national team.
'They were trained not to have strong egos,' said Gunter Gebauer, a philosopher and soccer expert at the Free University of Berlin. 'He leads by his actions; he is not the boss. That is a Western idea.'
Yet after Germany had a disastrous performance at the 2004 European Championships in Portugal, some German reporters questioned whether Ballack's eastern background left him with enough individuality to be a leader.
'They argued that he doesn't have the competitiveness that it takes, that he doesn't have that certain profile a leader needs,' Gottschlich, the Rostock professor, said. 'But that was a discussion in the media, not much with fans. It died out within a couple of weeks.'
Bruised feelings emerged again this spring, while Ballack's transfer from Bayern Munich to Chelsea was being negotiated. Uli Hoeness, Bayern's general manger, said Ballack was interested only in his bank account. Franz Beckenbauer, Germany's soccer icon, accused Ballack of 'not even trying' in Bundesliga games.
All will be forgiven, of course, if Ballack and Germany win the World Cup and gain redemption from 2002.
'This would be very important for our country' in light of its economic malaise and struggles with reunification, said Neuss, the Chemnitz professor. 'We've had a depressed mood in Germany. If Ballack can score the decisive goal in the final, that would really be good for Germany unity.'
SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"In Davis Cup, Russia Can Reap From the Ground It Broke
In a quick-shifting country where plenty of power has accumulated in the hands of a few, tennis is no exception.
Shamil Tarpishchev might not look the part of a kingpin when he sits semislumped on a bench in a Russian warm-up suit during the Davis Cup final that begins here Friday against Argentina. But it is Tarpishchev, 58, not his top players Nikolay Davydenko and Marat Safin, who is the heaviest hitter in Russian tennis.
A former Russian sports minister and the personal coach to Boris N. Yeltsin, Tarpishchev is the only person in the game doing triple duty as Davis Cup captain, Fed Cup captain and president of his national federation.
He is also a survivor. He has successfully navigated the changes in Russian sport and society and maintained his influence with discretion, which is part of the reason he has maintained it.
'Maybe the secret is that tennis, for a long time, was not important to anybody here,' he said Thursday.
Times have changed, as the buzz at Thursday's Davis Cup draw in the Olympic Stadium made clear. The pivotal moments were tennis's re-entering the Olympics in 1988 and Yeltsin's discovering a passion for the game during his tenure as Russia's first president from 1991 to 1999. 'At that stage, the middle level of tennis was not bad, but when Yeltsin came out in a tennis outfit on court, at that moment the whole thing took a leap,' Tarpishchev said. 'The mass media, the TV, everything came in, and the good thing was that it came at a time when we had already prepared the ground before.'
Now comes the reaping. You can make a strong argument that Russia, with its combined strength in the men's and women's game, is the leading tennis nation in the world. Traditional powers Australia and the United States are reeling and slumping. Belgium has great women's players but no great men. Spain has terrific men but no terrific women. Switzerland has Roger Federer, of course, and a solid supporting cast in Martina Hingis, Patty Schnyder and Stanislas Wawrinka, but cannot match the Russians' depth.
Maria Sharapova, Anastasia Myskina and Svetlana Kuznetsova have won women's Grand Slam singles titles in the past three years. Davydenko, a whippet of a counterpuncher, is ranked third in the world and was a United States Open semifinalist this year. Safin won the 2000 United States Open and the 2005 Australian Open, but he has not won any tournament since because of a lingering knee injury and his mercurial temperament.
But after dropping to 104th in the world rankings in August, he has worked his way back to No. 25 and is wearing a lean and hungry look this week, shouting and hurling rackets in practice. He was the dominant force when Russia won its first Davis Cup, in Paris in 2002. He swept his two singles matches against the French before Mikhail Youzhny finished off the victory with an improbable rally from two sets down against Paul-Henri Mathieu in the fifth match.
Safin would love to salvage this season by leading Russia to its first Davis Cup title on home ground. He will play one of Friday's singles matches, facing Argentina's No. 1 player, David Nalbandian. In the opening match, Davydenko will face Juan Ignacio Chela, who was picked by the Argentine captain, Alberto Mancini, largely because he has a 5-0 career edge over Davydenko.
Safin described his past year as one filled with injury and bad luck. 'A lot of things went the wrong way,' he said. 'So the only thing that really can make this year worth it is I think the Davis Cup.'
The counterpoint to Safin's experience is Dmitry Tursunov, the curly-topped, part-time blogger who moved to California at 12 and is still based there. 'I didn't even watch the final in 2002,' Tursunov said. 'I was in the States. You kind of hope something like this happens when you are growing up. You always want it. But I definitely didn't think in 2006 I would be in the finals.'
Tursunov, who said he once unsuccessfully applied for an American green card, is typical of his generation in that he has honed his game abroad but still represents Russia. There has been some talent drain. Anna Smashnova left for Israel, but that was the exception. Safin and Kuznetsova trained in Spain as teenagers. Davydenko based himself in Germany. Sharapova has been based in the United States since she was 9.
Tarpishchev says the early experiences are the ones that create the emotional ties, and though he is one of those working hard to create more training options and academies in Russia, he said that the system of studying abroad had had some advantages.
'If a player is good and stays here after 14, the next kid coming up doesn't have room to play and develop, so I have urged them to go,' he said. 'That way, we get the world to work for us.'
TENNIS",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Why 'Titanic' Conquered the World; Buenos Aires
In Argentina, where an average of 70,000 people have seen 'Titanic' each week since it opened in February, the film has become the stuff of television parody. On one popular morning talk program, for example, the host, Georgissa, let fly barbs about the country's social and political ills as she hung on to a sinking ship, soaked to the skin.
In a similar vein, the top-rated soap opera in Brazil, 'Por Amor' ('For Love'), used a crucial scene from 'Titanic' to celebrate the reconciliation of two of the show's stars. Reunited after a bitter interlude of jealous recrimination, the couple decide to take a second honeymoon on a private ship. As the man persuades the woman to stand on the edge of the ship's bow, he says, 'I want to do exactly what I saw in the 'Titanic.' It was so romantic. Trust me.'
CALVIN SIMS",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"New Location, But Favorites Are Familiar
Security is heavy, the ball is light, schools here are closed and pubs in England are open early as the world's largest sporting event comes to Asia for the first time.
France will begin its World Cup defense against a former colony, Senegal, here on Friday as soccer's global championship opens its monthlong tournament with 32 teams divided equally between the host countries, South Korea and Japan.
Billions of people are expected to watch the World Cup on television, with 1.5 billion expected to view the final match, on June 30 in Yokohama, Japan. The location of the tournament is new, but the favorites are familiar: France and Argentina, which is hoping that soccer can distract a nation despairing over a financial collapse. So severe is the economic crisis in Argentina that only 30 reporters of an expected Argentine contingent of 400 are here to cover the championship.
Brazil could capture its fifth World Cup if the three R's -- Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and the resuscitated Ronaldo -- can mesh in their attack to create the beautiful game. Italy is always a threat with its strangling defense, and Cameroon's Indomitable Lions are poised to advance farther than any African team that has come before.
A number of teams, however, have been hit by injuries, and many of the top players are tired after long club seasons in Europe. France, trying to become the first team in 40 years to repeat as champion, will be without its hobbled midfielder, Zinedine Zidane, widely considered the best player in the world, for at least Friday's game, and perhaps all three matches in group play.
Fatigue, and the relatively short period that national teams have had to prepare, could lead to a number of early-round upsets, predicted the American coach, Bruce Arena. He does not believe, for instance, that both Argentina and England will emerge from a group that also includes Sweden and Nigeria.
The United States will be the last team to open play, next Wednesday against skillful, and elegant, Portugal. First-round matches will also be played against South Korea on June 10 and Poland on June 14. The Americans will most likely need a draw and a victory to finish at least second in their group and advance to the Round of 16. In any case, the team appears far more capable and cohesive than the distressed side that finished last at the 1998 World Cup in France.
'There is no fear within this team,' the assistant coach Dave Sarachan said. 'They feel they can make some history here.'
The most intriguing question concerning the Americans -- who will start at goalkeeper? -- may have been answered today, when Kasey Keller missed practice with a sore left elbow. He sustained a bruise in a collision Wednesday with defender Carlos Llamosa. X-rays proved negative, team officials said. Michael Kammarman, a team spokesman, said that Keller was feeling significantly better and that 'we don't expect it to be an issue.'
However, Brad Friedel is in top form, having played brilliantly with Blackburn in the English Premier League and in subsequent World Cup tuneups. Arena had said he was considering playing both goalkeepers in the first round, and this latest injury might have made up his mind about who gets to start the opener. Playing Friedel would give Keller extra days to mend his sore elbow and would prevent Friedel from becoming frustrated with a lack of playing time, as he did during last summer's qualifying matches. Arena said he would make a decision Sunday, but would not announce it publicly.
All the goalkeepers in this tournament will have to contend with a lighter ball, manufactured by Adidas, that is designed to produce more speed and spectacular goals. It has already generated much criticism from those who will stand in the nets. The ball, made of gas-filled micro bladders and enhanced cushioning, is said to knuckle and create a difficult trajectory when kicked in the sweet spot.
'Terrible,' Keller called it. A 'ridiculous kiddies' bouncing ball,' is how Italy's Gianluigi Buffon described it.
When the World Cup opens Friday, the South Korean military will be on high alert in an effort to thwart any terrorist attacks at an event that draws the entire world's attention. Antiaircraft missiles will be deployed at the 10 stadiums being used here, along with fighter jets and helicopters, military officials have said. No-flight zones will be enforced during the matches.
Security measures, however, are not expected to dampen the enthusiasm of the spectators, particularly the South Korean fans, who are hoping for advancement after the national team played impressively in recent friendlies against England and France. The most enthusiastic Korean fans are known as the Red Devils and they can be spotted throughout Seoul wearing T-shirts that say 'Be the Reds' and 'Korea Team Fighting.' The South Korean team has never won a game in five previous World Cup appearances, and a victory in any match here is certain to set off jubilant celebrations.
In England, the pubs have been granted early-morning opening privileges so that the World Cup can be enjoyed with a stout pint or two. The British have been consumed for two months with the condition of the team captain, David Beckham, who is recovering from a broken bone in his left foot. He is now expected to play in the opener against Sweden. So engulfed was the country in his recovery, fans were asked to place their healing hands on a photograph of Beckham's foot that appeared on the cover of a tabloid newspaper.
'Thank God it wasn't a groin injury,' mused Terry Venables, the former national team coach.
Just as the tournament is set to open, the rainy season has arrived in this smoggy capital. Asked how his American team was preparing to play in rainy conditions, the curmudgeonly Arena said, 'We take a shower every day.'
SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Maradona Is Facing Ban From Cup Finals
LEAD: Diego Maradona, the 29-year-old Argentine forward whose knack for scoring goals is nearly matched by his penchant for controversy, is skirting possible disqualification from the 1990 World Cup finals.
Diego Maradona, the 29-year-old Argentine forward whose knack for scoring goals is nearly matched by his penchant for controversy, is skirting possible disqualification from the 1990 World Cup finals.
Maradona had not spoken to reporters for several weeks after what he considered unfair coverage of his marriage in Argentina. But when he talked to Italian reporters in Cagliari on Tuesday, he charged that the World Cup draw in Rome on Dec. 9 was fixed for the benefit of television.
That upset Italy's soccer officials, who have promised disciplinary action against Maradona that might lead to a fine or his disqualification from the Italian league. Yesterday, though, Milan's major daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera, backed Maradona, saying he had clearly stated 'what many had thought and some had let be understood between the lines.'
'It has been long known that World Cup draws are skillfully predetermined, but nobody ever protested,' the newspaper said. 'Now that Maradona, 'Mr. Disagreeable,' said it openly, it's too easy to attack him.'
Joseph Blatter, the secretary general of the International Soccer Federation, said Maradona might be banned from playing for Argentina, the defending champion, in next year's World Cup because of his 'malicious accusations.'
Maradona said he could not believe such a threat, adding: 'If I must apologize for my remarks, I will apologize. But I am not going to recant anything.'(AP)  SPORTS PEOPLE: SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Entirely Preserved Inca Mummies Found
After climbing to the 22,000-foot summit of a volcano in northern Argentina, archeologists have found three frozen Inca mummies, 500-year-old remains of a ritual sacrifice, which are so well preserved that blood is still present in the heart and lungs.
The bodies of two girls and a boy were buried beneath five feet of rock and dirt, amid a cache of statuettes, pottery and ornate textiles associated with human sacrifices in the Inca religion. They had apparently been naturally frozen by the weather since immediately after death. Two of the mummies were in such excellent condition, physicians said, that all their internal organs were intact. It was as if death  had been only recent.
Archeologists and other scholars said the findings should yield important insights into the religion and the worship of sacred mountains in the Inca empire, which spanned most of the Andes and the western coast of South America at the time of the Spanish conquest in the early 16th century. They said the mummies and the artifacts were even more impressive than the discovery of the Peruvian 'Ice Maiden,' a frozen body of an Inca sacrifice found in 1995.
The new discovery, made last month on Mount Llullaillaco, at Argentina's border with Chile, was announced yesterday by Dr. Johan Reinhard, an American archeologist and mountaineer who led an American-Argentine-Peruvian expedition supported by the National Geographic Society. He described the mummies and other finds at a news conference in Salta, Argentina, and in a telephone interview.
'The preservation of the mummies is just fantastic,' Dr. Reinhard said. 'It's eerie looking at the arms. You can still see the light hair on their arms.'
The archeologist said they were the best preserved of any mummies he had ever seen, and in recent years he has ascended to the peaks of mountains in Argentina, Chile and Peru and come down with 18 mummies, all apparent sacrifices to the sacred mountains. Physicians so far could not establish how the three individuals, probably between 8 and 15 years old, had met their death.
As far as the explorers could determine, the mummies and other offerings to the Inca gods appeared to have been undisturbed through the centuries. Gold, silver and shell statues, from two to seven inches tall, were arranged on the burial platform just as they probably were for the ritual sacrifices. Half of the statues were clothed. Other artifacts included pottery, some of it still containing food, and bundles of alpaca textiles that appeared to establish the sacrifice victims as elite members of the society.
'The undamaged female has a beautiful yellow, geometrically designed cover laid over her outer mantle,' Dr. Reinhard said. She also wore a feathered headdress.
Below the summit, at about the 17,000-foot level, the expedition found the stone ruins and ceramics of a camp where participants in sacred rituals presumably stayed before the final ascent to the peak.
'From a scientific point of view,' said Dr. Craig Morris, an Andean anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, 'the artifacts and the base camp are at least as important as the mummies in determining the meaning of these rituals.'
Dr. Richard Burger, an archeologist of early Andean civilizations at Yale University, said the preservation of the bodies gave medical scientists an opportunity to conduct revealing tests of the diet, health and genetics of the victims. The blood should lead to DNA studies of the genetic composition of these people.
These and other recent discoveries, Dr. Burger said, are important as established cases of capac cocha, or human offerings, by the Inca because there was previously a suspicion that the Spanish conquerors had exaggerated their accounts of such practices, as well as cannibalism and odd sexual mores, to justify their conquests.
Dr. Reinhard had explored Mount Llullaillaco (pronounced yoo-yie-YAK-oh) several times before, mapping ruins and trying the trail to the top. Last month the expedition battled driving snow and winds near the summit. 'We had several days of finding nothing,' he said. 'I was about to give up.'
But on March 16 the team found the first burial. One of the workers had to be lowered into a hole by his ankles so that he could pull the mummy out. Then they found the two others. One of the mummies, a female, had been damaged on the left side by a lightning strike, but the two others were undamaged.
Having called ahead by cellular phones, the archeologists had Argentine military vehicles waiting for them when they descended the mountain with their cargo of mummies wrapped in plastic, snow and foam insulation. The bodies were still frozen when they reached Salta, a city about 300 miles away. Some members of the team were from the Center for the Conservation of High Altitude Cultural Patrimony in Salta. Constanza Ceruti, an Argentine archeologist, was a co-leader of the expedition.
The mummies are to remain refrigerated in Salta for further tests. Dr. Reinhard said he had more mountains to climb in search of Inca sacrifices.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"World Cup '90;   Naples Loves Maradona, but Loves Italy More
LEAD: Some fans in Naples may suffer from conflicting twitches Tuesday when Diego Maradona of Argentina takes the field against Italy in the semifinals of the World Cup.
Some fans in Naples may suffer from conflicting twitches Tuesday when Diego Maradona of Argentina takes the field against Italy in the semifinals of the World Cup.
Almost all Neapolitan fans are expected to root against Maradona and the defending champions, and to root for Italy and its goalkeeper, Walter Zenga, who is closing in on a World Cup record for scoreless minutes. But since coming to the Naples club of the Italian League in 1984, Maradona has helped Napoli win two championships, including one this past season.
For a while he was asking to be traded, but in recent months, he has said he wants to finish out his career here, where he lives in a hilltop villa during the season.
After Argentina's quarterfinal victory over Yugoslavia on Saturday, Maradona tried to lobby for a little divided loyalty, reminding Neapolitans that they are often regarded as 'southerners' or even foreigners by the northern industrial and political power in Italy. 'The Neapolitans must remember one thing,' Maradona said. 'Italy makes it feel important one day of the year, but forgets about it the other 364.'
'No Need'
This theory about prejudice against Naples was rejected by Mayor Pietro Lezzi and Salvatore Schillaci, who comes from Palermo, Sicily. Schillaci, who has four goals for Italy in this World Cup tournament, said: 'It is not true that Maradona's city is discriminated against by the rest of Italy. The fans have no need to support him.'
Schillaci, who in the Italian League plays for Juventus of Turin, added: 'In the last month, I have become a bit of a symbol of the antiracist reunification of the country, and this is the part of the World Cup which I like best.'
Maradona, who has four fewer goals than Schillaci in this World Cup, and who missed a penalty kick in the shootout victory over Yugoslavia on Saturday, added that the victory 'is a gift that I do for Naples.'
Despite Maradona's maneuvering, Argentina will be merely the latest obstacle for the Italian national team, the Azzurri, or the Blues, who have won all five of their games in this World Cup, scoring seven goals and giving up none.
Zenga Downplays Records
Zenga, the Italian goalkeeper, has played all 450 minutes, and is closing in on two records. The record for consecutive minutes in one World Cup, 457, was set in 1978 by Leao of Brazil, and the record for scoreless minutes in all World Cup games is 474, set by Sepp Maier of West Germany in 1974 and matched by him in 1978.
'I tell you that I'm happy to be on a semifinal team in the World Cup,' said the 30-year-old Zenga, who plays for Inter of Milan. 'I'd be lying if I said I was not pleased with the chance for a record, but I would trade a few goals if I knew that Italy would be in the finals.'
Zenga has had to work hard only a few times in the five games, oddly enough in the closing minutes of a 1-0 victory against the United States and in the second half of the 1-0 quarterfinal victory over Ireland on Saturday.
'Our defense is made up of a blend of Inter and Milan players who know each other very well,' Zenga said, referring to the two Italian League teams in Milan.
The Italian League teams play each other at least twice during the season and often four or five times including league cup competitions. Also, the top players are often called to the national team, so there are few secrets and surprises. The four players from the city of Milan who line up in front of Zenga are: Giuseppe Bergomi, 26, the quiet captain from Inter; Franco Baresi, 30, the sweeper from Milan; Riccardo Ferri, 26, from Inter, and Paolo Maldini, 21, from Milan.
'Bergomi and Ferri have been with me for 10 years,' Zenga added, 'and Maldini and Baresi are unique.'
Defense Excels
The Italian defense has been at least as disciplined and dashing as the offense, clearing the ball to the sides, rarely making a mistake, and rarely dishing the ball back to Zenga. All of the defenders have taken an occasional run up the field, to keep enemy defenses honest and to open things up for the new ace scorer, Schillaci, lurking downfield.
Zenga, who is the host of a sports television show, was smoothly diplomatic about the matchup with the wintertime king of Naples.
'We respect Argentina a lot,' Zenga said, 'a lot of it because it has Diego Armando Maradona. But Argentina also has other good players. I think it will be a good match, worthy of Naples.'
When asked what team worried him most in the tournament, Zenga said: 'Argentina is our next match. The ball is my number one enemy.' Argentina has been its own enemy for most of this tournament, scoring only four goals in five games but managing to survive into the semifinals. The hero of the 1986 World Cup, Maradona, has yet to score in this one. He has been fouled more than any other player, and went into the tournament with a painful ingrown toenail and other aches and pains, after a season in which his fitness was often suspect.
Now Maradona must play the Italian team on a hot streak, and it may not matter that the game is being played in Diego Armando's other hometown.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Fossils Reveal a Rival to T. Rex
MOVE over, Tyrannosaurus rex. Newfound fossils reveal a beast that may be the biggest meat-eating dinosaur known, scientists reported in the current issue of the journal Nature.
Scientists estimate that the dinosaur, which resembled T. rex, was 41 to 43 feet long and weighed 6 to 8 tons when it roamed the plains in what is now Argentina looking for food to chomp with its huge serrated teeth.
It lived about 100 million years ago, which is about 30 million years before T. rex appeared, said Dr. Rodolfo Coria, one of the authors of the report and a paleontologist at the Carmen Funes Museum in Neuquen, Argentina. A bone-by-bone comparison with the remains of the largest known specimen of T. rex suggests that the newly discovered creature was slightly longer and maybe 3 tons heavier, Dr. Coria said.
The fossils were discovered by an automobile mechanic who hunts for dinosaur bones as a hobby, Dr. Coria said. In honor of the discoverer, Ruben Carolini, the huge dinosaur has been named Giganotosaurus carolinii.
Scientists have recovered about 70 percent of the skeleton. Without a complete skeleton scientists can only estimate the creature's size, Dr. Coria said. The dinosaur ran on its hind legs and probably had rather small arms, he said in a telephone interview. Exactly what it ate in its environment, which resembled the African savanna, is a mystery.
Despite the overall similarity to T. rex, Giganotosaurus was not closely related to it, and the two beasts arose independently in two places, isolated by time in space, where there were ecological niches for gigantic meat-eating dinosaurs, said.
T. rex lived in North America, and there was no land bridge from South America that could have let Giganotosaurus or its descendants move north to become ancestors of T. rex, Dr. Sereno said.
Jack Horner, curator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Mont., said that comparing the sizes of Giganotosaurus and T. rex is tricky because dinosaurs grew continuously until they died. As a result, scientists have no firm answer on how big T. rex got. Estimates range from about 40 feet to 50 feet.
Fossils of a meat-eating dinosaur from North Africa suggest another beast that may have been bigger than T. rex, Mr. Horner said. But no analysis of those bones has been published.
More important than determining its size will be finding out whether Giganotosaurus was a hunter or a scavenger, Mr. Horner said.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Elite Players Of Chess To Compete
A world chess championship tournament in September will have most of the world's elite players, including, for the first time, a woman.
The World Chess Federation announced on Sunday the eight players who will compete for its world championship in San Luis, Argentina. They include Viswanathan Anand of India, the No. 1 player in the world since the retirement of Garry Kasparov this year; Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, who is ranked No. 2; Peter Leko of Hungary, No. 3; Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan, No. 32, who is the current champion by virtue of having won the federation's elimination tournament last year; and Judit Polgar of Hungary, No. 7.
The tournament has a prize fund of $1 million, with $300,000 going to the winner.
Ms. Polgar, the only woman ranked among the top 100 players in the world, is generally acknowledged to be the best female player in history. She will be the first woman to take part in an invitation-only tournament for the world championship.
Among the players not competing in the tournament is Vladimir Kramnik of Russia, who calls himself the world champion and who is ranked No. 4. He was invited but declined.
The world championship has been split since 1993 when Mr. Kasparov, then the undisputed champion, broke from the federation. Mr. Kramnik defeated Mr. Kasparov in 2000 and defended his title by drawing a match with Mr. Leko last year.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"A Badge, As License To Break The Law
There are no crusading moralists to clean up the mess in 'El Bonaerense,' Pablo Trapero's grim, dispassionate drama of police corruption, set mostly in contemporary Buenos Aires. This powerful sweat-stained swatch of Argentine neo-realism, filmed in harsh high contrast that throws its characters' faces into deep shadow, follows the initiation of Zapa (Jorge Román), a naïve police recruit, into a labyrinth of sleaze.
As Zapa is about to begin his police training, his grinning commanding officer welcomes him to 'El Bonaerense,' then adds this sarcastic afterthought: 'God help you!' (El Bonaerense is a pun that refers to a rural resident of Buenos Aires province, but is also slang for a member of the Buenos Aires police force.)
Innocent as he seems, Zapa is no angel. A locksmith from a rural shantytown, he is left holding the bag after his boss, Polaco (Hugo Anganuzzi), eggs him into taking part in a safecracking caper that fails. Zapa is saved from prison through the intercession of his Uncle Ismael (Roberto Posse), a well-connected former local police chief, who arranges Zapa's abrupt career switch from locksmith to urban lawman.
From the outset the rules are casually bent. At 32, Zapa is technically too old to qualify for the police academy, but he is allowed to pass for 28. At the academy, where he discovers leniency given to officers who commit 'unintentional homicide,' Zapa is a slow but diligent learner. When his handiness as a locksmith attracts the attention of the precinct's boss, Deputy Inspector Gallo (Dario Levy), he finds himself on the fast track to a promotion.
Zapa allows himself to become Gallo's bagman, extorting cash payments from local businesses, including a brothel. He also incites the envy of fellow officers by beginning an affair with Mabel (Mimí Arduh), an attractive, hard-boiled police instructor who begins to pull away from him when he sinks too deeply into corruption.
Except in his steamy grapplings with Mabel, Zapa betrays little emotion. He accepts the corruption around him with a poker-faced resignation. Because the movie sees the world through his eyes, the outrageous behavior that enmeshes him passes without comment. The story proceeds as a series of loosely connected cinéma-vérité-style anecdotes that show Zapa involved in compromising situations. We see criminal suspects kicked and beaten (and sometimes shot) for sport by police officers who have no visible twinges of conscience.
'El Bonaerense,' which opens today at the Film Forum in New York, is all the more disturbing for refusing to act as an exposé. It just throws up its hands and says that this is the way it is. And its pointed detachment lends certain scenes an almost farcical sense of the absurd. The funniest and one of the scariest is a holiday party in which the drunk, trigger-happy officers go crazy firing their guns into the air. The celebration suggests a children's game of cops and robbers in which the toy firearms happen to be real.
Think of 'El Bonaerense' as an Argentine 'Training Day,' in which the evil under examination is so routine that it's not about to be uprooted anytime soon.
EL BONAERENSE
Written (in Spanish, with English subtitles), produced and directed by Pablo Trapero; director of photography, Guillermo Nieto; edited by Nicolás Goldbart; music by Pablo Lescano and Damas Gratis; production designer, Sebastian Roses; released by Menemsha Films. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Sixth Avenue, South Village. Running time: 100 minutes. This film is not rated.
WITH: Jorge Román (Zapa), Dario Levy (Deputy Inspector Gallo), Mimí Arduh (Mabel), Hugo Anganuzzi (Polaco), Victor Hugo Carrizo (Inspector Molinari), Graciana Chironi (Zapa's Mother) and Roberto Posse (Uncle Ismael).
FILM REVIEW",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"A Positive Drug Test Reported for Maradona
Diego Maradona, the captain of Argentina's national team and of the defending Italian League champion, Naples, tested positive for drugs after a recent game, his team said yesterday in Rome.
Giorgio Perinetti, a director of the team, said that the Italian Soccer Federation had notified team president Corrado Ferlaino of the test results, but would not say what Maradona had tested positive for.
La Repubblica reported that Maradona tested positive after a 1-0 victory by Naples over Bari on March 17. Maradona assisted on the game's goal.
A spokesman for the Italian Soccer Federation refused comment on La Repubblica's report, but did say that results of a second test would be available by the end of the week. A second test is given, in the presence of a doctor apppointed by the player or his club, when the post-game test is positive.
Maradona, who will miss tomorrow's game against Internazionale of Milan because of a one-game suspension for arguing with referees, did not attend the team's practice yesterday and could not be reached for comment.
Regulations provide for suspensions of from six months to two years for players who test positive. Any suspension made by the Italian federation would automatically be extended worldwide by FIFA, soccer's governing body. (AP)  SPORTS PEOPLE: SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"High Hopes and Low Expectations
Argentina last won a World Cup in 1986, when it was led by the extraordinary Diego Maradona. Since then, the performance of the blue-and-whites has been as melancholy as a tango lyric: they were the runners-up in 1990, failed to reach the semifinals in 1994 and 1998, and were shockingly eliminated in the first round in 2002.
So Argentine fans can be excused for looking with trepidation toward this Cup, which starts Friday in Germany. Is their rebuilt team, with its new coach and younger players, the legitimate contender it seems to be? Or should they be steeling themselves for more heartbreak and disillusionment?
Soccer here has always been played and analyzed with uncommon passion. Argentina has won the World Cup twice and finished second on two other occasions. And the run-up to this year's World Cup has been no different. A coaching change was made midstream, there have been injuries to key players and, most recently, a heated debate has erupted about some of the players that Coach José Pekerman chose for the squad and about some that he left off.
'It's the famous Argentine taste for drama,' said Ezequiel Fernández Moores, a popular Argentine sports and political commentator. 'We like to cry a lot and to play the role of victims, and we always need to convoke demons from outside to explain our failures, not just in football but in everything else.'
Especially galling for Argentina's fans is that their squad's decline has coincided with the dominance of their archrival, Brazil. While Argentina agonizes over its inability to find a successor to Maradona, whose private life has become a soap opera of its own, Brazil continues to manufacture crack players, and thrashed Argentina, 4-1, in a Confederations Cup match last year.
As in 2002, when a loss to England was a decisive factor in Argentina's early exit, there has been much grumbling that Argentina has been singled out for unfair treatment by being seeded in a 'group of death' while Brazil was favored with an easier draw. To advance, Argentina will have to get past a strong Dutch team and two other potentially dangerous squads -- Ivory Coast (its first opponent, on Saturday) and Serbia and Montenegro.
'Even then, if we win our group, as a reward we will play three days later in the group of 16,' said Leo Farinella, editor of the sports daily Olé. 'We don't have the luck of the others, who have weaker adversaries and can rest for five days between the two phases.'
After the repeated disappointments of the past 20 years, modest objectives have been set for Argentina in this year's Cup. Argentina's squad is deep and is likely to include such standouts as Juan Román Riquelme, a shrewd passer, and Carlos Tevez, who led the Brazilian league in goals last season. But that has not prevented management from poor-mouthing the team's chances.
'I will be satisfied if Argentina makes it to the final eight,' Julio Grondona, the longtime president of the Argentine Football Association, said in a radio interview last month. 'There is no obligation to come back champions,' he added, and anyone who argues otherwise 'has no sense of the game.'
Fans and commentators have complained that the bar has been set far too low; some say the team is good enough to reach an all-South American final against Brazil. But some veteran insiders have argued that playing down Argentina's chances is an intelligent strategy that will guarantee a better result.
'Brazil is accustomed to being favorites, but we Argentines are not,' Daniel Passarella, who coached the national team in the 1994 and 1998 World Cups, told reporters recently. 'If we are a strong candidate, we believe it and we relax.'
Since becoming coach of the team late in 2004, Pekerman has undertaken what can only be called a full-fledged purge. From the team that performed so embarrassingly in Asia, only Juan Pablo Sorín and Roberto Ayala remain as starters, and of the 23 players Pekerman named to his squad last month (after auditioning a remarkable 49), 16 emerged from the junior teams that he coached.
'The reality of the Argentine football player in the world today is one of being quite overshadowed,' Pekerman, 56, said a month before taking over the team. 'On the majority of the big European teams, you don't find Argentines.'
Pekerman's own trajectory is an unusual one for Argentina. Never a star player himself, he left soccer after his playing days and worked as a taxi driver before returning as a coach.
As coach of the national junior team, Pekerman had a spectacular run, winning three world championships in the under-21 category. But this is his first World Cup as a head coach, and he has proceeded cautiously -- too cautiously for some fans and commentators who say he is leaving some of his best scorers on the bench and is sticking with a goalie, Roberto Abbondanzieri, who tends to become porous in the clutch.
'Pekerman has had a good track record, but he has no defined style of play,' said Gonzalo Bonadeo, a popular television commentator. 'One day he emphasizes the offense, the next day the defense. But Argentina needs to score goals. If your defense is weak, as ours is, then why not attack? We can't be so timid.'
Ever since Maradona was disqualified for drug use in the 1994 Cup in the United States, Argentines have been yearning for a player who can dominate the field, intimidate opponents and electrify fans. At long last, they may have one: Lionel Messi, a diminutive 18-year-old who has played brilliantly for Barcelona.
'It's still early yet, but this kid has all the characteristics of a star,' said Sergio Danichevsky, the longtime sports editor of Clarín, Argentina's leading daily. 'He's a player who is typically Argentine in the sense that he is daring and gutsy, who in the decisive moments of the game is not going to hide, but will demand the ball.'
But Argentina being Argentina, there are complications. Messi has been hobbled since March with a thigh injury, and even when he is healthy, Pekerman has been reluctant to start him or Tevez, preferring to let the slower, more conservative Riquelme dictate the rhythm of the game.
'Messi is getting better every day, but we have to wait and not rush things,' Pekerman said recently. 'We don't want to make mistakes, even though we know he is impatient to play. That's why we are going to evaluate whether it is better to have him play from the start or come in later.'
In what fans regarded as a favorable omen, Argentina's last friendly before the start of the World Cup ended with a 2-0 victory over Angola on May 30. Messi was deemed healthy enough to play the last half hour, and the tempo of the game picked up noticeably when he came in.
'It's true that we no longer have Maradona,' Bonadeo said. 'But we do have four or five players of a caliber that Maradona never had around him, and if they play up to their ability, anything can happen. So let's see.'
SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Shortcuts Cut Down On Point-and-Click
Q. Why are some letters in Windows dialogue boxes underlined? I assume this is significant.
A. Those underlined letters you see on certain dialogue box buttons are hints to the shortcuts you can perform on the keyboard instead of using a mouse to select the option you want. In most cases, you can press the Alt key plus the underlined letter to perform that dialogue box action. For example, if you see the B in Browse underlined in a dialogue box button, you can press Alt and B to open the Browse window to look at files on your hard drive.
If you would like to spend less time moving the mouse, there are even more keys or key combinations you can use instead. Any button that is highlighted, for instance, can be selected by pressing the Enter key.
There are many more keyboard shortcuts in Windows, and you can look them up in the various Keyboard Shortcuts files in your computer's Help area, which you can find under the Start menu -- or by pressing the F1 key.
Mac users can also press the Enter key in lieu of clicking on a highlighted dialogue box button (signified by a heavy black outline around the button). The Mac Help files located under the main menu bar can explain other shortcuts.
Q. I send e-mail to my cousin in Argentina and we communicate in Spanish using Microsoft Outlook. Is there a way I can use a Spanish alphabet when I e-mail my cousin and an English alphabet the rest of the time?
A. There are a number of ways you can get Spanish-language characters like tildes and other punctuation marks into your messages. You can use the Character Map tool in Windows 98 and later versions, located in the Start menu under Programs, Accessories, then System Tools. Character Map can display and copy different accented letters that you can paste into your message. (Mac users can use the Key Caps program found under the Apple Menu to do the same thing.)
The Windows Character Map box will also display the ASCII code number for the desired letter or character down in the corner of the box. You will have to turn on the Num Lock key on your keyboard, then hold down the Alt key and type the number on the numeric keypad to get the character you want. You can find a link to a chart displaying the common codes for many foreign-language characters on Windows and Mac systems on the City College of San Francisco's Language Lab page at www.ccsf.cc.ca.us/Departments /Language_Lab.
Another option is to add a Spanish language keyboard layout to your system. Windows users can click on Start, go to the Control Panel and then open the Keyboard panel and click on the Language tab. Click on the Add button and select the language you want to use. (You may need to have your original Windows system disks to add the language file.) After you have added the Spanish keyboard file to your system, you can switch back and forth with the English keyboard layout in this same area of the Keyboard control panel. Mac users can select a Spanish keyboard in the Mac's Keyboard control panel.
Q. What is the 'click of death' on a Zip drive?
A. The 'click of death' was a sardonic name given several years ago to a major symptom that often preceded drive failure on the Zip and Jaz drives made by the Iomega Corporation. The name refers to the loud clicking sounds that the drive would make when it tried to read a Zip or Jaz disk that had been inserted. Not long after the clicking sound began, the drive itself would usually stop working completely, and often the disk inside it too.
Iomega addresses drive noises in its products at www.iomega.com /support/documents/30109.html. A freeware program for testing Zip and Jaz drives and cartridges can be found at grc.com/clickdeath.htm.
J. D. BIERSDORFER
Q&A",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Argentines Report Infection by Altered Farm Virus
LEAD: Officials in Argentina have concluded that several farm workers there inadvertently became infected with a genetically altered virus that had been injectd into cattle as an experimental vaccine against rabies, according to press accounts and an American critic of the biotechnology industry.
Officials in Argentina have concluded that several farm workers there inadvertently became infected with a genetically altered virus that had been injectd into cattle as an experimental vaccine against rabies, according to press accounts and an American critic of the biotechnology industry.
Some American experts in vaccines and genetic engineering said they were skeptical of the story and said that even if the vaccine had spread to workers, their health would not be imperiled. Repeated attempts to reach a spokesman for the Government in Buenos Aires by telephone today were unsuccessful. Virus Not Dangerous
In Washington, a critic of field experiments with genetically altered organisms, Jeremy Rifkin, cited the Argentine case in petitioning Federal regulators today to require advance notice from American researchers planning such experiments in other countries. He said the incident points to potential dangers from genetic engineering and the problems associated with American researchers conducting trials overseas, sometimes to escape regulation.
According to news reports from Argentina earlier this month and information that Mr. Rifkin's group, the Foundation on Economic Trends, said it received from an interview with an Argentine health official, up to five farmhands who tended cattle inoculated with an experimental rabies vaccine became infected with the virus used. The virus, the vaccinia virus, has been used for other vaccines and poses little health danger to people. In this case, the virus had been altered to stimulate production of antibodies to rabies, in hopes it could serve as an antirabies vaccine in cattle.
Jorge Ahumada of the Health and Social Action Ministry reportedly said that antibodies apparently generated by the virus were recently detected in blood samples from farmhands. It was not clear how many workers were involved and what type of antibodies were detected.
Dr. Bernard Moss of the National Institutes of Health, a leading expert on the type of vaccine used in the Argentine test, said accidental infection with this type of vaccine is 'highly unlikely,' and should not pose a major health risk to the workers if it did occur. #1986 Experiment The vaccine was produced by taking a single gene from the surface of a rabies virus and splicing it into vaccinia. Researchers believe using only a noninfectious part of the rabies virus in the new vaccine will activate protective antibodies with fewer side effects than using the whole virus, whether it is alive or inactivated.
Dr. Moss said vaccinia vaccines, which are being tested against numerous diseases, pose no more risk of accidental infection to humans than any other live virus vaccine and probably are less risky because vaccinia is relatively benign and the genes attached to it usually are not infectious.
The experiment to test a genetically-engineered vaccine against bovine rabies was carried out in 1986 at a Pan American Health Organization research farm 185 miles south of Buenos Aires. The experiment had earlier been the subject of controversy because neither the health organization, which is based in Washington, nor the Wistar Institute of Philadelphia, which developed the vaccine, had informed the Argentine or American Governments of the test because no law required it. The Argentine Government ended the experiment and ordered the animals destroyed when the trial was disclosed.
All government-funded genetic engineering work is required to comply with National Insitutes of Health safety guidelines. However, in the Argentinian vaccine case, NIH determined last year that it did not violate the guidelines because the actual trial itself did not use Government money.  By WARREN E. LEARY WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 - Officials in Argentina have concluded that several farm workers there inadvertently became infected with a genetically altered virus that had been injectd into cattle as an experimental vaccine against rabies, according to press accounts and an American critic of the biotechnology industry.
Some American experts in vaccines and genetic engineering said they were skeptical of the story and said that even if the vaccine had spread to workers, their health would not be imperiled. Repeated attempts to reach a spokesman for the Government in Buenos Aires by telephone today were unsuccessful.
In Washington, a critic of field experiments with genetically altered organisms, Jeremy Rifkin, cited the Argentine case in petitioning Federal regulators today to require advance notice from American researchers planning such experiments in other countries. He said the incident points to potential dangers from genetic engineering and the problems associated with American researchers conducting trials overseas, sometimes to escape regulation. Virus Not Dangerous
According to news reports from Argentina earlier this month and information that Mr. Rifkin's group, the Foundation on Economic Trends, said it received from an interview with an Argentine health official, up to five farmhands who tended cattle inoculated with an experimental rabies vaccine became infected with the virus used. The virus, the vaccinia virus, has been used for other vaccines and poses little health danger to people. In this case, the virus had been altered to stimulate production of antibodies to rabies, in hopes it could serve as an antirabies vaccine in cattle.
Jorge Ahumada of the Health and Social Action Ministry reportedly said that antibodies apparently generated by the virus were recently detected in blood samples from farmhands. It was not clear how many workers were involved and what type of antibodies were detected.
Dr. Bernard Moss of the National Institutes of Health, a leading expert on the type of vaccine used in the Argentine test, said accidental infection with this type of vaccine is 'highly unlikely,' and should not pose a major health risk to the workers if it did occur. #1986 Experiment The vaccine was produced by taking a single gene from the surface of a rabies virus and splicing it into vaccinia. Researchers believe using only a noninfectious part of the rabies virus in the new vaccine will activate protective antibodies with fewer side effects than using the whole virus, whether it is alive or inactivated.
Dr. Moss said vaccinia vaccines, which are being tested against numerous diseases, pose no more risk of accidental infection to humans than any other live virus vaccine and probably are less risky because vaccinia is relatively benign and the genes attached to it usually are not infectious.
The experiment to test a genetically-engineered vaccine against bovine rabies was carried out in 1986 at a Pan American Health Organization research farm 185 miles south of Buenos Aires. The experiment had earlier been the subject of controversy because neither the health organization, which is based in Washington, nor the Wistar Institute of Philadelphia, which developed the vaccine, had informed the Argentine or American Governments of the test because no law required it. The Argentine Government ended the experiment and ordered the animals destroyed when the trial was disclosed.
All government-funded genetic engineering work is required to comply with National Insitutes of Health safety guidelines. However, in the Argentinian vaccine case, NIH determined last year that it did not violate the guidelines because the actual trial itself did not use Government money.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Argentina's New No. 10 Ensures Opening Victory
No team knew more urgently than Argentina the threat of facing an African team in the opening game of a World Cup and the tournament's recent history of magnificent upset and humiliating defeat.
And so it was with clinical precision that the playmaker Juan Riquelme opened Saturday's match against the newcomer Ivory Coast, helping to put Argentina ahead by two goals by halftime. He set up goals by forwards Hernán Crespo and Javier Saviola with his exquisite feet, vision, anticipation and sense of laconic rhythm.
Eventually, Argentina prevailed with a 2-1 victory that brought as much relief as satisfaction. Four years ago, Argentina, a perennial World Cup favorite, exited sourly in the first round. Now it has an upper hand in a so-called Group of Death with the Netherlands, Ivory Coast and Serbia and Montenegro.
Gone are lingering pretournament worries from 1990 when, as defending World Cup champion, Argentina lost its opening match to Cameroon. Argentina learned another lesson in 2002 when France, also a reigning champion, lost to Senegal, its former colony.
'It is a big step for us, but we are not there yet,' said Argentina's coach, José Pekerman. 'We don't focus on the final. I prefer step by step.'
Spoiled in the loss was the Ivory Coast players' hope that victory in their first World Cup match might further signify the possibilities of peace and unity in their foundering West African nation, which has been divided by civil war since 2002.
Forward Didier Drogba, who like Crespo plays for Chelsea, champion of the English Premier League, reduced Argentina's margin to 2-1 in the 82nd minute, cuffing a cross with his left foot. But Ivory Coast could not manage an equalizer in the frantic final minutes.
'Other people thought Ivory Coast was easy,' Crespo said, 'but we knew it was going to be complicated, and it was.'
The Ivorians played with great energy and intent, but they will regret inefficiency in finishing their chances. Until he departed in added time, Riquelme controlled the match during the important moments, expertly managing the pace and applying the brakes when Ivory Coast wanted to stomp on the accelerator.
It says much about Argentina's depth that Saturday's victory was achieved without its two young star forwards: Lionel Messi, 18, who helped lead Argentina to the world youth championship last year, and Carlos Tevez, 22, the star of the gold-medal-winning Olympic team at the 2004 Athens Games.
In the 24th minute, Argentina switched tactics from crisp short passes to a long ball to Crespo that drew a foul. From the left flank, Riquelme delivered an inviting free kick to the 6-yard line. When Argentine defender Gabriel Heinze was shoved down in a scrum, the ball bounced free and Crespo ran onto it with a hop and a skip and poked it into the net for a 1-0 lead.
In the 38th minute, Riquelme held the ball patiently in midfield and waited while Saviola feinted, then sprinted sharply behind the Ivory Coast defense. With deft timing to avoid an offside trap, Riquelme pushed the ball through a seam to an open Saviola.
Jean-Jacques Tizié charged forward from the goalmouth, but he was too late, and Saviola flicked the ball with his right foot from 12 yards, giving Argentina a 2-0 advantage.
In his younger days, Riquelme, soon to be 28, was called the next Diego Maradona, an impossible mantle to shoulder, one of brutal responsibility and expectation.
They are of disparate personalities, Riquelme forever modest and Maradona always given to excess on the field and off. But Riquelme wears No. 10, as Maradona did in bringing two World Cup titles to Argentina, so the comparisons, however unfair, will endure.
And with Maradona in the audience on Saturday, pumping his tattooed arms and waving a jersey in celebration, Riquelme did not disappoint.
He is a star but also a poignant figure in Argentine soccer. Riquelme came to prominence with Boca Juniors in the Argentine league and, briefly, teamed with Maradona.
But in 2002, Riquelme's younger brother was kidnapped. He was later released after the family paid a $160,000 ransom, according to news reports.
In part, the kidnapping spurred Riquelme's decision to leave Boca Juniors for Spain, where he now plays for Villarreal. It recently advanced to the semifinals of the Champions League, Europe's most important club tournament.
Suitably impressed with Riquelme during Champions League play, even though he missed a penalty kick against Arsenal in the semifinals, Arsenal Manager Arsène Wenger said of him, 'He's always able to slow the game down and wait for a weak moment to kill you.'
It was an assessment the Ivory Coast would not dispute
SOCCER
Correction:  June 15, 2006, Thursday  A sports article in some copies on Sunday about Argentina's 2-1 soccer victory against Ivory Coast in the World Cup referred incorrectly to the number of World Cup titles that Diego Maradona helped win for Argentina. It is one (in 1986), not two.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Mercurial but Resilient, Argentine Opera Perks Up
It took three architects to complete the acoustically superb and richly detailed Teatro Colon here -- one died early in the construction, another was murdered by his butler, who was involved with his wife -- before the scheduled inaugural performance of 'Otello' in 1908. Then, taking Verdian melodrama to another level, Antonio Paoli, the great Puerto Rican tenor who was to sing Otello, came down with the flu, forcing in a last-minute slapdash 'Aida.'
This was the start to a tumultuous century of Argentine opera, plagued by long periods of mismanagement and Peronist labor unrest but also blessed, sometimes simultaneously, with the finest operatic productions in Latin America.
This year, as always, the Colon has been operatic offstage as well as on. The theater's workers and performers have repeatedly blocked the Avenida de Mayo by singing and dancing in front of City Hall to protest wages and other labor conditions. 'La Boheme' and several other otherwise workmanlike productions were faulted by critics for the casting of aging or overweight stars as young lovers. And the season's opening performance, 'La Traviata' with the soprano June Anderson, was marred by a heat spell that overwhelmed the air-conditioning system and left the audience's tuxedos and the divas' costumes drenched.
But despite that, with the current opera season at the Colon three-quarters complete, critics are calling this a year of relative stability and rising artistic merit. Jose Cura's return to Argentina to perform 'Otello' was the talk of Buenos Aires, and the career of an exciting young Argentine star tenor, Dario Volonte, was propelled with his stirring performance in the patriotic Argentine opera 'Aurora.'
Critics raved about the productions of Debussy's 'Pelleas et Melisande,' Mozart's 'Cosi Fan Tutte' and Arrigo Boito's 'Mefistofele,' which produced perhaps the season's most entertaining moment when its star, Samuel Ramey, climbed to the presidential box to sip Champagne with devilish delight. With scandals enveloping President Carlos Saul Menem in his last months in office, the audience took the hint and laughed uproariously.
The staging in September of 'Die Tote Stadt,' the Latin American premiere of that 1920 Erich Wolfgang Korngold work, has been a surprise hit that several Argentine critics say will help further polish this Czech-born composer's reputation as more than a writer of movie scores, albeit one who won Oscars for 'The Adventures of Robin Hood' and 'Anthony Adverse.'
The season is expected to end strongly with the reliable crowd pleasers 'Salome' and 'Lucia di Lammermoor,' unless mounting labor threats interrupt rehearsal schedules.
'We've stabilized a bit,' said Federico Monjeau, opera critic of the Buenos Aires newspaper Clarin. 'But the unions still run the show.'
It may be too early to declare a renaissance for Argentine opera, but there are reasons to cheer, not the least being the art form's increasing popularity, particularly among the young.
Several provincial opera houses are reopening or expanding their seasons. The Teatro Argentino in La Plata, traditionally Argentina's second most important opera house until it was virtually destroyed by fire in 1977, is scheduled to reopen in October. A new opera company has been founded in Rosario, and its inaugural production of 'Tosca' in August was a critical success.
Opera broadcasts are proliferating on the radio, including two new weekly shows. Their host is Victor Hugo Morales, Argentina's most prominent soccer announcer, who is helping to make opera fashionable among a younger audience. The radio shows have helped create new Argentine stars like Patricia Gutierrez, a young soprano in the Colon chorus whose sudden popularity sold out the 1,200-seat auditorium in Mar del Plata in September.
A new opera company, Juventus Lirica, was started with help from the Colon this year as a home for young singers, and it has already won critical acclaim, especially for a delightful production of 'The Barber of Seville.' Meanwhile opera recitals in San Telmo and other bohemian neighborhoods in and around Buenos Aires have become virtually nightly affairs. In July 47 young Argentine singers staged an opera marathon that lasted more than six hours and packed a theater in a lower-middle-class neighborhood just outside Buenos Aires until 1 A.M.
'Despite the bad economic situation, opera and operetta activity seems to growing constantly,' said Alfredo Cernadas Quesada, manager of classical music labels at Warner Music Argentina. 'Cities that haven't had opera for decades are having opera again.'
Opera has been deeply entwined in the culture of Argentina for more than a century, following several waves of Italian immigration. There were five opera theaters in Buenos Aires alone in 1900. Caruso and all the great European stars performed in Argentina regularly in the early decades of the century, attracted by the acoustics of the Colon and the huge contracts the theater then offered.
Argentine performances of opera and classical music in general reached their pinnacle in the 1930's and 40's, when the German conductors Fritz Busch and Erich Kleiber fled the Nazis and took refuge with many other European artists in Argentina.
But over the next 40 years, with the exception of a decade of artistic flourish in the 60's, economic, political and labor turmoil took its toll.
The comeback for Argentine opera started in 1989, when Sergio Renan was appointed general manager and artistic director of the Colon. Mr. Renan, a respected film director with international contacts, attracted a host of stars, including Placido Domingo, back to Argentine opera and staged lavish productions.
But unable to control the unions, Mr. Renan was pushed out in 1996. The current management -- the jobs of general manager and artistic director have been separated -- is considered less creative by most critics, but performances of the last two seasons have generally been viewed as more even in quality.
'The condition of Argentine opera isn't bad,' said Horacio Sanguinetti, author of a soon-to-be published book on the history of Argentine opera. 'It's been worse, and it's getting better.'
ARTS ABROAD",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Feats of Grace and Grit; Argentina Wins One for the Rest
As the final seconds wound down, the celebrating Argentine players began to seek out one another, make wide-eyed contact and mouth the words: 'Do you believe it? Do you believe it?'
Did they believe in miracles? They didn't have to because their convincing victory over a lackluster and fundamentals-challenged United States team last summer at the world basketball championships in Indianapolis was no miracle. It was inevitable that the world would defeat a team of N.B.A. players and close the yawning talent gap that had existed since 1992, when Commissioner David Stern of the N.B.A. sent the basketball ambassadors otherwise known as the Dream Team to the Barcelona Olympics.
Over a startlingly short decade in the international arena, supremacy gave way to superiority and then to survival and finally submission. The United States team, coached by George Karl, lost twice more in Indianapolis -- to Yugoslavia and to Spain -- but Argentina will always have bragging rights as the country that chopped the superpower of Kareem and Wilt, of Magic and Michael, symbolically down to the size of mortal men.
HARVEY ARATON",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Dancing In the Street
LEAD: It was already a national holiday, so the 10 million inhabitants of the Republic of Cameroon hardly knew how to celebrate on Friday when the West African nation's soccer team defeated the defending champion, Argentina, in the opening round of the 1990 World Cup. They found a way.  As soon as the game was over,
It was already a national holiday, so the 10 million inhabitants of the Republic of Cameroon hardly knew how to celebrate on Friday when the West African nation's soccer team defeated the defending champion, Argentina, in the opening round of the 1990 World Cup. They found a way.  As soon as the game was over, Cameroonians, who had been given the day off to follow the match on radio or television, poured out of their homes in exuberant, and sometimes raucous, celebration.
In the capital city of Yaounde, in the port city of Douala and in every town and village in between and beyond, there was dancing in the streets and impromptu parades.
Horn-blaring taxis trailing noise-making chains of scrap metal formed a procession through Yaounde, where ecstatic fans sang the national anthem over and over and paraded through the streets chanting, 'We mourn the death of Maradona.'
The reference, of course, was to the acclaimed Argentine star, who came under such constant and vicious attack from the Cameroon players that he must have believed the apocryphal rumor that the Cameroonian team had prepared for the World Cup by practicing barefoot using a human skull as a ball.
Actually, the players had incentive enough to win. In addition to salaries of more than $20,000, the rough equivalent of $400,000 in the United States, where the per capita annual income is about 20 times the $800 Cameroon level, each player receives a bonus equal to half his salary for each victory.
For all the national glee over the stunning upset, there was one ominous indication that the Cameroon Lions' days as World Cup lions might be numbered.
The nation's sorcerers, who had publicly predicted the 1-0 victory over Argentina, refused to foretell the outcome of Cameroon's next game, against Romania on Thursday.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Maradona Is Left Out
DIEGO MARADONA was left off Argentina's national team roster for a two-game series with Australia that will determine which country plays in the World Cup in 1994. A spokesman for the Argentine Soccer Association said Friday that the 33-year-old midfielder, who recently returned to his native country to play professionally, could still be added to the team. Maradona led Argentina to the 1986 World Cup title and a second-place finish in 1990. He has played just two games for Argentina's national team since the 1990 World Cup -- Feb. 18 and Feb. 24 this year. (AP)  SPORTS PEOPLE: SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Arts, Briefly; Autumn at P. S. 122
Performance Space 122 (P. S. 122 to you) announced its fall season yesterday. Among the shows and other description-defying works are several premieres, including 'Tale of 2Cities: An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks,' a two-part play about the relocation of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Other shows include 'Tower of Babel' by the Dutch artists Lidy Six and Robert Steijn, a festival of works by four playwrights from Buenos Aires, and 'Moopim,' a performance by the Israeli dance company LeeSaar.
CAMPBELL ROBERTSON",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"2004: I.O.C. Picks 5 Finalists
Reflecting geographical and political sensitivities, the International Olympic Committee yesterday narrowed the number of cities bidding for the 2004 Summer Olympics to 5 from 11, selecting Rome, Athens, Stockholm, Cape Town and Buenos Aires as the finalists.
Rome and Athens remain the favorites to be voted on Sept. 5 by I.O.C. members. However, Cape Town and Buenos Aires are centering their bids on the fact that the Olympics have never been held in either Africa or South America.
The six cities removed from the bidding yesterday were Istanbul, Turkey; Lille, France; San Juan, P.R.; Rio de Janeiro; Seville, Spain, and St. Petersburg, Russia. The failure of the St. Petersburg bid was a political defeat for President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia, who, in a recent letter, had lobbied the I.O.C.'s president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, for inclusion among the five finalists.
The United States did not bid for the 2004 Summer Games, believing it had no chance so soon after Atlanta held the 1996 Summer Olympics. The United States Olympic Committee is now determining whether it would be feasible to submit a bid for 2008. The 2000 Summer Olympics will be in Sydney, Australia. Rome, site of the 1960 Summer Games, remains the front-runner for 2004.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Dropping the (White) Gloves in a Met Duel
They don't want to talk about this, but the members of the grand old Metropolitan Opera Club -- maybe you've seen them in their boxes in the Dress Circle, always dressed in black tie or white -- have been having some problems with management at the Met.
The problems, which Joseph Volpe, general manager of the Met, does not wish to discuss either, concern the group's little-known on-site club house: an elegantly appointed private room with drinking and dining facilities on the fourth level, which one reaches via a discreetly hidden elevator. (Walk beyond the box office to a short corridor beside the gift shop and take a left.)
Club members, most speaking only on the condition that they not be identified, say that the Met has demanded a stiff increase in fees for their clubhouse, which really annoys them, as their club is 108 years old and they feel they have been there financially for the tough times.
They say that the Met wants to open the room not just to anybody, of course, but to wealthy patrons. Private dining space is scarce in the opera house, and the club room, which can seat 100 and overlooks the reflecting pond to the north, is a treasure.
They say -- and this has distressed many of them mightily -- that the black tie requirement could be dropped.
And they report that when negotiations between the Met and the club got heated at the end of the season last spring, the club's on-site staff members were denied access to the building to perform clerical duties. Informed of that several months later at their annual dinner in September, members were appalled.
'It was a negotiating ploy of the Metropolitan Opera Association,' said Cecil S. Ashdown, a longtime member, using the Met's formal name. 'They figured they'd get our attention and they did. We thought we in the club were gentlemen; we're not used to these sort of street tactics, gutter tactics.'
Paul M. Montrone, president of the Metropolitan Opera Association, did not return two calls. Peter Clark, a Met spokesman, said that Mr. Volpe would comment only if officers of the club did so first. Dr. Peter J. Linden, the club president, did not return five phone calls, made to his home, office and the club. Although the lockout was apparently brief, the memories linger.
'It was just absurd,' said one disgruntled club member. 'You don't treat major donors that way, and the club is a major donor. Not in terms of Vilar. Alberto Vilar, the largest opera donor in the world, he just gave $25 million.'
The Opera Club's contributions?
'Half a million dollars a year,' the member said. 'They should be nice to us. There has not been a year as far back as I can remember when the club has not made a significant contribution.'
A few words about the membership.
'You can say the club is about 300 people who are passionate about an art form and unbelievably knowledgeable who will sometimes brave a blizzard, a horrible rainstorm, to show up in black tie to see the seventh performance of 'Traviata' in two months.'
'Maybe the Wagner Society has that,' the member added, 'but it is maybe just about Wagner.'
Historically the Opera Club, whose members are nicknamed the Penguins because of their fondness for white tie and who reserve their group of boxes Monday through Friday evenings and for Saturday matinees, has played an important financial role at the Met. During the Depression and later when the Metropolitan could not fill the house, the club's guaranteed block of 60 seats was important. It contributed the signature muted-gold curtain that drapes the stage, and it has helped underwrite performances.
Now, with the house at more than 90 percent capacity and an abundance of wealthy donors, some members say the club is no longer valued by Met management. Their room, however, is. When entertaining, Met management must set up on the Grand Tier or co-opt the Grand Tier Restaurant, which is normally open to the public, or the Belmont Room of the Opera Guild, an organization that raises money for the Met.
The club's arrangement with the Met had been informal. It does not have a lease. Mr. Ashdown, who was formerly on the club's board, said that members make a contribution to the Met each year and close their deals with 'a gentleman's handshake.'
Last winter, things changed.
There was a special meeting, said one member who attended, at which club members were told that their $500,000 contribution to the Met was considered unsatisfactory and had to be increased by a substantial sum.
As negotiations proceeded, there was a dispute about whether the often sizable contributions that club members make directly to the Met -- which earn them mentions in the opera program -- could be counted toward the club's contribution. In the spring, negotiations are said to have broken down.
Ultimately, the club raised mandatory contributions to the Met from approximately $500 to $2,000 a member. (There is an additional $3,000 fee for membership and the use of the club's boxes.) Mr. Ashdown said that not all members are wealthy, and that the price increase caused several to drop out.
It is not easy to be a member of the Opera Club, holding fast to another era's civilities. The dress code is often ridiculed.
'It's absurd,' one high-ranking Met staff member said.
He recalled an Opera Club Ball held on the Grand Tier in 1998 in which Carlos Saúl Menem, then president of Argentina, was honored. 'The invitation said 'White tie with decorations if convenient,' ' he said, laughing.
Originally called the Vaudeville Club, the Opera Club was begun when a group of bon vivants formed an all-male club for after-theater entertaining. Searching for quarters in 1892, they found rooms in the old Metropolitan Opera House at 39th Street and Broadway, which had been closed after a fire. Stanford White, a charter member, designed the club with 25-foot ceilings, gilt-edged mirrors, boxes and a small stage where the men put on their own entertainment, often bawdy.
When the opera house reopened in 1893, the members took a large box on the Grand Tier, seating 60, with a private corridor connecting it to the club. And over the years the stories piled up.
According to club lore, when Enrico Caruso was arrested in 1906 for pinching a woman's behind in the Central Park monkey house, the Metropolitan Opera Club bailed him out.
In one of the most fabled of its fund-raising balls of the 30's, 'A Romantic Pageant of the Second Empire,' according to Town & Country magazine, the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia came as her grandmother, Empress Marie, wife of Czar Alexander II.
When the opera moved to Lincoln Center in 1966, the members chose boxes with an obstructed view to be near their dining quarters. 'Terrible seats,' said Alfred F. Hubay, a former box office manager of the Met, but the members wanted to retain the feeling of the old house.
White tie is now just a Monday evening tradition. Women are allowed as members. The box has 34 seats, stage left. One has to walk through a public space to get to the club, which has the modern look of the opera house, although there is a chandelier and a small bust of the prewar tenor Giovanni Martinelli at the bar.
Mr. Ashdown, who is optimistic about a happy resolution to the imbroglio, still calls the situation 'amorphous.'
'The club can't put out billing for the new season until it's resolved,' he said. 'We can't bill if you don't know if you're going to be there.'
Feelings about opening the club and losing the room's black tie requirement are mixed.
'We resent it,' said the disgruntled member who spoke of Mr. Vilar's donation. 'If the Opera Club is turned into merely a place to park wealthy people who might or might not really enjoy opera, the character of the club will change.'
And the dress code?
'That is a part of who we are, and it makes us who we are. Life has become so informal that it's a last bastion, one of the last bastions of decorum and style.'
Others are more sanguine.
'I myself wouldn't care if the patrons came in mufti, because we would have black tie on and would be going to our club boxes,' Mr. Ashdown said. 'I'd be wearing a real operatic uniform.'
Thus, he attended a recent Monday evening performance of 'Nabucco' in white tie. Thus, the next night, at 'La Bohème,' about two dozen members, mostly male, were in their boxes in black tie, as conspicuous as any other endangered species, old birds of a bygone New York, holding up their side.
At intermission, they walked briskly past those patrons sipping Champagne from plastic flutes to the privacy of their club. When a would-be interloper, after identifying herself as a reporter, asked if a gentleman might show her the room, he declined.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"In Argentina, Tennis Prodigies Are Reviving Dormant Tradition
The 21st century has been a daunting, demoralizing time for Argentina, a time of currency devaluation and deflated expectations. But there is at least one sector of Argentine society in the midst of another golden age: men's tennis.
Seven years ago, the nation that produced Guillermo Vilas and his Davis Cup sidekick José Luis Clerc did not have a man ranked in the top 75. Last week, eight Argentines were in that elite group, none of them older than 27. The leader of the new wave, the smooth-moving Guillermo Coria, is the first Argentine since Vilas to reach No. 3 in the world and is on the shortlist of favorites to win this year's French Open, which begins here on Monday.
'Argentina needs things to be proud of, because when you cannot buy the things you used to buy, you feel very down,' Vilas said in a telephone interview. 'But through sport you can still achieve things that you could not achieve before.'
For the moment, Coria, eighth-ranked David Nalbandian and the other new Argentine stars are still chasing the achievements of Vilas, who won four Grand Slam singles titles.
Vilas's last major victory came in 1979 at the Australian Open. He remains the only Argentine man to win a major.
'I really think these guys are going to win Grand Slams,' Vilas said. 'And for sure they will win the Davis Cup. I don't see how they can't, because there are so many of them, and they are so young.'
Coria has been the most successful clay-court player over the past year, winning 31 of his past 32 matches on the surface that provides the best forum for his grace and fluid counterpunching.
'This is the first time I feel coming into a Grand Slam tournament that I'm prepared to win it,' he said last week.
Coria was named by his father, Oscar. 'I named him for Vilas, because until Vilas came along, tennis in Argentina was only for the upper classes,' Oscar Coria, a coach who now runs his son's tennis academy, said in an e-mail message. 'Guillermo was born on the day that Vilas beat Clerc for the first time in 14 months. I never thought my son would be a champion. But I did have the hope that he would play tennis.'
Coria's best performance in a Grand Slam tournament was reaching the semifinals of the French Open last year. Nalbandian reached the Wimbledon final in 2002 and the United States Open semifinals last year. Although Nalbandian claims to prefer faster surfaces, he, too, is a threat to win at Roland Garros.
Other Argentines have also thrived on clay this spring. Juan Ignacio Chela won in Estoril. Gaston Gaudio reached the final in Barcelona, an event he won in 2002. Mariano Zabaleta has been a consistent threat on clay. And Agustin Calleri beat Juan Carlos Ferrero of Spain, the defending French Open champion, last year in the Davis Cup semifinals on clay in Malaga and upset Andre Agassi this year in Key Biscayne, Fla., on a hardcourt.
That was the same tournament in which another Argentine, 20-year-old Juan Monaco, defeated the former world No. 1 Gustavo Kuerten, the Brazilian who began the South American renaissance in earnest by winning the first of his three French Open titles in 1997. The next year Marcelo Rios of Chile became the first South American to reach No. 1. But it is Argentina's star turn now.
The sobering note is the specter of doping. Chela tested positive for a steroid in 2000, and Coria for nandrolone in 2001, although both were given reduced suspensions after arguing that they had ingested the substances inadvertently.
Argentina has had fine men's players since Vilas, including Martin Jaite, Guillermo Perez-Roldan and Alberto Mancini, but never this many at once.
'Our strength is in numbers,' said Guillermo Cañas, who became the first Argentine to win a Masters Series event when he won the Canadian Open in 2002. 'We all train together and improve off each other.'
The epicenter of the Argentine tennis boom is at two adjacent clubs: the Buenos Aires Lawn Tennis Club and the Vilas Racket Club. Coria and Nalbandian are frequent visitors, although both were reared far outside the capital. Coria is from Venado Tuerto, about a four-hour drive northwest of Buenos Aires. Nalbandian grew up farther north in Unquillo, near Cordoba, Argentina's second-biggest city.
Born less than two weeks apart, Coria and Nalbandian, both 22, have been rivals since they were preteens. Like most of the new wave, they come from middle-class families.
But Coria and Nalbandian benefited from a national program put in place in the 1990's to identify and nurture talent. Vilas initially played a significant role. Though he lasted less than a year, that centralized approach has remained a strength of the system.
Unlike Nalbandian, Coria left the country at age 13, accepting a full scholarship to Patricio Apey's academy in Key Biscayne. Apey previously coached Argentina's greatest women's player, Gabriela Sabatini.
When Coria returned home nearly two years later, he and his peers benefited from the creation in 1997 of the Copa Ericsson, a circuit that provided South Americans with the chance to compete for precious computer points and prize money relatively close to home.
The financial crisis put an end to that tour in 2001, and soccer still matters there much more than tennis. But Vilas can sense that perceptions are shifting.
'Before in Argentina, a tennis player was considered to be a guy who could not play soccer,' Vilas said. 'Now, if you are a tennis player, people say: 'Wow, that's great. What's your ranking?' '
The answer to that question is an increasing source of pride for Argentines, and another Grand Slam title would do even more to improve the national mood.
TENNIS",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Safin Comes Through for Russia In a Davis Cup Title at Home
While Marat Safin and the rest of Russia's Davis Cup team were holding hands and bowing to the crowd inside the Olympic Stadium, José Acasuso of Argentina was crying in his chair as his teammates huddled close and tried to make the best of a difficult situation.
After Argentina tied the Davis Cup final at 2-2 with a victory in the first match Sunday, it needed only a victory by Acasuso, ranked 27th in the world, to secure the title. Argentina was looking for its first championship since it began playing Davis Cup in 1921. It had played in only one other final, in 1981.
Acasuso, with his big serve working, produced plenty of trouble for the more celebrated Safin, who is ranked 26th. What Acasuso could not produce was the shot he needed most.
He slugged a short forehand into the net on match point with Safin ahead by 6-5 in the tie breaker in the fourth set, giving Safin a 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (5) victory.
Acasuso put a hand on his face and staggered forward for the handshake. But Safin took quite a while to reach the net; he was engulfed by Russians intent on celebrating their country's second Davis Cup victory but its first at home. If Safin were not 6 feet 4 inches and 195 pounds, his teammates would certainly have thrown him into the air for quite a while longer.
'This is the best thing that's happened to me in the last two years,' said a Champagne-soaked Safin, who was also part of the winning doubles team Saturday.
In 2002, when Russia won its first Davis Cup, defeating France in Paris, Safin also accounted for 2 points; he won both his singles matches but lost the doubles. Russia has appeared in two other Davis Cup finals, both held in Moscow, losing to Sweden in 1994 and to the United States in 1995.
On Friday, the opening day of this final, Safin lost to David Nalbandian in straight sets and whined at length about the rubberized medium-speed surface that his team had chosen.
After that unconvincing start, it all came together for Safin on Saturday and Sunday in his native Moscow. On Saturday, he teamed with Dmitry Tursunov to overpower Nalbandian and Agustin Calleri, 6-2, 6-3, 6-3, with some phenomenal serving. The match took much less than two hours and gave Russia a 2-1 lead.
'That was a big surprise for us, the way we lost that doubles,' said Argentina's captain, Alberto Mancini.
On Sunday, after Nalbandian dominated Nikolay Davydenko, 6-2, 6-2, 4-6, 6-4, to force a decisive fifth match, Safin swaggered back onto the court and took over.
TENNIS",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Injuries Near Maradona
At least five reporters reported slight injuries yesterday after being hit by pellets from an air rifle fired from the home of the soccer star DIEGO MARADONA in Moreno, Argentina. It was not clear if Maradona himself was the shooter, but reporters at the home said they they saw him carrying a gun. One photographer said he took a photo of Maradona firing.
Maradona, weary of playing and hampered by injuries, said Tuesday that he was quitting Newell's Old Boys of the Argentine League. (AP)  SPORTS PEOPLE: SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"The Prestige HBO Series Is Going South
A PSYCHOTIC serial killer is on the loose in a harsh, soulless city, and the police are stumped. It's a familiar plot from a familiar genre, but among the things that make 'Epitafios' different from the average television thriller is this: it is the first dramatic mini-series that HBO has ever commissioned in Spanish, and it was written and filmed in Latin America by Latin Americans with Latin American viewers in mind.
On the air in the prime-time slot of Sunday night at 10 since mid-August, 'Epitafios' ('Epitaphs' in English) admittedly does feature a world-weary former cop as its main character, along with a few other conventions of the genre. But the 13-episode series has also emphasized some distinctly Latin American plot elements and production strategies with an eye to helping HBO raise its profile in a market that at times has proved difficult to penetrate.
'After years of being HBO's little brother, operating in a much smaller territory in terms of subscribers and economic strength than our domestic side, we needed to initiate a process parallel to what HBO did in the U.S. and generate our own programming,' said Luis Peraza, a vice president of HBO Latin America who also is executive producer of the series.
Latin Americans, though, are raised on soapy telenovelas, which draw huge ratings everywhere they are broadcast, and have little exposure to thrillers other than what comes from the United States. Thus the choice of 'Epitafios' as HBO Latin America's first effort was risky, as the directors and writers responsible for the show knew from the start.
'The Americans do the thriller a lot, and they do it well, whether in films, on television or in cable, and with more resources than we will ever have,' said Alberto Lecchi, a veteran of film and television who is one of two directors of the mini-series, filmed in Argentina with an Argentine cast. 'So the first challenge we had to face was how to tell a story that has been told many times before and still, on the budget we had, glue the viewer to the screen.'
One solution was to give the main characters traits that would be recognizable to viewers in the 20-plus countries where 'Epitafios' is broadcast. Renzo Márquez, the former police detective turned cabdriver who is the protagonist, may be disillusioned, but he and the ex-colleagues he rejoins after his name appears on the killer's hit list are anything but hard-boiled.
'We can't forget that we're in Latin America, with all the self-destructive processes and impulses that go with that fact,' said Jorge Nisco, the other director of the series. 'These are not American or European characters. They are more passionate, with more exacerbated sensibilities, given to emotional explosions and not hiding their sentiments, whether love or fear or euphoria.'
To make 'Epitafios' even more realistic to HBO Latin America's two million or so subscribers, the series takes place in a world where the police 'lack the means to investigate, which forces them to improvise,' said Walter Slavich, one of the scriptwriters. 'This isn't 'C.S.I.,'' he added, meaning that patrol cars run out of gas and forensic experts do not have the money to run tests that could help them crack the case.
Mr. Slavich and his twin brother, Marcelo, the other scriptwriter, also devised some unusual plot twists they hope will hook viewers. 'Epitafios' not only features 'a killer chasing a police detective and not vice versa,' as Mr. Lecchi noted, but also allows the identity of the killer, who has been knocking off teachers, students and administrators at an elite private school, to be revealed at the end of the third episode.
'We wanted to be provocative,' Marcelo Slavich said. 'We know the spectator is going to say, 'How can that be?' It's a different way of doing things, and I think it works. The audience knows the identity of the killer, but not why he kills or how the story turns out. And because the spectator knows who the killer is and the characters don't, we make the spectator an accomplice.'
Once those issues were resolved, the producers then had to grapple with the problem of whether the actors should speak with Argentine accents, which are heavily Italianate in intonation and use some words and grammatical structures that are not common elsewhere. In the end, they decided to have the cast try to speak in what Mr. Peraza called 'neutral Spanish' and to minimize Argentine inflections.
'It was very strange in the beginning, very odd,' said Julio Chávez, who plays Renzo Márquez. 'I didn't think it was really necessary, but then I'm not the producer, so it's not my area. But what I could and did do was to grab the script and try to eliminate as many as possible of the usages that felt peculiar to me.'
Similarly, though the setting of 'Epitafios' is clearly Buenos Aires, with scenes set in identifiable local landmarks like Recoleta Cemetery, where Evita Perón is buried, the city's name is never once mentioned. 'We don't refer to the place because we want to tell a story that could take place in any Latin American metropolis,' Mr. Nisco explained.
As the series progresses, a brassy, burned-out detective named Marina Segal, played by Cecilia Roth, emerges as Renzo Márquez's bête noire turned ally. Ms. Roth, probably best-known outside Argentina as one of the muses of the Spanish film director Pedro Almodóvar, hasn't worked much in television in recent years, but said she was attracted by the novelty of the 'Epitafios' project and the challenges it presented.
'We felt a little bit like lab rats in an experiment, in that we were aware that we were doing something new and very different,' she said.
HBO Latin America is not seen in Spain, but there is already interest there and in other European countries in showing 'Epitafios' on cable or broadcast channels. The show's producers recognize that in the United States the English-language audience that watches 'The Sopranos' and 'Six Feet Under' is a very hard sell. But they hope to reach the booming Hispanic market directly through the network's Spanish-language channel, HBO Latino.
'We don't have a deal yet, but we are in discussions with HBO Latino,' Mr. Peraza said. 'HBO domestic is more difficult for anything not spoken in English, but HBO Latino is very interested and we are very optimistic. Whether sooner or later, we are expecting some remuneration from our investment.'
So far critics and audiences have embraced the series. There may even be an 'Epitafios II.' But even if there is not a second season, Mr. Chávez already sees a spillover effect, both into network television here and across borders.
And regardless of the fate of 'Epitafios,' HBO plans to plunge ahead with more original programming from other countries in Latin America. The network has already commissioned a pair of mini-series to be made in Brazil. The first, based on a character created by the Brazilian novelist Rubem Fonseca, is tentatively scheduled to go on the air a year from now and will give Spanish-speakers a glimpse of their giant Portuguese-speaking neighbor.
'This is the good side of globalization, one that offers us the possibility for growth,' Ms. Roth said. 'It is a good way for us to come together but at the same time see how we are different. The English-speaking world has been doing this sort of thing for a long time, but in Latin America, we have been distanced from each other. So this is an important step forward.'
TELEVISION",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Maradona Tested Positive, Report Says
An Argentine news agency reported today that police tests on Diego Maradona were positive for cocaine use as the soccer star remained isolated in a jail cell.
The 30-year-old Maradona, arrested Friday with two other men, was questioned for three hours by Federal Judge Amelia Berraz de Vidal. Later in the day, he was again taken before the judge, this time with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Meanwhile, the goverment stripped Maradona of his title as presidential adviser and sports ambassador for President Carlos Saul Menem.
Menem, speaking in Santa Rosa, described Maradona as a ""sick boy"" who ""must be helped to rid himself of this vice that is destroying him morally and materially.""
Maradona, the best-known soccer player in the world, was held at the federal court building after his arrest at an alleged cocaine sales and distribution center.
The national news agency Noticias Argentinas cited court sources as saying urine tests performed on Maradona and two men arrested with him indicated that all three showed signs of cocaine use.
The report could not immediately be confirmed, but Interior Minister Julio Mera Figueroa said in a broadcast interview that he had received ""unofficial reports"" that Maradona had the drug in his system when he was arrested.
Under Argentina's recently stiffened drug laws, a person found guilty of possessing small amounts of cocaine for purposes of consumption can be sentenced to between one month and two years in prison.
Maradona, the captain of Argentina's national team and of defending Italian League champion Naples, was suspended from soccer on March 29 after testing positive for cocaine following a match on March 17 against Bari. The suspension was set at 15 months and extended worldwide by FIFA, soccer's governing body. But Maradona continues to draw 60 percent of his $2 million annual salary from Naples.
On Friday, Maradona and two other men -- identified by police as Ricardo Ayala and Jorge Perez -- were arrested after the police raided an apartment in the middle-class neighborhood of Caballito, four miles from downtown Buenos Aires.
The apartment, owned by Ayala, had been under surveillance for three months, police said. Maradona had been seen entering the apartment on Thursday, officers said.
SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"A Game That Argentina Has Been Waiting For
THE arcing 3-pointer from the left wing was settling in the net when Manu Ginobili landed awkwardly on his right ankle, then crumpled to the floor and onto his back. Good shot, bad timing. His team, Argentina, was in the second quarter of a dogfight with Germany in the semifinals of the world basketball championships.
A chance for gold and a guaranteed medal -- Argentina's first in these championships in 52 years -- was at stake. As for Ginobili, less than a month away from his first training camp with the San Antonio Spurs, an injury in the final weekend of the 11-day championships would be the last thing he would want to carry from Indianapolis.
'Second-degree sprain, I think,' Pepe Sanchez, the Argentine point guard, would report of his backcourt mate. 'He's gone to the hospital for X-rays. I don't know if he'll play tomorrow. It hurts. I think he'd feel really bad if we'd lost, but we didn't let him down.'
As it turned out, Argentina, this tournament's strongest unit, banded even closer without its best player, rallying to defeat Dirk Nowitzki and Germany, 86-80, yesterday at Conseco Fieldhouse. The final beckons today against Yugoslavia, which overcame a 9-point halftime deficit and defeated the upstart New Zealand, 89-78, creating a showdown with Argentina -- not the gold medal game people here thought they'd see, but clearly the one with the two best teams.
Argentine fans celebrated wildly in the final seconds. Tears streamed down the face of Alejandro Montecchia, a 6-foot-1 point guard who made several big plays down the stretch. Awaiting their country's players in the mixed zone area, Argentine journalists hugged and cried.
'The journalists told us that they are dancing in the streets back home,' Sanchez said, skeptically.
Basketball, to begin with, is not the most popular sport in Argentina, and the country has been plagued with a devastated economy. 'It won't help the economy,' said Fernando Duro, an assistant coach. 'But even for people who don't like basketball, maybe when they hear it will make them feel good.'
Argentina had already scratched out history in these championships, as the first team to upend the N.B.A. professionals from the United States. Much as this was big news for Americans -- maybe the only news, given the apathy this tournament has generated in Indianapolis and around the country -- Argentina Coach Ruben Magnano said, 'Our euphoria lasted only 15 minutes.'
With the American mystique shattered, the gold became the goal. These Argentine players, most of whom play professional ball in Spain, feature a core of nine players who have been together for eight years. Sanchez and Ginobili, both 25, have been playing together since they were 12. 'This team is a family, like brothers,' Sanchez said.
Sometimes brothers have to go their own way. Ginobili's injury so close to the opening of N.B.A. training camps underscores the risks many of the American pros have been increasingly reluctant to take when deciding whether to play for their country. It raises the question -- as well as some hope for the United States after its pro pickup team lost consecutive games and failed to win a medal -- of whether the countries that appear to have caught up to the United States will be able to count on their best players participating as their bank accounts fatten in the N.B.A.
Already, there are signs of how the good life affects one's nationalistic pride. Canada came here without its three best players, all N.B.A. players who begged off. China, of all teams, was without one of its frontline stars here, after Wang Zhi Zhi, who played with Dallas last season, ran afoul of the Chinese basketball delegation for skipping training camp for this tournament. After one disheartening game, Yao Ming, about to become the Houston Rockets' prize rookie center, stormed off the court without his team in tow, not your customary Chinese sporting behavior.
Here, and now, the Argentines and Yugoslavs are psyched and primed to be their countries' first gold medalists in an international competition that included N.B.A. players. Vlade Divac, who had previously retired from his national team, unretired because he correctly believed that the United States was vulnerable and that Yugoslavia could defend the gold medal it won four years ago in Athens, when N.B.A. players boycotted because of a homefront labor dispute.
'It's not something that someone's going to say -- 'I don't want to play,' ' Sanchez said of the Argentine team. 'If you don't want to play, you'd better have an excuse.'
He conceded that possible stardom in the N.B.A. might complicate life for the gifted Ginobili, but if he knows his old friend, that was the last thing on his mind as he rode to the hospital yesterday. 'If there's any way Manu can play, he will,' Sanchez said. 'We have all waited for this next game our whole lives.'
Sports of The Times",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"A Meat Eater Bigger Than T. Rex Is Unearthed
A new dinosaur species, one of the largest known carnivorous dinosaurs, has emerged from the red sandstone of Patagonia, in Argentina, where reptilian giants seem to have thrived 100 million years ago.
Paleontologists reported yesterday that they had found the fossils of seven to nine individuals of a species they are naming Mapusaurus roseae.
An analysis of the bones showed that an adult exceeded 40 feet in length, which the discoverers said was slightly larger than specimens of both its close relative, Giganotosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus rex. Some scientists think that a Spinosaurus species from North Africa is the largest meat-eating dinosaur, but that is still debated.
The discovery was made in sediments of a 100-million-year-old water channel at a site 15 miles south of Plaza Huincul, Argentina. It was reported at a news conference in Plaza Huincul and described in the French journal Geodiversitas.
Rodolfo A. Coria of the Carmen Funes Museum in Plaza Huincul and Philip J. Currie of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, co-leaders of the excavations, said they found hundreds of Mapusaurus bones in the sediments. Nearly all of the bones were scattered, and not in their original skeletal arrangements.
The skull is lighter than that of Giganotosaurus, but with the sharp, blade-shaped teeth that are the trademark of predatory dinosaurs. One of the most intriguing bones, the paleontologists said, was the longest known fibula, or shin bone, for any meat-eating dinosaur.
The fossils were excavated over five years, beginning in 1995, before scientists realized they were dealing with a new species of giant carnivores, members of the broader meat-eating carcharodontosaurids, Dr. Currie said.
'Preparation later revealed that skeletal parts represented more than a single individual,' the two scientists wrote in the journal. They estimated that the dinosaurs ranged in size from slender juveniles 18 feet long to a robust adult of at least 40 feet long.
The scientists said Mapusaurus apparently lived at the same time and place as the largest known dinosaur, the 125-foot-long Argentinosaurus plant eater that Mapusaurus presumably hunted. The genus name Mapusaurus is derived from the word for earth among the Mapuches, the native people of western Patagonia.
The discovery, along with other recent ones in Canada, Mongolia and the United States, appeared to support an emerging interpretation of the hunting behavior of predatory dinosaurs. Instead of being solitary hunters, as once thought, they may have operated in groups.
'The presence of so many animals in one quarry,' Dr. Currie said in a statement released by the University of Alberta, 'suggests that they were living together in a pack at the time leading up to their catastrophic death.'
Correction:  May 1, 2006, Monday  An article in Science Times on April 18 about the discovery of a species of dinosaur in Argentina included an incorrect reference to a fossilized bone described by paleontologists as the longest known fibula for any meat-eating dinosaur. The fibula is the calf bone, not the shinbone.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Hockeyroos Don't Bend and Don't Break, and They Win
The train that winds into Olympic Park was slowly easing by the hockey stadium earlier this week when a boy sprung from his seat like a trick snake out of a can.
Sticking his painted face against the window, he was searching the empty field in the distance. 'Where are the Hockeyroos?,' he asked. Better yet, what are they? At first, the name sounds like a cuddly team mascot or the title of a Disney film.
But the Hockeyroos are neither. They are a team that is as tough as a hammer's head and very much real. This is the Australian women's field hockey team, a group of unflinching, unrelenting players who have become their nation's most dominate international team. With a following that goes well beyond just a cult niche, they have left their country dizzy with their success over the last decade years.
Tonight, a swarm of chanting Aussies packed the hockey stadium for their beloved team's gold-medal match against Argentina. And by the end of their 3-1 victory, after the Hockeyroos had dismantled their opponent's will with their deceptive stick skills, opportunistic scoring and aggressive attack, they were free to enjoy the buildup to their gold medal.
While the crowd counted down the last 10 seconds in a crescendo, the Hockeyroos embraced each other, linked arms like papers dolls and started celebrating. The Olympic favorites -- a team that has now won three gold medals in a row -- could finally feel relief.
'I must say there was some tension,' said Rechelle Hawkes. 'There were a few girls who were nervous. It was pretty quiet before we came out. But once it started, we all came together.'
Now, some of them will be going their own way.Richard Charlesworth, the coach and the adored taskmaster who pushed his team to be perfectionists, but was visibly moved as he watched his players bask in their moment, is expected to depart.
'Afterward, he just stood up briefly and said he was really, really proud of us,' said Jenny Morris. 'He had some tears in his eyes.'
Others were waiting for the emotional impact of the night to hit them. At age 32, Hawkes is retiring from competition with three gold medals, equaling the total of Australian icon Dawn Fraser.
'To be mentioned in the same breath as Dawn Fraser is amazing, but I couldn't have done it without this team,' Hawkes said. 'Winning in Atlanta was special, but this is the best way to go out. I'm really just over the moon.'
She was among the many. As the team completed a victory lap around the field, the steel-framed stadium trembled with the roar, but perhaps the most touching display of admiration came from Argentina. The silver medalists lined up in two parallel rows, formed a bridge with their hands, and then ushered the Aussies through their gauntlet as a show of respect.
'What we achieved was important,' said goalkeeper Mariela Antoniska, who endured a flurry of 17 attempts, saved a remarkable 14 of the shots but wept after the game. 'I'm disappointed, but Australia is a very good team.'
The Aussies have been excelling for years. Under Charlesworth, the team's reputation as intimidators has flourished. They are not dirty, but hard-nosed. If they are hurt, his players refuse to show it. If they are afraid, they learn to hide it. Tonight, the Aussies were anxious beneath their fagade but shook it off in the opening minutes.
Although they missed some early shots, some of which glanced off the goalposts, the Australians were on the attack. Nine minutes into the game, Alyson Annan slipped in front of the net and used her stick like a pool cue. Faced with a thicket of legs and sticks, she poked the ball past a diving Antoniska.
Just before the first half, the Aussies took a 2-0 lead after they converted a penalty corner opportunity into a goal. This time, a quick-thinking Juliet Haslam was in the right place to turn a deflection off the post into a goal.
Instead of allowing Argentina to get back into the game, Australia opened the second half by taking advantage of another penalty corner situation. Three minutes into play, Morris reached out and slashed the ball in between defenders and into the net from the top of the circle. Ahead 3-0, the Aussies were revealing just how dominating they have come to be, and why they are the pride of their country.
'I don't know if anything prepares you for the emotion of this,' said Morris, who had difficulty speaking without getting emotional. 'This is a bloody great night. To win a gold here is just amazing.'
In the process, the rest of the world came to discover the answer to, What's a Hockeyroo?
SYDNEY 2000: FIELD HOCKEY",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Fossil Found of a Big Bird That Kermit Wouldn't Like
Fossils of the largest known bird, an extinct flightless predator with a skull the size of a horse's and a menacing beak like an eagle's, have been discovered in Argentina, paleontologists reported last week.
The big bird, which stood about 10 feet tall and probably weighed 400 pounds, was fleet of foot and able to chase down and devour rodents, reptiles and small mammals 15 million years ago on the plains of Patagonia. Not for nothing are its closely related species, a group known as phorusrhacids, more commonly called the 'terror birds.'
Such avian giants evolved and prospered in the time of South America's total isolation from other continents. All of these birds were apparently flightless, and most of them ate only plants. Until now, the only known species of carnivorous terror birds averaged five to nine feet tall and had relatively small heads.
Paleontologists said the new fossil discovery might force them to reconsider previous ideas that the terror birds that evolved the biggest bodies were significantly slower runners.
'This is not only the largest bird ever found,' said Luis M. Chiappe, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. 'It also tells us the idea we have heard and repeated over the years may not be entirely valid.'
Dr. Chiappe and Sara Bertelli, also at the Los Angeles museum, described the find in the current issue of the journal Nature. They said the skull, more than 28 inches long, was virtually complete and remarkably different from and at least 10 percent bigger than skulls of related species. The researchers inferred the bird's running ability from its leg and foot bones.
'We conclude that reconstructions of the skull of gigantic phorusrhacids on the basis of smaller relatives are unwarranted,' the two paleontologists wrote, 'and that the long-established correlation between their corpulence and reduced cursorial agility needs to be re-evaluated.'
The skull and limb bones were found two years ago by a high school student, Guillermo Aguirre-Zabala. They were embedded in 15-million-year-old rock outcrops near the railroad station in his home village, Comallo, Argentina, which is east of Bariloche, where the fossils, as yet unnamed, are kept at a paleontological museum.
Before the discovery, knowledge of the skulls of large-bodied terror birds was limited to fragmentary specimens collected more than two decades ago. So scientists tended to interpret and illustrate the heads of the bigger birds as scaled-up versions of the better-known smaller species. These smaller cousins were about two to two and a half feet tall, big for birds but hardly the stature of the predatory giants.
In their examination of the new specimen, Dr. Chiappe and Dr. Bertelli noted many distinctive skull traits, particularly the shape and proportions of the face, a lower and longer beak and a flat cranial roof.
Even more revealing, they said, were the long, slender leg bone and the foot bones fused together. The foot bones bore a superficial resemblance to the three-toed rhea, a living flightless bird. The newfound terror bird was indeed big, they surmised, but 'substantially swifter' than had been assumed for other enormous species of its group.
'It may not have been as fast as an ostrich,' Dr. Chiappe said, referring to the speediest of living flightless birds, able to reach speeds around 45 m.p.h. 'But it clearly was a land bird that could run fast.'
And with this ability, these big birds appear to have become the top predator of the continent for millions of years. Other fossil evidence shows that the phorusrhacids lived the fast life between 60 million and 2 million years ago, passing from the scene after the emergence of the Panamanian land bridge ended South America's isolation.",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Race Crash Kills 16 in Argentina
LEAD: A race car plunged into a crowd of spectators after one of its tires exploded today, killing at least 16 persons and injuring more than a dozen others, the police said.
A race car plunged into a crowd of spectators after one of its tires exploded today, killing at least 16 persons and injuring more than a dozen others, the police said.
Authorities said the car, a Dodge driven by Edgardo Caparros of Argentina, was in a race for modified stock cars outside this city, 375 miles south of Buenos Aires.
Witnesses said Caparros, who was hospitalized, was going about 125 miles an hour when the tire blew and the vehicle overturned. It rolled into a crowd of onlookers, including families who had been picnicking beside the race course, a closed-off section of highway.
The race was suspended following the accident.
SPORTS NEWS BRIEFS",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Argentina Offers Glimpse at What May Be to Come
Argentina rested several of its stars, but not its ambition, on Wednesday night. It won its group with a 0-0 draw against the Netherlands that suggested that the future could be every bit as encouraging as the present at the World Cup.
It said much about Argentina's prodigious depth -- and its inviting chances of winning this and future championships -- that the luminous young forwards Lionel Messi and Carlos Tevez could not get into the starting lineup until this final match of group play.
Argentina, the group winner on goal differential, will play Mexico in the Round of 16, while the Netherlands will face Portugal. Both of Wednesday's opponents had already advanced with two previous victories, so Argentina Coach José Pekerman could afford a cautionary approach in resting his usual starting forwards, Hernán Crespo and Javier Saviola.
Each had received a yellow card, and a second would have meant a suspension against Mexico. The Netherlands rested five players for the same prudent reason. For Argentina, the match became a showcase for Messi and Tevez, and they proved to be incandescent if not victorious replacements.
'The only thing we lacked were goals,' Tevez said. 'We did everything right.'
The game was not completely satisfying. Argentina dominated early, then grew vulnerable during a late flurry by the Netherlands. But Tevez was named the star of the game, and Pekerman called for a tolerant assessment of his young stars in a game in which the final score did not quite match anticipation and expectation.
Both Tevez and Messi had scored earlier, in a 6-0 rout of Serbia and Montenegro.
'Football is easy and football is difficult at the same time,' Pekerman said. 'It's easy to praise, but we must also be patient when everything doesn't turn out the way we want it to.'
Stocky and bullish at 22, Tevez was the star of Argentina's gold-medal-winning team at the 2004 Athens Olympics. He moves forward with a muscular doggedness made evident by a chipped front tooth. On Wednesday, he kept threatening to score until the final whistle.
Tevez cracked a left-footed shot from outside the penalty area that knuckled just wide in the first half. He coaxed a yellow card for Dutch forward Dirk Kuyt with an apparent flop that nearly brought an own goal for the Netherlands in the 29th minute. He blasted another late shot that was saved, and in second-half injury time, he shouldered a ball down in the penalty area and fired high.
Messi, who will turn 19 on Saturday, possesses such talent that he has inspired T-shirts calling him 'Messi-ah of Football.' In Hamburg, a banner featuring his likeness is draped 20 stories down the side of a hotel. According to news accounts, Nike and Adidas are in court battling over his endorsement of their sportswear.
Wednesday was Messi's first start in three months, since he sustained a thigh injury with Barcelona, his club team. His speed, acceleration, touch and control were on elegant display. He feathered passes. He ran at four Dutch defenders and hammered a shot from 25 yards that was saved. And, as did Tevez, he tracked back to midfield to win the ball.
Messi's effort was such that when he left the game in the 69th minute, he drew a standing ovation from his idol, Diego Maradona, who led Argentina to the World Cup title in 1986.
'He can put up with anything, even with the savior tag that people are already attaching,' Maradona said to Agence France-Presse before the World Cup. 'The ball remains on the upper part of his foot like it's glued. He's got another gear, and the best part is that he hasn't reached his peak.'
Messi has a patch on his cleats that says, The Hand of God, a reference to Maradona's infamous hand-ball goal against England during the 1986 World Cup. But don't call Messi the next Maradona, said Carlos Valderrama, the retired Colombian midfielder who is a television commentator here.
'He's his own player,' Valderrama said. 'Very unique. Very quick feet. So young.'
Messi moved with his family to Barcelona as a 13-year-old to escape Argentina's crushing financial crisis, according to the Web site of FIFA, soccer's world governing body. He was signed to Barcelona's youth club, and because of his diminutive size, he was given growth hormones, according to FIFA. Even now, Messi, whom FIFA lists at 5 feet 7 inches and 143 pounds, is known as el Pulga, the Flea, a perfect nickname for the irritation he brings to Argentina's opponents.
'It shows we have so many quality players, that we can replace other ones and we still have a good chance,' Messi said of Wednesday's match.
SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"An Argentine With Literary Roots in Singer and Roth
As a child, Marcelo Birmajer went each summer with his parents to Miramar, a beach resort that is for the Jews of Argentina what the Catskills once were for the Jews of New York. There, his father would tell stories about the people who paraded by as the family sat on the sand or, as dusk fell each day, relate the plot of whatever novel he happened to be reading.
Today, Mr. Birmajer (pronounced BEER-mocker) is one of Argentina's most prolific and praised young writers of fiction. But he traces both the birth of his vocation and his desire to portray his country's Jewish community, at about 300,000 the largest in Latin America, back to those summer days and the simple fact that 'my father, an accountant for the state gas company, was a great storyteller.'
At 38, Mr. Birmajer has already written more than 20 books, many focusing on life here in the Jewish barrio, known as El Once. The grandson of Romanian, Polish, Lithuanian and Syrian immigrants, he grew up in the neighborhood, which he describes as a fascinating blend of Ashkenazic and Sephardic traditions, with Jews rich and poor, religious and secular, living side by side.
'Not only was I born in Once, but the studio where I still write is there,' he said in Spanish during an interview last month at the studio. 'It's a place that I prefer not just for reasons of class, but for metaphysical or mythical reasons as well. I like to just walk around and see the ebullience of commerce, the money changing hands, to eat in the Sephardic restaurants. It's the place that has the vitamins that allow me to write.'
In one of his most recent depictions of Once and its inhabitants, Mr. Birmajer collaborated on the script for the movie 'Lost Embrace.' [It opened in New York on Jan. 28.] A bittersweet comedy directed by Daniel Burman, the film won awards at festivals in Spain and Cuba for its script even before shooting began. At the Berlin International Film Festival last year, 'Lost Embrace' won the Silver Bear for best film and its star, Daniel Hendler, was named best actor.
Mr. Hendler plays Ariel Makaroff, who finds himself simultaneously dissatisfied with Argentina's ceaseless economic crises, his own love life and his job running a lingerie shop with his mother in a small mall. He seeks to emigrate, not to Israel, but to Europe, hoping to use the Polish passport to which he is entitled through his grandmother, who fled the Holocaust.
'Marcelo was a childhood friend of my older brother,' said Mr. Burman, the film's director, who wrote the screenplay with Mr. Birmajer, 'and though I hadn't seen him in a long time, I had read his books and knew that we shared the same artistic universe. We are both fascinated with everyday life and believe that inside even the most ordinary-appearing person is an interesting story just waiting to be told.'
A recurring character in Mr. Birmajer's fiction is Javier Mossen, a sexually voracious and sometimes repugnant journalist whom some regard as Mr. Birmajer's alter ego. In three acclaimed short story collections, together known as 'Stories of Married Men,' Mossen manages to transform nearly every contact with a woman into an erotically charged encounter.
In stories like 'An Interview With Kissinger,' Mr. Birmajer also uses Mossen to comment humorously or satirically on the worlds of politics and journalism. Mr. Birmajer is 'one of several younger writers who have really moved in a nonconfrontational manner away from the baroque style of García Márquez, Vargas Llosa and Fuentes,' the translator Edith Grossman said. 'His is a more straightforward kind of narrative, something entirely different from the older generation.'
In a country whose modern literary tradition is based largely on fabulists and experimentalists like Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar, critics do not seem to know quite what to make of Mr. Birmajer. So he often finds himself being compared to writers who are Jewish and American, 'a sort of Woody Allen of the Pampas' and 'David Mamet in Spanish,' as he has been described. And though Mr. Birmajer admits the importance of American Jewish writers and comedians like Bernard Malamud and Jerry Seinfeld in molding his work, he cites others as primary influences, including Philip Roth but especially Isaac Bashevis Singer.
'Even though by time and circumstance I am closer to Roth, if I had to choose a single master, without a doubt it would be Singer,' he said. 'I am absolutely devoted to him, have all of his books and have translated some into Spanish. He is a disenchanted mystic and a seer, the son and grandson of rabbis who knows the Torah by heart but is won over by the profane, not the sacred.'
Some of Mr. Birmajer's short stories and novels, including 'Being Human and Other Misfortunes' and 'Not So Different,' have recently been translated into German, Italian, Portuguese and Dutch. Thus far, though, none of his work has appeared in Hebrew, and only one of his short stories, titled 'A Christmas Carol,' has been translated into English.
In the story, Mossen, a nonobservant Jew, drifts from one Christmas Eve party to another here, hoping to find and seduce Raquel, a woman he has long lusted after. On the street, he rescues his Uncle Boris from a group of skinhead punks, only to have his Orthodox uncle reproach him for not practicing their faith.
'It's really a knockout, with that poignant, bittersweet quality you find in Yiddish writing,' said Ms. Grossman, who did the translation, 'and brilliant in the way he finds a link between a failed love affair and what is going on in the streets.'
Besides screenplays, Mr. Birmajer has also tried his hand at novels, children's books, essays, comic books, erotica, literary criticism and journalism. But he says his favorite literary form is the short story.
'What I like the most, is to sit around the fire, so to speak, and tell a story, like my father did when I was a kid,' said Mr. Birmajer, who is married and has two children. 'The story of Solomon, of David, of Pesach, the Torah itself, all are stories with a beginning, middle and end. So all this stuff of postmodernism and literary experimentation and vanguards aren't worth a shekel to me. I never experiment with structure.'
Though Mr. Birmajer has also written a pamphlet on 'Being Jewish in the 21st Century,' he has never referred directly -- by design, he said -- to the 1994 bombing attack on a Jewish community center here, the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in the world since World War II.
Yet, he said, 'it is always present, in the form of an atmosphere in which something can always happen.'
'It is a theme that seems to me, like the Shoah, that you end up bastardizing if you take away its sacrosanct nature and use it as a theme for fiction,' he said.
As an Argentine who is Jewish, 'I have felt anti-Semitism all my life,' Mr. Birmajer continued. 'But to the extent that I have been successful, Judaism has been one of the foundations of my career. It's a paradoxical situation: anti-Semitism exists here, but at the same time, this country is livable and quite sweet.'",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Stretched to Limit, Germany Ousts Argentina
The most anticipated match of the World Cup recovered from a tedious start to provide a dramatic finish on Friday as Germany defeated Argentina, 4-2, on penalty kicks. Hardly anyone finds a shootout to be a satisfying conclusion, but the tautness served to rescue a quarterfinal that was often uninspiring and fractious.
The match had remained tied at 1-1 through 30 minutes of overtime, as neither squad truly measured up to the importance of a confrontation between two World Cup favorites. Afterward, a 90-second scuffle broke out between the teams, bringing a sour end to the afternoon on the field. But outside, hundreds of thousands of German supporters poured into the streets of the capital to celebrate a victory that moved the home team into a semifinal match Tuesday against Italy.
The Italians easily defeated Ukraine, 3-0, with two goals from Luca Toni, in the day's other quarterfinal match in Hamburg.
'The team has grown over the last six weeks, and it is a team which is saying they can be world champions,' Jürgen Klinsmann, the 41-year-old German manager, said afterward.
The game extended to penalty kicks after Argentine defender Roberto Ayala scored on a header off a corner kick in the 49th minute. German forward Miroslav Klose tied the score with his own header in the 80th minute, giving him a tournament-leading five goals.
Finally, Germany prevailed on the instinct and reaction of goalkeeper Jens Lehmann, who blocked two penalty kicks in the shootout.
Germany appeared confident and decisive on all four of its penalty kicks taken by Oliver Neuville, Michael Ballack, Lukas Podolski and Tim Borowski. The shots eluded the substitute Argentine goalkeeper Leonardo Franco -- who entered in the 71st minute after an injury to the starter, Roberto Abbondanzieri -- and who seemed slightly awed by his first appearance in the tournament.
Lehmann, on the other hand, seemed self-assured, bouncing in front of goal, arms raised, making himself appear larger than his 6-foot-3-inch height.
Klinsmann's decision to start Lehmann in the World Cup ahead of Oliver Kahn had been controversial here. Kahn was named most valuable player of the 2002 World Cup, and he publicly expressed displeasure with his bench role. But few are questioning Klinsmann's choice now. Before Friday's shootout, Kahn approached Lehmann with encouraging words and shook his hand in support.
Lehmann guessed correctly but could not stop Argentina's first penalty kick, by forward Julio Cruz. But on the next attempt he dived to his left and smothered a weak bouncer from Ayala.
On Argentina's third penalty kick, Lehmann got a hand on the shot by midfielder Maxi Rodríguez, but could not keep the ball out of the net. On Argentina's fourth attempt, he dived to his left yet again and punched away the left-footed kick of midfielder Esteban Cambiasso, rendering Germany's fifth kick unnecessary.
The crowd of 72,000 erupted at Olympic Stadium and Germany's players rushed from midfield and the sideline to pile on Lehmann in celebration. Cambiasso broke into inconsolable tears.
Players and coaches disagreed about the brief scuffle that followed. It appeared that Leandro Cufre, an Argentine reserve, got into an argument with two German players. Cufre was red-carded even though the match was over. Players from both sides then began pushing, and the German assistant coach Oliver Bierhoff got into a shoving match with the Argentines.
Klinsmann and Argentina Coach José Pekerman played down the scuffle, blaming the intense emotions surrounding the game.
Pekerman also said he planned to quit as head coach. 'It is over, the chapter is closed,' he said. He will be left to explain why he never inserted the 19-year-old sensation Lionel Messi into the game. Argentina also played the final 48 minutes without its playmaker, Juan Riquelme, who was not sharp and who was substituted for in the 72nd minute.
Argentina played the first half with a dreary patience, apparently trying to draw the larger German defense away from goal and hoping to use its speed and nimbleness for a clinical finish. Meanwhile, Germany started forcefully but crudely, unable to string together more than a few passes.
Klinsmann cautioned his players to remain calm, but their serenity was shattered in the 49th minute, when Argentina did what Germany was supposed to do -- dominate on set pieces.
Riquelme lifted a corner kick and Ayala leapt in front of Klose, who is two inches taller, and headed the ball powerfully from eight yards. Lehmann could only reach futilely as Argentina took a 1-0 lead.
The pace of the game then picked up, with Germany desperate to tie the score. In the 64th minute, after Germany won a corner kick, the Argentine goalkeeper Abbondanzieri went up for the ball, but it appeared he was kneed in the lower stomach or groin by Klose.
The injury persisted, and Abbondanzieri left the field on a stretcher in the 71st minute. He was replaced by Franco, who had not played a minute in this World Cup.
Ballack was limping badly through the end of the second half and could barely move during the overtime, even going to the sideline for several minutes for treatment of cramps. 'I would have gone out, but we already made three substitutions,' Ballack said. 'So I had to tough it out.'
In the 75th minute, Germany sent on the midfielder Borowski, and he made an immediate impact. In the 80th minute, after a throw-in, Ballack crossed to Borowski near the top of the penalty area. Borowski deftly headed the ball to a charging Klose, who got inside Juan Pablo Sorín, Argentina's captain, and drove a header just inside the left post to tie the score at 1-1.
'Small things will decide that sort of game,' Klinsmann said. 'They scored on a corner kick out of nothing. We went after them. We always knew we could come back.'
And thanks to the resolve of Lehmann in goal, Germany prevailed on the nervous and theatrical caprice of penalty kicks.
'For a coach and the entire team, it's a thriller, like a Hitchcock movie,' said Klinsmann, who lives in Southern California. 'Obviously you're the happiest person in the world if you win and the saddest if you lose.'
Rounding Out the Final Four  Jere Longman breaks down today's quarterfinal games. The winners will join Germany and Italy in the World Cup semifinals.
Brazil VS. France  The Brazil-France match is a repeat of the 1998 World Cup final, in which France defeated Brazil, 3-0. Zinédine Zidane scored twice in that match for France, and he has said he will retire after this World Cup. France played unimpressively to start this tournament but has rebounded in its past two games. The speed of wing Franck Ribéry has brought energy to the French team, and Zidane can still control a game from his position inmidfield. The French are aging, though, and it remains to be seen whether they can maintain a top level in consecutive matches. Brazil's Ronaldo suffered a seizure before the 1998 match and played listlessly in the final. Although he has appeared to be overweight and lacking fitness in this tournament, he has scored three goals to become the World Cup's career scoring leader with 15 goals. Brazil has not yet hit on all cylinders, but it remains the favorite.
England VS. Portugal  England has drawn the ire of FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter for its lack of assertiveness in attack, but England Manager Sven-Goran Eriksson seems determined to keep Wayne Rooney as a lone striker. The English have struggled mightily in this tournament and are trying to reach the semifinals for only the third time. The other two occasions were 1966 (when they won) and 1990. Right back Gary Neville is scheduled to return from injury. Portugal is coached by Luiz Felipe Scolari, who was Brazil's coach when it ousted England in the 2002 quarterfinals on the way to bringing Brazil its fifth World Cup title. Portugal will have to play without two midfielders, Deco and Costinha, who received red cards against the Netherlands in the Round of 16.
SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"The Inevitable Finally Happens
IT was inevitable from the day the celebrity pros from the United States embarked on a global strategy and hung the first racks of jerseys abroad that said, 'Buy me.'
Beginning with Barcelona, the basketball wannabes of the admiring world collected their autographs and took their pictures. They later lost their fear and established a plan. The Lithunians just missed in Sydney. The Brazilians got to overtime last summer at the Goodwill Games. Nobody remains infallible forever. In the case of the N.B.A., over a startlingly short decade in the international arena, supremacy gave way to superiority and then to survival and finally, last night, submission.
'For me, the game tonight, Argentina should be congratulated,' George Karl, now the first coach to lose with a lineup of millionaire stars, softly told the news media after the N.B.A.'s run of 58 victories from the 1992 Olympics came to a dizzying end. 'The excuses for the American team are for all of you to write.'
No Shaq, no Kobe, no McGrady, but please, no excuses, for more shocking than the score -- Argentina 87, U.S.A. 80 -- was how it was achieved. For all the talk of how the Europeans and Asians and South Americans now have game, the Argentines surely did not beat the United States last night at its own game. They won with the passing and precision you would have found in an Indiana country high school gymnasium with wooden backboards 40 years ago. They beat the United States at a game it abandoned -- for better or worse, and let that be open for lengthy discussion -- a long time ago.
In the second quarter, when the early Argentine lead ballooned to a hair-raising 20 points, they planted the seeds to this historic first by conducting a virtual lay-up drill.
'We kept switching when we weren't supposed to switch,' Andre Miller would say later. 'We were lost on defense.'
Ironically, the historic first loss was administered not by a team featuring legitimate N.B.A. players, but by a finely tuned and well-acquainted unit conducted by a former Temple point guard, Pepe Sanchez, lacking the jump shot necessary for the N.B.A. The best Argentine player, a stunningly fluid left-handed shooting guard named Emanuel Ginobili, is headed to San Antonio this fall, and he is likely to camp there a very long time. As for the rest of the Argentines, maybe the best you could say about them is that they are most likely headed to the medal stand Sunday. After last night, it will shock no one if it is for the gold.
'I think they were confused with all the screening and moving around,' Ginobili said. 'They didn't know to switch or not. I said yesterday that the only weak point for the Americans is that they don't know each other.'
This was also a debatable contention, given the assemblage of a team with enigmatic perimeter shooting, one go-to scorer, Paul Pierce, still in his prime and a front line lacking not only a center but what you would consider an established franchise player.
Still, Ginobili unintentionally got to the heart of the matter in the attempt to explain what we'd just watched. For all the romanticizing of the Dream Team and its 43-point average Olympic victory, it was as much a pickup team as this one here. They were just the greatest players of what may have been the N.B.A.'s ultimate generation, and in the depressing final seconds last night, Karl watched with his arms folded as the punctuation was applied to the belief that only the very best N.B.A. players may -- I repeat, may -- be good enough to guarantee victory at this level.
Before the game, Stu Jackson, who chairs the selection committee for the United States team, stood in the corridor and said, 'You can't blame the guys who pulled out or who turned down the invitation to play.' Shaquille O'Neal paid his dues in 1994 and 1996. Kobe Bryant has played deep into June three years running. Tracy McGrady had a bad back. And more to the point, the goals the N.B.A. had when it stepped onto the world stage -- first and foremost it was about marketing and making more money -- have essentially been reached.
The significantly improved quality of these teams and all the foreign-born players bounding into the league provide, when you think about it, the evidence of a job well done. No excuses. No disgraces. Evolution takes its natural course, or at least the one set in motion by David Stern and the army of sneakers pitchmen.
The rest of the world is not what it was. Reggie Miller is not what he was. In the final minutes last night, Sanchez said he feared one of those fourth-quarter runs that Reggie used to save for the Knicks. 'I was sweating until the last seconds,' he said. 'But with about four seconds to go, we were looking at each other and saying, 'Do you believe it? Do you believe it?' '
Do you believe in miracles? Not really, because this was no miracle. This was inevitable.
Sports of The Times",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Maradona Arrested
DIEGO MARADONA, suspended from soccer earlier this month for using cocaine, was arrested yesterday on charges of possession of a half-kilo of the drug.
Two other men were also arrested at an apartment in the Buenos Aires suburb of Caballito, local news agencies reported.
Maradona, 30 years old, was suspended by the Italian League on March 29 after a sample of his urine taken after a match March 17 tested positive for cocaine.
Two weeks ago, the Italian League formally suspended Maradona for 15 months, a ban that was extended worldwide by the Federation Internationale de Football Association, soccer's governing body. (AP)
SPORTS PEOPLE: SOCCER",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Accord Is Reached To Recall Pesticide Devastating Hawk
AN agreement between an international chemical company and environmentalists may help reduce poisoning that has killed thousands of  hawks on the pampas of Argentina in  recent years.
The deaths of members of a broad-winged species called Swainson's hawk were caused by a highly toxic pesticide used by farmers to fight grasshopper infestations. Even now the hawks are working their way south from the North American grasslands to Argentina.
The pact commits Ciba-Geigy Ltd. of Basel, Switzerland, to remove the chemical, known as monocrotophos, from the market in the agricultural area 300 miles west of Buenos Aires where most of the world's Swainson's hawks congregate during the South American summer. The company also agreed to buy back stocks of monocrotophos in the hands of distributors, applicators and farmers. Ciba-Geigy, which makes one-third of the monocrotophos sold in Argentina, said it would encourage several other producers of the pesticide to take similar steps.
The agreement was disclosed yesterday by the American Bird Conservancy, a Washington-based advocacy group representing 56 environmental and ornithological organizations. Gerald Winegrad, its director of government relations, said the conservancy's goal was to convince the company to take the chemical off the market worldwide.
While the Argentine Government recently prohibited the use of monocrotophos for grasshopper control  and banned all uses of the chemical on the alfalfa fields where many of the Swainson's hawks forage, scientists in the United States and Canada worry that farmers whose crops are under attack by the insects will continue to use existing stocks of the poison. Maria Elena Zaccagnini, a  wildlife biologist with Argentina's National Institute of Agriculture Technology, said climatic conditions were right for 'an immense grasshopper population during the coming season.'
Argentine agencies and Ciba-Geigy have also started a program to inform pampas farmers about the threat pesticides pose to the hawks.  But Dr. Pierre Mineau, head of the Canadian Wildlife Service's pesticide section, expressed concern that time was running out for farmers to return monocrotophos supplies or buy substitute chemicals before mid-November, when the birds arrive in the area. And Ms. Zaccagnini said there was no evidence yet that chemical companies were removing monocrotophos from farm supply stores.
Swainson's hawks nest on prairies, plains and deserts west of the Mississippi River, usually from May to August. The species' continent-wide population is estimated at 400,000.  Until recently, biologists were puzzled by a decline in the bird's numbers in the Canadian prairie provinces and in several far western states.
Early in the breeding season, Swainson's hawks hunt rodents,  mainly the ground squirrels that can be abundant on arid western grasslands. But Brian Woodbridge, a biologist with the Klamath National Forest in Northern California who has studied the raptor for the last 13 years, said the birds 'delay nesting so their young fledge in August when grasshopper outbreaks occur.'
Little was known about the migration of the species until two years ago, when Mr. Woodbridge used satellite telemetry to follow two Swainson's hawks from the Butte Valley in California, north of Mount Shasta, to Argentina. There the biologist found huge flocks of hawks soaring over alfalfa and sunflower fields during  the day and roosting at night in eucalyptus groves planted near ranch buildings. Mr. Woodbridge also found  hundreds of dead hawks, and a farmer told him the birds had died after a field next to their roost was sprayed.
Last winter Mr. Woodbridge returned to the pampas with Michael Goldstein, a graduate student at Clemson University. They counted 4,000 dead Swainson's hawks at four sites and estimated that 20,000 of the raptors had died from aerial and ground spraying of a pesticide that forensic evidence later confirmed to be monocrotophos. Some of the birds were killed by direct exposure to the spray, and others by eating poisoned  grasshoppers, Mr. Woodbridge said.
Monocrotophos, one of a group of agricultural chemicals known as organophosphates, is marketed to control a variety of insects, but it is neither manufactured nor used in the United States. The pesticide is banned in Canada.
Dr. Michael Hooper of Clemson's Institute of Wildlife and Environmental Toxicology, said Swainson's hawk 'may be very sensitive to organophosphates.' Dr. Hooper noted with concern that another, less toxic  organophosphate pesticide was being recommended as a replacement for grasshopper control.
He said an extensive monitoring program this winter involving scientists from Argentina and North America and nearly 30 satellite-linked hawks 'will go a long way to help us determine whether the species' problem is basically with monocrotophos.'",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"At the End of the World, the Fish Stories Come True
Although it holds the world's biggest population of large trout, the Rio Grande in Tierra del Fuego was rarely fished as recently as 40 years ago. Sea trout, the descendants of brown trout placed in the river in the 1930's, thrived in the Antarctic Sea and returned to the Rio Grande every year in ever-increasing numbers and sizes. Ten pounds was the average, and tales of 20-pounders raised eyebrows at first, but the photographic evidence of anglers holding impressive trout could not be dismissed in that pre-Photoshop era.
Two years ago, on my first visit to the place that travel brochures not unreasonably call 'the land at the end of the world,' I caught a half-dozen fish that weighed 20 pounds apiece, and they have inhabited my dreams ever since. I returned this year with my daughter, Lucy, at the invitation of Jose Calvo Garcia, an old friend whose nickname is Buby and who has helped more than anyone else to explore and popularize this extraordinary fishery.
The eastern part of the timeless, wind-swept landscape is a succession of sere hills marching across a hundred miles of scrub land to snow-capped mountains in the West. Apart from small herds of llama-like guanacos, the land is given over to flocks of sheep, tended by gauchos on horseback trailed by packs of the spirited sheepdogs who are their ever-present workmates.
We set up headquarters at Aurelia Lodge, a comfortable ranch-turned-fishing camp. Well before our arrival, I used the Internet to track the weather and the fishing, pointing and clicking a dozen times a day trying to separate the truth from wishful thinking. By most accounts, a large cohort of fish had entered from the ocean in November. Meanwhile, the run-off from the mountains had abated so that the river ran low and clear. Conditions should have been prime, but a week before we arrived a freak storm dumped a half year's worth of rain on the area. Many fish took advantage of the high water to continue their spawning journey farther upstream while new fish had yet to arrive from the ocean to take their place. Pickings were slim.
Still, when you come this far to fish, you fish. On our first session, Lucy and I each landed a 12-pound trout, and Lucy hooked another fish that was considerably larger. Startled by the size of this catch, she was unable to come tight quickly enough and the huge trout escaped, speeding across the stream. In the following days, Lucy and I each hooked more than a dozen of the silver-sided trout. However, neither of us could master the restrained but forceful strike necessary for a secure hook-up. When these fish take, it is so exciting that you tend to rear back too quickly.
We were bedeviled, but much luckier than the rest of our group who barely managed a hook-up. Buby, the most experienced of us all, was shut out, but he took it with the equipoise that is his way. With his ageless hound's-tooth, snap-brimmed hat and his six-weight rod (not the brutish two-handed Spey rods that many anglers feel they need to handle the gale winds pushing up from the South Pole), Buby has a style that is as laid back as a Hoagy Carmichael tune. As we returned from the river each evening and sat down to supper at midnight (not particularly late in Argentina) he would say, by way of benediction: 'Well, we must hope that tomorrow will be better. I am sure we will catch a fish.'
But as things turned out, Lucy and I kept hooking up and not landing fish, while the rest of our gang kept taking the collar. We couldn't explain it. Weeks after my return, I was awakened one night when the answer hit me. It was all about our leaders. At the suggestion of our guide, Luis Olivier, Lucy and I fished 14-foot leaders and size-12 flies. The others in our group were fishing 7-foot leaders with bigger flies. That had to be the difference, even though it has always been my experience that long leaders are for dry flies on quiet water; with wet flies, leader length is not an issue. 'Now you tell me,' a friend of mine remonstrated when I called last week to tell him of my revelation.
Putting our 'bad luck' in perspective, few anglers ever get to catch even one 12-pound trout in a lifetime. Fewer still have the chance to hook, and lose, fish twice that size, especially in the midst of such grand vistas. Nor do fathers and grown daughters often get the chance to spend a week fishing together. I thought of this on our last night, as golden fingers of sunlight poured down on the jagged white peaks of the southernmost Andes.
Flocks of Magellan geese called through the calm air of twilight, their wings lit from below with the rosy light of alpenglow. For a moment, it almost didn't matter that we had not caught more fish.
Mind you, I said 'almost.' The moment passed, and as far as I'm concerned, Lucy and I have a score to settle with the trout of Tierra del Fuego.
OUTDOORS",0
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Argentina,"Maradona Has Designs on a New Team
After a 15-month international suspension and repeated retirement plans, DIEGO MARADONA said he wants to play pro soccer again: with Boca Juniors in Argentina.
""I have a dream, if Napoli releases me: to play with Boca Juniors and help Boca to win the Argentine title following 11 years of failures,"" Maradona said in an interview aired yesterday by the television network Telemontecarlo.
Maradona, interviewed in Buenos Aires earlier this week, reaffirmed that he would not answer the call of his Italian club, Naples, to join the team in preparation for the next season. (AP)  SPORTS PEOPLE: SOCCER",0
Top/News,"Reversed Call Changes Everything
With 1 minute 50 seconds remaining in regulation of an N.F.L. playoff game, New England trailed Oakland by 13-10. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady dropped back to pass. He appeared to pump-fake and to pull the ball down as Charles Woodson, a Raiders cornerback, sacked him on a well-timed blitz, causing a fumble. Great play. Great call. Game over.
Not so fast.
The ruling was overturned. The Patriots maintained possession, drove for the tying field goal, then won in overtime. The call ruptured my theory that sports were the great equalizer, a haven immune from the political machinations that define most of our lives. In sports, for the most part, neither riches nor station in life can bail you out in the moment of truth. Either you do or you don't.
The Patriots did not, then they did. They won the game and later the Super Bowl. A forgettable moment I will never forget.
WILLIAM C. RHODEN",1
Top/News,"AFGHANS AWAY FROM HOME: RUGS, GUNS AND FEAR
LEAD: An Afghan garrison town is rising here on bare, stony hills whose access roads are mainly the gullies of nearly waterless streams.
An Afghan garrison town is rising here on bare, stony hills whose access roads are mainly the gullies of nearly waterless streams.
There is a fortress-like weapons dump, a field of guerrillas' tents, a motor pool, a supply depot and an imposing new headquarters building that might in other times have been the walled palace of a Central Asian warlord.
Nearby, more than 25,000 civilians, supported by relief agencies from Islamic nations and the West, have created an Afghan village, with mosques, a tailor shop, foodstalls and a small clinic. Afghan buses with Afghan drivers and passengers ply the bumpy routes to the market town of Jallozai or to the city of Peshawar, about 20 miles to the northwest.
Nevertheless, this is Pakistani territory, at least 40 miles from the Afghan border.
Shamsshato and many other settlement like it are part of the reality of the war in Afghanistan between a Soviet-installed Government and seven Islamic guerrilla armies fighting to oust it, with American, British, Saudi and other international support. Taking On a Permanence
For many Pakistanis, it is a reality that is taking on an unwelcome permanence, generating controversy and a degree of anguish over what this country's role should be in a neighbor's conflict.
More than three million Afghan refugees are thought to be in Pakistan now, with two million more in Iran and perhaps an additional three million displaced within their own country, according to refugee leaders and international aid organizations.
Experts here, taking into account admittedly sketchy casualty figures in Afghanistan, believe that half the people have fled their homes or died since Soviet forces swept into the country in 1979. At the beginning of this decade, the population was estimated at around 16 million.
Pakistan's response to Afghanistan's turmoil was instant and generous, relief officials say. Refugees and political exiles have been fleeing here since the early 1970's, when a series of coups and countercoups began in Kabul, the Afghan capital.
Unlike refugees in Southeast Asia or most other regions of first asylum, those here in Pakistan are not severely restricted. They are not fenced in. Their settlements are known as 'refugee villages' and are run by civilian Pakistani administrators. Move Freely Around Country
Afghans can move freely around the country, finding jobs or starting small businesses. Itinerant Afghan carpet salesmen, bright rugs flung over their shoulders like shawls, are a common sight on the streets of Peshawar.
Aid officials said they knew Afghan families with fleets of small Mercedes buses. More than 4,000 private vehicles engaged in public transportation had been temporarily licensed by Pakistan by the end of 1985. Since then, countless others have joined the business.
In Peshawar alone there are 600,000 Afghans, according to Ikramullah Jan, the federal Government's spokesman for North West Frontier Province and the border tribal areas.
'We are also 600,000,' he added. 'So that makes us 50-50 now.' 'The difference is the Afghans all have guns,' a resident of Peshawar said. 'They could go through this town like a knife through butter.'
The police, another resident remarked, are unusually polite and respectful in this province. 'They know if they rough up somebody they could get shot,' he said. Pressure to Move Reported
People in Shamsshato say the new military headquarters being built for the guerrilla organization Hizb-e-Islam was a response to pressure from the local authorities to move guerrillas out of the Peshawar area.
Hizb-e-Islam, led by Gulbadeen Hekmatyar, is reported to be getting much of the covert American aid channeled to the guerrillas through Pakistan.
Because of the conservative Islamic practices of most Afghans here - they are rural people, unlike the Persian-speaking elite who fled the cities earlier - the refugee women and children remain out of sight.
A Western resident of Peshawar said most Pakistanis therefore never see the pitiable families of the guerrillas, including old people, but only the men, strolling armed through town or loitering in coffee shops.
There are repeated calls for a complete separation of the Afghan and Pakistani populations, and Pakistani officials have said they will try to restrict Afghans to the refugee camps. But most aid officials say this would be an enormous if not impossible task now.
Most Pakistanis asked about the Afghans still say they are fellow Moslems who must be given refuge and support against Soviet attempts to remake their country. At the same time, fears are beginning to be expressed in speeches, letters to newspapers and conversations with outsiders about new levels of danger that the Afghan presence may be bringing.
Throughout the region, border villages are vulnerable to bombing by Soviet and Afghan Government aircraft. These raids have increased in recent weeks. Explosions and Rocket Attacks
Since early last year, there have been several unexplained explosions in Peshawar, and these are increasing in their 'wantonness and bloodiness,' a foreigner living in the city said.
Rocket attacks are also occurring now, with the rockets being fired into town apparently from tribal areas a few miles to the west.
The terror campaign may be the work of mercenary saboteurs, according to some officials. These officials are convinced that Afghan Government and Soviet agents are the paymasters behind the attacks.
'The Russians have spent millions of rubles, millions of dollars to subvert people in the Peshawar area,' a university professor said. 'If one of these rockets kills the family breadwinner, how can the others not turn against the Afghans, who are seen to be the cause of the trouble?'
'But people in their hearts know they can't deny them,' he said. 'We give them shelter. That is all they ask of us.'  SHAMSSHATO JOURNAL",1
Top/News,"The Hit Parade Marches Toward a Kind of Reality
Pop hitmakers of 2002 gathered at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night to pay obeisance to a powerful radio station, WHTZ, in its annual Z100 Jingle Ball. As they did, it was possible to see the pop pendulum swinging: away from the fantasy confections of the late 1990's and toward a calculated approximation of realism.
First of all, there were no simpering boy bands on the bill. Justin Timberlake of 'N Sync opened the show on his own, dancing despite a broken foot. The only vocal group on hand was Destiny's Child, singing its hard-nosed songs about independent women and untrustworthy men.
The rest of the performers were solo acts, and nearly all were determined to convey unmediated sincerity. Avril Lavigne, 18, wore a punky black T-shirt and strummed her own guitar as she performed tunes in MTV-ready formats from pop-punk to power ballads. She sang about the acutely felt slights of adolescence -- a boyfriend who tries to act too cool in public, a friend who's shut her out -- with a neatly fashioned straightforwardness. In her best song, the catchy, punk-pop 'Sk8er Boi,' a girl who rejects a lower-class guy regrets it when he becomes a rock star; it's a welcome step away from self-pity.
Nelly, Ja Rule and Ashanti -- the show's hip-hop contingent -- get their realism by keeping their raps and tunes simple, inviting singalongs. Nelly and half a dozen associates rapped in uncomplicated, singsong cadences about lust, parties, their native St. Louis and a dance floor so hot that women take their clothes off. Ja Rule, who has lately become the roughneck for hire among pop-R&B singers, took his shirt off and recited his low, raspy come-ons; fans eagerly sang Jennifer Lopez's parts around his rap in 'I'm Real.' Ashanti, whose tangy voice supplied hooks for hip-hop songs before she made her own album, sang about devoted love in short, sharp phrases that the whole crowd could join.
John Mayer strummed jazzy, virtuosic chords on an acoustic guitar, parading his tender feelings about women. Kelly Clarkson, who won the 'American Idol' competition, sang two Mariah Carey-style ballads about love, putting ripples into her rich, creamy voice before growling in the homestretch of each song.
Kylie Minogue, the Australian singer who had an American hit this year, 'Can't Get You Out of My Head,' after a long career in Britain, was the exception. She harked back to 1980's Madonna, singing in a thin voice over percolating electronics. Dressed in a minimal black stretch garment, gesturing with languid arms and surrounded by campy dancers -- the men wore silver hot pants or, in a quasi-Latin number, flouncy black skirts -- she projected an android cool that was decidedly out of place.
POP REVIEW",1
Top/News,"Sailing Up to Its Name by Skimming Waters
At a time when big one-design yachts and all the class rules that come with them are dominating sailboat racing, a 26-footer with an independent pedigree is competing as the little boat that could.
It's called Wai Rere, a New Zealand Maori name that means 'skipping over water.' Indeed, the owners, Chris and Trice Bouzaid, a couple from Jamestown, R.I., are finding its skimming qualities exciting. The sailboat has won at Key West Race Week twice and two years ago won Block Island Race Week.
The boat is a favorite to win the sport-boat division at Block Island Race Week again when the event begins tomorrow on Rhode Island Sound with 133 sailboats expected over all. One of the most competitive classes will be among the 14 sport boats -- all from production classes -- trying to unseat the free-spirited Wai Rere (pronounced Why-REAR-ee). The craft has no class rules other than to go fast.
'It's very easy to sail,' Chris Bouzaid said about his family's 3-year-old boat. 'And it has none of the tricks and gimmicks that a lot of the newer sailboats have. That's why we decided not to buy a boat from a single one-design class. If we wanted to change something, we wouldn't be able do it,' he explained. 'With our boat, we can do anything we want.'
The boat's New Zealand designer, Steve Thompson, has built only the one boat. Formerly named Tom Tom Taxi, the boat was in New Zealand when the Bouzaids took it for a sail. By the end of the day, the couple had bought the boat for $25,000, a good buy. Most sport boats -- the modern 25-to-35-foot open-cockpit racers -- cost more like $50,000 to $80,000.
Wai Rere has an oversized ballast bulb at the end of its fin keel, and a circular, bowl-shaped hull that likes to heel rather than stay flat in a breeze. The way the Bouzaids see it, that makes the boat easier to sail than its contemporaries.
The closest thing to it in competition today is the Viper 830GR, a larger and more expensive version of Wai Rere. Also a Thompson creation, the sailboat is built in Tiverton, R.I., as a production model with its own set of class rules. Two Viper 830's are expected at Block Island, and both have names that indicate a challenge to the Bouzaids' flying fish: one is High Voltage, and the other, Snakebite.
2 New Yachts Favored
The Newport Bermuda Race got off to a smooth start Friday afternoon for the fleet of 161 boats that began the race in a dwindling 7- to 9-knot southwesterly breeze off Newport, R.I.
Boomerang, the competition's record-holder, needs to finish in less than 57 hours 31 minutes 50 seconds, the pace it set in the 635-mile voyage two years ago. Rima and Deep Powder, two new 60-foot yachts designed by Bruce Farr & Associates of Annapolis, Md., are favorites to win on corrected time under the International Measurement System, the handicap racing division in which they are competing.
The biennial competition draws both amateur cruising boats and state-of-the-art race boats. Jim Mertz, an 87-year-old yachtsman from Rye, N.Y., is competing in his 27th Bermuda race. He is skipper of Symphony, a Beneteau 42.
British Powerboat on Way
Cable & Wireless Adventurer, the odd-shaped, 115-foot powerboat attempting to break an 83-day record around the world, is expected to arrive in New York City around 8 A.M. on Tuesday. The custom-made British boat left Gibraltar last April 19 in its 26,000-mile quest to beat a round-the-world time set in 1960 by the nuclear-powered submarine the U.S.S. Triton.
It is expected to leave New York Wednesday morning for the last leg of its journey, a 3,000-mile trans-Atlantic voyage back to Gibraltar. The powerboat will be docked at North Cove Yacht Harbor, a marina near the World Financial Center.
Young America to Sail
Also at North Cove Yacht Harbor will be Young America, the 75-foot training boat for the New York Yacht Club's America's Cup challenge in 1999-2000. The white-hulled sailboat was formerly named Spirit of Unum, a trial horse in San Diego for the PACT '95 cup syndicate. It is expected in New York from Newport, R.I., on Thursday, and will stay through July 4. It will take potential donors and sponsors for a sail.
THE BOATING REPORT: NOTEBOOK",1
Top/News,"Escapees Leave Haven Of Pretoria Embassy
LEAD: Four black political detainees who escaped to the West German Embassy left the building today after the police guaranteed their freedom.
Four black political detainees who escaped to the West German Embassy left the building today after the police guaranteed their freedom.
'We emerge feeling victorious,' said Ephraim Nkoe, one of the four blacks who fled to the embassy in Pretoria on Monday from Hillbrow Hospital in Johannesburg, where they had been admitted after joining other detainees in a hunger strike.
The men left the embassy and returned to Johannesburg, where they embraced relatives before addressing a news conference.
They called for the release of an estimated 300 anti-apartheid campaigners still detained without charges and issued a special appeal on behalf of Sandile Thusi, hospitalized in critical condition in Durban after fasting for 33 days. Mr. Nkoe said the South African Law and Order Minister, Adriaan J. Vlok, sent a police general to Durban to determine if Mr. Thusi, 26 years old, should be released.
The four escapees had been held for periods of 10 to 23 months. In addition to Mr. Nkoe, 28, they are Job Sithole, 21; Mpho Lekgoro, 24, and Clive Radebe, 28, all leaders of youth groups affiliated with the United Democratic Front, the nationwide anti-apartheid coalition that has essentially been banned.",1
Top/News,"New Tool Is Developed for Manipulating Genes of Organisms
BY selectively breeding molecules, a California laboratory has created a new tool for manipulating the genes of living organisms. The achievement, which is reported in the current issue of the journal Science, might one day yield new weapons against a variety of human diseases, including AIDS.
The technique developed at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., by Dr. Gerald F. Joyce and his colleagues mimics natural evolutionary processes by subjecting test-tube solutions of genetic molecules to the same kinds of conditions that produce new animal species.
Dr. Joyce has succeeded in inducing populations of ordinary RNA molecules to produce a new type of RNA molecule that can efficiently chop a DNA molecule apart, something no known RNA molecule had done. Dr. Joyce showed that this laboratory-made RNA molecule could be used as a template for making a snippet of new DNA, which when inserted into the common bacterium E. coli, rendered it immune to attack by a virus called M13.
""Protecting a bacterium against a disease that attacks only bacteria may not seem very practical,"" Dr. Joyce said, ""but it demonstrates a principle that may have far-reaching applications in attacking human diseases. For me, the main satisfaction was in finding that molecules can evolve, just as animal species evolve when they are subjected to selective evolutionary pressures. It's Darwinian evolution in a test tube."" Seeking Chemical Loopholes
Dr. Joyce's work was partly financed by the AIDS division of the National Institutes of Health, with the object of finding chemical loopholes through which the DNA-altering ability of the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, could be disabled.
The work may also shed light on the origin of life. Many scientists believe that variants of RNA, the messenger molecule that instructs amino acids to assemble themselves as proteins, evolved to produce a host of other important molecules, including DNA, the master genetic blueprint of most living organisms.
By promoting the evolution of molecules rather than entire organisms, the Scripps group vastly increased the number of constituents in the evolutionary process, and simultaneously reduced the time needed to create new variants.
Dr. Thomas R. Cech of the University of Colorado in Boulder, who won the 1989 Nobel Prize in chemistry, described Dr. Joyce's achievement as ""a real landmark."" The novelty of Dr. Joyce's system, Dr. Cech said, was that instead of attempting to design and build a new genetic molecule with the desired characteristics, the Scripps group simply created laboratory conditions ""to let nature do the work."" Using RNA Enzymes
The molecules Dr. Joyce used in his experiments belong to a class that Dr. Cech discovered, for which he won the Nobel Prize. Before the work of Dr. Cech and his co-winner, Dr. Sidney Altman of Yale University, RNA was considered to be purely a genetic messenger with no other functions. But the two scientists found that RNA can also act as an enzyme, a substance that promotes chemical reactions. They found that certain RNA enzymes, those that Dr. Cech named ribozymes, could break apart and reorganize messenger RNA, thereby altering its genetic message.
Although ribozymes can efficiently cleave RNA molecules, they were thought to have little if any ability to cleave DNA molecules. But Dr. Joyce changed that view, creating ribozymes that have proved capable of splitting DNA fairly well.
The technique Dr. Joyce used may give genetic engineers an important new tool for removing undesirable genes that cause human disease or for inserting self-destructive genes in disease organisms. H.I.V., for instance, has a genetic code consisting of RNA, but when it infects a healthy human cell, it copies the information from its own RNA code to the cell's DNA. Dr. Joyce said he believed that this infected DNA might be open to attack by some new ribozyme created by laboratory-induced evolution, offering a way to treat the disease. But he cautions that such a possibility is nowhere near realization. Mass Producing Molecules
Dr. Joyce and his colleagues, Dr. Deborah Robertson and Amber A. Beaudry, said they had derived their starting molecules from a single-cell protozoan called Tetrahymena thermophila, an organism that thrives in very hot water like that found in volcanic geysers. The ribozyme derived from this peculiar organism can cleave DNA fairly well, but only under very hot, salty conditions. The investigators wanted to modify the ribozyme to work at temperatures and salt concentrations like those in the human body.
Ribozymes do not reproduce themselves, but molecular biologists can mass produce copies of such molecules using a technique called polymerase chain reaction. A procedure similar to that was modified by the Scripps group to introduce random errors in the ribozyme copies it produces, resulting in myriads of slightly differing variations. In a single generation of copies, some 10 quadrillion molecules are produced in the Scripps laboratory, each with some chemical variation from the original.
Dr. Joyce explains that all the variants produced by a single error-prone copying run are simultaneously given a chance to try to cleave a certain kind of DNA molecule. Most fail completely, but a handful may show some slight skill. When a variant succeeds in chopping the DNA molecule apart, it automatically attaches a snippet of the DNA to itself, which serves as a chemical tag that is recognized by the copying process.
In the next generation, the copying procedure singles out the tagged molecules and makes more copies of them. The procedure is repeated every day or so, introducing another 10 quadrillion variations each time and each time coming a little closer to producing a molecule with the desired properties.
It took only 10 generations, bred in only about two weeks, for nature, acting under Dr. Joyce's control, to evolve the new ribozyme molecule that can cleave DNA efficiently at body temperature. He and his colleagues have no idea why or how the new molecule works as it does. ""We don't attempt to design molecules rationally,"" he said. ""We just stipulate what we want a molecule to do, and then let natural selection find the best way to go about it.""
Does the accelerated evolution of special-purpose RNA enzymes reproduce some of the steps by which natural evolution led from the first flicker of life four billion years ago to the human race?
Dr. Cech believes this intriguing question must remain forever unanswered, since no ""fossils"" remain of any of the primordial molecules from which life arose. But for Dr. Joyce, molecules from each evolutionary generation remain in frozen storage, available to retrace evolutionary pathways and to start new ones.",1
Top/News,"Barfield Near Contract as Season Wanes
LEAD: The sun did not break through until the ninth inning, but by then it was already too late. Jesse Barfield had swung and missed at a third strike, then returned to the dugout and quietly watched the final moments of another meaningless game at the Stadium.
The sun did not break through until the ninth inning, but by then it was already too late. Jesse Barfield had swung and missed at a third strike, then returned to the dugout and quietly watched the final moments of another meaningless game at the Stadium.
His afternoon was bleak and barren, just as the game had been, just as it should be when the closing days are in sight and there is nothing to play for.
But while the Yankees were handed a 3-0 loss yesterday by the Seattle Mariners, their sixth defeat in seven games, Barfield's future with the team may be taking a step forward. Bob Quinn, the team's general manager, said it was possible that the Yankee right fielder could be signed to a multiyear deal soon, perhaps before the season ends.
Quinn and Joe Maenza, the attorney representing Barfield, denied a report that the player had agreed to a three-year, $5 million contract. But both indicated an agreement could be near, and Quinn said he expected to meet again with Maenza this week.
'The parameters have been spelled out, although there are things within the parameters that have to be worked out,' Quinn said yesterday. 'But any problems we're having are not insurmountable. We would hope to have something done at the end of the season or shortly thereafter.' Mixed Season for Barfield
Barfield, acquired on April 30 in a deal that sent Al Leiter to the Toronto Blue Jays, has endured a season of mixed results. He is batting .241 with the Yankees, although he has hit 17 of his 22 homers with them, second only to Don Mattingly. He is in a 1-for-13 slump and has struck out 138 times this season, but his 15 assists with the team are the most since Dave Winfield had 17 in 1982.
But the Yankees sense a distinct need for the outfielder, who turns 30 years old next month. They know they cannot assume a complete recovery by Winfield, who underwent back surgery last March, and without Barfield, it would leave them short of a right-handed power hitter.
'I'm not thinking about that,' Barfield said of next season. 'It would be nice to play here, but the ball is in their court.'
Maenza, reached yesterday in Boca Raton, Fla., said he believed the negotiations were progressing well, although he indicated there were still areas to be discussed.
'I have a good feeling about the way they're going,' he said. 'They have an interest in him, and they're realistic about having to pay him what he's worth. I think it's going to get done.' Best Wishes
Barfield, who is earning $1.3 million this season, has repeatedly said that he has no pangs over the trade that sent him from the team leading the American League East to one contending for fifth place. He has never looked back and wondered, what if.
'I wish them all the best,' he said of the Blue Jays, 'but I have nothing to do with them. I hope they win it all, but I'm happy here.'
The final weeks have not been happy days for the Yankees, however. In losing two of three games to the Mariners, they were held to 5 runs and 16 hits. They have also begun to test the patience of their manager, Bucky Dent, whose record is 12-17 as manager and 2-6 since he signed a one-year extension Sept. 8.
Asked if the players were simply playing out the string until the season reaches an end, Dent said: 'I hope they're not. All I'm doing is watching right now. I haven't said much. I'll find out who the players are who want to play and go with them.
'I have a lot of patience, but sometimes it runs a little thin. I start to get a little edgy, and when I get edgy, I'll say something.'
The Yankees, who were shut out for the 10th time this season, were blanked yesterday by Brian Holman, who pitched the first eight innings, and Mike Schooler, who worked the ninth for his 30th save.
Walt Terrell gave up three runs in seven innings and lost his fifth game for the Yankees and 18th this season.  An Old Photo
In one of their more memorable giveaways, the Yankees handed out plastic coffee mugs, each one containing a full-color team picture, to all fans in attendance. But of the 31 players and coaches shown on each mug, 10 are not in uniform now, including Manager Dallas Green and his four coaches, all dismissed last month.",1
Top/News,"Kiss, Kiss: The International Language of Love
'I represent todos paises (all countries),' Fragancia (Wilfredo Crispin) proclaimed during DLG's farewell concert on Saturday night at Irving Plaza. His Spanglish declaration summed up the group's successful plan to find an international audience by mixing and fusing rhythms from across the Caribbean and New York City, starting with salsa and reggae and adding rapping, rhythm-and-blues ballads, dance-club music and all kinds of Latin-American styles.
DLG, which stands for Dark Latin Groove, was the brainchild of Sergio George, a producer who remade Latin pop in the 1990's; it was his laboratory for advanced border-crossing combinations. But to the women at Irving Plaza who squealed, danced and sang along at every opportunity -- so loud, in one song, that DLG's lead singer, Huey Dunbar, laughingly said, 'I can't follow that!' -- it wasn't the musical ambitions that mattered: it was the romance. Singing about endless kisses and irresistible beauties, Mr. Dunbar was promising love in the hybrid language that young Latinas take for granted.
Onstage, every song was virtually a medley. What started as a ballad -- with Mr. Dunbar emoting with as many quivering Stevie Wonder turns and slides as Boyz II Men -- would soon crackle with salsa percussion, piano and horns, then cut back while Fragancia rapped in Spanish, then return to Mr. Dunbar's crooning, then drop to half-speed for the growling dancehall-reggae interjections of James De Jesus. Meanwhile the three vocalists were working through synchronized dance moves like the Backstreet Boys.
There were stretches when DLG's unctuous pop side took over and Mr. Dunbar reached for a few vibrato-laden high notes too many. But the music's constant variety rescued him; Fragancia's rapid-fire raps grounded the songs, and Mr. De Jesus's interjections added humor. While the studio arrangements go through even more changes on DLG's three albums, the band onstage never ran out of rhythms. As a matter of casual overachievement, it kept slipping musicianly flourishes behind the pop sentiments.
The group's farewell set was full of sentimental testimonials from the three vocalists: to one another (with jokes about backstage fights over wardrobe), to Mr. George (who briefly took over on keyboard), to the musicians (who were allowed to hijack the set with a series of percussion solos), to family and recording company, and to fans of every nationality and address. It brought on the singers from the opening act, the Cuban group Bamboleo, and a member of salsa's older generation, Cuco Valoy. And again and again, DLG called for applause for New York City, where cultures can't help mingling.
POP REVIEW",1
Top/News,"Reagan Sees Virtue in Sale of Studio to Sony
LEAD: Former President Ronald Reagan told Japanese audiences today that he welcomed Japanese investment in the United States and that Sony's recent takeover of a big motion picture studio might even 'bring back decency and good taste' to American movies.
Former President Ronald Reagan told Japanese audiences today that he welcomed Japanese investment in the United States and that Sony's recent takeover of a big motion picture studio might even 'bring back decency and good taste' to American movies.
Speaking at midpoint in his nine-day visit to Japan, Mr. Reagan addressed one of the most delicate recent issues in Japan-American relations by saying it was hypocritical for Americans to invest in other countries around the world and then oppose Japanese investment at home.
'Some of those people don't know what they're talking about,' the former President told an audience of corporate executives and other wealthy business people at a black-tie dinner this evening, referring to critics of the proposed takeover of Columbia Pictures by Sony, the Japanese electronics company.
'If America looks like a good investment, why, we should be pleased and proud of it,' Mr. Reagan said. He added that the United States remained the largest global investor in other countries and then commented, 'Who are we to bellyache about somebody else wanting to do that?'
The former President made his comments in a speech and a television interview featuring some of his most freewheeling thoughts since leaving office in January. He appeared to be in a buoyant mood as a result of the affectionate greeting he has received since arriving here on Friday. Grateful for Quake Aid
On several occasions, he told the Japanese how grateful he was as a Californian that $6.5 million had been raised privately so far to help victims of the northern California earthquake.
He also used his platform to challenge Japan to use its enormous economic resources to increase aid to Poland, something that the Government of Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu is considering. The Government is said to be uncertain and divided over how much aid to give.
Addressing several other recent issues, Mr. Reagan defended President Bush's recent actions in Panama, saying Mr. Bush was correct in declining to use American troops stationed in Panama to back a military coup to oust Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega. 'I think we'd lose most of our friends in Latin America had we done it that way,' Mr. Reagan said.
Mr. Reagan, as he has before, also criticized China for cracking down on protesters in June. But in an unusual aside, he also suggested that the students might have been partly to blame for pressing their own claims too fast and too far, undercutting those who favored progress in China.
'I love those young people, and I agree with what their feelings are, but did they handicap people who were quietly trying to do what they want?' he asked in the television interview. Cost of Trip Is $6 Million
Mr. Reagan arrived here on Friday as the guest of the Fujisankei Communications Group, a news media conglomerate whose owners are politically conservative supporters of the former President and his policies. The group is paying more than $6 million to bring Mr. Reagan and his wife, Nancy, to Japan, including a $2 million fee to Mr. Reagan himself.
Spokesmen for the Fujisankei group and for the Foreign Ministry have made no secret of their hope that Mr. Reagan would speak out against what Japanese fear is a growing protectionist sentiment in the United States. The former President stuck to generalities until now, but today he fulfilled the hopes of his Japanese hosts.
In the television interview for the Fuji network, owned by Fujisankei, he was asked about the negative reaction in the United States to the Sony deal. 'I don't feel there's anything wrong with that,' Mr. Reagan interjected, adding that as a former actor 'I'm not too proud of Hollywood these days, with the immorality that is shown in pictures and the vulgarity.'
'I just have a feeling that maybe Hollywood needs some outsiders to bring back decency and good taste to some of the pictures that are being made,' he added.",1
Top/News,"Cuttlefish and Octopi And Squid: Oh, My!
This year, James Cameron released a short documentary called 'Aliens of the Deep.' Mr. Cameron's premise was that there are underwater creatures on our planet that rival any outer space creature the 'Star Wars' or 'Star Trek' writers could dream up.
Bob Cranston, an underwater cinematographer, offers something similar in 'Encountering Sea Monsters,' tomorrow's episode of the PBS series 'Nature.' The title suggests that whether the fabled Loch Ness monster exists or not, some absolutely real sea creatures are just as frightening, if not more so.
Mr. Cranston concentrates on one class of marine mollusk: the cephalopods. That means octopi, nautili, cuttlefish and squid. Viewers learn, for instance, that the giant Pacific octopus has an approximate reach of 20 feet, can weigh 200 pounds or so, has skin that can change color and texture, has babies the size of a grain of rice, lives only three or four years and likes to make eye contact with humans.
'Encountering Sea Monsters' is rather standard nature programming: pretty to look at and fairly to very interesting, depending on the viewer's emotional attachment to the subject.
Locations include waters off Australia, Indonesia and British Columbia. Attractions include the pajama squid, whose body is striped like a prison uniform in an old James Cagney movie; the blue-ringed octopus, whose venom can paralyze and kill a victim in minutes (and no antidote exists, says the narrator, Tim Matheson); and cuttlefish with special cells that enable their skin to light up in vivid colors and ruffle gracefully like underwater chiffon.
The hour offers its share of sex and violence. A male cuttlefish is cuckolded by another, who was clever enough to disguise himself as a female and then mate with the first fish's female right under his nose (or whatever cuttlefish have). Early in the show, a giant octopus kills and eats a crab that was desperately trying to hide.
As for monsterhood, none of these creatures, with the possible exception of the hairy frogfish, look that terrifying. In fact, one small octopus, which carries a brown bottle wherever it goes, is almost lovable. When a human leaves it a much grander bottle, large and clear with a multimasted sailing ship inside, the octopus investigates the gift, considers for a moment, then picks up its beloved brown bottle and goes on its way.
Nature  Encountering Sea Monsters  PBS, tomorrow night at 8; check local listings.
Photographed by Bob Cranston. Narrated by Tim Matheson. Produced by Thirteen/WNET New York and National Geographic Television; Sue Houghton, producer; for 'Nature,' Fred Kaufman, executive producer; William Grant, executive in charge.
TELEVISION REVIEW",1
Top/News,"Battle Scene on Egyptian Temple May Be Earliest View of Israelites
LEAD: SCHOLARS poring over every jot and tittle in the Bible and archeologists picking over stone ruins have long disputed the origins of the early Israelites. Were they conquerors sweeping through the fortified countryside of Canaan, as suggested by the story of Joshua? Sheep-herding nomads from the east?
The result is a growing consensus among Egyptologists, Biblical scholars and archeologists that most of the early Israelites were Canaanites. Into their midst may have filtered some nomadic shepherds from east of the Jordan and others who had fled Egypt, assuming the story of Exodus has a historical basis. But they were mainly Canaanites who settled along the ridge running north from Hebron through Jerusalem far from the fortified city-states to the west.
In an article published in the September issue of Biblical Archeology Review, Frank J. Yurco, an Egyptologist with the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, described his analysis of a hieroglyphic text in the Cairo Museum and four battle scenes carved on the Karnak wall that led him to conclude that the early Israelites were culturally close to the Canaanites and presumably emerged from that society in the 13th and 12th centuries B. C. The battle scene that Mr. Yurco says is 'by far the earliest visual portrayal of Israelites ever discovered' shows the people wearing ankle-length cloaks, the same style as the Canaanites, and not the short kilts and turbans of the Shasu, nomadic people that many scholars had associated with the origin of Israel.
'The evidence from the Karnak reliefs contradicts the position taken by scholars who have tried to identify the Israelites with the Shasu,' Mr. Yurco wrote. 'The reliefs seem to suggest that at least some of the early Israelites coalesced out of Canaanite society, albeit Canaanites who did not live in the cities but who had withdrawn to the hill country, precisely where archeological remains as well as Biblical texts place them.'
Dr. Lawrence E. Stager, Dorot professor of the archeology of Israel at Harvard University, praised the research as a 'brilliant comparison of a literary work with an artistic work' and said he agreed with the identification of the people depicted in one battle scene as Israelites being defeated by Pharaoh Merenptah, the son and successor of Ramses II.
Calling the findings 'one of the most exciting new perspectives being brought to Biblical history,' Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archeology Review, said: 'If we read the Bible, we get a simpler version of a group of people who simply wandered from Egypt into Canaan. The reality behind this is much more complex and equally fascinating.'
This preceded by nearly a century the use in the Bible, in the Song of Deborah recorded in the Book of Judges, of the name Israel to designate the people's premonarchic tribal confederacy. They did not unite under a monarch until King Saul in the 11th century.
Mr. Yurco's discovery grew out of his work with the University of Chicago's epigraphic survey of Egyptian temples and research for a doctoral dissertation he is preparing at the university's Oriental Institute. His first glimmering came when he found that four battle scenes carved on the Karnak wall had been mistakenly attributed to Ramses II, the pharaoh who ruled Egypt for much of the 13th century B. C. Hammers and Plaster It had been an understandable mistake. The centerpiece of that particular wall is the hieroglyphic text of the peace treaty that concluded the battle of Kadesh in Syria in 1275 between Ramses and the Hittite army. The four battle scenes that framed the treaty were therefore assumed to depict combat in that war.
In his detective work, Mr. Yurco found that in the practice of the time, succeeding pharaohs had had their predecessors' names hammered out and plastered over and replaced with their own names. But when he scraped away the superimposed names, he determined that the original inscription was not Ramses II but Merenptah, pharaoh from 1212 to 1202. The visage of a pharaoh carved on a nearby block resembled not Ramses but the figure found on Merenptah's tomb.
'That was when I made the conceptual leap that the battle scenes were from Merenptah's campaign against Canaan,' Mr. Yurco said in an interview.
His next step was to re-examine the Merenptah Stele, a black granite tablet inscribed with the account of the pharaoh's military exploits. The text, discovered a century ago and housed in the Cairo Museum, includes the earliest known mention of Israel.
In describing Merenptah's four victories in Canaan, the text said: 'Askelon has been overcome. Gezer has been captured. Yano'am was made non-existent. Israel is laid waste, his seed is not.'
Mr. Yurco then connected the victories mentioned in the text with the four battle scenes at Karnak. The first was specifically identified, he discovered, as the town of Ashkelon. The next two could be Gezer and Yano'am, as they were fortified places lying on a line between Ashkelon on the coastal plain into the hill country. But the fourth scene, with pharaoh's horse and chariot team in the center and running roughshod over fallen soldiers, shows no walls or towers or other evidence of a fortified city.
This reminded Mr. Yurco of a clue from the Merenptah Stele. Hieroglyphic writing consists not only of signs intended to be vocalized, but also signs, known as determinatives, whose sole function is to indicate the category or kind of word to which they are attached. The determinative used in the stele with the names of the first three sites is the one regularly used for city-states. The name for Israel, however, is written with a determinative that is usually reserved for peoples without a fixed city-state area, or rural and possibly nomadic people.
'The Enemy Men Depicted'
Only the fourth scene is of a battle against any enemy without a fortified town. 'If I am correct,' Mr. Yurco concluded in his article, 'then the enemy men depicted in the fourth battle scene are Israelites.'
And the 'most significant aspect' of this depiction, Mr. Yurco added, is that the Israelites are dressed like Canaanites and not Shasu. Another implication, he said, is that the reliefs provide 'striking confirmation of accumulating archeological evidence that the initial Israelite settlements were in the highlands and that they were in open, dispersed villages with no substantial fortified towns.'
Dr. Stager said the early Israelites were probably a 'hodgepodge of different segments of society' that was brought together by their rural experience. He said no scholars today seriously believe the early Israelites came as conquerors. Some argue that they split off from Canaan in a peasant revolt against the upper class, or else were escaping the overcrowded lowlands. Many scholars in modern Israel still favor the idea that early Israelites were pastoralists who migrated into the hill country of Canaan.
Mr. Yurco and some other scholars say the new findings do not rule out the possibility that people from the Exodus also were a component of the new rural society. Most Biblical experts downplay the Exodus story, however, because they are not certain of its historical reality or, if true, when it occurred.
'I would not say we have the whole constituency of early Israelites yet,' Dr. Stager said.
But from their depiction in the battle scene on the Karnak wall, they dressed like Canaanites who lived in remote rural settlements. The Canaanites from whom most early Israelites presumably came eventually were swallowed up by history, first through a change to the Greek name of Phoenicians and then vanishing altogether after the time of Jesus. The land of Canaan is now modern Israel and parts of Sinai and Jordan.",1
Top/News,"Palestinians And Israelis Trying to Plot A Cease-Fire
Foreign Minister Amr Moussa and his Israeli counterpart, Shimon Peres, said today  that the Israelis and the Palestinians were working to formulate a cease-fire aimed at ending months of bloodshed, but the violence showed no sign of receding.
'Mr. Peres told us that there is an intention to continue talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians in order to achieve a cease-fire,' Mr. Moussa said after a meeting between President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt  and the Israeli foreign minister. 'This would be a major step by both parties to get back to a situation where they can talk. But that is what we heard; it remains to be seen what occurs.'
Mr. Peres said Israel would also begin taking immediate steps to relieve the economic troubles suffered by the Palestinians. He did not specify those steps, although the Israeli government recently said thousands more Palestinians would be given passes to resume work inside Israel.
Mr. Peres, before leaving Egypt for a similar discussion in Jordan with King Abdullah II, noted that a cease-fire was the priority.
'There are still issues that we have to clarify, and I don't want to claim that everything is O.K. and everything is agreed,' Mr. Peres said. 'But I can say that an agreement on how to handle the situation was really achieved.'
Mr. Mubarak said that if a cease-fire held for four weeks, the two sides could resume peace negotiations.
Muhammad M. Sobeih, the Palestinian envoy to the Arab League, said that the cease-fire talks were being held between top Israeli and Palestinian security officials under American auspices, and that an agreement on a truce might be reached soon.
Mr. Peres was the most senior official to visit Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab nations to have formal peace treaties with Israel, since the election of Ariel Sharon as prime minister in February.
Egypt and Jordan developed a joint proposal last month suggesting a path back to peace negotiations. Their plan suggests that Israel lift its blockade of the occupied territories, withdraw tanks and troops positioned around Palestinian towns in the last seven months and transfer tax revenue withheld from the Palestinian government. It also mandates a freeze on all settlement building.
Israel rejects any such freeze, and the two sides also differ on where peace talks might resume. Israel at first rejected the proposal outright, but later backtracked and suggested changes. Mr. Peres brought some of those reservations with him, and Egyptian and Jordanian officials said they would study them.
Egypt made it clear, however, that it was not interested in getting bogged down in talks about talks. 'We are not proposing to start a new process to discuss the Egyptian-Jordanian paper,' Mr. Moussa said.
In Israel and the Palestinian territories, there was no letup in the two sides' brutalizing each other.
Two bombs targeting Jewish settlers were detonated in the West Bank, one a car bomb that killed the Palestinian suspected of trying to attack a school bus. The Israeli police blew up a third bomb, placed in the coastal town of Netanya.
In Gaza, Israeli tanks shelled the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Gaza and a Palestinian intelligence post, with at least three Palestinians reported wounded. Despite an order by Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, to halt mortar attacks, Palestinians fired shells into an Israeli settlement, but no one was hurt.
On Saturday, Palestinian gunmen shot dead an off-duty Israeli soldier and wounded four of his passengers in a drive-by shooting. In Bethlehem, Israeli troops killed an activist from Al Fatah, Mr. Arafat's movement, in an exchange of fire and wounded his 5-year-old son.
Similar tit-for-tat attacks wrecked all previous attempts at establish a cease-fire, and any such effort would be extremely fragile.
Palestinians voiced skepticism that Mr. Sharon would do much more than roll his tanks around a bit, and some political groups said that merely getting back to where the talks were last September would be ignoring the frustration that lead to the Palestinian uprising.
On the Israeli side, Mr. Sharon used a telephone call to King Abdullah to reiterate that he would not negotiate under fire. 'The prime minister said that the situation on the ground is intolerable and, except for words, the Palestinian Authority is not doing anything serious,' said a statement from his office.
Although even some Israeli officials noted that negotiations were necessary at some minimal level to achieve at least a cease-fire, neither side views those talks alone as bringing stability.
'After the cease-fire, the Israelis and Palestinians cannot just stare at each other,' said Mr. Abdel Maguid. 'They have to move forward in the peace process, to discuss and solve the problems that lead to the current situation.'
Correction:  May 1, 2001, Tuesday  Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about attempts by Egypt and Jordan to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinians omitted the full name and the affiliation of an Egyptian scholar who assessed the prospects. He is Wahid Abdel Maguid, deputy director of Al Ahram Center for Strategic Studies.",1
Top/News,"Sports of The Times; Lebow Won His Personal Marathon
THE best way to remember Fred Lebow is smack in the middle of his own race. I could tell you about the fraternal warmth I always felt whenever Fred Lebow would sidle up to me at somebody else's party, probably wearing a jogging suit and running shoes, witty and perceptive in his lush Transylvanian accent, even when he wasn't pushing his own event or explaining away some problem, which was always, you understand, extremely minor.
Fred died yesterday, exactly four weeks before his event, the New York City Marathon, which has become the most delightful sporting day in New York, every year.
Charming hustler that he was, he brought in big-time appearance and prize money at the front end of the marathon, but the reason so many of us enjoyed him was that he turned this giant city into a playland one Sunday every November.
He arranged for thousands and thousands of people, fat and skinny, young and old, from dozens and dozens of countries, to romp through the five boroughs, a celebration of human will.
I could give a private or historical view of a man I liked very much. But better, I should tell you about Fred and the New York City Marathon.
There were two marathons I will remember more than all the others. One in 1981, when Fred was still totally Fred, the master of nuance and detail, controlling that marathon from an open Jeep. The other was in 1992, when Fred was operating on sheer nerve after coming through surgery for brain cancer, when he controlled that marathon on his own two feet, in the company of his dear friend Grete Waitz.
The marathon was already a big deal by 1981, the time I rode in the pace car with Fred. He was hardly inhibited by my presence. At the staging area in Staten Island, he pushed and pulled and cajoled and threatened everybody, from hard-bitten city cops to timid volunteers.
""Allan, I have just heard a rumor,"" he gritted into a walkie-talkie, at Allan Steinfeld, the longtime backbone of the New York Road Runners who yesterday became the 31,000-member club's new leader. ""The rumor says the race will start at 10:45 instead of 10:38. It will start at 10:38.""
A man with a movie camera asked him for ""a little time"" and as he moved on he snapped, ""I am Fred Lebow and I do not have any time.""
As the cannon erupted to start the race, Lebow spotted a few runners who had infiltrated the elite front ranks. ""You hot-doggers, get back, you won't last to the other side of the bridge,"" Fred roared through a bullhorn. ""I know who you are, you hot-doggers.""
I still hear that word, ""hot-doggers,"" as the ultimate insult for interlopers.
He was as tough on the volunteers as the hot-doggers. As the parade entered Bay Ridge, somebody in the crowd shouted ""Nice, race, Fred,"" but Lebow was more concerned with cautioning: ""Move those water tables back. They're too close to the runners.""
When the driver of the time-clock car refused to speed up, gesturing that the runners had to see the split times, Lebow shouted into the bullhorn, ""Leave the course!""
Of all the people Fred fired that day, none left, and none displayed hard feelings afterward. That was just Fred.
Coming into the strongly Hasidic neighborhood in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, Lebow called out in Yiddish, ""Lama heren,"" which he translated as, ""Let me hear it,"" but few of the black-frocked Hasids applauded. It took me years to even sense Fred's tangled feelings about his religion. His family had barely escaped Europe ahead of the Holocaust; most of the others kept the name Lebowitz and the Orthodox rituals, but Lebow had become worldly, a bachelor who dated many ""vimmen,"" a runner who trained on the Sabbath, a man who did business in the polyglot world. Yet I came to think that Fred was spooked by the impassive stares of the Hasids, almost as if they were judging him.
(Somebody told me that at the end, Fred was speaking only Yiddish and Hungarian to one of his sisters; it reminds me that he always knew who he was and where he came from.)
The last thing I remember about that 1981 marathon was the way he leaped off his Jeep to embrace Alberto Salazar and murmur ""thank you"" for the world record, and how he waited to embrace and thank Allison Roe a few minutes later. He was a good leader. In my column that day, I compared him with Patton racing through the French countryside to liberate Paris.
In 1992, when he was recovering from brain cancer, a ghastly assassin, here was the indomitable Fred, coming back from an operation, not only running the marathon but running the marathon. Both ways.
Waitz volunteered to run with him, willing her superb runner's body to run slowly while Fred willed his stricken body to run at all. I could see the changes in Fred. He was thinner, older, more gaunt, more preoccupied. He used to have an extra awareness of other people's personalities, even if just to flatter or criticize them for his own purposes. But now he was more introverted. He had become a case, his own life a desperate struggle, and he didn't have as much attention for other people. I mourned that part of him, but good grief, look how far he had come. I sat with them on a sunny morning in October as they planned their race in November. I described them as Hepburn and Tracy preparing for one more movie together.
""In my wildest dream, I would like to finish half the race before the winner crosses the finish line,"" Lebow told her.
""It's better to be conservative,"" Waitz said softly. ""I always say, 'Take the first 18 miles as transportation. Without wasting too much energy.' Then you can run. If we can get to First Avenue . . . .""
He got to First Avenue. He got to where he and Waitz could hear the announcements: ""Fred is on the 21st mile. Fred is approaching the park."" Later Waitz would say, ""When we came into the park, I got goose bumps.""
We all got goose bumps when the two of them crossed the line together in 5 hours 32 minutes 34 seconds, and they fell into a clinch, better than Hepburn and Tracy, both of them crying, surrounded by friends and family.
That day I wrote: ""There have been many beautiful moments in the stadiums and arenas of New York, but this moment, on a roadway in Central Park, between a Romanian emigre and a Norwegian champion, could stand for all of them."" Later, of course, Fred wanted to know who had messed up at the starting line.
The New York City Marathon will go on. The city should name something after him, maybe one street in each of the five boroughs he united one Sunday every November. But definitely the final stretch in Central Park should be named Fred Lebow Boulevard. I like the word ""boulevard."" It has such a grandiose ring to it, and Fred Lebow was a grandiose man who just happened to pull off all his dreams. Fate handed him a short race. With his gall, with his love of life, Fred Lebow turned it into a marathon.",1
Top/News,"New Chief for Royal Theater
The film and theater director Nicholas Hytner has been appointed to succeed Trevor Nunn as director of the Royal National Theater in London. He will take over in April 2003 for a period of five years.
Mr. Hytner, 45, has worked extensively with the National Theater. As associate director from 1990 to 1997, he directed seven productions, including 'The Wind in the Willows' adapted by Alan Bennett, 'Carousel' by Rodgers and Hammerstein and 'The Madness of King George,' also by Mr. Bennett, which he went on to direct as a film. It was nominated for four Academy Awards and won both the Bafta and Evening Standard awards for best British film. Other films he has directed are 'The Crucible' and 'The Object of My Affection.'
He has also directed plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as opera productions, including Mozart's 'Magic Flute' and Verdi's 'Force of Destiny' for the English National Opera, and Mozart's 'Clemenza di Tito' at Glyndebourne. As associate director of  Lincoln Center, he has directed 'Carousel' and 'Twelfth Night.'
His only forthcoming commitment before taking up this post is a commercial Broadway show, 'Sweet Smell of Success,' scheduled for February 2002.
'After that I will play it by ear,' Mr. Hytner said at a news conference at the National Theater yesterday.
'I'm thrilled by the challenge of leading the National and working with a company of outstandingly creative people whom I've loved and admired for many years,' he said. 'I'm honored to be inheriting it from a great director and hugely encouraged by his support and the enthusiasm of the National Theater board.' Adding that he was looking forward to shaping the National, he also said, 'I love this place more than anywhere else I have worked.'
Mr. Nunn, whose announcement last April that he would step down as director prompted months of speculation about his successor, said of Mr. Hytner, 'Some of his most important achievements have been at the National, so it is exciting that he has decided to offer himself for this newest challenge, and entirely fitting that the board have unanimously decided that he, who knows the National so well, should be the next director.'
Mr. Hytner, whose well-received production of 'Mother Clap's Molly House' by Mark Ravenhill is currently in the National's repertory, will be the company's fifth director since it was founded by Laurence Olivier in 1963. Other directors were Sir Peter Hall and Richard Eyre.",1
Top/News,"Yangon Journal; AIDS Onslaught Breaches the Burmese Citadel
In a ward of Yangon's Infectious Diseases Hospital, Myo Tun tried to shake hands with a visitor, but he was so weakened by AIDS that the muscles of his hand and arms had all but disappeared. He barely had enough strength to hold the prayer beads that are his final comfort.
""I used heroin with my friends, and we always shared the needles,"" said Mr. Myo Tun, 24 years old, as he drew a green cotton blanket beneath his bare feet. ""Even today my friends do not worry about AIDS. They are not sick yet.""
Dr. Rai Mra, a hospital physician, said he had no access to AZT or any of the other specialized drugs that might slow the ravages of the disease in Mr. Myo Tun and several other AIDS patients in the hospital, a center for AIDS treatment in Myanmar, formerly Burma.
""We don't have the facilities that other countries have,"" he said with the shrug that is second nature to Burmese doctors, such is their chronic shortage of modern medicines and equipment. ""Any help would be welcome.""  A Medical Catastrophe
One of the world's most isolated and secretive nations is opening up enough to admit that it has fallen victim to a medical catastrophe: an AIDS epidemic that is likely to ravage this country as it is now devastating Myanmar's neighbors.
Doctors and health workers say a disastrous mix of factors -- a large population of intravenous drug users, a migration of prostitutes, a grave shortage of condoms and testing equipment, and a conservative social structure that makes AIDS education difficult -- means that Myanmar faces an AIDS crisis as serious as that now found in neighboring Thailand and India.
But unlike its neighbors, Myanmar is the target of sanctions that have choked off most of the international aid for health projects that might control the spread of the disease.
""Cutting off aid has hurt both the innocent victims of the epidemic and the potential victims,"" said Albina du Boisrouvray, founder of the Association Francois-Xavier Bagnoud, one of the few Western charities to support AIDS projects here. ""They don't have enough condoms. They don't have enough testing kits to test the blood. I'm flabbergasted by what they don't have.""
Estimates from international health organizations place the number of people in Myanmar infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, at 150,000 to 450,000 in a population of about 43 million. The infection rates found in tests of intravenous drug users here -- nearly 80 percent are H.I.V. positive -- are the highest recorded anywhere.  An Uncooperative Neighbor
Myanmar's neighbors are a big part of the problem, especially Thailand, where thousands of Burmese women are working as prostitutes, many of them in conditions that amount to slave labor.
""What the Thais do is horrible,"" said a foreign health worker in Yangon, the Burmese capital. ""They recruit Burmese girls -- and they are girls -- and tell them that they will work as maids or waitresses. When they get to Thailand, they are forced into prostitution. And when they get AIDS, they are pushed back across the border.""
Foreign health workers generally have few kind words for Myanmar's military Government, which has an abysmal human rights record. But on the issue of AIDS, they say, the Government appears to understand that it has a disaster on its hands, and to be doing something about it.
""We realize this is one of the major health problems in Myanmar,"" said Dr. Myo Thet Htoon, the manager of the AIDS program of Myanmar's Ministry of Health. ""We know it could reach the whole population if we are not intelligent enough to prevent it.""
According to the World Health Organization, the first H.I.V. infections were detected in Myanmar in 1988. In 1992, the last year for which full-year figures are available, 1,640 people tested positive for the virus out of 75,000 tested.
Initially the principal transmission route for the virus was needle-sharing among intravenous drug users. But increasingly it is spread by sexual contact among heterosexuals, duplicating a pattern found in Thailand, where 800,000 are now estimated to be H.I.V. positive out of population of 57 million. The Money Is Lacking
Thailand's AIDS-prevention program -- with its distribution of free condoms, widespread testing and vast public education program -- is considered a model for the developing world. But across the border in Myanmar, one of the world's poorest countries, with a per capita income of less than $900 a year, the Government says there is no money for a comparable effort.
Nearly a third of the blood supply here goes untested for the H.I.V. virus because of a shortage of test kits, which cost as little as 70 cents apiece. International aid groups donated about 1.2 million condoms to Myanmar last year, but that is not nearly enough to meet demand. Outside large cities, condoms are often impossible to find, and they carry a price -- about 10 cents each -- that is out of the reach of the very poor.
The United Nations has stepped in to help with education. In 1991, Unicef produced a 60-minute film for Burmese television, ""Poisonous Love."" The central character in the film is a young man who contracts H.I.V. from a prostitute. He then goes on infect his wife and, possibly, his newborn child.
It took Unicef a year to persuade the Burmese junta to show the film, and there was a long struggle with Government censors who insisted that a scene showing condoms be cut because it might offend many in this deeply conservative Buddhist country.
The scene was left in only after Unicef made a direct appeal to Lieut. Gen. Khin Nyunt, the head of Burmese military intelligence and the man often described by diplomats as the first among equals in the junta.
""Khin Nyunt's wife is a physician, thank goodness,"" a Western health worker said. ""Otherwise, it might never have gotten on the air.""",1
Top/News,"Former Premier Defends 2 Allies In Spain Courts
Former Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez today formally joined the defense team of two senior officials who served in his Government in the 1980's and are appealing 10-year sentences for their roles in the kidnapping of a suspected Basque separatist.
Mr. Gonzalez, 56, acting as a lawyer for the first time in nearly 20 years, co-signed appeals to the Constitutional Court, Spain's highest tribunal, for his Interior Minister, Jose Barrionuevo, and his Director of State Security, Rafael Vera.
They are seeking to overturn a Supreme Court conviction on July 29 for their roles in the December 1983 kidnapping. The court also convicted 10 lower-ranking officials who served under Mr. Gonzalez, but he is helping just the top two aides, the only defendants who maintained their innocence.
Mr. Gonzalez, a Socialist, led Spain from 1982 to 1996, when he lost an election to the conservative Popular Party. He insists that the kidnapping trial was motivated by his political adversaries.
Mr. Gonzalez is now being talked about to head the European Union's Executive Commission in 2000, but he has been dogged by questions, revived at the trial, that his Government ran a 'dirty war' using a shadowy organization called the Anti-Terrorist Liberation Groups. It is blamed for killing 27 suspected Basque separatists from 1983 to 1987.
The 1983 kidnapping was the first action publicly claimed by the organization. But the victim turned out to be a French furniture dealer, Segundo Marey, not a Basque terrorist. He was released 10 days after being abducted from his home in southern France.
At the time, the Basque underground group E.T.A. -- whose initials in the Basque language stand for 'Basque Homeland and Liberty' -- used southern France as a sanctuary. Spanish authorities blame E.T.A. for about 800 deaths in its 30-year-old struggle.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1996 that there was insufficient evidence to charge Mr. Gonzalez in the kidnapping case.",1
Top/News,"Here, There and Everywhere: Jets' Lewis Simply Does It All
Linebacker Mo Lewis had been patient, not complaining about his reduced role on the Jets' defense. But last Sunday, he showed the Jets what they had been missing.
Lewis was named the American Football Conference's defensive player of the week for his performance against New England: five tackles, one sack, an interception, a deflected pass that was picked off by Victor Green and returned for a touchdown and a 3-yard run on fourth-and-2 out of a fake field-goal formation.
'I'm just a team guy,' Lewis said today. 'Of course I've been disappointed I was on the sideline because I always want to be on the field.'
Before today, Lewis had not spoken with the news media because he did not want to discuss his unsettled contract situation.  Lewis, a two-time Pro Bowl selection, was tagged as the team's franchise player in the off-season but contract talks broke down.  Lewis, who has been with the Jets his entire 10-year career, signed a one-year, $4.2 million contract, and he is most likely to leave after this season, replaced by John Abraham.
But Lewis's performance Sunday is sure to help his market value. Lewis had not played in the nickel package this season because Coach Al Groh wanted to give him some rest and give Abraham an opportunity to establish himself. The reasoning was sound: although Lewis played in 95.2 percent of plays last season, according to Jets' records, most of his 38.5 regular-season sacks have come on first and second downs. But Groh said he had a gut feeling about putting Lewis back in on third downs and he played nearly every one last week.
The result was immediate, even though Lewis said he was not in the flow of the game because it was his first time playing every down this season. On a third down early in the third quarter, Lewis sacked Drew Bledsoe for a 12-yard loss, forcing the Patriots to punt from deep in their own territory. Then, on a third-and-5 in the fourth quarter, Lewis intercepted a Bledsoe pass at New England's 36-yard line.
Lewis did not lobby Groh to increase his playing time, and he will not say that he deserves to play every down against Miami Monday night, in what is sure to be a battle of stellar defenses.
'You have to sit back, as a leader, you can't always be forceful,' he said. 'You have to be humble. Being on the sideline is tough. When the game is over, you felt like it was a void, that you didn't really play a complete game. I missed it.'
So did his teammates. They universally say that Lewis is the best player on the defense, and his absence on passing situations bewildered them as much as it did Lewis.
'You wonder why,' cornerback Marcus Coleman said. 'Eventually, the cream rises to the top. Everybody in this league knows Mo belongs out there.'
Said Green: 'If we play 70 plays, he's got to be on the field for 70 plays. He can't be on for 30 plays, then you limit what he can do.'
Lewis's adjustment period began with the arrival of Mike Nolan, the defensive coordinator who replaced Bill Belichick, and continued with his diminished role. But that period may be coming to an end. He is content with his role, and the whispers about the bumpy transition to Nolan's system have subsided.
'When you go into a marriage, everything is new to you,' Lewis said. 'When it's one way, and you felt it was the best relationship -- and I mean the relationship with Belichick -- and here comes a new person into your life, you're like: 'It's my way or the highway.' Being in a relationship, everybody has to learn how to compromise. It went both ways and it's working out pretty good.'
EXTRA POINTS
More fun with the injury report: center KEVIN MAWAE is listed as doubtful with a sore foot, but he insisted he was fine, and would practice on Wednesday, but he did not. 'I'm 100 percent going to play. I missed one practice in 11 years,' Mawae said before practice. 'I haven't missed a game since I was a freshman in college.' . . . But linebacker JOHN ABRAHAM, who is listed as questionable with a stomach muscle pull, did not practice and he seems less likely to play Monday. . . . Tight end ANTHONY BECHT (sprained knee) and running back BERNIE PARMALEE (hamstring) were both listed as questionable. Parmalee did not practice and Becht participated in individual drills.
FOOTBALL",1
Top/News,"Women Become the Darlings Of the Candidates in Mexico
The macho, conservative world of Mexican politics has finally begun to show off its more feminine side as political parties battle as never before to win the votes of women.
Male strippers were hired to perform at one campaign rally. Television advertisements raised questions about candidates' relationships with their former wives, a subject long considered taboo for public discussion. And while the participation of candidates' families is common in the United States, the high-profile roles of political wives and daughters  in Mexico this year has signaled a new opening for women and women's issues in government.
Because of their numbers, women have been strongly courted by political candidates in Mexico since they gained the vote in 1953. But in Sunday's presidential election -- currently a statistical dead heat between the governing party candidate, Francisco Labastida Ochoa, and the center-right opponent, Vicente Fox Quesada -- women's votes may be decisive.
Some 52 percent of the Mexican electorate are women; more than one-third of all voters are homemakers.
Because of that power, the way the presidential candidates dress, speak and arrange their schedules, whether campaigning in urban centers or rural villages, is done to appeal to women.
Leaders of the National Feminine Civic Association said that for the first time they had been invited to meetings with most presidential candidates to express their concerns about women.
Mr. Fox's penchant for bluejeans and cowboy boots may make him appear more down to earth among working men, but to many women they make him just plain sexy. And Mr. Labastida has turned to his wife, Maria Teresa Uriarte de Labastida, to help infuse warmth and color into his image.
Mrs. Labastida is an expert on Mayan culture who moves as easily at indigenous ceremonies as she does among the Mexican elite. Pretty and poised, Mrs. Labastida often wraps her husband in bearhugs on stage and gladly complies when the crowds demand she give him a kiss. Her visibility and political self-assuredness have brought comparisons to Hillary Rodham Clinton.
And it seems that Mrs. Labastida shares the same instinct for political combat. At a recent rally of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, for women at the National Auditorium, it was Mrs. Labastida who criticized Mr. Fox for his occasional use of vulgar language, suggesting that he was not only a bad influence on children but also undeserving of public trust.
Women like Eva Nely Duarte Ochoa, 43, a homemaker and mother of three from Michoacan, hung on every word. 'To see the party recognize the talents of women, for me, is proof that they understand our needs and that they are going to pay attention,' she said. 'Women have always participated in all parts of society, but now we are being recognized for our contributions.'
The efforts appear to have paid off for the PRI. While the most reliable final polls last week showed that the support for Mr. Labastida and Mr. Fox among voters in general was too close to call, they found that Mr. Labastida was slightly more popular among women.
Homemakers, the largest segment of voters among women, have long been a bastion of support for the PRI, especially those who live in rural communities, have fewer years of education and hold more conservative beliefs. And it seems that support is holding.
But women's strength no longer lies only in their numbers. There has also been evidence of a coming of age as women assume greater control in their homes and communities. According to the Mexican Association of Women Executives, more and more women have moved into the work force, with close to 40 percent of all Mexican women involved in some type of economic activity for the benefit of their families. Among workers, women have an average of 1.3 years more education than men. And more than 50 percent of all university students are women.
Women tend to be more sensitive than men to how well the government fulfills its responsibilities, analysts say, and less afraid to express discontent. As homemakers, they are the ones who worry most about whether there is electricity, clean water, reliable transportation and good schools and hospitals. And in the workplace, they have become vocal advocates for fair wages and safe conditions.
'Women more than any other group, except maybe young people, are the most active proponents for change,' said Martha Sahagun, a spokeswoman for Mr. Fox. 'They are the most forceful fighters and to limit their importance to their numbers devalues their significance.'
Margarita Elena Tapia, a candidate for the Mexico City Council of Delegates, considers her campaign the product of women's new political power. The left-wing Center Democratic Party asked her to be its candidate, she said, because of a commitment the party had made to feminist organizations and because the grass-roots organizations at work in the neighborhoods Ms. Tapia would represent are led by women.
'Only a few women have served as governors or as cabinet members,' she said, 'but smart politicians understand that their political bases are controlled by women.'
If Mr. Fox, the candidate of the opposition National Action Party, is elected, he will be the first unmarried president of Mexico in recent decades. Both he and Mr. Labastida are divorced, and Mr. Labastida has acknowledged fathering a child out of wedlock. But neither candidate seems to have suffered in popularity because of these matters.
Women like Olga Lidia Colina Gonzalez, a factory worker, said she supported Mr. Fox because she liked what he did for women when he was  governor in her home state of Guanajuato. 'He told everybody that women's words are worth as much as men's' Mrs. Gonzalez said. 'Before people used to use any bad language they wanted with me. Now, wherever I go, I get treated with respect.'
Although Mr. Labastida has appeared to win more support among conservative women, it is generally Mr. Fox who espouses more traditional positions on women's and religious issues, especially abortion. A devout Catholic, he said he believes life begins at conception and therefore he personally opposes abortion.
Early in his campaign, Mr. Fox was criticized as being too macho, and even homophobic, by feminist groups when he spoke about his feelings against abortion and when his campaign ran advertisements questioning Mr. Labastida's masculinity.
Then Mr. Fox's pretty and articulate daughters -- two of the four children he adopted with his former wife -- drew on their own existence to soften Mr. Fox's position and blunt those attacks. In interviews with reporters, the daughters talked about how fortunate they felt that their biological mothers decided against abortion. 'Just look at us,' said Paulina Fox, a 17-year-old who won second place in a national public-speaking competition. 'Why would you end the life of someone when there are parents looking for children to care for and make happy.'
Since then, Mr. Fox has gained ground among women, and most of it comes from the educated, urban, working women who would be expected to be against him.
According to a June 5 poll in the newspaper Reforma, he beat Mr. Labastida among professionals older and younger than 40, among office workers in the private sector, among general workers in public and private agencies, and among students.
'His position on abortion was the only thing that made me uncomfortable,' said Telia Cervantes Gutierrez, a 24-year-old law student. 'But when you see his daughters at his side, you know that he really believes it when he says there are alternatives to abortion.'
At a Fox rally last Saturday in Mexico City's main plaza, Ms. Cervantes stood next to her mother, Evelia Garduno, 40, a homemaker who said she had decided to vote against the PRI for the first time.
It used to be, Ms. Garduno said, that she was afraid to vote for change. Now, she said, change seemed the best hope for the future of her children. 'For years we have waited for better houses, better schools, better jobs,' she said. 'I do not want to wait anymore.'",1
Top/News,"Gallego Doesn't Hear the Word 'Trade'
The rumors seem to wash in and out like the tide, but Mike Gallego does his best to ignore them. He has seen too many spring trainings, heard too much unfounded gossip, to listen now and wonder if there is reason to be concerned.
Gallego is trying to win an everyday job with the Yankees, but he is also trying to avoid becoming the center of a trade that could occur before the end of the month.
The Yankees' predicament is choosing between Gallego and Pat Kelly as their second baseman. It would be easy to keep both, except that the Yankees already have capable infield backups in Randy Velarde and Andy Stankiewicz, who are likely to make the team.
There are few answers coming from either Gene Michael, the team's general manager, or Buck Showalter, the manager. Michael has said that he has heard from several teams interested in a middle infielder -- the Mets and San Francisco Giants appear to have needs -- but he won't comment on whether they involve Gallego.
All Gallego knows is that most rumors seem to summon his name. Part of the Job
""I'm aware of them, obviously,"" he said today before the Yankees played the Boston Red Sox at Fort Lauderdale Stadium. ""I've been around long enough to realize that most players go through this at least once in their career.""
If this is a competition, Gallego seems to be losing. He was batting .161 at the start of the day, compared with Kelly's .308 average. Although players do not measure their success by spring statistics, it is sometimes the only way for a manager to determine the season's starters.
""I'm not looking over my shoulder to see what Mike or Andy are doing and then saying that I've got to go out and get a couple of hits today,"" Kelly said. ""That would totally defeat the purpose of spring training. I'm just trying to get myself ready for anything.""
Anything could happen. Showalter concedes that a trade remains a real possibility, but it isn't the only one. Many Ways to Go
""Pat could go to Columbus,"" he said. ""There's a lot of different ways it could stack up. You could also keep Gallego and Kelly, but we really wouldn't want to do that.""
The 25-year-old Kelly is youth, but Gallego, who is 32, represents experience to a team that might contend in the American League East. Kelly is making $160,000 this season -- small change in a sport of millionaires -- while Gallego has two seasons left on a three-year, $5.1 million contract.
""I've been there, I've done it, I have the experience and I know how to win,"" said Gallego, who played on championship teams with the Oakland A's. ""As far as ability is concerned, I'm sure there are 20 minor leaguers who have better range and can run better. But I know how to read pitchers, how to read swings and how to turn the double play.
""I might be showing a little favoritism, but if I were a general manager, I'd pick Mike Gallego.""
Kelly said only this: ""I'm marketable. I'm not hard to get rid of -- or hard to keep.""
Any suggestion of a return to the minors, though, does not go over well. ""I don't want to talk about it,"" Kelly said. ""That would be absolutely ridiculous.""
INSIDE PITCH
WADE BOGGS and his former teammates, the Boston Red Sox, finally met. Boggs, who signed a free-agent contract with the Yankees last winter, went 0 for 3 and was given a mixed ovation Saturday by a Fort Lauderdale Stadium crowd that obviously included many Red Sox fans. Before the game, he paused to talk with the Red Sox trainer and clubhouse manager but didn't speak with any of his former teammates. Asked earlier if he felt any emotion about the game, he said: ""Not a bit. There would be emotion if I got traded, but I made the decision to leave. The moment I walked out the door, the emotion went, too."" . . . BOB WICKMAN gave up one run in four innings in the Yankees' 3-1 victory over the Red Sox Saturday. JOHN HABYAN worked two innings for the victory, and NEAL HEATON, who seems likely to beat out JEFF JOHNSON for a role as left-handed reliever, threw three scoreless innings for the save.
BASEBALL",1
Top/News,"Italy's Semi-New Government, 57th Since the War, Is Sworn In
Acting Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema presented a new, lightly shuffled cabinet today that mostly underscored the fierce infighting within his center-left majority that forced him to resign on Saturday.
Mr. D'Alema's new government -- Italy's 57th since World War II -- discarded ministers affiliated with three small parties that mutinied last week. He replaced them with two representatives of the Democrats Party, which was founded by his predecessor, Roman Prodi, and had been demanding more of a voice since it won 7.7 percent of the vote in the elections in June for the European Parliament.
The key members of Mr. D'Alema's team, including Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini, Treasury Minister Giuliano Amato and Economics Minister Vincenzo Visco, remained in place. But Carlo Scognamiglio was replaced as defense minister by Sergio Mattarella, a member of the Italian Popular Party, the largest centrist party loyal to Mr. D'Alema.
Mr. D'Alema and his ministers were sworn in this morning by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, but the new team still needs to go before the Italian Parliament for a vote of confidence. The Senate approved the cabinet tonight. The lower house is expected to vote on Thursday.
When Mr. D'Alema resigned on Saturday, he said he did so to create a 'stronger, more stable' government that could last until parliamentary elections in 2001. But even if his government is narrowly approved, as is likely, it is bound to remain vulnerable to stalemate.
The Italian political system, which still awards seats to even tiny parties on the basis of their shares of the national vote, is inherently fragile. Mr. D'Alema's majority, moreover, stretches uncomfortably across the ideological spectrum, including Communists but also centrists who, on many issues, lean right. Disputes over such issues as the budget and Kosovo caused Mr. Prodi to fall by one vote in October 1998.
Mr. D'Alema has made electoral reform a key goal, saying a two-party system would give Italy the political stability it sorely lacks. Earlier this week, he held meetings with the three small parties, known as the Clover Alliance, whose rebellion had forced his resignation. But he was unable to convince them to support his plan for electoral reform.
Mr. D'Alema wants to do away with proportional representation, but that would in effect wipe out the small parties. 'The country is looking ahead, while politics is struggling to turn over a new leaf,' he told Parliament today.
Mr. D'Alema wants to complete formation of his new government by Saturday, and the selection process was so speedy that some new cabinet ministers found out about their new positions only when they were announced on television.",1
Top/News,"North Korea Begins to Reopen Plant for Processing Plutonium
North Korea started to reopen a sealed plutonium reprocessing plant today, the most provocative and technically important step it has taken in recent days to revive a nuclear program that experts said could produce weapons within months.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said North Korean officials had disabled surveillance cameras and broken through seals barring entry to a building housing the equipment needed to turn spent fuel rods from a nearby reactor into weapons-grade material.
On Sunday, North Korean officials disabled cameras and broke seals around a pool holding 8,000 of the spent fuel rods at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, 55 miles north of Pyongyang, the capital. On Saturday, the North Koreans began dismantling monitoring equipment at the reactor itself.
'The reprocessing plant is the important one, because that's where they extract the plutonium from the spent fuel,' said Mark Gwozdecky, spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. 'If we don't have our monitoring equipment in place, we're not in a position to assure anybody that this material is not being diverted for weapons.'
The Bush administration emphasized that it would continue to deal with the issue diplomatically. But even as he endorsed diplomacy as the right course for now, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld warned North Korea not to assume that the United States was incapable of confronting it militarily, even as Washington prepares for possible war with Iraq.
'If they do, it would be a mistake,' Mr. Rumsfeld said at a news conference.
The Korean developments also generated new bipartisan pressure from Congress for the White House to rethink its policy of not negotiating until North Korea drops its nuclear program.
North Korea disclosed in October that it had continued to pursue a nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement. That announcement led the United States to cut off shipments of oil to North Korea.
Since then the Pyongyang government has steadily ratcheted up the stakes in the confrontation, apparently in an effort to win economic concessions and security agreements from Washington at a time when the United States is focused on Iraq.
Faced with the new provocation today, the administration said it would stick to its demand that North Korea drop its nuclear program as a condition for negotiations.
'We think it's important to let the North Koreans know that the way to engage and integrate with the international community is to live up to treaties and agreements and obligations, not to break those agreements and then ask for more in return,' a White House official said.
Asked whether the United States had set off the confrontation by labeling North Korea part of the 'axis of evil,' along with Iraq and Iran, thus backing Pyongyang into a corner, Mr. Rumsfeld replied that the responsibility rested with North Korea's totalitarian leadership.
'The idea that it's the rhetoric from the United States that's causing them to starve their people or to do these idiotic things,' Mr. Rumsfeld said, 'misses the point.'
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell continued the American efforts to maintain a united international front on the Korean issue.
This morning, Mr. Powell spoke with his counterparts in Russia, France and Britain to emphasize the need for 'a peaceful resolution,' said the State Department spokesman, Philip Reeker. Over the weekend Mr. Powell spoke with the foreign ministers of South Korea, Japan, China and Russia.
Mr. Reeker repeated the American position that there can be no negotiations while North Korea is pursuing its nuclear program. 'We will not give in to blackmail,' he said.
Mr. Reeker said that as far as he knew, there was no dissent among those partners from the resolve to press North Korea.
But the newly elected South Korean government, which takes office in late February, is pledged to engagement with the North, and is operating in an atmosphere of notably strong anti-American sentiment. Japanese diplomats have been privately concerned that isolating North Korea would backfire. Today Russia's deputy foreign minister, Georgi Mamedov, was quoted in a Moscow newspaper suggesting that the Bush administration was to blame.
'How should a small country feel when it is told that it is all but part of forces of evil of biblical proportions and should be fought against until total annihilation?' Mr. Mamedov asked, according to Reuters.
Mr. Reeker dismissed Mr. Mamedov's comments as 'totally absurd.'
Members of Congress from both parties have also started to question the administration's position on negotiations.
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the departing Democratic chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview that the growing prospect of a nuclear crisis was likely to increase the pressure for international negotiations with North Korea, even if they do not directly involve the United States.
On Sunday, the incoming Republican chairman of the committee, Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, said in an interview with Fox News that the United States would 'have to talk, talk continuously to South Korea, to North Korea, to Japan, be heavily engaged.'
Representative Curt Weldon, Republican of Pennsylvania, said he would like to travel to North Korea to establish some communication with its government. 'No dialogue is a recipe for disaster,' he said. 'That doesn't mean we have to appease or to cave.'
Two Democrats, Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Charles E. Schumer of New York, wrote to Mr. Bush last week asking for an explanation of administration's policy. 'The administration has not enunciated a clear policy goal on North Korea,' Mr. Schumer said today. 'They say, 'Let's not talk.' But where is that leading us? You don't have to have a Ph.D. in foreign relations to understand that North Korea poses a greater danger to the United States than Iraq. But nobody quite knows what our policy is.'
Although North Korea is now well down the path to completing all the steps it needs to begin processing weapons-grade plutonium at Yongbyon, officials said there was still time to avert a showdown.
Mr. Gwozdecky said the atomic energy agency's inspectors on the scene had reported that the North Koreans had not finished breaking through all the seals -- a combination of electronic alarms and bolts -- to get into the reprocessing plant, a job he said would probably be completed on Tuesday. He said it would be weeks or months before the plant would be operational.
Faced with a similar impasse with North Korea in 1994, the Clinton administration considered a plan to bomb Yongbyon, but instead managed to reach a negotiated settlement. But even as it has laid out a formal doctrine of pre-emption to head off threats to national security, the Bush administration has stressed that it is not contemplating military action against North Korea.
Indeed, American officials played down any sense of urgency. Responding to questions about why evidence that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction requires the threat of immediate military action, while the certainty that North Korea is on the verge of being able to produce nuclear weapons does not, administration officials said Iraq had exhausted its chances to resolve its conflict diplomatically while North Korea had not.
'The Iraqi regime has thumbed their noses at the United Nations annually for a good period of time,' Mr. Rumsfeld said. 'The situation in North Korea is a fairly recent one. The diplomacy that's under way there is in its early stages for the United States and the interested neighboring countries. It seems to me to be a perfectly rational way of proceeding.'",1
Top/News,"Asians to Press U.S. on Boat People
LEAD: Britain and six Southeast Asian nations plan a new attempt to persuade the Bush Administration and the Vietnamese Government to agree to the forced return of thousands of Vietnamese boat people later this summer.
Britain and six Southeast Asian nations plan a new attempt to persuade the Bush Administration and the Vietnamese Government to agree to the forced return of thousands of Vietnamese boat people later this summer.
The six Asian nations are warning that unless the forcible repatriation is accepted, they will no longer allow boat people to land, and an international plan for looking after these refugees will collapse.
The diplomatic campaign, which diplomats say will involve high level appeals in Washington and Hanoi next month is intended to secure American and Vietnamese backing for the return of boat people who are deemed to be economic migrants rather than political refugees by July 1.
Asians Present an Ultimatum
This deadline was set at a meeting in Manila earlier this month of the 29 countries that drew up the Comprehensive Plan of Action on Indochinese Refugees at a United Nations-sponsored conference in Geneva last year. If the United States and Vietnam agree, these countries will meet again in Geneva on June 26 to prepare the repatriation.
The six members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations - Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Brunei - which are caring for about 50,000 Vietnamese boat people, warned that unless the United States and Vietnam agree to forced return of economic migrants, they will refuse to accept any more boat people, as Malaysia is increasingly doing already.
This would effectively destroy the Comprehensive Action Plan, diplomats say, under which these countries and Hong Kong agreed to offer asylum to boat people fleeing Vietnam but to resettle only those deemed genuine political refugees.
Hong Kong Wants Thousands Out
Britain has said it also wants to send back the roughly 8,500 Vietnamese boat people in Hong Kong to whom it has already refused refugee status as soon as another 1,700 who have agreed to go back on a voluntary basis have been sent home.
By the end of the year British officials say about 40,000 of Hong Kong's estimated 55,000 boat people will probably have had their requests for asylum denied and be designated for forced repatriation.
Britain and the six Asian nations want the forced repatriations to be carried out under the supervision of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to ensure that the returnees are well treated by the Vietnamese and found housing and jobs.
But the United States has blocked their plan, arguing that conditions in Vietnam are too bad for the refugees to be sent back there. Privately, British and Southeast Asian officials feel that the Bush Administration's attitude is chiefly influenced by fear of a political backlash among Vietnamese Americans if the United States supports repatriation.
Britain Calls for Special Camp
As a result, Britain has proposed that the Bush Administration build a special camp for the boat people on Guam, the American Pacific island, and accept boat people denied refuge there until it judges that conditions in Vietnam have sufficiently improved for them to go back.
It has also asked the United States to pay up to $80 million toward the cost of caring for boat people currently housed in Hong Kong's refugee camps.
The Administration has refused both requests, saying it cannot accept people who are not genuine refugees and that, in any event, housing them on American soil would only encourage more Vietnamese to flee the country.
Fewer Arriving in Hong Kong
While Hong Kong's overcrowded refugee camps have forced Britain to take the lead in pressing for forced repatriation in the past, refugee officials say fewer refugees are arriving there now and conditions are easing. In the Southeast Asian countries, on the other hand, the flow of new arrivals is still runnning at relatively high levels, and the governments are increasingly anxious to start sending boat people home, by force if necessary.
According to the latest United Nations figures, Indonesia has received 5,087 boat people so far this year, lifting the total to 12,169. Thailand has taken in 3,772, giving it a total of 13,069. Malaysia, which already cares for over 19,000 boat people, has received another 988. And the Philippines with 9,092 has taken in another 200 this year.",1
Top/News,"Dudley Gets Closer to Knicks
A trade involving the Knicks, the Portland Trail Blazers and the Toronto Raptors that would bring Chris Dudley to New York is a step closer to happening, but may still run afoul of the National Basketball Association's complicated salary-cap rules.
The Trail Blazers, who signed Brian Grant yesterday to a seven-year deal worth $63 million, re-signed Dudley, 32, to a one-year deal for the minimum salary of $272,250. An arbitration hearing in the next 10 days, two league officials said, will decide whether that contract allows Dudley to keep his so-called Larry Bird rights. If it does not, then a team that traded for him could not exceed its salary cap to sign him after this season, and he would probably stay in Portland.
In the proposed trade, the Knicks would send John Wallace or Walter McCarty to Toronto for a draft pick, which would go to Portland for the 6-foot-11-inch Dudley. If Dudley retained his Bird rights, he could play at the minimum salary this season with the understanding that the Knicks would then exceed the salary cap to re-sign him.",1
Top/News,"Smashing Service Is Their Business
Sure, BORIS and MAC and IVAN have big serves. But the most potent servers in tennis history will not be among those playing when the United States Open starts today.
Don't agree? Then argue with SIDNEY B. WOOD Jr ., who has played against most of the finest players in an international career that began in the 1920's. For his money, Wood places ELLSWORTH VINES and FRANK SHIELDS -- stars of the 1930's -- on a different level than today's players.
""The development in racquet-making adds 20 percent to every player's hitting power,"" said the 78-year-old Wood, a manufacturer of tennis-court surfaces. ""But it takes more than sheer speed for a high ace count. Deception rates first -- get the guy leaning the wrong way and he's yours -- with accuracy and power second and third.""
At the time he won Wimbledon in 1931, Wood, at 19 years old, was the youngest winner of the men's event. The record stood for more than 50 years, until then 17-year-old BORIS BECKER won in 1985. Wood recalls Vines's averaging more than two aces a game in a 50-match tour against DON BUDGE , and he said that Shields averaged 2.2 aces a game for an entire season.
""If you can do one ace a game, you're very good,"" Wood said.
Here are Wood's ratings and comments on great servers: THE BEST Ellsworth Vines and Frank Shields: Their records set them apart. THE CONTENDERS Gottfried VonCramm: His serves were terminators. Pancho Gonzalez: At game-point against, averaged 87 percent on first ball. Ivan Lendl: Despite being handicapped by a high toss that can be wind-affected. Boris Becker: Battering-ram serve his Wimbledon meal ticket. Pete Sampras, Michael Stitch, Goran Ivanisevic: Once they cut their double-fault count, they have perfect motions as sho-ins for greatness. OTHER MEMORABLE ACERS Bill Tilden John Doeg Don Budge Dave Jones Jack Kramer Bobby Riggs Bob Falkenburg Lew Hoad John Feaver Mike Sangster Stan Smith John Newcombe Arthur Ashe John McEnroe  SIDELINES: BASELINE BASHERS",1
Top/News,"OBSERVATORY
Look-Alike Tuna and Shark
In consumer electronics, the buzzword of the moment is convergence. It used to be, for instance, that you had your cellphone and you had your organizer, and never the twain did meet. Now both gadgets have evolved to be pretty much the same; your cellphone contains your datebook, and you can make calls from your organizer.
Convergence can happen in nature, too. Consider the case of lamnid sharks, like the mako and the great white, and tuna. They have evolved separately for about 400 million years, and in some ways are about as different as fish can be. The tuna has bones, the other has only cartilage. But they have the same streamlined body shape, and both have a tall tail fin that is attached to the body at a narrow point .
Now Jeanine M. Donley of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and other researchers have shown that this convergence is, as they put it in a paper in the journal Nature, more than skin deep. They studied how mako sharks swim, down to the particular muscle movements, and found that there are remarkable similarities to tuna.
The researchers placed newly caught shortfin makos in a swim tunnel, a kind of endless pool for fish. They embedded piezoelectric sensors deep within the flesh to detect muscle movements.
While most fish swim by wriggling the whole body, tuna, which have been extensively studied, get their propulsive power by sweeping the tail back and forth. The researchers showed that makos do this too, and in a similar way; specialized muscles near the backbone transmit their power to the tail through long tendons.
As for why these two types of fish converged, the answer is clear. Both are open-sea hunters and have a need for speed, which their specialized shape and muscle dynamics give them.
Mineral From the Moon
There may be nothing new under the sun, but there is something new from the moon. Scientists from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and other institutions have found a new mineral in a lunar meteorite that was collected in Oman four years ago.
The mineral, named hapkeite, consists of iron and silicon and was produced by space weathering; the elements were vaporized by micrometeorites on the moon and then redeposited as a film on rock.
The finding was reported in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Parasitic Interaction
The common view of parasite species in animals is that they are like loners at a party: one drinking alone at the bar, another hovering around the cheese dip, a third mumbling to itself in the corner. In other words, they have no interaction at all.
But a study of wild rabbits in Scotland has shown that parasites are not always such social misfits.
Researchers from Australia, Britain and the United States analyzed data from a rabbit population that was sampled monthly for 23 years. These rabbits have five species of parasitic worms in their intestinal tract -- one in the stomach, three in the small intestine and one in the large intestine. The researchers looked for evidence that the parasites had an effect on one another.
The study, published in Nature, found a network of interactions. Increasing numbers of one parasite resulted in a decrease in one or more of the others, often depending on where in the tract (upstream or downstream, in the researchers' terms) the particular worms were. The effects were either direct -- byproducts of one worm, for example, could harm another downstream -- or indirect, through the rabbit's immune system.
Many important farm animals have similar parasite communities, the researchers say, so similar research should be undertaken on them, with any interactions taken into account when trying to control infections. A drug against one worm, for example, may allow others to become more of a problem. On the other hand, introducing a relatively benign parasite may be an alternate way to control those already there.
They Hummed in Europe, Too
Hummingbirds just got a lot older and wider. Two 30-million-year-old German fossils have been identified as hummingbirds, pushing their fossil record back about 29 million years and providing proof they once inhabited the Old World.
The discovery was made by Dr. Gerald Mayr of the natural history museum Forschungsinstitut Senkenberg in Frankfurt and reported in the journal Science. He named the extinct species Eurotrochilus inexpectatus.
Dr. Mayr found the fossils in storage in a Stuttgart museum. They had been donated by a private collector who uncovered them in a clay pit near Frauenweiler in southern Germany. Dr. Mayr said that he recognized particular features of the birds' anatomy in the fossils, which are less than two inches long.
'I'm convinced they're hummingbirds,' he said. 'They're very, very distinctive in the wing bone, which is adapted to hovering and nectar feeding.' The bone and shoulder joint allow the wings to beat in a figure-eight pattern.
One of the fossils also has a long beak, like modern hummingbirds. Several older hummingbird-like fossils have been found in Germany and the Caucasus, but they are generally considered more primitive birds, in part because there is no clear evidence they had long beaks.
The only other fossils of modern hummingbirds are about one million years old. Like their living descendants, they have been found only in the New World.
Dr. Mayr said the big leap backward in the fossil record did not surprise him. Genetic analysis had estimated that modern hummingbirds diverged from other birds 30 to 40 million years ago. The problem was to find evidence.
There won't be any more found at Frauenweiler. 'The site does not exist anymore,' Dr. Mayr said. 'It's going to become a landfill.'",1
Top/News,"Yankees Add Momentum to the Red Sox' Collapse in the East
The countdown to perfection began after Jose Offerman struck out yesterday, Yankee Stadium buzzing with anticipation. Mike Mussina could sense it.
He could hear it. He felt the distinctive energy of the crowd in his first start since he fell a strike short of a perfect game last Sunday night in Boston.
Offerman whiffed and the crowd roared. Only 26 outs to go. It was the first inning.
Mussina walked Troy O'Leary in the second inning. Manager Joe Torre turned to his pitching coach, Mel Stottlemyre, and told him it was the best thing that could have happened.
Trot Nixon doubled in the fourth inning, Boston's first hit of the game, and Torre was glad Mussina could forget about perfect games and no-hitters and get back to pitching, something he does very well.
Mussina allowed one unearned run over six innings and Tino Martinez slammed a couple of homers and drove in five runs against his former teammate David Cone as the Yankees crushed Boston, 9-2.
The Red Sox are ready for an autopsy. They have lost 12 of their last 13 games. The Yankees went into Fenway Park on Aug. 31 leading the American League East by six games. They have doubled that lead over Boston in eight days, winning all five games with the Red Sox.
The Yankees' number for clinching is 10. They will clinch the division title with any combination of Yankees victories and Boston losses equaling 10.
'We went to Boston last week with a six-game lead and a three-game series and it could've gone to a three-game lead if we played terribly,' Mussina said. 'We really pitched tremendously and we found a way to come through with three very close games, and that has led us into believing we can go out there and put this thing away and play some good baseball and get it going again.'
Roger Clemens is 19-1 and the front-runner for the American League Cy Young award, Orlando Hernández has made two strong starts in the last eight days, and Andy Pettitte is 14-9. Mussina is 15-11 over all. In his last six starts he is 4-1 with a 1.03 earned run average, allowing 21 hits and 10 walks in 44 innings, with 48 strikeouts. Mussina has not allowed an earned run in 25 consecutive innings.
A couple of Mussina's former teammates from the Baltimore Orioles called him after his near-perfect game, Jesse Orosco phoning from California.
'You blew it again,' Orosco joked, referring to the game in 1997 when Mussina retired the first 25 batters.
Mussina did not talk much about the game last week.
Reliving the disappointment in conversation served no practical purpose, he said.
He saw no point in dwelling on what could have been, and he had no expectations of dominating Boston in a similar fashion yesterday. 'To realistically think the same thing could happen did not enter my mind,' he said.
Mussina struck out the side in the top of the first, immediately grabbing the attention of the fans.
But Cone, who held the Yankees scoreless into the ninth inning during Mussina's masterpiece last Sunday, allowed a walk and a two-run homer to Martinez in the bottom of the first. It was turning into a different kind of game.
Mussina pitched out of trouble in the fourth inning, then the fifth, when Boston scored an unearned run to draw to 2-1.
But in the sixth, Chuck Knoblauch singled and Bernie Williams walked before Martinez ripped his second home run of the game.
It was his 31st home run of the season and his 100th, 101st and 102nd runs batted in.
Cone was replaced with two out in the sixth, and fans stood and clapped for their vanquished old friend.
Cone said, 'Emotionally, it's been very draining to have this down streak when we were so close to being in this race, so close to making a run at the Yankees.'
The Yankees added four runs after Cone departed, taking a 9-1 lead. Torre relieved Mussina, who pitched extraordinarily over two decisive weekends in September and through the frustration of having Carl Everett end his bid for a perfect game by dumping a single into left-center field with two strikes and two out in the ninth inning last Sunday night.
'A lot of that game was a blur,' Mussina said.
'You get upset, you get disappointed and you let it go.
'I will, sometime.'
INSIDE PITCH
PAUL O'NEILL has been hampered by late-season injuries in each of the last two years, and he has another problem this year. O'Neill hurt the outside part of his left foot while running the bases Friday, was scratched from yesterday's starting lineup and might miss the next few games. O'Neill said after yesterday's game that he should be ready by tomorrow, but Manager JOE TORRE seemed intent on resting him for a couple of days.
DEREK JETER could come back next week, but Torre wants to be cautious and the Yankees will play on Tampa Bay's artificial surface next weekend. Jeter may be used as a designated hitter against the Devil Rays. . . . SCOTT BROSIUS will take batting practice against some of the pitchers called up from Class AAA last week, and he could return to the everyday lineup Wednesday or Thursday.
JORGE POSADA, who is appealing the six-game suspension he received Friday for a confrontation with an umpire, has not heard when his hearing will be held. The Yankees will begin a 10-game road trip Friday, and unless Posada's appeal is heard in the next few days, the process will have to be continued in another city.
BASEBALL",1
Top/News,"Patient 76ers to Retire Chamberlain's No. 13
LEAD: Wilt Chamberlain, the second-leading career scorer in National Basketball Association history with 31,419 points over 14 seasons, has seen his jersey number, 13, retired by the Los Angeles Lakers, for whom he played his six final seasons, ending in 1973. Now the Philadelphia 76ers, with whom he played three and a half seasons in the mid-1960's, would like to honor their home-grown 7-foot-1-inch hero, too.
Wilt Chamberlain, the second-leading career scorer in National Basketball Association history with 31,419 points over 14 seasons, has seen his jersey number, 13, retired by the Los Angeles Lakers, for whom he played his six final seasons, ending in 1973. Now the Philadelphia 76ers, with whom he played three and a half seasons in the mid-1960's, would like to honor their home-grown 7-foot-1-inch hero, too.
John Nash, the 76ers' general manager, announced Thursday that a ceremony to honor Chamberlain and retire his number would take place at the Spectrum early next season.
Chamberlain long held a grudge against the 76ers. Philadelphia acquired him from San Francisco on Jan. 15, 1965, with an understanding that he would gain part ownership of the 76ers. But Ike Richman, the owner, died before the agreement could be made formal, and attempts by the 76ers over the years to retire the number 13 met with a cool reception from Chamberlain. But times and attitudes changed.
'He's thrilled, he's looking forward to it,' said Michael Richman (no relation to Ike Richman), a Philadelphia lawyer who has been Chamberlain's contact with the team.(AP)  SPORTS PEOPLE: PRO BASKETBALL",1
Top/News,"WATCH AND LISTEN
LEAD: A sensor that clips onto an earlobe, fingertip or your chest can provide a digital readout of your heart rate while you exercise, and a new version can talk.
A sensor that clips onto an earlobe, fingertip or your chest can provide a digital readout of your heart rate while you exercise, and a new version can talk.
It tells when you're overexercising, and warns you if you're slowing down. It will also tell you your heart rate. The HeartWatch, marketed by Computer Instruments Corporation of Hempstead, L.I., is a wireless audiovisual unit. It works in combination with a listening device, such as a personal stereo, to transmit the voice.
The object of monitoring your heart rate is to stay within a target zone, which varies among individuals depending on age and health. The HeartWatch lets you know whether you are within the safe zone that you have programmed. The voice on the meter interrupts the music only when you are above or below your target zone.
The HeartWatch comes with a chest band that picks up heart rate through electrode sensors. A separate pocket-sized receiver comes with a display screen that shows heart rate and exercise time. The HeartWatch costs about $300. Call (800) 227-1314; in New York State, (516) 483-8200.",1
Top/News,"Hockey; Nothing to It: Richter Erases Giacomin's Record
The Rangers have a hot man in goal. And they will need him as they battle the Devils for the most points over all and the best record in the National Hockey League.
Mike Richter recorded his fifth shutout and his 38th victory of the season -- breaking a 25-year-old club record held by Ed Giacomin -- as the Rangers defeated the Dallas Stars, 3-0, last night at Madison Square Garden.
The victory gave the Rangers a 2-point lead over the Devils heading into tonight's showdown at Byrne Meadowlands Arena. The Devils lost, 2-1, to the Capitals last night at USAir Arena in Landover, Md.
""We've worked very hard to put ourselves in this position and we want to finish first,"" Rangers Coach Mike Keenan said about tonight's clash with the Devils.
""They made up some ground,"" Mark Messier, the Rangers' captain, said about the Devils. ""We haven't been thinking about them. The last two days we concentrated on this game.""
Brian Leetch, Glenn Anderson and Aleksei Kovalev scored the goals for the Rangers against Andy Moog, who faced 29 shots.
Richter faced 28 shots and had some trouble handling the puck cleanly, especially in the opening period, but his teammates were there to recover each time and keep Richter's bid for a shutout intact.
""The guys played very well in front of me and they deserve a lot of the credit,"" said Richter, who improved his record to 38-12-5.
Richter's first mishap came four minutes into the game when the puck fell behind him after a shot by Russ Courtnall. But defenseman Kevin Lowe was there to clear it from the crease.
Richter was fortunate again about two minutes later when Brent Gilchrist stepped into the low slot to collect a rebound, but his shot hit Richter's stick on the way up and then bounced off the crossbar.
At the end of the ice, Moog was steady for the most part. His glove saves on Adam Graves and Leetch were his highlights in the first 40 minutes.
Moog can't be held responsible for Leetch's goal because he was screened by Graves and one of his defensemen.
Sergei Zubov started the play that led to Leetch's 22d of the season, 2 minutes 47 seconds into the second period, with a pass to Messier in the right circle.
The captain of the Rangers spotted Leetch alone at the left point as the Stars were killing a penalty to Gord Donnell and found him with a pass.
Leetch took a stride and let go a blistering shot from the top of the left circle that ended up in the goal over Moog's left shoulder, bringing the sellout crowd to life.
The goal was Leetch's fourth in the past three games. It was also the 50th game in the last 67 that the Rangers scored the first goal in the game.
Leetch's goal stood as the only one in the game until Anderson pounced on a rebound off a shot by Graves for his 20th of the season with 8:55 left.
Kovalev iced the triumph for the Rangers on an empty-net goal in the waning moments, his third goal in the past two games and 20th of the season. SLAP SHOTS
ADAM GRAVES was honored in a ceremony before the game for breaking VIC HADFIELD's record for goals in a season. Hadfield had 50 goals in the 1971-72 season and it lasted until March 23, when Graves scored his 51st. Graves's parents and his fiancee attended the ceremony at center ice. . . . The Rangers evened the season series with the Stars, who beat the Rangers in Dallas, 3-1, on Feb. 26. . . . SERGEI NEMCHINOV will return from his eight-game suspension against the Devils tonight and MIKE HUDSON will return from his 10-game suspension against Florida Monday night.",1
Top/News,"Woodson Makes An Early Impact
RAIDERS 27, PACKERS 21
It didn't take the Heisman Trophy winner Charles Woodson long to make his mark in the National Football League.
Woodson's ferocious first-quarter hit on Antonio Freeman forced a turnover that put the Oakland Raiders on their way to a 27-21 victory over the Packers at Green Bay yesterday.
It was the Packers' first loss at Lambeau Field since Sept. 17, 1995, a span of 33 games, including five exhibitions.
The Raiders' coach, Jon Gruden, gave Woodson the start at left cornerback so that he could be tested by quarterback Brett Favre and receivers Freeman and Derrick Mayes.
On Favre's first pass in his direction, Woodson hammered Freeman just as the ball arrived. Free safety Eric Turner grabbed the ricochet and returned it 35 yards for a touchdown.
It was one of three turnovers the Raiders (2-0) turned into 17 first-half points on their way to a 24-7 halftime lead.
Favre threw Woodson's way only once more, and the ball bounced off Freeman's chest. Favre finished 3 of 8 for 53 yards, but things quickly deteriorated for Green Bay (2-1) when the three-time most valuable player finished his work.
The backup Doug Pederson promptly fumbled two of center Frank Winters's first three snaps, and Oakland turned those gifts into 10 more points and a 17-0 lead.
SAN DIEGO  Leaf Is Unhappy With His Play
While Ryan Leaf looked great again on the statistics sheet, he did not give himself a passing grade for his play in the San Diego Chargers' second exhibition game on Saturday night.
The rookie completed 13 of 22 passes for 200 yards and a touchdown, and also made a twisting leap over two St. Louis linebackers for his first rushing touchdown in the Chargers' 41-27 victory in San Diego.
Leaf also threw his first interception, which bounced off Webster Slaughter's hands to cornerback Todd Lyght, who raced 73 yards for a touchdown to cut San Diego's lead to 17-7 late in the second quarter.
I made a lot of mistakes, Leaf said. It's probably the worst half of football I've played in a long time. I missed wide-open receivers.
SEATTLE  Moon Makes Return to Canada
The dramatic finish of Saturday night's American Bowl in Vancouver, British Columbia, wasn't enough for the more than 45,000 fans, many of whom came to see the former Canadian Football League star Warren Moon.
While John Becksvoort clinched San Francisco's 24-21 exhibition victory over Seattle with a 31-yard field goal with two seconds left, the chants of We want Moon! and Mo-o-o-o-o-n! echoed through B.C. Place Stadium.
Moon, however, was left to patrol the sideline in his uniform, not ready to play after having joined the team three days earlier following a contract holdout. Moon played six seasons in the C.F.L. and won five Grey Cup championships with Edmonton.
N.F.L.: ROUNDUP",1
Top/News,"Group Supports Foschi Ban
The international swimming federation yesterday welcomed the two-year suspension of JESSICA FOSCHI for steroid use.
The director of FINA, swimming's international governing body, said world-class athletes, including Foschi, must accept responsibility for any positive drug test -- whether or not they took the banned substance intentionally.
You are responsible as an athlete of high level to see that you don't take  any kind of medicine or food except from those people entitled to give it to you,"" the director, CORNEL MARCULESCU, said. ""It is the same responsibility you  have to take with your luggage at customs.""
The United States Swimming Federation, following FINA regulations, on Tuesday banned Foschi, a 15-year-old from Old Brookville, L.I., from national and international competition for two years. A urine test last August turned up positive.
(AP)
SPORTS PEOPLE: SWIMMING",1
Top/News,"All but Salmon at Salmon Stream Lake, a Sportsman's Unspoiled Paradise
As we paddled our canoe down the slow-moving outlet stream at the southern end of Salmon Stream Lake, we were both startled by an otter that slid off the top of a huge boulder into the dark water when we were only a few feet away.
It had obviously been dozing on its six-foot-high perch that sultry August morning, and I remarked to my companion, Ruth Kirchmeier, that only once before in my life had I gotten that close to a sleeping otter. More than 60 years ago, I was tending to my trap line in a salt marsh during a January thaw when I had come upon the animal soaking up the sun on top of a muskrat house.
Being prone to look for favorable portents no matter how bizarre, I immediately began to speculate that the otter was a sign that our morning's quest for smallmouth bass would be successful.
Three years ago, I purchased a partially completed lodge and a 220-acre peninsula that juts out into the lake in an unincorporated township in Penobscot County, about 60 miles north of Bangor. My two sons, grandsons and I got the place, the only dwelling on the lake and accessible only by water, functioning with propane gas appliances by last fall.
One won't find Salmon Stream Lake in literature dealing with Maine's prime fishing waters, and its name is misleading, for it holds no salmon. It's a shallow, body of water about a mile long and a half-mile wide. Part of the Penobscot River watershed, it contains white suckers, sunfish, pickerel, yellow perch, white perch and smallmouth bass -- and an occasional brook trout. There is no formal public access to the lake and the fishing pressure is minimal. On our recent four-day visit, Ruth and I never saw another angler.
Until this year, I had not done any serious fishing on the lake -- being too busy working on the lodge -- although I had taken yellow perch and pickerel and a few small bass from Salmon Stream which flows into the lake along the east side of the peninsula. Boulder-strewn with several spots more than 16 feet deep, the outlet stream winds through a lovely marsh for half a mile, making it a superb smallmouth bass habitat.
It was over 90 degrees in the shade in late afternoon the day we arrived and the next day was even hotter. The surface water temperature of the lake was 82 degrees in early morning and 14 feet down in the two holes I tested, it was 68 degrees. The hard-fighting and acrobatic smallmouths, in which I was most interested, wouldn't be inclined to take anything offered under such conditions.
This spring, Jason McLaughlin of Medway, Me., who watches the place for us, built a portable lightweight dock that is anchored off the rocky point in front of the camp. I devoted the first day to putting together a 10-foot wooden walkway to it. The dock had been moored in place by my youngest son, Jeff, and Rob Oslyn. They also dug a new hole for the outhouse and moved the structure to its new location.
As I fashioned the dock walkway, Ruth worked on her latest woodcut at the eight-foot-long cherry wood trestle table I built for the place. When the walkway was completed, we pulled it into place and added concrete building blocks to the dock's offshore anchors.
We get the camp's washing and cooking water from the lake -- which is about 100 feet away -- via an overland black plastic pipe and a pitcher pump. When I quit work at 5 o'clock and went inside to wash my hands I discovered that the water -- sun-warmed in the black pipe -- was so hot that it was painful.
At dusk, I went to fish the inlet stream and soon caught two good-sized pickerel on a sub-surface swimming plug and then, after dark, hooked up with what I thought was a smallmouth, although it didn't jump. Later, when cleaning those fish for supper by flashlight, I realized that my last catch was a white perch of over two pounds. It was much darker than the salt-pond white perch with which I am familiar.
Seeking cooling breezes at bedtime, Ruth and I spread mattresses on the floor in front of the screened-in glass doors that face the lake and went to sleep listening to the occasional wailing of loons from the far shore. We also listened to the distant roar of big trucks on Interstate 95, which parallels the lake's east shore.
Directly opposite the camp the highway is more than a half-mile away and dense forest intervenes, but the sound of heavy vehicles is clearly audible on quiet days. I have become accustomed to this intrusion in what appears to be a wilderness, much, I surmise, as have the loons, ospreys, eagles, moose, deer, beaver, mink otter, varying hares, ruffed grouse and waterfowl.
On the morning that we surprised the otter, I began fishing the area around the boulder on which it had been resting with a deep-diving plug. The first fish I caught was a foot-long sucker and as I was bringing it to the canoe to release it, I saw a fish about twice its length. On my next cast I was fast to something substantial, a smallmouth bass of more than four pounds that hurtled three feet into the air. I kept that fish -- smallmouths are good eating -- and a few minutes later caught and released another equally athletic smallmouth of the same size.
The sleeping otter had been a portent of success. My two bass weren't record-breakers, but they were the largest of their species that I had ever caught. I quit fishing before the day got any hotter. At sundown we had a swim and lolled on our new dock, drinks in hand, watching the last light fade over Mount Katahdin.
OUTDOORS",1
Top/News,"Nets Again Break Down Late
The Nets spoke about fourth-quarter execution, and about how a veteran team like the Bulls was able to perform so cohesively while the Nets faltered. On and on they droned. They sounded like a losing team, and they were. Again.
But Coach Chuck Daly and the Nets were simply being honest about what had happened at Chicago Stadium Wednesday night in a 94-86 Bulls victory. Whenever the three-time defending champions needed a crucial basket in the final 12 minutes, there was Scottie Pippen or Toni Kukoc or even, believe it, the resurrected Bill Wennington to provide it. Even without Michael Jordan, the Bulls adeptly orchestrate their offense.
Not the Nets. In a seven-minute span when the Bulls uncorked the only extended run with an 18-9 surge, the Nets were vainly trying to create decent shots. They were also trying to accumulate more field goals than turnovers, and they barely achieved it by a 5-3 margin. The disintegration helped saddle the Nets with their 18th straight loss at Chicago Stadium, a drought that stretches back to 1986. 'Too Many Breakdowns'
""You're looking at a team that has been playing together for how many years?"" wondered Derrick Coleman, forgetting that Kukoc and Wennington are in their first seasons with the Bulls. ""We couldn't really run our offense down the stretch. We had too many breakdowns.""
Aptly said. While Kukoc, Wennington, Steve Kerr and Corie Blount have seamlessly meshed into the Chicago system and helped the Bulls to 10 straight victories, their longest winning streak in two years, the Nets still sometimes look like a team that is trying to become acquainted. Six of the 10 Nets who played against Chicago are in their first seasons with New Jersey, and it has been a problem at times.
Kenny Anderson, who played splendidly with 27 points, is still learning to direct the offense in tight spots. He nicked the Knicks for 8 points in the final 93 seconds of an 85-81 victory on Dec. 21, but he had one turnover and another shot blocked by Wennington when the Bulls took control of the game Wednesday night. Anderson also missed a 3-point field goal with 1 minute 52 seconds left that would have sliced the deficit to 1. Few Options for Coleman
Coleman is still adapting to the double- and triple-teams on defense that he might see for the rest of his career. He misfired on 12 of 19 shots and tossed up one weak attempt with three Bulls draped around him. But maybe Coleman cannot be blamed for chucking up a prayer because he has few options to pass to. Kevin Edwards, signed as a free-agent shooting guard, did a lot of shooting and a lot of missing Wednesday as he clanged 13 of 15, including his first 11 shots from the field.
Still, the Nets viewed the loss as a potential springboard. In the past 11 days, the once-moribund Nets have defeated the Atlantic Division leading-Knicks twice, the Central Division leading-Hawks once and played evenly with the Bulls for 37 minutes. But then they fumbled, the Bulls raced to the victory and the Nets uttered those three simple words: fourth quarter execution.
""You can build on something like this,"" Coleman said. ""We're getting there. It comes down to fourth-quarter execution.""  PRO BASKETBALL",1
Top/News,"Family Affair
LEAD: Ben Hinson, a high-scoring forward for the basketball team at Baptist College in Charleston, S.C., is considered the best player in the Division I Big South Conference. It wasn't until he was a teen-ager, though, that he could beat his sister in a game of one-on-one.
Ben Hinson, a high-scoring forward for the basketball team at Baptist College in Charleston, S.C., is considered the best player in the Division I Big South Conference. It wasn't until he was a teen-ager, though, that he could beat his sister in a game of one-on-one.
Priscilla Hinson, a year older than Ben, was taller than her brother when they were growing up. Now he's 6-4, she's 6-2, both are seniors at Baptist, and both lead their teams in scoring. 'She played with her back to the basket, and I didn't like to foul her too much,' Ben recalls of the sibling games back in Hamlet, N.C. 'But when I got tired of her beating me, I started getting rough.'
The competition in general was rough back in Hamlet, where other players at the local park included Mike Quick (now of the Philadelphia Eagles), Franklin Stubbs (Los Angeles Dodgers) and Cozell McQueen, who went on to star at North Carolina State. Hinson, a cousin of the Philadelphia 76ers' Roy Hinson, maintains that eventually he was better at basketball than all of them, a claim that nobody in the Big South would dispute. Priscilla Hinson, however, has stiff opposition for stature as best female player in the league. It comes from Radford University's 6-2 senior, Joyce Sampson, sister of Ralph.
SCOUTING",1
Top/News,"Daly Reaches the Green
JOHN DALY was a big winner even before teeing off today in the first round of the United States Open in Oakmont, Pa. Wilson Sporting Goods announced a contract yesterday that will keep Daly in the money for the next decade. Though specific terms of the contract were not released, one report, in Golfweek magazine, said it is a $30 million deal over 10 years.
""I don't know what the numbers are myself,"" said Daly, who is known as one of the PGA Tour's longest hitters. ""I didn't read it. I just signed it."" (AP)  SPORTS PEOPLE: GOLF",1
Top/News,"From Ship to Chef: 4-Star Fishing in the City
On Aug. 11, 1819, the paddle-wheeler Bellona, under the command of the youthful and not-yet-famous Cornelius Vanderbilt, advertised a trip that would leave from the Whitehall dock in Lower Manhattan at 10 A.M. the following Sunday. It promised ""a few hours of healthful pleasure"" at a spot, about 10 miles east of Sandy Hook, known as the Fishing Banks.
With this announcement, according to William Zeisel, a New York angling historian, the first party boat in New York waters inaugurated a low-cost and bountiful fishery that has offered sport to generations of local anglers. The party boats are still around today, most notably in the shrinking but still active fleet of day boats that moor along the quay fronting on Emmons Avenue in Sheepshead Bay.
The ships no longer offer live polka bands, as they did in those early days. But the waters off Sandy Hook -- the southernmost boundary of New York Harbor -- are still the seasonal home for striped bass, cod, ling, whiting, sharks, bluefish, and the homely but toothsome blackfish.
It was with blackfish in mind that I boarded the fishing boat Ranger on a blustery but sun-washed Saturday.
At the stern, members of a loquacious Greek family guarded their spots. Within the cabin, two Japanese men gulped down sushi rolls. Two Central American women dozed as they sank deep into their many layers of clothing, their faces enshrouded in kerchiefs to ward off the cold.
We anchored above a wreck in Ambrose Channel, the main sea lane into the harbor. The wind was up, as were the swells that rocked us vigorously. My daughter, Lucy, and I did not do too well, although she was delighted to pull up two of the small sharks known as dogfish. They were sharks, after all, and how any times does a 9-year-old get the chance to tell her schoolmates that she had caught two of them?
We had not perfected the touch required for blackfish success. One does not strike at the first tap on the line; wait for that second or third tap, when the rod bends, before striking. This last piece of lore was imparted to us by Ed Dols, a Sheepshead Bay regular. He fished, as many of the better blackfish anglers do, with a soft sensitive rod and an antique sidewinder reel. Eddie's was a 40-year-old ""U-Needa,"" a bakelite version of the very earliest English reels used by Izaak Walton.
Eddie took seven nice fish, but the wind, waves and racing tide vanquished Lucy and me.
I resolved to come back.
The wind howled for two days. Finally on Wednesday, Eddie called and told me to meet him at 6:45 on the 65-foot Ocean Eagle. While the Ranger was a large (110 feet), well-appointed, metal-hulled craft, the Ocean Eagle was smaller and funkier, with wooden decks and a smallish cabin where 10 serious anglers sat, drank coffee, played penny-a-point gin rummy, smoked Pall-Malls, sipped hot turkey soup and fought off the weather with an occasional tot of homemade corn liquor.
It was very much the scene that, when I was a boy, I had imagined taking place in a railroad caboose.
Eddie is known around Sheepshead as Aquarium Eddie. He explained he earned his nickname during 37 years spent as an aquarist at the New York Aquarium in Coney Island. In addition to his fish and animal duties, he accompanied the naturalist Nixon Griffis on collecting expeditions around the world. Eddie dived into Lake Titicaca for giant frogs, which he caught by hand, and he netted one of the world's rarest fish, the poison-spined Green Laced Lion fish, on the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.
Did he have a favorite animal? He answered that a few years back, he had developed a strong friendship with a walrus named Olaf, who died, as do many walruses in captivity, of complications brought on by obesity.
We anchored in Sandy Hook Channel near the Fisherman Buoy. Artie Leang and Charlie Fitzpatrick (crewman on the Staten Island Ferry) were particularly successful there. Leang told me not to bounce my sinker off the bottom. It was the easiest way to hang up on undersea rubble. I thanked him and proceeded to catch fish.
We moved farther southeast to a part of the Seventeen Fathoms area known as the Mud Buoy because it marks a huge underwater mound where the dredgers of New York Harbor dump their spoils. Captain Greg Nardiello set his two anchors meticulously, 30 compass points off the wind direction and slightly uptide of the undersea target.
We fished facing the warming sun for two hours, not talking much, looking at, almost listening to our rod tips. When the blackfish started to bite, we all ""roller-skated"" -- the term for the way blackfisherman scoot around the decks -- over to the hot spot. By the time we returned to port at 3 P.M., I had 12 fillets.
I now had a chance to indulge a long-standing wish that was born when I researched a 19th century account of a world-record brook trout said to have been caught on the Connetquot River in Long Island.
As the story goes, Daniel Webster and his fishing pal, Martin Van Buren, were in church, heavily hung over from dipping into a hogshead of rum at Sam Carman's tavern. The sermon was interrupted by Carman's slave, Apaius Enos, who reported that an enormous trout was feeding in the mill pond. Webster got his rod and proceeded to land a 14-pound, 10-ounce brookie. He iced it and took the stage coach back to Delmonico's Restaurant, where New York's (and America's) first great chef, Charles Ranhofer, prepared it with an almondine sauce.
Although my fish was no world record, it still merited a call to Michael Lomonaco, a friend and fellow angler who is the chef at the ""21"" Club, founded by another New York fisherman, Peter Kriendler.
""I'll bring the fish if you're up to cooking it,"" I offered. He accepted.
The next afternoon I sat down to my semiannual lunch date with my college roommate, Vinnie Farrell. Lomonaco started with bay scallops and hazelnuts washed down with Chardonnay. We moved on to our blackfish, which was pan-fried in a coating of cornmeal and served atop a bed of black olives, sun-dried tomatoes, sauteed fennel, and a sprig of fresh dill. The sauce was bright and powerful. The blackfish released a pleasant steam as it flaked. Vinnie and I gave our conversation a rest, and surrendered ourselves to the food.  OUTDOORS",1
Top/News,"Sprewell's Outburst Draws Fine Of $25,000
Moments after filling Madison Square Garden with two hours of terrific basketball and nearly as much obscenity on Tuesday night, Latrell Sprewell implied that he had had a storybook return, even if it might have required a parental advisory label.
'You always hope it's going to be a night like this,' he said after scoring 31 points in Minnesota's 98-92 victory over the Knicks. 'You just never know.'
But yesterday the National Basketball Association fined Sprewell $25,000 for shouting obscenities at James L. Dolan, the Garden chairman, and Lon Kruger, a Knicks assistant coach.
The amount is more than twice the $10,000 that the 76ers' Allen Iverson was fined for making an obscene gesture toward fans in November and that Sprewell was fined for his behavior in his first trip back to play at Golden State in 1999.
Stu Jackson, the league's senior vice president for basketball operations, made the decision after viewing a tape of the game yesterday afternoon. Jackson, who watched from the stands Tuesday, was not available for comment. The fact that Sprewell behaved similarly at Golden State may have influenced his decision on the amount of the fine.
Sprewell could not be reached for comment, but his custom during his five seasons with the Knicks -- when he was fined more than $600,000 -- was to appeal fines through the players association.
Sprewell, who clearly relished his behavior on Tuesday, said he enjoyed this experience more than his return to Golden State, where he was ostracized after choking Coach P. J. Carlesimo in 1997.
'This was definitely sweeter because we won and I was able to play well and I was really emotional,' he said. 'Back when I went back there, the fans weren't really cheering for me; they were booing. So to be able to play in front of my fans here that love me so much and perform like that was definitely sweeter.'
Knicks fans embraced Sprewell when he was signed in 1999, but he might not have been such a crowd favorite if the Garden had seen more nights like Tuesday. While the majority of fans cheered him lustily, a smattering of boos was heard in the game's final minutes when Sprewell was his crudest, cursing Dolan and Kruger at the top of his voice.
Dolan said afterward that Sprewell's actions justified his decision to trade him in July.
Dolan then spoke briefly with other Knicks officials, including the new president, Isiah Thomas, and Steve Mills, the Garden president for sports team operations, and they agreed not to comment about Sprewell, saying his actions spoke for themselves.
Sprewell played with great passion with the Knicks. He got into a few shouting matches with fans on the road, but for the most part the anger he displayed Tuesday was absent, leaving most Knicks followers with the impression that he had changed drastically.
There was no greater example than Dec. 25, 2001, when Sprewell approached Carlesimo after the Knicks defeated Toronto in a nationally televised game. Carlesimo had broadcast the game for NBC, and before going into the locker room, Sprewell walked toward him unsolicited, extended his hand and wished him Merry Christmas.
It was their first interaction in four years.
'It's Christmastime, it's a special time of the year and we really should be thankful for a lot of things,' Sprewell said at the time. 'I'm not such a person where I just can't let bygones be bygones. I think I've reached that point where I've really put it behind me and it's over with. It's been a long time. I really don't care about that whole situation anymore. It's really in the past.'
Sprewell's history with Dolan began amicably enough. Dolan seemingly overrode the edicts of his general manager at the time, Scott Layden, and Coach Don Chaney by reducing Sprewell's fine for missing a shoot-around to $2,500 from $125,000 in April 2002.
Sprewell, citing the collective bargaining agreement, has contended that Dolan had no choice but to reduce the figure. Dolan said he did Sprewell a favor, so he was offended when Sprewell arrived for training camp the next September with a mysteriously broken hand.
The fact that the articulate and engaging Sprewell won the public debate over Layden, even becoming a sympathetic figure, incensed Dolan even more.
From that point, Sprewell's days in New York were numbered. After trying to trade him for most of last season, Layden, under orders from Dolan, sent Sprewell to Minnesota in a four-team deal that brought Keith Van Horn to the Knicks.
Before the trade deadline in February, Sprewell correctly predicted trouble for Van Horn if the long-rumored deal was made.
'New York will go crazy if they trade me for Van Horn,' Sprewell told a confidant.
Then in October, Dolan said that Sprewell was traded because he lacked character.
While Sprewell was proud of the way he dressed down Dolan and Kruger, who became a target when he told Sprewell late in the game after another outburst at Dolan to 'just play,' many of the Knicks players said they thought Sprewell validated Dolan's claims about his character.
'I do worry about our image,' Dikembe Mutombo said yesterday. 'There's a lot of us who are trying to do good out there and portray basketball players in a different way. At the same time, we still have bad apples out there that portray us in different ways.'
Charlie Ward suggested that Sprewell had forgotten it was the Knicks organization that enabled him to resurrect his career after his run-in with Carlesimo had made him a pariah.
'Basically, it showed a lack of gratitude,' Ward said. 'He was very ungrateful for what the Knicks organization did for him when he was going through a tough time. It's just embarrassing.'
None of Sprewell's venom was aimed at his former teammates or the fans, and he said he would love to play for the Knicks again, though he knows that is an impossibility under the current ownership.
'I don't think Dolan would have that,' Sprewell said.
PRO BASKETBALL",1
Top/News,"Israel Approves an Expanded Security Barrier
Israel's government on Wednesday approved construction of new barriers deep inside the West Bank to shield several large Jewish settlements. The move significantly expands the scope of the already contentious project to wall off much of the West Bank, and could draw penalties from the Bush administration.
Palestinians angrily denounced the decision, saying it would cost them large tracts of land, turn many Palestinian communities into isolated enclaves and greatly complicate any future peace negotiations.
'If President Bush allows this wall to be built it will be the biggest failure of the peace process,' said Saeb Erekat, a leading Palestinian politician. 'It is a land grab with one aim: to sabotage President Bush's vision of a two-state solution.'
The Bush administration, which has urged Israel to leave the settlements outside the barrier, reacted cooly but refrained from outright criticism. 'Our views on the fence remain unchanged,' the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher said. 'We will look carefully at this decision.'
As punishment for continued settlement building -- which was supposed to halt under the current Middle East peace plan -- the United States has said it plans to reduce slightly the three-year, $9 billion loan guarantees it extended to Israel in March.
Washington is considering additional reductions in the loan guarantees based on the route Israel takes with the barrier.
The barrier consists of electronic fences, concrete walls, guard towers and trenches, and currently runs along the northern West Bank and around parts of Jerusalem. It is designed to prevent suicide bombers from reaching Israeli cities.
The most strenuous objections are not about the barrier itself, but the route Israel has chosen. The Bush administration has asked Israel to adhere as closely as possible to the West Bank frontier that existed from 1949 to 1967. Already, though, it cuts several miles into Palestinian land in the West Bank in order to incorporate Jewish settlements.
The new fences approved Wednesday would enclose three sides of Ariel, a settlement of 18,000, and three other Jewish settlements in the area, north of Jerusalem. The western side of the settlements would not be enclosed during the initial building, expected to take about six months.
However, at that point, Israel plans to consult with the United States about extending the fences westward until they connect with the main barrier that runs near the West Bank boundary. The result would be unbroken barriers jutting into the West Bank for 10 miles or more.
On Wednesday, Israeli troops came under fire during an arrest raid in the West Bank town of Tulkarm, and responded by killing two Palestinian men, the military and Palestinians said.
In Jenin, also in the West Bank, Israel arrested a senior figure in Islamic Jihad, Bassam Saadi, the military said.",1
Top/News,"Hurdle for U.S. In Getting Data On Passengers
The European Union's highest court ruled Tuesday that the Union had overstepped its authority by agreeing to give the United States personal details about airline passengers on flights to America in an effort to fight terrorism.
The decision will force the two sides to renegotiate the deal at a time of heightened concerns about possible infringements of civil liberties by the Bush administration in its campaign against terrorism, and the extent to which European governments have cooperated.
The ruling gave both sides four months to approve a new agreement, and American officials expressed optimism that one could be reached. But without an agreement, the United States could take punitive action, in theory even denying landing rights to airlines that withhold the information.
That could cause major disruptions in trans-Atlantic air travel, which accounts for nearly half of all foreign air travel to the United States.
The European Court of Justice, based in Luxembourg, found that the European Commission and the European Council lacked the authority to make the deal, which was reached in May 2004.
Specifically, the court said passenger records were collected by airlines for their own commercial use, so the European Union could not legally agree to provide them to the American authorities, even for the purposes of public security or law enforcement.
The agreement, which took 18 months to negotiate and was to last through 2007, gave the American authorities access to 34 categories of information about passengers on all flights from the 25 nations in the union. The data is made available as passengers board in Europe.
But the European Parliament challenged the agreement in court on two points: The parliament was not consulted when the accord was reached, under intense pressure from the Bush administration, and it objected to the extent of personal data to be turned over -- including names, addresses, phone numbers, itineraries and payment information, including credit card numbers.
Privacy advocates said the agreement violated civil rights, but the United States said the information helped identify the patterns of suspicious travelers. The court did not rule on the privacy question, focusing instead on the scope of European Union's authority.
'The European Court is saying, yes, the European Parliament was right, that the data transfer agreement is illegal,' said Graham Watson, a British member of the parliament and chairman of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. 'What will now be needed is some pretty tough talking to get a new agreement in which our concerns about privacy are properly addressed.'
In Washington, Jarrod Agen, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said privacy was not really the issue, because his department could obtain the same information by questioning the passengers on arrival.
But, he added, security would be strengthened by having the information provided in advance.
For now, he said, 'the planes will continue to fly and the security data will continue to be exchanged.'
'There won't be any lowering of the data protection standards, or effect on passengers, or disruption to air traffic in the near term,' he added.
In the past, the United States has warned that European airlines could be fined or lose American landing rights if they failed to make the data available.
But an American official in Brussels, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter, said Washington would seek a diplomatic arrangement with the European Union that respected the ruling without disrupting air travel.
A spokesman for the European Commission, Johannes Laitenberger, told reporters in Brussels that the European Union remained 'committed to the fight against terrorism, while respecting fundamental human rights such as the right to privacy.'
Europeans are by far the largest single class of visitors to the United States. In 2004, the most recent data available, 9.6 million European Union citizens entered the United States, according to a Department of Commerce survey.
In the nearly five years since terrorists hijacked American passenger planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, governments on both sides of the Atlantic have expanded their powers of surveillance, tipping the balance of civil liberties in favor of safeguarding against attacks, at the expense of protecting individual privacy rights.
But critics of the deal to share passenger data said rights violations -- from Iraqi prisons and Guantánamo Bay, to secret C.I.A. flights of terrorism suspects over Europe -- have tainted other antiterrorism efforts.
Last month, for instance, investigators for the European Parliament said several European countries had been aware of, perhaps even complicit in the practice known as rendition, in which the Central Intelligence Agency abducted terrorism suspects and took them to countries that use torture.
'People are very much concerned about the direction that the Bush administration has been taking in these matters,' Mr. Watson said.
European civil liberties groups were outraged when the European Union signed the accord two years ago, arguing that it did not ensure the privacy protection that exists under current laws in the Union.
The United States did agree to restrict access to the data to certain American agencies, and limited the time such data could be stored to three and a half years. But European civil libertarians say Washington has failed to safeguard such information against misuse.
Opponents cited Congressional testimony in February by the director of the United States Transportation Security Administration, Kip Hawley, who said his agency could not guarantee that the privacy of passengers' personal information was fully protected.
A recent episode involving the theft of names and Social Security numbers of 26.5 million American veterans from the home of a Veterans Affairs employee has raised further doubts about the care with which the government treats personal data.
Sophie in 't Veld, a Dutch member of the European Parliament and a vocal opponent of handing over the passenger data, said that the first evaluation of the agreement's effectiveness in fighting terrorism was completed in March but that the report had been kept confidential by the European Union and the United States government.
'The one question that has never been answered is, does it actually work?' said Ms. in 't Veld. 'How many terrorists did they catch? How many international criminals? How many attacks did they prevent? And how many mistakes were made? We do not know because this information has never been made public. It is outrageous.'
European legislators said they were disappointed that the European Court did not direct the Commission and the Council to give the parliament joint oversight in approving any new accord. But they hoped that their concerns would be brought out in the new negotiations.
European airlines reacted with caution to the ruling. Though the accord officially remains in effect for the next four months, some said they were seeking advice from their governments on how to proceed.
'This is an extraordinary situation to be in,' Paul Charles, a spokesman for Virgin Atlantic Airways, told Bloomberg News.
Air France-KLM, Europe's largest airline, said it would continue to provide the American authorities with the passenger records. 'We will still operate under the current situation for now,' said a spokesman, Samuel Coulon.
Peter Hustinx, who oversees privacy issues for the European Union, said that until a new agreement was reached, airlines were facing some legal uncertainty if they continued to send passenger data to the American authorities.
'I expect the U.S. government will continue to want the data, and airlines will want to share,' Mr. Hustinx said. 'But they may face challenges by individual citizens or even from national data-protection authorities.'",1
Top/News,"For Fassel, The Giants Are Better In Reality
Football coaches are usually overoptimistic dreamers. Jim Fassel said his dreams for the Giants were not optimistic enough.
Coaches rarely say publicly -- even after the fact -- which games they expect to win. Fassel disclosed today that he expected the Giants to win 11 of their 16 regular-season games. They won 12. He also dreamed they would win their conference championship and get to Super Bowl XXXV, something they can accomplish by beating the Minnesota Vikings here Sunday.
'I have a card on my desk with the schedule,' he said. 'Before the season, I marked a W next to 11 games. Those were the targets. The other games I left blank because you never put down an L.'
The Giants won all of the W games except against the Detroit Lions. They won two games not on the W list: against the Washington Redskins on the road and against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Giants Stadium.
'I don't know how much money I would have put on it,' Fassel said of his prediction. 'We had our best team. If we didn't get out of whack and we stayed healthy, we could do it. I thought we could make a run if we had a few breaks.'
Some Question About It
Despite five players listed as questionable, which means they were given a 50-50 chance to play, the Giants will go into Sunday's game with everyone apparently ready.
The latest injury report showed as questionable wide receiver Amani Toomer (sprained left ankle), guard Glenn Parker (ribs), wide receiver Joe Jurevicius (sprained left knee), cornerback Reggie Stephens (sprained ankle) and the special-teams player Jack Golden (hip).
Work Before Play
Workmen spent much of today getting the Giants Stadium grass field ready for Sunday's game.
'The field is frozen,' said John Mara, the Giants' executive vice president. 'By game time, they think it will be a fine playing surface. It's level and flat. If you're playing on grass in this part of the country this time of year, that's the way it's going to be. It's a lot better than AstroTurf this time of year.'
PRO FOOTBALL: NOTEBOOK",1
Top/News,"Lageman Making Noticeable Changes
LEAD: The Andrew Dice Clay T-shirt was gone today, but Jeff Lageman was still wearing the pony tail, the ripped blue jeans, riding his Harley Davidson and building his reputation as the unforgettable character of the Jets' camp.
The Andrew Dice Clay T-shirt was gone today, but Jeff Lageman was still wearing the pony tail, the ripped blue jeans, riding his Harley Davidson and building his reputation as the unforgettable character of the Jets' camp.
'I don't know what happened to the Andrew Dice Clay T-shirt,' said Lageman, who was wearing a black shirt with a Harley Davidson logo. 'I stood it up in the corner when I went to bed. I woke up this morning and it was gone. It must've gotten up and walked away in the middle of the night. I think it got kind of grossed out by my body odor.'
Lageman, who was the Jets' No. 1 draft pick out of Virginia last year. started the final 15 games of the season at right outside linebacker after not reporting to training camp until Aug. 24. He was the team's fourth-leading tackler with 72, the second-leading sacker with four and a half behind Dennis Byrd, a lineman, and made the Pro Football Writers' all-rookie squad.
When Bruce Coslet took over as coach, he switched from a 3-4 alignment to a more traditional 4-3 and asked Lageman to play right defensive end.
Committed to New Role
'He's doing well,' Coslet said. 'He's got quickness. He can close in on a quarterback; he can close in on a running back. It's good for him playing down. He's not going to grab and throw a 300-pounder, but he can run around that guy. He's got a whole training camp to learn his part of the defense and he's very intelligent.'
Coslet is not concerned about Lageman's training camp attire.
'It doesn't matter to me as long as he gets the sacks and tackles,' Coslet said. 'There's not much emphasis put on that type of thing here. It's how you block and tackle.'
The 6-foot-5-inch, 255-pound Lageman said he was committed to his new position. 'People used to always tell me when I was in little league and in college that 'you're going to be a down lineman one of these days' and I would never believe them,' he said. 'I'm not totally alien to the position but I'm not comfortable yet. It takes awhile.
'From college to last year I went from inside to outside but I was still a linebacker. It's just some of the angles are different but you're standing up and you can still see the whole scheme.
'On the D-line now you've got to key on an individual lineman and you're down in a three-point stand and you don't get the benefit of standing up and reading the whole field. This is the biggest change I've ever had to make and it is tough.'
Distinctive Style
The last Jet anybody remembers coming to camp on a motorcycle was John Riggins, the running back, who also showed up with a Mohawk-style haircut in the 1970's. But Lageman insists he's not putting on a show.
'I enjoy riding the motorcycle,' he said. 'Instead of driving a car and worrying about a parking spot, you just drive up and park anywhere you want to.'
Lageman said there was a purpose to the rest of his look, including the rips in his cutoffs.
'The bandana keeps the hair out of my eyes,' he said. 'The pony tail started originally because when you're riding a bike 60 or 70 miles an hour you're not able to brush your hair after. The rip is where I tried to sit down 10 pounds heavier. The slash on the side of my leg is my pen holder when I go to meetings.'
As for the tallymarks on the thigh of his cutoffs. 'That tells me how many days I've been wearing them.'
No Thomas
The Jets spoke with Marvin Demoff, the agent for Blair Thomas, their unsigned No. 1 pick, over the weekend, but Dick Steinberg, the team's general manager, reported no progress. Meanwhile, the Jets' running back corps remained thin. Johnny Hector, who won the starting job from Freeman McNeil last season didn't work out again Sunday because of the sprained knee he suffered Friday and it was announced that Carl Byrum, a fourth-year fullback out of Mississippi Valley State, would be out four to six weeks weeks with a hamstring he pulled on Saturday. Dennis Byrd, the defensive end, who jammed his shoulder in a pileup on Saturday also sat out.",1
Top/News,"Long Dismissed as Piglike, Hippo Gains a Nobler Cousin, the Whale
Imagine having always been told that your closest relative is a pig, then waking up one morning to find that no, your nearest cousin is a whale.
This decisive change in social standing has recently befallen the hippopotamus, which will doubtless receive new respect everywhere with the possible exception of Kansas, where the Board of Education discourages any thought that different species might be related to one another through evolution.
Outside of Kansas, the whale is obviously a mammal that returned to the sea, but determining its closest terrestrial relatives is hard because its form has been so extensively modified. It has lost its hind limbs altogether and its forelimbs have morphed into flippers.
One might suppose that the easiest way for a land animal to become a whale would be to turn first into a hippopotamus. Hippos are almost halfway to whales, as they are hairless, nurse their infants underwater and communicate by underwater sound.
But mammalogists long thought otherwise. The hippo's nearest relatives were the pig and the piglike peccary, they declared. Enormous controversy greeted the suggestion in 1985 by Vincent Sarich, a pioneer of molecular-based evolution, that the hippo's closest cousin was the whale.
Now that DNA is so easy to sequence, molecular evolutionists have been refining the family trees drawn up the old-fashioned way, on the basis of an animal's outward appearance. Several recent DNA-based reconstructions of the even-toed ungulates, the order that includes camels, giraffes, pigs, hippos and whales, have confirmed Dr. Sarich's original suggestion.
The latest of these studies, published in today's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is based on the viruslike elements that have copied themselves throughout the genomes of many species. The DNA of these extinct viruses help mark forks on a family tree because they are either present or absent at a given position in a species' DNA.
The authors, led by Dr. Norihiro Okada of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, believe the extinct virus method is less ambiguous than other DNA-based methods of reconstructing family trees. It is so good, Dr. Okada has written, that one can dispense with the usual statistical analysis.
In a commentary, Dr. David M. Hillis, a molecular evolutionist at the University of Texas at Austin, said the extinct viruses, known to biologists as SINE and LINE insertions, were good but not perfect markers of evolution, and that dispensing with statistical analysis was 'highly inadvisable.'
Despite disagreements over methods, molecular evolutionists are now at one on the whale's family tree. The story goes like this. First there was an ancestral even-toed ungulate. Then the family tree split between camels and all the rest. Next the pigs and peccaries split off, followed by giraffes and deer, leaving just the ancestor of all hippos. Romping in the water, some hippos ventured into the ocean. These seafaring hippos then branched into the two superfamilies of the baleen whales (finbacks, blue whales) and the toothed whales (dolphins, porpoises).
But don't tell it in Topeka.",1
Top/News,"Red Wings Sign Lewis To Succeed Bowman
Dave Lewis knows that becoming the head coach of the Detroit Red Wings will be scrutinized because he succeeds Scotty Bowman, who has won more games than any other coach in N.H.L. history.
But Lewis, who signed a two-year contract yesterday, is not worried even though it will be his first season as a head coach at any level. He was a Red Wings assistant coach for 14 years and an N.H.L. player for 15.
'Beware of the wrath of a patient man,' Lewis said at a news conference announcing his hiring. 'I'm looking forward to that opportunity and challenge. Sooner or later, Scotty was going to retire.'
Besides promoting Lewis, 49, the Red Wings retained Barry Smith as associate coach and promoted the former Red Wing Joe Kocur from video technician to assistant coach. Smith was the only other person to interview for the opening, created when Bowman retired on June 13, the night he won his record ninth Stanley Cup.
'In the days after Scotty Bowman retired, I had some of the top players on our team recommend to me that the best thing we could do for our team was to hire a coach from within,' Detroit General Manager Ken Holland said. 'It was a difficult decision, but I just felt in the end that Dave was the man for our hockey club. He knows our team, he knows our players and he knows their roles.'
Lewis was a defenseman under Al Arbour for the Islanders, and also played for the Los Angeles Kings and the Devils before retiring on Nov. 6, 1987, in Detroit as a teammate to Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman. Lewis immediately joined the Red Wings' staff under Jacques Demers.
He later worked for Bryan Murray in Detroit before working with Bowman for the past nine seasons. At the beginning of the 1998-99 season, Lewis shared the head-coaching responsibilities with Smith for the first five games of the regular season while Bowman recovered from knee surgery. Lewis and Smith went 4-1. (AP)
BRUINS RE-SIGN MURRAY: The Boston Bruins re-signed right winger Glen Murray, their leading scorer from last season, to a two-year contract yesterday. Financial terms were not disclosed.
A restricted free agent, Murray had 41 goals and 71 points before filing for arbitration. Obtained by the Bruins in a trade with the Los Angeles Kings early last season, Murray has 192 goals and 179 assists in 10 N.H.L. seasons. (Reuters)
OLIWA SIGNED BY RANGERS: The Rangers yesterday signed the restricted free agent Krzysztof Oliwa, a left wing acquired from the Pittsburgh Penguins last month.
Oliwa had 2 assists and 150 penalty minutes in 57 games with the Penguins last season.
In 300 career games with Pittsburgh, the Devils and Columbus, he has 14 goals, 26 assists and 1,039 penalty minutes, In 1997-98, he led the N.H.L. with 33 major penalties and was third in the league with 295 penalty minutes. (AP)
N.H.L.: ROUNDUP",1
Top/News,"With New Office Suite for the Mac Microsoft Does More Than Windows
The Microsoft Corporation today released a new version of its popular Office suite for the Macintosh.
This newest version underscores how the Macintosh market has continued to diverge from the mainstream of the PC world, because although it is similar to the Windows Office suite, it has some intriguing differences that relate to its history, and to the habits of the Macintosh faithful.
The new version, Office 2001 for Mac, includes a personal information manager and e-mail program called  Entourage that is roughly equivalent to the company's popular Outlook application for its Windows Office suite, but only roughly.
The addition is also notable because it is a program that William H. Gates, Microsoft's co-founder and chief software architect, four years ago told this reporter would never be available for the Office version for the Macintosh.
That was, however, before Mr. Gates achieved a rapprochement with Apple Computer under its new chief executive, Steven Jobs, and invested $150 million in the company. Now Microsoft is the largest software developer for the Macintosh.
'It's clear to me that although Office is a business tool, the Microsoft developers have clearly had the Macintosh audience in mind for their new product,' said Chris LeTocq, a computer industry analyst at Dataquest, a market research firm in San Jose, Calif.
Like Outlook, Entourage is intended to blend electronic mail with calendar scheduling, making it possible to organize meetings and appointments and lists of tasks in one integrated program.
But while the Outlook program is integrated closely with the Microsoft Exchange electronic mail server, Entourage is a stand-alone program, designed that way because Macintosh computers are less common in corporate settings than Windows machines.
In other ways as well, the Macintosh product is different from the Windows version. The Entourage team said their goal was to cross the boundary between home and office transparently.
So Entourage automatically retrieves mail from multiple e-mail accounts and enables the user to see all of it in one In box. It also makes it easy for several users of the computer to share the e-mail program.
In one of its most interesting features, if you go to the address book and enter an address for a contact, there is a button you can click to get driving directions.
Entourage is also the clearest evidence that as the market for Apple software has declined in recent years, some of the best Macintosh programmers have taken refuge at Microsoft.
Its Macintosh Business Unit has about 200 employees, about half of whom work at Microsoft's new Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View, Calif.
Entourage is the most recent work of a small group of these Microsoft programmers, some of whom began developing an electronic mail program called Emailer for the Macintosh in the early 1990's at a tiny company, Fog City Software.
At that time the Macintosh computer still attracted innovative software first. Microsoft had not yet introduced Windows 95 and was still following the Macintosh lead.
Among the programmers who worked on Emailer and ended up at Microsoft were Jud Spencer and David Cartwright, who were part of a small team that competed against the Netscape Communications Corporation in the Macintosh browser and electronic mail market.
The group has produced five versions of the Explorer browser and  has steadily erased Netscape's lead by producing a stable program with a range of features.
More recently Microsoft has tapped into the community of Macintosh software true believers and hired two young biology students who were dedicated software hobbyists.
Dan Crevier, 29, had been a graduate student in biophysics at Harvard,  where he was a Macintosh enthusiast.
'I realized I loved writing software for the Macintosh more than biology,' he said.
The same was true for Omar Shahine when he was a biology undergraduate student at Georgetown University. Mr. Shahine's Web page reads: 'You may ask what the heck Biology has to do with my current job. . . . Well, nothing. My years of tinkering with my Macintosh paid off!'
For Microsoft, harnessing the efforts of Mac true believers has led to a boutique, but profitable, software business.
David Readerman, a financial analyst at Thomas Weisel Partners in San Francisco, estimates that Microsoft's Office business revenue is $8 billion annually and that the Macintosh Office product may bring in around 6 percent of that market.
'The Macintosh business is more profitable and its revenue contributes more profit than Windows Office,' he said.
And it aims at a different sort of consumer. The company has substantially redesigned its marketing campaign for Office 2001 for Mac, on the idea that Mac users are individualists and iconoclasts, said Kevin Brown, director of Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit.
Mr. Brown, who has worked on both the Windows and Macintosh sides of the Microsoft business, took over from Ben Waldman, who is now working on Microsoft's mobile and wireless business strategy.
Mr. Brown started as a Microsoft salesman. During his years in the Macintosh division, however, he has been infected with the fervor for the alternative software world that is still embraced by many of its users as a virtual religion.
During a recent Macintosh show in New York, Mr. Brown was given the opportunity by Mr. Jobs to give a brief demonstration of some of the features in the new version of Office for Mac.
Although he said he was nervous going onstage before thousands of the Macintosh faithful for the first time, he chanted a short mantra after each new feature: 'Only on the Mac!'
After just a few moments, he found that most of the audience was chanting with him.",1
Top/News,"Norman Is Master Of Losing Gracefully
It has been said that we learn far more about the character of athletes in defeat than in victory. If this were true, then we would know just about everything there is to know about Greg Norman by now. Because this is a man who  has undergone more torturous losses in major championships than most golfers can even imagine.
Of course, we don't know everything about this abstruse Aussie and we never will. But we did learn something more about Greg Norman on Sunday, during and after his latest and most rending loss in the Masters.
And that is this: Not even the worst collapse in major championship history, not even a blown six-stroke lead and a round of 78, the most embarrassingly inept display he has ever put on under pressure, could turn Norman into a jerk.
He lost the Masters, certainly. Lost it worse than anyone has. Lost his game, his putting stroke, his composure and the green jacket, to Nick Fa'do. But he never lost his class.
In this day of increasingly churlish and childish athletes -- basketball players, even Magic Johnson, bumping referees and baseball players unleashing expletive-laden diatribes for no apparent reason -- Norman's behavior is something to celebrate.
There are those who will excoriate Norman. I will not.
I never had the good fortune to meet Bob Jones, founder of the Masters. But the feeling that he would have liked Greg Norman is inescapable. In many ways, they are kindred spirits. Jones was an understated man and so he and Norman probably wouldn't have seen eye to eye on the Shark's flashy, conspicuous consumption, or even on his nickname. But they would have argued amiably about it over a few glasses of corn whiskey and then shaken hands.
That's because, above all, and for all his amazing accomplishments and successes, Jones was a sportsman. He understood the nerve-exposing pressures that golfers face. He understood what happens when it all unravels on a golf course like Augusta National. He co-designed the place, after all, and part of the genius of the design is the complete examination it forces players to undergo before wearing the green jacket.
Norman failed the examination on the course, but he aced the follow-up, a part that is nearly as difficult as the golf, and Jones would have appreciated that. Norman did something Rudyard Kipling wrote about back in 1910. During the  course of this 1996 Masters week, Norman met triumph and disaster. Then, on the  disastrous Sunday, he managed to ""treat those two impostors just the same."" He is more a man for it.
We have seen golfers who cannot cope with loss. Seve Ballesteros has twice bolted the grounds at Augusta National, wordlessly, rudely, after suffering agonizing defeat in 1986 and 1987. Payne Stewart, after a pair of galling losses in the early 90's, sprinted for the parking lot.
This is what makes Norman uncommon. We know that he has now had the lead three-fourths of the way through seven majors. He has won one of those. This is  not an admirable record, but it is his record. Let the record also show that not once has Norman refused to answer all the questions, sometimes making excuses but always showing up.
Think for a moment about how Derrick Coleman, noted National Basketball Association underachiever and misanthrope, would react to an interview request after missing six free throws down the stretch.
Norman, 41, will likely never match the major championship records of the greats. Faldo, Norman's former nemesis and new-found buddy, joined Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player on Sunday as one of three players to have won the Masters and British Open three times each. It seems a remote possibility th't Norman, with two British Opens as his only majors, will achieve that.
So be it. Arnold Palmer never won the P.G.A. Championship. Sam Snead never won the United States Open. Seve Ballesteros never won either one and probably never will. Greg Norman just lost another major.
""I just didn't win today,"" he said on Sunday. ""I'm not a loser.""
No, he's not. There are those who believe he will never win again. They are wrong. No one who can treat triumph and disaster the same can end on a note like this one. Asked on Sunday how it was humanly possible not to dwell on the Masters, Norman replied, ""Watch.""
He could we do anything else? Is there anyone in golf more entertaining -- or compelling -- to watch?
GOLF",1
Top/News,"Some Offer Hope to the Neediest Year After Year
Every year since 1979, Ruth Marton has sent $100 to the New York Times Neediest Cases Fund in memory of her sister, Gerd Muehsam, a Holocaust survivor. This year, Ms. Marton added $25 to her contribution to honor her good friend and distant relative Eugene Dorfman, who died in late November.
""Perhaps I can bring a bit of unexpected comfort to an elderly, ailing and lonely woman, possibly a Hitler refugee, as were my sister and I,"" Ms. Marton wrote in a letter to the fund.
Charles E. Brenauer of Manhattan sent $60 a few weeks ago. This is his 42d consecutive year of giving to the fund. David Judson gave $500 this year, as did Dorothy K. Davis of Manhattan, who gave in memory of her parents. And Sylvia Civin of Fresh Meadows, Queens, gave $250.
They are just a few of the consistent supporters of the fund, people who every year, without fail, take a moment out of their frenetic city lives to write a check, and sometimes a modest note.
""Here is my traditional contribution,"" wrote Vera Glasberg of Forest Hills, Queens, who gave $25. ""I only wish I could contribute more.""
While the fund has always relied on a core of committed givers, it is equally dependent on new donors to carry on its tradition of assisting New York City's population of homeless, sick and elderly. This year has been particularly difficult for the city's less fortunate citizens. As a result of city and state  budget cuts, nonprofit agencies like the seven supported by the fund have reduced, and in some cases eliminated, social service programs.
The Neediest Cases Fund dates to 1911, when Adolph S. Ochs, the publisher of  The Times, met a homeless man while taking an after-dinner stroll on Christmas Day. The next year, The Times published a list of the 100 neediest cases, appealing to readers for support. All donations go directly to the charities, since The Times pays overhead. Since this year's drive began on Nov. 23, $278,134.53 has been donated by 964 contributors.
One of them was Carol H. Kridel of Manhattan, who, like many repeat donors, gave in memory of a loved one. She sent $100 on behalf of her brother, John Walter Hirsch, who was 3 when he died of diabetes in 1917. ""I have continued this tradition ever since my mother died October 1990,"" she wrote.
Others are responding to the scenes of the street. The vague shape of a body  wrapped in a blanket, lying on the ground or huddled against a building. An elderly person picking through garbage for some bit of food. A man with a cup.
Those images are not new, but they are apparently as disturbing as ever.
""I am enclosing my usual check for your fund, and as usual, I wonder how much good it can do,"" wrote Bertha Rader of Manhattan in a note that accompanied a check for $1,000. ""One can't just sit there.""
HOW TO HELP Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to P.O.  Box 5193, General Post Office, New York, N.Y. 10087, or any of these organizations:
BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE 285 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217. CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK 1011 First Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022. CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS 191 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201. CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY 105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010. COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK 105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010. FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES 281 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10010. UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK 130 East 59th Street, Room 427, New York, N.Y. 10022.
No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
The Times pays the fund's expenses, so all contributions go directly to the charities, which use them to provide services and cash assistance to the poor.
Contributions to the fund are deductible on Federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law.
To delay may mean to forget.
THE NEEDIEST CASES",1
Top/News,"So Far This Season, There's No Letdown For the Red Storm
St. John's played carefree basketball yesterday and comfortably dispatched an overmatched opponent. The Red Storm's 84-59 shredding of Hofstra gave St. John's five consecutive victories over teams it was expected to beat and a 5-0 record for the first time since the 1994-95 season.
This is worth noting, because in each of the previous two seasons, St. John's lost to a lesser local team early in its schedule. Coach Mike Jarvis said he had more players competing for playing time this season, so the routs are happening more often.
The Red Storm gave a crowd of 10,729 at the second game of a doubleheader at Madison Square Garden a healthy dollop of intensity by breezing past Hofstra (1-5), which has been depleted by suspensions and an injury. St. John's forced 29 turnovers and limited Hofstra's shooting percentage to 39.7 in an up-tempo game.
The Red Storm built a 40-22 lead at halftime. A 7-2 run at the beginning of the second half reduced the rest of the game to a playground exercise. As Jarvis substituted freely, a few important developments emerged.
The swingman Willie Shaw provided the expected spark by coming off the bench to score 17 points in his second game back from a suspension. The freshman point guard Elijah Ingram continued to steady his floor leadership with 17 points and only 2 turnovers. And the team's de facto center, Kyle Cuffe, had 15 points and 12 rebounds for his first double-double. The high-scoring guard Marcus Hatten was relegated to a supporting role with 15 points.
St. John's could face two more local teams before it begins play in the Big East Conference, but it has already proved its mettle against programs that share its recruiting turf but not its national profile. St. John's has won by an average of 20.8 points, and none of the Red Storm's victories have come by less than 11 points.
'We're playing every game like it's a big-name school,' Cuffe said.
Hofstra, which recently made two straight N.C.A.A. tournament appearances, has fallen on hard times. Coach Jay Wright left for Villanova before last season and the Pride stumbled to 12-20 under Coach Tom Pecora.
This season, Hofstra suspended its best scorer, the senior guard Rick Apodaca, and the sophomore forward Wendell Gibson for 14 games after they tested positive for marijuana. They will become eligible Jan. 18.
Shaw's suspension, lasting four games, was also because of a positive test for marijuana; he would not comment on the more severe penalty given to the Hofstra players, but he noted their absence.
'It definitely could have been a different game,' Shaw said.
With the starting forward Danny Walker out because of an ankle injury, Hofstra has been reduced to the role of a scrappy neighbor that poses no real threat.
'We stand by our university's policy,' Pecora said. 'You play the hand that is dealt to you.'
Woody Souffrant led the Pride with 15 points and Kenny Adeleke added 13.
All signs pointed to a rout in the first half. Hofstra committed 16 turnovers, shot 34.6 percent and went scoreless for 5 minutes 32 seconds in falling behind by 24-8. St. John's extended the lead to 19 points, endured a brief spell in which Hofstra cut the lead to 11, then finished the half leading by 18.
The Red Storm will step out of its comfort zone Saturday with a game at Wake Forest.
In the first game of the doubleheader, Mississippi State, ranked No. 24 in the Associated Press poll, beat No. 13 Xavier, 71-61, and Mario Austin topped David West in a battle of preseason all-Americans.
Austin, a center making his first appearance this season after a six-game suspension, scored 28 points as Mississippi State (6-1) built a 21-point lead in the first half and did not allow Xavier (6-2) to come closer than 8 the rest of the way. West, a senior forward, scored 2 points in the first half and finished with 13.
COLLEGE BASKETBALL",1
Top/News,"Columbia Is Helping to Bring Royal Shakespeare to Apollo
Columbia University and the University of Michigan are teaming up to sponsor the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Salman Rushdie's allegorical novel, 'Midnight's Children,' and to bring it to the United States in the spring.
The production will be presented in January and February in London and in March in Michigan and New York, where it will play at the Apollo Theater on 125th Street. It builds upon scripts that Mr. Rushdie wrote for a five-part serialization of the 1981 novel for the BBC; the project was canceled shortly before it was to be filmed in Sri Lanka because of political upheaval there.
'It works very well as a stage piece,' said Mr. Rushdie, who is collaborating on the nearly completed script with Simon Reade, a dramaturge, and Tim Supple, a theatrical director. 'In some ways, it is easier to do onstage than on film.'
He said the production had also renewed interest in making a film.
For Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia's president since June, the production marks the beginning of what he hopes will be Columbia's expanded role in the arts. A legal scholar who is married to an artist, Jean Magnano Bollinger, Mr. Bollinger has said repeatedly that universities should help nourish contemporary arts. Mr. Bollinger typically carries a small copy of a Shakespeare play with him and is currently dipping into 'Antony and Cleopatra.'
In recent months he has had discussions with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Bill T. Jones about possible relationships between their dance companies and Columbia, although no agreements have been reached.
When he was president at the University of Michigan (he stepped down last year), the University Musical Society, its affiliated performing arts presenting organization, joined with the university and put up $2 million to help the Royal Shakespeare Company produce Shakespeare's historical dramas. The company performed at Michigan last year and will return to Ann Arbor both in 2003 and in 2005. Members of the troupe will visit in between as well. The Michigan performances last year were accompanied by lectures, discussions and other educational events for the campus and the community, and Mr. Bollinger plans similar events in New York.
'This is not simply a performing arts organization saying, 'Watch this performance,' ' he said in an interview. 'It will be much more: the integration of the arts organization and the university. It will be great for the university, great for the cultural institution and great for society.'
Mr. Bollinger said he hoped Columbia would have a continuing relationship with the Royal Shakespeare Company, as well as one with the Apollo, Columbia's neighbor in Harlem, where 'Midnight's Children' will be presented March 21 to 30.
David D. Rodriguez, the Apollo's executive director, said that 'Midnight's Children' was 'the first direct artistic collaboration with Columbia that anyone here can remember' and that he, too, hoped there would be more. The theater has 1,500 seats.
Mr. Bollinger said that he did not know yet what the Shakespeare project would cost but that he expected to cover much of the expense through ticket receipts and outside fund-raising. Neither university would discuss how much it was investing, but Chris Foy, managing director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, said that together the two universities were providing $2 million.
The Royal Shakespeare Company has been experiencing turmoil in recent months as it debates how and where it should operate, and in July it announced a change in artistic directors, but Mr. Bollinger said he did not expect those problems to create difficulties for the joint venture. He said he had the 'highest regard' both for Adrian Noble, the company's outgoing artistic director, who initiated the Rushdie project, and for Michael Boyd, his successor, who worked on the company's Michigan performances last year.
Mr. Foy said that affiliations with American universities -- the company has also begun working with theater and media studies programs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- were important. Education is part of the company's mission, he said, and the American audience is important because it is the largest English-speaking audience in the world. He also relishes the chance to appear at the Apollo Theater.
'To go into a theater with that history is particularly exciting,' he said.
In recent years, the company has performed regularly in the United States, including in New Haven, Washington, California and New York. For the moment, at least, it is not scheduled to perform at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where it has appeared in recent years.
'We do not want to spread ourselves too thin,' Mr. Foy said.
Mr. Rushdie said this week that the script was all but completed. 'Essentially I need to give it one last polish,' he said.
'I hope it preserves the heart and the spirit of the book,' he added. 'But the book is a quarter-million words long, and we can't put all of that on the stage.'
He estimated that the play might run 'three hours-ish.'
The lushly written book, which won the Booker Prize in Britain, focuses on the troubled coming of age of 2 of the 1,001 children born in the first hour of Indian independence, Aug. 15, 1947, and of India itself.
Mr. Rushdie said he expected 20 actors to play 60 or 70 roles. One advantage of doing a play rather than a movie, he said, is that theater audiences are more willing to accept actors who play children and adults.
'So actually, it's more fun to do it onstage,' he said. 'You just say to the actors: 'At this point, you are 10 years old. At another point, you are grown up.' '
He said he did not know what the cost of the play would be. 'I have never asked and never been told,' he said. 'Plenty, I think.'
Having Columbia and Michigan as backers has been 'absolutely invaluable,' he said.
'It has given us the freedom to do the play not as part of the repertory, but as a stand-alone project,' he said. 'We need a cast of about 20 actors, most to play characters of Indian origin. Thanks to the investment of Columbia and Michigan, we can cast it for itself.'",1
Top/News,"Restive Indonesians Find Little Hope in Vote
Something happened on the way to the thoroughly engineered Government landslide that is widely expected on Thursday in a parliamentary election here in the world's fourth most populous country.
An often violent monthlong campaign produced an outpouring of disaffection with the 31-year rule of President Suharto, a tenure that has brought Indonesia increasing prosperity but little political openness.
Although the Government has sought to control every aspect of the vote -- restricting campaign activities, mobilizing Government workers, vetting candidates for all three parties and reviewing their speeches -- a widespread restiveness and frustration have made themselves felt in rallies, riots and a broad and illegal campaign to boycott the vote.
'I want to see change in Indonesia,' Mohammad Feli, a 21-year-old art student, said as he eyed the soldiers guarding his alley here in the capital as the campaign ended  last week.
'There is too much unemployment in Indonesia,' he said. 'I want justice and equality for everyone. I want human rights. I want a system like overseas, like in America.'
But in an election-eve speech today, Mr. Suharto said democratic development in Indonesia would be 'a long process.' He asserted that a strictly controlled political system was necessary to assure stability and economic development.
Indeed, the riots that have shaken the country since last July, when mobs rampaged through Jakarta, appear only to have strengthened the Government's sense that Indonesia is too volatile to allow openness.
'What we have seen in the streets is the revenge of the poor,' said Juwono Sudarsono, vice governor of the Indonesian defense college.
'A lot of my colleagues argue for American-style openness,' he said.  'They talk of the cut and thrust of democracy. Well, you get a real cut and thrust here, with people using knives to kill each other. Openness among the poor is like giving them a lethal weapon.'
Elections in this nation of 200 million people, which the Government calls 'festivals of democracy,' are more ritual than substance, offering a rare forum every five years for political expression but producing little effect on the leadership.
The 500-member Parliament,  made up of 425 elected representatives and 75 members of the military, is largely ceremonial. If Mr. Suharto, 75, chooses to stay on for a seventh term, as most people expect, he will be endorsed next year by a People's Consultative Assembly in which Parliament will be joined by 500 additional delegates selected by the Government.
And even if Mr. Suharto, known for his surprises, chooses to retire, there is no strong opposition figure in a position to replace him. When people speculate about the future, the guessing game is over who the President might select to carry on his legacy.
Over the years he has seen to it that no potential successor emerged.  He has named a new Vice President with each election, and a chief virtue of the current incumbent, Try Sutrisno, is his blandness.
A year ago, when the leader of one of the non-governmental parties, Megawati Sukarnoputri, showed signs of presenting a real opposition, the Government engineered her ouster as party chief.
The split that resulted has in effect neutered her party, the Indonesian Democratic Party. The Government's election board did not approve either Mrs. Megawati or her supporters as candidates, and Mrs. Megawati -- the daughter of Sukarno, the first President -- has announced she would not vote.
But despite the restlessness born of his long tenure and of the country's stunted democratic system, Mr. Suharto has stated repeatedly that 'we will not change a system that has proven effective.'
Some foreign and Indonesian political experts suggest that the recent violence was as least in part a result of the frustration and political immaturity bred by Mr. Suharto's closed political system. An Indonesian election monitoring group that is not sanctioned by the Government asserted this week that the campaign violence resulted from 'inadequate political room and inadequate socialization of nonviolent values and the accumulation of social frustration.'
With shocking suddenness, a variety of local conflicts have exploded into convulsions of vandalism, arson and looting often aimed at the Chinese and Christian minorities, who are seen as symbols of affluence in Indonesia, the most populous Muslim  nation. Banks, shopping centers, car dealerships and Government offices have been attacked, as well as churches and Buddhist temples.
In one of the worst incidents, as many as 130 people died on the last day of the campaign in the remote town of Banjermasin when they were trapped in a shopping center that was set on fire by rioters.
$(Violence continued during the five-day cooling off period after the campaign officially ended. On Thursday, as the polls opened, the police in East Timor reported 12 campaign-related deaths the day before, Reuters reported, quoting the police chief, Col. Yusuf Muharam.$)
But although the Government system has hardly changed over the last three decades, Indonesia has undergone broad transformations that are straining the social fabric.
The economy has continued to grow at 7 to 8 percent a year, and the  inflation rate is less than 7 percent.  Jakarta has swollen into a vast and increasingly modern metropolis.
But economic growth has brought sharp disparities in wealth, widespread unemployment and underemployment, rapid urbanization and social disruption and unredressed seizures of land for new factories, supermarkets, golf courses, housing developments and whole new towns carved out of the rice fields.
One of the main problems Mr. Suharto's Government faces is an income gap. A thin layer of society has grown very wealthy very quickly. A broad underclass remains very poor.  In between, only about 18 million people make up a middle class that Mr. Juwono said might form the basis of a healthy democracy.
Another crucial problem is a generation gap. The violence and the most passionate opposition rallies have mostly involved the young and the poor, a fast-growing sector that some analysts say is the greatest threat to stability.
Of the nearly 125 million eligible voters, fully 20 million have reached voting age only since the last election. Many are unemployed and angry, with some 2.1 million seeking to enter the work force each year.
More than 80 million people are too young to remember the poverty, hunger and political chaos of the 1960's, when Mr. Suharto came to power. They did not experience the purge of Communists in 1965 that led to the deaths of 500,000 people.
They take for granted the near-universal schooling, health care and basic services the Government has provided over the last three decades.
Newly connected to the outside world through mass communications, they are demanding more say in local and national affairs. They are protesting widespread corruption, Government abuses and an often unresponsive local government and judiciary system.
These themes distilled themselves into a generalized mood of defiance and dissatisfaction in the final days of the campaign.
'We are the party of the poor!' a demonstrator in Jakarta shouted, waving the green banner of the United Development Party.
An unemployed bus driver named Ambrosius looked on from among the soldiers who guarded the streets.
'The future is gloomy,' said Ambrosius, 47, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. 'So many people have no job. There has to be change.'
His friend Hilarius, who is also unemployed, saw little hope of that.
'Whoever is in charge, we are still going to be coolies,' he said. 'That's the reality. Change is going to take many years.'",1
Top/News,"Helping Turn Individualists Into Willing Collaborators
Joel Frahm, one of the young band leaders often heard in New York's small jazz clubs, sounds supremely comfortable playing the tenor saxophone. He has enough physical force to produce a full, mellow sound at a rapid tempo, and sometimes he naturally recalls Sonny Rollins's playing from the late 1950's.
If developing one's own small-group sound is the toughest challenge of jazz, Mr. Frahm has done the next hardest thing, which is to form effective musical relationships with a number of individual players, including the drummer Matt Wilson, the bassist Omer Avital and the pianist David Berkman. Those relationships have helped nourish the local jazz scene during the last five years, and it is from those relationships that originality can spring.
Mr. Berkman appeared in the new version of Mr. Frahm's quartet last Tuesday night at Smoke, and the two musicians ran swiftly together, overlapping each other's lines, filling in each other's spaces. There were an awful lot of notes flying around, too many at times, and yet each player has such a strong touch that together they sound joyous in the surety of where they're going. Mr. Berkman can be a great accompanist, playing strange, declarative shapes at irregular moments during someone else's solo. His piston touch doesn't let him fade into the background.
And that approach works with Mr. Frahm, who has some urgent little idiosyncrasies of his own. In Charlie Parker's 'Cheryl,' a blues, Mr. Frahm attached himself to the root note of the tonic chord, hopping on it and driving it home through a chorus, while Mr. Berkman roamed hungrily around that note. In John Coltrane's 'Giant Steps' they both played flowing improvisations over a rewritten theme, finally ending up in a pleasant prearranged harmony. Together they built ideas that veered toward obsessiveness, but the rhythm section -- the bassist Joe Martin and the drummer Rick Montalbano -- never came undone.
In the middle of the set the singer Jane Monheit briefly visited the stage to perform Ellington's 'I Got It Bad (and That Ain't Good),' opening it with the verse sung a cappella, and it was impressive. Shrewdly she reconciled the seen-it-all speech inflections of a young, sophisticated New Yorker into a rhapsodic, breathy jazz vocal style.
JAZZ REVIEW",1
Top/News,"Pettitte Pays More Early Dividends
Perhaps Buck Showalter should ponder pitching Andy Pettitte on three days' rest. Why not? Showalter has discussed starting Jack McDowell and David Cone on shorter rest if it is necessary in the wild-card scuffle, but lately Pettitte has almost been as stellar as the remarkable McDowell and better than the inconsistent Cone.
Pettitte was precise again tonight. Not shaken by Bobby Bonilla's two-run homer in the first inning, Pettitte calmly stifled the Orioles on three hits until the ninth and led the Yankees to a 5-4 victory at Camden Yards. The Yankees climbed into a first-place tie with Seattle, which did not play, in the ever-tightening and unpredictable American League wild-card race. Texas, which defeated Toronto, 6-1, is one game behind.
Pettitte, who retired 21 of 24 Orioles from the second through the eighth innings, was two outs away from a complete-game, 5-2 victory when Bonilla singled and Rafael Palmeiro crushed a towering homer off the yellow right-field foul pole to trim Baltimore's deficit to one run. John Wetteland replaced Pettitte and buzzed by Chris Hoiles and Harold Baines for his 25th save, helping the Yankees win for the 13th time in 16 games in christening a stretch drive in which they play 16 contests against teams with losing records.
""Everybody knows we've got to win every game,"" said Pettitte, who won on the road for the first time since July 27. ""I'm just going about trying to keep us in the game. I've got a lot of confidence and a lot of respect for the game.""
Where would the Yankees be this season without Pettitte? The 23-year-old left-hander, who displays remarkable poise and a powerful repertory, won his fourth straight start, has a 2.38 earned run average during that span and is doing a wondrous imitation of McDowell. But McDowell has won a Cy Young Award and was expected to produce during a post-season run. Pettitte? He was New York's minor league pitcher of the year in 1994 and was not expected to be so valuable so soon.
But Pettitte (10-8) has been most valuable and has compiled the most victories by a rookie starter with the Yankees since Fritz Peterson (12-11) in 1966. In an uncertain season in which the injured Jimmy Key managed one victory, the Yanks have desperately needed each of Pettitte's triumphs. He has meshed beautifully and even improved to 3-7 away from Yankee Stadium.
""When you surround him with Jack McDowell, Jimmy Key, David Cone and Wade Boggs, maybe they don't realize they're supposed to do anything different than those guys,"" said Showalter. ""He's got a respect for the game. There is nothing beneath him. You marvel at that. It's good to see guys grow.""
Don Mattingly's one-out double off Rick Krivda in the ninth seemed innocent in a 4-2 contest. When Boggs, who did not start because of a strained left hamstring, batted against Terry Clark, Baltimore Manager Phil Regan did not intentionally walk him with the open base. It was a mistake. Boggs laced a 3-2 pitch to left field for a single and a 5-2 cushion. The run, driven in by a player who limped off the field for a pinch-runner, proved pivotal when Palmeiro homered and knocked Pettitte out.
""What impressed me is I turned to tell him to be ready and he already has his helmet and his batting gloves on,"" Showalter said of Boggs.
Ruben Sierra complained before the game about his reduced playing time and even had his agent call Showalter, but Pettitte adeptly switched the attention back to baseball. After the first, Pettitte cast the Orioles into a deep slumber.
Pettitte experienced trouble in the first after he issued a two-out walk to Cal Ripken. Bonilla whacked the next pitch to deep right-center field. Paul O'Neill retreated, measured his jump and the ball glanced off his glove to put the Orioles in front, 2-0. O'Neill tumbled to the ground and slammed his glove against the warning track in disgust at his failure to rob Bonilla.
But Pettitte rebounded and any disgust disappeared while the Yankees fashioned a neat comeback against Krivda with one in the second, one in the third on Bernie Williams's homer, two in the fourth and one important run in the ninth. Still, the question remained: Where would the Yankees be without Pettitte?
""Probably the same place we'd be without David Cone, Jack McDowell or John Wetteland,"" Showalter answered. ""I think everyone has played a big part in it. I don't want to single Andy out as a key. He's one of the pieces that got us back in this thing."" INSIDE PITCH
BERNIE WILLIAMS will travel to Bayamon, P.R., Friday for the impending birth of his daughter and will miss at least one game. GERALD WILLIAMS will probably play center field while Bernie Williams is with his family. . . . DON MATTINGLY's 8-year-old son, PRESTON, gave him some baseball cards and a book to get autographed by CAL RIPKEN. . . . ANDY PETTITTE picked MARK SMITH off first in the second, his league-leading 10th pickoff.  BASEBALL",1
Top/News,"China Wins a Bigger Say in Hong Kong
Britain and China announced a breakthrough today in their bitter 18-month dispute over the future of Hong Kong, agreeing that the colony can build an expensive new airport, but on the condition that China will gain even more influence over Hong Kong's affairs.
It was an ambiguous resolution at best to the highly emotional airport battle, which was seen by each side as a test of the other's good faith and by some as a sign of China's impatience for control over the prosperous capitalist enclave.
Britain received the assurances it sought that China will honor any debts the $16.2 billion airport incurs, even after Hong Kong returns to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997. That guarantee was considered essential to attracting private capital, on which the project depends.
In return, Britain acceded to China's demand that it be formally consulted on all major decisions about the airport. China also received extensive financial influence over Hong Kong, with Britain promising that when the colony is turned over it will have at least $3.2 billion in cash reserves.  British Leader Plans Visit
Hong Kong has never disclosed the size of its reserves, but they are believed to amount to tens of billions of dollars. China hinted during the dispute over the airport that it believed Britain was trying to empty the colony's coffers before China took control. China will now be able to influence both the financing of the airport project and the colony's overall finances.
The British Government also announced that Prime Minister John Major would travel to the Chinese capital soon to sign a memorandum of understanding containing the agreement.
That, too, could prove a bonus to the Chinese; the leaders of the industrialized nations agreed to halt all high-level visits after China's violent suppression of demonstrations in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. Mr. Major's visit would be the first by a major Western leader since then.
""We have an agreement that enables us to go ahead with this project with the confidence and certainty we've been looking for,"" said Hong Kong's Governor, Sir David Wilson.
He added, ""I don't think this is a bad deal for Hong Kong.""  The Key Phrase
The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce praised the accord, and Martin Lee, a lawyer who has pushed for open elections in Hong Kong, said he welcomed the agreement's assurances. But Mr. Lee added that the threat to the colony's autonomy was worrying. ""This would be most unacceptable,"" he commented.
The key phrase in the agreement is, ""Any decision will give full weight to the Chinese Government's views.""
The problem of what Britain will do if China continues to object to some aspect of the airport project after it is consulted remains unresolved.
""We think it's reasonable and makes sense to consult China on these issues,"" said Peter B. Davies, a spokesman at the British Embassy here. He added that ""there are no secret annexes"" that stipulate how disputes would be handled.
Britain had pushed for construction of the airport as a vote of confidence in the future of Hong Kong and to help insure its prosperity after it is returned to China.  Private Capital to Pay
The current airport, which juts into busy Hong Kong harbor from a crowded residential and commercial district near the heart of the city, will be replaced by a complex on the adjacent island of Lan Tao.
It will require huge amounts of excavation and landfill and construction of a suspension bridge nearly a mile long. Private capital is expected to pay for much of the project. Morgan Stanley & Company, the American securities firm, is the adviser on raising the billions of dollars that will be required.
China insisted it had a right to influence the airport plan, even though it has no formal say in the colony's affairs until 1997. At one heated moment a top Chinese Government official said that only the Chinese Government had the right to speak for Hong Kong's people.
Such remarks and Beijing's relentless criticisms were perceived by many in Hong Kong as meddling, a worrying sign that China would interfere in the colony's capitalist system in spite of a promise it will remain unchanged for 50 years after the 1997 handover. The bickering undermined already fragile confidence in Hong Kong.  A Form of Veto
Particularly worrisome for the British and many in Hong Kong was a sense that China was exercising a form of veto over a major Hong Kong issue. The project needed China's promise to honor the airport's debts to attract private capital. China had conspicuously withheld that promise; today it was offered.
As part of this financial understanding, the Bank of China was promised a large role in raising the loans needed for the airport. In addition, a Bank of China official will sit on the governing airport authority.
The Chinese Government said it would support ""necessary and reasonable borrowing by the Hong Kong Government,"" even if it is to be repaid after 1997. What would count as reasonable was left unclear.
But China will hold a veto over any steps that would leave the airport with more than $640 million in debt after 1997. A joint committee will be formed, half of whose members will be Chinese, to review all major contracts and franchises that will run beyond 1997.",1
Top/News,"OFFER BY ISRAELIS IS PRAISED BY U.S.
The Clinton Administration sought today to cast the offer of Israel to take back about 100 of 400 deported Palestinians in an optimistic light as Arab countriespressed ahead here with their campaign for Security Council sanctions against the country.
In Washington, the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, called the Israeli decision ""a breakthrough"" and said the ""important process that has been established obviates the need for further action in the Security Council.""
Mr. Boucher said it was now time ""to concentrate our efforts on invigorating the Arab-Israeli peace negotiations,"" adding that the United States would soon be consulting with Russia, the other co-chairman of the Middle East peace conference, about dates for the next round of talks, the ninth. U.S. Hoped for More
But the 100 Palestinians that Israel has agreed to take back fall well short of earlier American hopes that it could be persuaded to accept at least twice that number immediately and the rest shortly afterward, thus answering Arab charges that it is in violation of the Security Council's order that all 400 deportees be allowed to return..
Many Council members said today that the Clinton Administration's call for the Council to drop the whole Palestinian issue was making their position very difficult because it seemed that the United States was trying to block discussion of an issue that still angered many countries. Arab and many other nations feel that the Council is imposing a double standard at American insistence whereby it punishes countries like Iraq, Libya and Yugoslavia for defying its orders but excuses Israel.
Arab countries appeared to harden the sanctions they want the Security Council to impose on Israel until it complies with the Council's demand.
They dropped a previous suggestion that Israel be banned from future human rights meetings organized by the United Nations, including the world conference on human rights due to take place in Vienna in June. Instead they asked the Council to order all countries to withdraw trade concessions or other preferential economic treatment given Israel, including its important preferential trade arrangements with the United States and the 12 European Community countries.
Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali appeared to add his voice to those, saying Israel was still not in full compliance with the Security Council's orders.
Lester Pollock, chairman of the Organization of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, quoted the Secretary General, after meeting with him today, as saying he still had ""reservations about whether they are in compliance, reservations about whether a partial return is good enough.""",1
Top/News,"Stewart's Fortune Changes With a Victory at Pocono
Tony Stewart's crew chief hopped on the radio today and asked Stewart if he was nervous.
Why should he be, Stewart replied. Everything else had gone wrong this season, so why should this race be any different? He could deal with more rotten luck.
'I figured something was going to happen, because that's been the story line for us all year,' Stewart said.
But the story line had a twist: all the bad breaks happened to someone else. Stewart, the defending Nascar Winston Cup champion, won the Pocono 500 and ended a 27-race streak without a victory that lasted nearly 10 months.
'It sure has been a long, hard year,' said Joe Gibbs, the owner of Stewart's orange Chevrolet.
The 16th victory of Stewart's brief Winston Cup career lacked drama. Stewart took the lead from Sterling Marlin on a yellow-flag pit stop with 44 laps left in the 200-lap race, and a final-lap sprint between Stewart and Mark Martin dissolved because of an accident behind them.
'I feel like the crew won us the race, not me,' said Stewart, who won the race under caution.
But at least he won. Stewart had only one top-five finish in the first 13 races of the season, and he started the day in 16th place in the drivers' point standing.
Stewart was penalized a lap during a June 1 race at Dover, Del., because of a pit infraction. He led for 100 laps early in an April 27 race in Los Angeles but blew an engine and finished 41st.
'Everything has to be 100 percent, every lap, in order to win,' Greg Zipadelli, Stewart's crew chief, said today.
A little luck was apparently all Stewart's team needed. He qualified fourth for the 500-mile race, and he held the lead at three times in the first 127 laps. It appeared that the only gamble he could lose was deciding when to pit for a splash of fuel late in the race.
Had Stewart pitted just before a caution flag, he would have lost track position and would have had to battle to the front of the pack again. But everyone else also needed a little fuel to finish the race, and Stewart was in the lead well before the next caution period.
'It's fun when it all works out the way you want it to,' Zipadelli said. 'Most of the time this year, it hasn't worked out that way.'
Martin averaged 134.892 miles an hour and earned $214,253.
Kurt Busch, a teammate of Martin's, and the third-place finisher, Matt Kenseth, slapped the wall with six laps left. Stewart's lead over Martin -- 1.628 seconds, or about 150 yards -- evaporated in an instant.
But Stewart had a good jump on Martin on the restart. Martin had no chance to catch him before Terry Labonte nudged Jeff Green behind the leaders, sending Green's car into the retaining wall with a thud and bringing out the fourth caution flag.
Even though the front end of his car was crumpled to the windshield, leaving two air hoses protruding from the front like a pair of elephant tusks, Green was not injured.
'I hate it; I never meant to get into Jeff there,' Labonte said. 'He's a great competitor and he was having a really great run there, but I had such a good run on him, and we got together.'
Martin never had a chance to race Stewart, and Martin finished second again at Pocono. Martin has finished second four times and among the top five 17 times in 33 races at Pocono, but he has never won here.
Asked if he felt as if Pocono owed him a victory, Martin told reporters: 'You guys are all mixed up. You just don't get it. I mean, it's hard to run second. Everybody else out there wanted to run second, except for Tony Stewart, compared to what they did.'
Kenseth, who extended his lead in the Winston Cup points standing to 176 from 171 over Dale Earnhardt Jr., was not disappointed to finish third, either. Kenseth ran out of gas early in the race on pit road, and his crew had to push him a long way to get him restarted.
'It was a panic moment,' Kenseth said.
AUTO RACING",1
Top/News,"South Korean Plane Crashes On Guam With 254 on Board
A South Korean jumbo jet slogging through a late-night downpour  crashed yesterday in the jungle hills a few miles from a runway on Guam after the pilot reported trouble. Most of the 254 passengers were presumed dead, officials on Guam said.
A spokesman for Korean Air said that 49 people had been pulled from the wreckage of the Boeing 747-300, which was left scattered and burning in a remote ravine, and that 30 had minor injuries. Earlier an airline official in Seoul told Agence-France Presse that some of the 49 may have died after admission to hospitals on Guam.
Rescue workers who reached the site with flashlights found at least 35 survivors, The Associated Press reported.
The plane, Flight 801 from Seoul, South Korea, was about half full, with 225 adults, three children, three infants and a crew of 23, officials in Guam said. The travelers were mostly Koreans -- vacationers, and honeymoon couples -- and at least 13 Americans. It was not clear whether the pilot or copilot had survived.
Because of the bad weather, darkness and low visibility, the plane would have been relying more heavily on instruments to make the landing at Agana International Airport, where a radio system that tells pilots whether they are flying high enough as they approach the runway had been out of service since last month.
Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board said investigators had found the voice and flight data recorders, which could help reconstruct the pilots' actions and the plane's movements in the minutes before it went down.
In Seoul, Korean Air said the circumstances indicated that the crash was caused by bad weather and faulty equipment at the airport on Guam. However, a Korean aviation expert said that human error or engine trouble could not be ruled out.
White House officials said they had no early indications that terrorism had been a factor in the crash.
Witnesses said the plane plowed through the jungle trailing smoke and flames, before it came to rest. The first rescuers had to make a maddeningly slow journey to the wreckage, trudging in with flashlights after hacking their way through razor-sharp grass that came up to their shoulders. They were followed by a bulldozer that slowly leveled a path over the rocky ground, the witnesses said.
Even so, evacuating the survivors was arduous -- because of uneven ground and uncertain footing, it took four people to lift out each stretcher. At least 30 survivors were picked up by helicopters piloted by aviators with night-vision goggles, who took them to two hospitals -- 17 to an American naval hospital, and 12 to Guam Memorial. Most of the survivors were being treated for second- or third-degree burns, officials said.  With the jet still smoldering, Navy construction crews began moving in to crack open the fuselage and try to rescue any other passengers who might still have been alive. Local officials also set up a makeshift morgue where they carried the bodies of victims.
The area of the search was extended to surrounding areas to look for people who may have been flung away from the plane by the impact, Reuters reported from Agana.
'We are continuing to go to the wreckage site to make sure that there is no one we are not able to find,' aid a spokeswoman for Gov. Carl Gutierrez of Guam.
Reuters quoted witnesses as saying that the plane split into five parts when it crashed.
'I saw some people were able to walk away from the wreckage,' said Dr. Michael Lancer, a Guam resident who reached the wreckage while it was still burning. 'The plane was in five pieces and it's a miracle that anyone could come out of this.'
Witnesses described a bright burst of light in the foggy night sky, but it was not clear whether that was the fire set off by the crash or whether the flames began while the plane was still in the air. Melissa Arnett, a 15-year-old high school student who had climbed out of bed to close her window because rain was blowing in, said she saw a red flash after hearing the plane lumber over.
'It was pretty frightening,' she said.
Officials said the 13-year-old jet was running about an hour behind schedule when it was cleared to land on a runway that was built by the Japanese during World War II. But the big jet made it only as far as Nimitz Hill, a thinly populated area where Guam's limestone plateau gives way to mountains volcanoes. The visibility was about a mile.
Investigators were on their way to Guam last night. An 18-person team from the National Transportation Safety Board left Andrews Air Force Base near Washington on a military transport plane; other agency officials left from Los Angeles.
George W. Black, the agency official in charge of the investigation, said that recovering pieces of the wreckage would not be difficult despite the nature of the terrain. Accompanying him was Greg Feith, who headed the investigation of the ValuJet crash last year in the Everglades. That crash was attributed to a fire aboard the plane.
'Before T.W.A. 800 and ValuJet, I would have said the terrain might be a problem,' Mr. Black said. 'If we can do that, we can do anything.'
The investigators will almost certainly look into why the plane flying as Korean Air Lines 801 yesterday was a Boeing 747 -- normally Flight 801 uses an Airbus.
It was not immediately clear whether the change was a factor in the crash. But in such accidents, one  question investigators routinely ask is whether the crew was familiar with the airport. Because the 747 does not ususally travel this route, its crew may have been unfamiliar with the approach; flight crews do not usually switch between Boeing and Airbus planes.
Bad weather could have added to the tensions in the cockpit on a first-time crew's approach.
Officials said that Flight 801 radioed the control tower at about 1:50 A.M., when the plane was seven miles away. Andrew Murphy, a spokesman for the airport, said the report mentioned trouble, but he said he did not know whether the problem was the too-low approach or a mechanical malfunction.
The tower called the plane at 2 A.M., Mr. Murphy said. 'There was no response.' A few minutes later, he said, the tower received word of the crash.
The plane appears to have crashed almost directly on top of a navigational device that it should have been using to guide its descent. Aviation experts said that raised the possiblity that the pilot had been confused about where he was in relation to the runway or to prescribed altitude checkpoints along the way.
The pilot would have needed the navigational device, known as a vortac, because of the problem with the instrument-landing beacon. The beacon provided a signal known as a glide slope indicator, which tells a pilot whether the plane is too high or too low as it approaches the runway. That system had been out of service since July; the F.A.A. said it had cautioned pilots about the problem in a recent 'Notice to Airmen.'
Without the glide slope indicator, the procedure would be to use the plane's altimeter and distance measuring equipment as the plane flies a prescribed path. The F.A.A.'s approved approach called for maintaining an altitude of 2,600 feet, which would have put the plane between a sandwich of clouds -- below a layer at 3,500 feet and above a broken layer at 1,900 feet..
The plane should have been relying on the vortac, which announces its identity in the dots and dashes of Morse code -- in this case, the letters U, N and Z. The device, about 3 miles from the end of the runway, also sends a signal that lets a computer on the plane calculate the distance to the vortac.
The approved approach called for the plane to descend to 2,000 feet by the time it was 1.5 miles ahead of the vortac. The F.A.A. does not specify the altitude at which planes should cross over the vortac, but Flight 801 should should have been down to 980 feet when it was 1.3 miles beyond the vortac. It never made it that far, crashing on top of the vortac. Pilots sometimes refer to this point as the 'cone of silence,' because signals from the vortac cannot be heard when the device is directly below.
The crash seemed unlikely to rekindle the diplomatic tensions that followed two incidents involving Korean jetliners in the 1980's.
In September 1983, a Korean Air 747 was shot down by Soviet jet fighters, killing all 269 aboard. The Soviets maintained that the Alaska-to-Seoul flight was an intelligence mission.
In 1988, the United States put North Korea on its list of nations that support international terrorism, citing its role in the November 1987 bombing of a Korean airliner that killed 115 people. The evidence against North Korea was based on the confession of a North Korean woman who said that she and an accomplice had planted a time bomb on the plane on orders from the son of North Korea's then leader, Kim Il Sung. The Boeing 707 blew up on the way from Baghdad to Seoul.",1
Top/News,"Nets Appear To Have Winning Knack
It is nights like tonight that you look at the Nets and begin to wonder: Is this team for real? Six Nets players scored in double figures against the Atlanta Hawks and for a brief moment they didn't look like Team Turmoil. They just looked good.
Now that the Nets have your attention after spanking Atlanta, 122-115, before 9,069 at the Byrne Meadowlands Arena, let's review a few facts. The 8-7 Nets have won four straight games. The last time they were above .500 at this point in the season was November 1986. They are walking the walk, and after the game, they were talking togetherness, not trash.
""We have to play together because there are no excuses this year,"" said center Sam Bowie. ""We can't say, 'We're not happy with the coach or we're not happy with whatever.' We should win. Coming home like this, this was a must-win game for us."" Controlling Wilkins
And this was one of their most convincing of the season. After a successful and tiring trip to the West Coast, the Nets could have come back and tripped over themselves. But they didn't, playing intimidating defense by blocking eight shots and holding star foward Dominique Wilkins to 5-of-22 shooting and 18 points.
The score was not a true indication of how the Nets dominated the Hawks. As Bowie bluntly stated: ""We kind of played with Atlanta if you will. That's not a put-down against them, but it's the truth.""
The Nets are winning despite changes in their lineup because of injuries. On Tuesday, the Nets put forward Jayson Williams on the injured list, which means he will miss at least five games. They activated backup center Dan O'Sullivan, a Bronx native. Derrick Coleman, fighting back spasms, was in the lineup after missing two games.
But as sore as Coleman was, it didn't show. He led the team with 21 points, eight rebounds and four assists. He also had three blocked shots. It was an impressive performance, and showed the kind of things Coleman is capable of doing.
""We had to step up on defense,"" said Coleman. ""You need that. Defense starts our offense. Anybody can score. But can you buckle down and stop people?""
Guard Drazen Petrovic had 20 points and forward Chris Morris had 19. Kenny Anderson had 11 points and 8 assists. Guard Rumeal Robinson, playing against his old team, took advantage of Coach Chuck Daly using four guards and scored 18. Mahorn Makes Presence Felt
It was forward Rick Mahorn who perhaps set the tone for the game early with his big body. He had just 8 points but along with Bowie had 11 rebounds. Said Mahorn: ""You have to establish yourself at the beginning of the game. Once you set the tone, it carries you.""
You see two things with the Nets and both were evident tonight. One, this is a team that, when at its best, seems able to compete with just about any team in the league. The Hawks are not a bad team, entering this game winning five of their last six.
The key for New Jersey was controlling Wilkins, and most of the credit should go to Morris, who shadowed Wilkins most of the game. The Hawks were also hurt when forward Kevin Willis was ejected after two technical fouls in the first half. But the Nets were playing so well his presence probably wouldn't have made much of a difference.
But the second thing is this: Sometimes the Nets are prone to serious mental lapses. The Nets had Atlanta down by as much as 17 points midway through the third period, but a series of turnovers and blown defenses allowed the Hawks to cut it to 83-76 before Daly was forced to use a timeout. It was 89-80 at the end of the third, but late in the fourth it was 113-99.
Also, the Nets allowed center Jon Koncak, who has the mobility of a redwood tree, to shoot the lights out. He was 7 of 9 for 15 points.
""At times I thought we played well,"" said Daly. ""If we could just sustain it and play consistent. We don't win pretty, that's for sure. We win kind of ugly sometimes.""
But the low points in this game were few. Now, as Daly said, it's important for the Nets to ""not get carried away. We have San Antonio on Friday and David Robinson.""  PRO BASKETBALL",1
Top/News,"Red Dogs Win Local Matchup
The New York CityHawks got a gift of a fumble late in the game, but they still lost, 39-32, to the New Jersey Red Dogs last night before an announced crowd of 9,692 at Continental Arena.
The Red Dogs, who improved to 6-4 and are still in the playoff chase, are 4-0 in their two-year rivalry with the CityHawks (2-8), who dropped their sixth straight.
The CityHawks had a chance when Red Dogs quarterback Rickey Foggie, nursing a 7-point lead with 38 seconds to play, fumbled on a keeper. James Bowden recovered at the Red Dogs' 9. But two plays later, Perez was intercepted in the end zone.
RON DICKER
PLUS: ARENA FOOTBALL",1
Top/News,"The Dance: Maria Benitez Spanish Company
LEAD: THE Maria Benitez Spanish Dance Company presented a compelling program on Tuesday at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue. But there was one moment that stood out. It came with a farruca performed by Eduardo Montero. Choreographed by Jose Luis Ayuste to traditional music, the solo gave Mr. Montero, a guest artist with the company, a chance to let loose with steely, lacy fusillades of foot beats of such exquisitely precise timing and dynamic range that one watched breathlessly.
THE Maria Benitez Spanish Dance Company presented a compelling program on Tuesday at the Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue. But there was one moment that stood out. It came with a farruca performed by Eduardo Montero. Choreographed by Jose Luis Ayuste to traditional music, the solo gave Mr. Montero, a guest artist with the company, a chance to let loose with steely, lacy fusillades of foot beats of such exquisitely precise timing and dynamic range that one watched breathlessly. And near the end of the solo, Mr. Montero extended his arms to the audience, his face crumpling, just a little like a singer drawing in his listeners triumphantly as he hits a final, exhilaratingly exhausting high note.
It was a fitting gesture, so challenging a virtuosic tightrope did Mr. Montero probe, at one point seeming to 'play' his feet like a complex musical instrument. In those few seconds, Mr. Montero offered a perfect, living thesis on artistry and the relationship of the artist and the audience. He spun. He glided. He drifted across the stage on the velvet texture of his footwork like the sleepwalker in George Balanchine's 'Sonnambula.' Then suddenly, at the end, he slowed to an amble, shrugged and walked off the stage in the best boulevardier tradition.
Mr. Montero epitomized the cool in the fire-and-ice art of Spanish dancing. And there is a good deal of cool in the performing of Miss Benitez and her company, who will be at the Joyce through Sunday. At first the slightly distanced quality of Miss Benitez's performing was puzzling. No tearing the stage to tatters here, except in the most reasoned of ways. But that distance is one of thoughtful good taste and a kind of purity that connotes great seriousness about one's art.
That was evident in Miss Benitez's dances, among them 'Andaluza,' a new solo choreographed by Rosita Segovia to music by Manuel de Falla. Here and throughout the program, there was much to admire in her long line and lyric articulation of hands and fingers, as well as in the lean and hungry way she moved into the dances, a quality that was nicely enhanced by Mr. Montero's genial and courtly partnering.
The ensemble pieces on this program of ten dance numbers included three fascinating pure-dance excursions into another culture. There was the sexy, hypnotically precise 'Zapateado' choreographed by Mr. Montero and performed by Rosa Mercedes, Faustino Rios, Monica Flores and Miguel Diez, in gaucho-style clothes with the men wielding swords. With its high kicks and earth-hugging gallops, 'Viva la Jota!,' choreographed by Pedro Azorin to music by Echegary-Caballero, offered an exuberant argument for the popularity of this dance from northern Spain. And 'Sonata,' choreographed by Miss Segovia to music by Scarlatti, was a sweetly merry exercise in the escuela bolera style of the late 18th century, complete with ballet-style beats. The cast was led by Miss Mercedes, who darts like a hummingbird through her dances, and completed by Ana Diaz, Cristina Masdueno and Xiomara Prats.
There were slow stretches in the first half of the program, but the evening came to an exciting traditional close with 'Jaleo' and 'Finale,' with solos for most of the company, which also included Dolores Espinosa. The dancers were accompanied by Cuquito de Barbate, the ensemble's rousing singer, Paco Izquierdo, the fine solo guitarist, and Guillermo Ros, also on guitar. Craig Miller designed the strong lighting for this well-staged program.",1
Top/News,"Home Run Among 100 Oddball Notions
THE campaign to sell barbecue grills to vegetarians is languishing. The boss wants ideas, and he wants them Thursday. You could roll in your rocking chair until an idea comes. You could take a long, ruminative walk. You could ask the fellow who delivers the pizza.
Mindlink Problem Solver, Corporate Edition, a Windows program from the Mindlink Software Corporation of North Pomfret, Vt., extracts ideas buried in your head. It is a solo brainstorming session. It keeps track of crazy ideas that may lead to more crazy ideas; out of 100 ridiculous suggestions, one can point the way to a practical solution.
There are six icons on the opening screen: The Gym; Idea Generation; Guided Problem Solving; Problem Solving; Evaluate and Refine Concept, and Thought Warehouse. I clicked Idea Generation, then New. Invited to name my problem, I typed ""column opening"" and clicked Next.
The program's screens are neatly laid out, and the directions are clear. The first one told me to ""write a clear, brief, and focused statement that captures your problem."" I typed, ""How to begin a column on Mindlink."" Next was Problem Background, with questions. What do you know about the problem? Response: ""The program guides you in solving problems."" What does anybody else know about it? ""Everybody has problems, and ways to solve them, successfully or not."" What has already been tried? ""Thinking, sleeping on it, hoping for the best."" What portion of the problem is yours to solve? Describe what you hope to get from this session.
Next, I entered ideas. There were too many to list here, and some would be embarrassing. The more relevant included ""a simple statement of what the program says it can do"" and ""a silly but apropos story or joke."" Then Mindlink invited me to click on Trigger. This led to Absurd 2, combining ""absurdity with some creative writing."" Three elements were offered to be incorporated into an opening paragraph or outline: rocking, street merchants, hike. This is where the process got intriguing, and hard. I wrote: ""You must solve a business problem. You could sit in your rocking chair until an idea comes. You could take a long walk. You could ask the fellow you buy the morning paper from.""
Invent two ""absurd"" ideas about your wish. Oh, my. Sell refrigerators to Eskimos? Trite. ""Sell barbecue grills to vegetarians."" ""Let him who is without sin throw the first rock at the chair."" Now use parts of the absurd ideas to generate new working ideas. ""The campaign to sell barbecue grills to vegetarians is languishing. The boss wants ideas, and wants them now. You could sit in your rocking chair until an idea comes, or maybe a rock instead.""
When you return from the Idea Trigger module, you are offered several options. I chose Summary, and a neat outline of my thoughts, organized under subheadings, appeared on the screen. After looking over the outline, I selected Next and was told that I had produced nine ideas, but that at least 15 are recommended. I clicked Trigger again, and could have pursued ""depressed, acorn, climb."" Another click brought ""rolling, seashell, faint."" When Mick Jagger retires, will he sit in a rolling chair? This was getting absurd, which was the idea. It was also getting to be fun, but we have deadlines.
My session was limited to the Idea Generator. Of the other sections, The Gym is a series of exercises; Guided Problem Solving is a tutorial; Problem Solving is for generating and organizing ""wishes, ideas and potential solutions,"" to quote from the excellent 100-plus-page manual; Evaluate and Refine Concept lets you use the problem-solving part of the program for an idea developed outside of Mindlink without starting all over again, and Thought Warehouse is a database for your ideas, far better organized than the one between your ears.
Mindlink Corporate Edition sells for around $200. The number for information is (800) 253-1844.
Mindlink is based on techniques licensed from Synectics Inc., an international management consulting firm. As a Windows 3.1 program, it should also work with OS/2 and, when it appears in a couple of weeks, Windows 95. For Windows 3.1, four megabytes of RAM are required, eight recommended; 10 megabytes of hard-disk space are required.
""Hard, surfboard, read."" The campaign to sell surfboards to Saudis is languishing. ""Darkening, popcorn, study."" The campaign to sell Patagonian popcorn is darkening. ""Pungent, egg, suspend . . .""  PERIPHERALS",1
Top/News,"All Her Stage Is a World; Its Women Call for Justice
Even for a high-voltage performance artist like Sarah Jones, this was some assignment: draw life and soul, hurt and anguish from the paper and ink of laws that discriminate against women worldwide. That is what Ms. Jones was asked to do by a international women's organization looking for a way to make a United Nations conference sit up and take notice.
'I've always got some sort of ax to grind in my work,' said Ms. Jones, 26. So she took the challenge. 'We get to kind of play with reality a little,' she added.
The result is 'Women Can't Wait,' a show written and acted by Ms. Jones, who honed her accents and pithy character portrayals at downtown poetry slams, then graduated to small clubs. Her first solo show, 'Surface Transit,' a collection of eight New York characters created around the themes of tolerance and intolerance, had its premiere in 1998 at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and later played at the American Place Theater. It was praised in publications like The Village Voice and Time Out New York and is headed for a summer run at P.S. 122, starting on June 14.
Ms. Jones -- born into a multiethnic family in Baltimore, raised in Washington and New York and educated at Bryn Mawr -- writes her own material. Her ideas and characters have always come from her own experience, she said. Until now.
Like 'Surface Transit,' 'Women Can't Wait' has eight characters. But these are not the people she sees around her in New York, where she lives. Ms. Jones uses only one prop, a diaphanous shawl, to create her international population. She covers her head and becomes Praveen, a timid woman from India working up the courage to talk about beatings by her husband and the family that denied her sympathy. In an instant, with the shawl transformed into a scarf tied jauntily around her neck, she is Emeraude, a vivacious Frenchwoman defying laws against women working at night.
And so it goes: shawl up, shawl down, shawl around the waist or over her shoulder. Ms. Jones is Tomoko from Japan, Hala from Jordan, Alma from Uruguay, Bonita from the United States, Shira from Israel. By the time she becomes little Anna from Kenya, the shawl has been balled up and transformed into a child's doll.
Through it all runs the thread of women who do not theorize but speak from personal, often horrific experience and who sometimes awaken to the injustice done them.
Today 'Women Can't Wait' will have a different audience from the one Ms. Jones normally draws in clubs. It is to be performed at the United Nations for official delegates and nongovernmental representatives at an international conference being held five years after the world's largest gathering of women took place in Beijing in 1995.
Meryl Streep will introduce Ms. Jones. Two additional shows, also limited to conference participants, will be held at the United States Customs House, where the United States government and New York City are to act as hosts to unofficial delegations to the weeklong United Nations meeting. The conference will bring thousands of women from more than 150 nations to the city.
She will also perform 'Women Can't Wait' on Friday night at 8 at the Judson Memorial Church, 55 Washington Square South, Greenwich Village. Gloria Steinem will introduce Ms. Jones at that performance, which is open to the public.
The organization that commissioned the one-woman show, Equality Now, an advocate for women's rights based in New York, works with immigrants in the United States and women in poor countries to fight  laws that it identifies as limiting women's rights and freedoms. For inspiration, it provided Ms. Jones with videos of women in various countries. She said she was deep into research for the piece on the Internet, which she calls 'an interesting kind of portal' to the world.
As she does in her other work, she drew ideas from real people but invented her own characters, writing their speeches herself. In this way her pieces differ from those of Anna Deavere Smith, who interviews people and uses their words onstage.
Ms. Jones, who volunteers in a homeless shelter on Saturdays, said she also drew on those experiences to create her portraits of oppression.
'These women in the shelter, many of them are facing some of the same problems,' she said.
Ms. Jones's parents are both doctors who met at Johns Hopkins University, an African-American father and a mother of European and Caribbean descent. She said she picked up her fascination with accents and mannerisms while a high school student at the United Nations International School in New York. 'So this show is a homecoming for me,' she said.
'I've never been trained; I laugh when people call me an actor,' she said. 'In my family background I had access to different accents. And then in school, it was amazing. There were all these kids, something like 150 nationalities, and everybody had these gorgeous accents, and I would listen all day. The U.N. school opened up so much for me. It really broadened my horizons. As a kid I was suddenly aware of the plights of people not only in my own backyard but all over the place.'
From there she went to Bryn Mawr College. 'I drifted into performance art in the middle of college, and it yanked me right the heck out of the Main Line area and back home,' she said.
'Surface Transit' brought Ms. Jones to the attention of Equality Now after Ms. Steinem, an adviser to the group, saw her show. Then, in December, the group's executive director, Jessica Neuwirth, was taken by her staff, as a birthday gift, to a club where Ms. Jones was performing, and she was invited to prepare her piece for the United Nations conference.
Writing 'Women Can't Wait' has been a consuming journey, Ms. Jones said. 'It's life and death,' she said. 'This is about actual peoples' lives'  being on the line every day.'",1
Top/News,"Salinas: Plenty of Smoke, No Smoking Gun
More than a year after Carlos Salinas de Gortari left Mexico's presidency, a secret Central Intelligence Agency report assured American officials that there was no hard evidence linking him to the scandals that had soiled his administration.
'We do not at this time have a 'smoking gun' that implicates former Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari in influence-peddling and graft,' the document began.
But in its next breath, the C.I.A. assessment, dated Dec. 27, 1995, raised serious doubts about the integrity of the Harvard-trained economist whom Washington had once hailed as the beacon of a new political generation in Latin America.
'Circumstances and fragmentary reporting strongly suggest such involvement,' the report continued, referring to Mr. Salinas's possible participation as President in the corrupt activities of his relatives and aides.
Caution in such appraisals is nothing new. But in recent years, as the character of Mexican politicians become an important issue in Washington, American officials say reports on the subject have often raised ambiguity to an art form.
The C.I.A. report, a copy of which was made available to a reporter, includes some intriguing allegations. But even in its details, the document underscores the limited effort American intelligence officers seem to have made to sort out such accusations.
The former Mexican President has never been charged with any crime and denies knowing anything of the misdeeds with which his elder brother has been charged.
Mr. Salinas did not return telephone calls today.
The C.I.A. report does not delve into those issues in detail. Rather, it synthesizes what several American officials described as a typical mix of assertions by confidential informants and circumstantial evidence.
'A very few intelligence reports, from sources of varying reliability, link former President Salinas to illegal activities, although none ties him directly to narcotics trafficking,' the document states. 'Salinas's hands-on approach to governing during his tenure as President makes it unlikely that he had no knowledge of his brother's affairs or the shady dealings of other close associates.'
The report goes on to recount a series of charges:
*An informant of 'undetermined reliability' had reported that before the sale of Government-owned banks by Mr. Salinas's administration in 1990, Raul Salinas and other members of the President's family used inside information to invest heavily in financial instruments that later jumped in value.
*During the race leading up the election of his successor in 1994, Carlos Salinas pressured the campaign of his own party's candidate, Ernesto Zedillo, 'into hiring Ana Paola Gerard -- who was widely rumored to be his mistress -- at an exorbitant salary.'
*An investigation into 'alleged narcotics links of former Agriculture Secretary Carlos Hank Gonzalez highlighted a relationship, which Zedillo's investigators felt cast suspicion upon the former administration, between Hank, Carlos Salinas and another prominent family suspected of laundering drug money.' The report attributes the information to the intelligence service of another foreign government.
When such charges reached the C.I.A. is unclear. But there is little indication that American intelligence officers made much of an effort to determine their veracity.
By the time that agency officials compiled the report, for example, the relationship between Carlos Salinas and Ms. Gerard was more than a rumor. Ms. Gerard, 36, a former presidential aide, was about to give birth to Mr. Salinas's daughter.",1
Top/News,"Among Mourners in London, Anger Still at the Queen
Vernon Lloyd-Jones, a 67-year-old businessman who came from Wales to join a sea of people mourning at Kensington Palace, where Diana, Princess of Wales, had lived, watched the crowds streaming in to pay their respects as he listened to Queen Elizabeth praising her former daughter-in-law.
'Until last week I liked the monarchy,' he said. 'But the way they treated her, they were so cruel.'
That seemed to be the predominant mood of the crowds gathered by the tens of thousands here tonight to pay their respects to Diana.
Again and again, people who came to Kensington Palace park to pile flowers over the vast lawns, light candles and pray quietly in front of her home expressed little affection for the Queen, the House of Windsor, even the notion of monarchy.
'Surely she could have said something earlier!' said Stella Parkinson, 67, a retired credit controller who had been here for hours with her daughter and granddaughter. 'They used her to produce heirs to the throne and then got rid of her. I used to like the monarchy. No more.'
As night fell, thousands more  poured in to the park. Candles flickered everywhere. Some wept. Children played around their parents. Some simply did not want to leave.
'She could have said something earlier in the week,' said Michele Heathcote, 16, a student, who fought back tears. 'I think the royal family is very worried about the anger felt by those of us who are taking Diana's  loss very personally.'
At a nearby restaurant, Maurice Fyles, a 30-year-old market researcher, said: 'The thing about Diana is that she was the first one in this royal family to say, 'This is how I feel.' Her death and the astonishing reaction to it will change the way the royal family talks to the public. That was the meaning of this speech by the Queen.'
Attaching a card that read 'Diana, the best Queen we never had,' Thilina Abayawardana, a civil servant at the Inland Revenue, the British equivalent of the Internal Revenue Service, had the kindest words to say about the Queen and the royal family: 'She has listened to her subjects and tried to please them. She understood what Diana meant to us.'
The Rev. Jonathan Blake, who came with his son and daughter, said: 'I am pleased to have heard the speech. The Queen did well to respond to public feelings. People thought Diana a beautiful person. She is richly loved because she was real and enriched people with her tenderness. She made mistakes. She loved. She suffered. She was very different from the royal family.'
Michael Pallette, 62, a teacher, said of the royal family: 'They should have treated her with this sort of regard during her life. They never appreciated her. This extraordinary week of public grief suggests to me they have made a terrible error. Personally I can do without the royals.'
DEATH OF THE PRINCESS: THE MOOD",1
Top/News,"Taylor Draws With Wright and Keeps His Title
Jermain Taylor and Winky Wright fought to a draw Saturday night, allowing Taylor to retain the undisputed welterweight championship. The judge Melvina Lathan scored the fight even (114-114), the judge Chuck Giampa scored it for Taylor (115-113), and the judge Ray Hawkins scored it for Wright (115-113).
It was a close bout with no knockdowns, and neither fighter was seriously hurt. But Wright appeared to be more upset with the decision, leaving the ring almost immediately after it was announced. The crowd at the FedEx Forum reacted with mixed emotions.
Taylor's left eye was nearly swollen shut, but that never prevented him from pressing forward, or from seeing Wright's punches.
The two entered the final round knowing the outcome was at stake, but the final round was close, as were many rounds in the fight.
It remained to be seen if Taylor (25-0-1) would give Wright (50-3-1) a rematch, coming off tough back-to-back 12-round battles against Bernard Hopkins. Perhaps Taylor will want an easier opponent in his next fight, which could leave Wright, at age 34, even more unhappy.
Taylor praised Wright afterward.
'He had a great jab,' Taylor said. 'I didn't think his jab was going to be as fast as it was. In the last round, I couldn't see out of my left eye. I knew it was a close fight. It could have gone either way.'
Wright might have made a mistake, not throwing many punches in the final two rounds.
'I felt if he wanted the title so bad, he should have fought all 12 rounds,' Taylor said. 'I fought all 12. This is boxing, You have to fight all 12.'
Asked if he would give Wright a rematch, Taylor said: 'Yes sir. I would fight him again anytime.'
Wright said he felt the decision was influenced because the fight took place a two-hour drive from Taylor's hometown, Little Rock, Ark.
'If I didn't win the 12th, then who did?' Wright said. 'He certainly didn't. I'm in his hometown, they gave him what he wanted. All the fans saw who won the fight. I don't want no rematch. If I have to come here and get this kind of decision, there's no point.'
Taylor tried to land a punch that would take the decision out of the judges' hands. The 10th round was the best of the fight, with Wright hitting Taylor with a combination to the head, but Wright answered with body shots and uppercuts late in the round.
Taylor seemed most comfortable counterpunching, hoping to catch Wright unaware. But Wright was elusive, often sneaking in several punches and slipping away before Taylor could land anything.
Taylor's left eye was almost shut by the ninth round. Wright hit Taylor with a right hand late in that round, forcing Taylor to spin away.
The fighters set a torrid pace early, but in Rounds 6 through 8, the action slowed, and they became more cautious, probing for openings.
Taylor had a strong sixth round, gaining Wright's attention with several body shots. Taylor was the harder puncher, and there were many spirited exchanges when Taylor threw power punches at Wright. Taylor seemed determined to throw body shots, hoping to break Wright down. But many of Taylor's blows deflected off Wright's gloves, as Wright solidified his reputation for being one of the toughest fighters to hit cleanly.
After an uneventful first round, Wright began finding the range with his jab in the second round. Wright's jab is perhaps the best in boxing, and it sets up his game plan. Taylor made the mistake of allowing himself to be backed into a corner, and Wright found the mark with several jabs that knocked Taylor's head back.
Wright entered the ring in clever attire, wearing a gray business suit, complete with shirt and tie, over his trunks. The largely pro-Taylor crowd booed, but Wright's message was clear.
For Wright, this was a business trip. But Taylor was still the champion when the night ended.
BOXING",1
Top/News,"Cohen Has Winning Moment; Kwan Will Go to Turin
More than an hour after the United States Figure Skating Championships were over, only Sasha Cohen knew her fate.
As the national champion, she was given an automatic berth to the Olympic team going to Turin, Italy, next month. But as second- and third-place finishers here, Kimmie Meissner and Emily Hughes, both 16, were on the cusp. They had a daunting obstacle in front of them: the nine-time national champion and two-time Olympian Michelle Kwan.
Kwan, who skipped the nationals because of a groin injury, petitioned to receive a medical bye onto the Olympic team. And after a long wait that ended early Sunday morning, Kwan was given her chance to finally win that elusive Olympic gold medal.
Along with Cohen, the United States Figure Skating Association named Kwan and Meissner to the three-women Olympic team. It also named Hughes the first alternate, and Katy Taylor, who was fourth at nationals, the second alternate.
'With all my heart, I wish I was in St. Louis competing, so it was really disappointing to sit home and watch,' Kwan said in a teleconference early Sunday morning. She added that she had received criticism about her decision to try to make the team, but support from her friends, fans and family helped her stay positive.
'I'm very happy that U.S. Figure Skating has approved my petition, at the same time I know how Emily must be feeling because I was in a similar situation in 1994,' she said.
In 1994, Kwan finished second at nationals, but was named an alternate to the Olympic team when an injured Nancy Kerrigan petitioned to make the Olympic team. Now her position has flip-flopped.
A United States Figure Skating international committee met after the conclusion of the women's free skate, disappearing into a room not far from the ice. They voted, 20-to-3, to place Kwan on the team, though she has competed in only one major competition in the past year; she finished fourth at last year's worlds.
Kwan said that she was confident she would be well enough to compete in Turin. Still, Bob Horen, chairman of the governing body's international committee, said a five-person team would be sent to monitor Kwan before Jan. 27, to see whether she was well enough to skate at the Olympics. He said the group would check to see if Kwan could do 'full run-throughs of her short and long program at competition level.' If so, she goes to Turin.
'The committee felt that Michelle probably would have had a better chance to win a medal,' Horen said of the committee's decision to choose Kwan over Hughes.
Kwan said that she would pull herself off the team if she felt that she could not be ready to compete in the Olympics, but that she felt as if she would be ready for the challenge.
'Nothing is stopping me right now,' she said. 'I feel like I could go into full training.'
Cohen, who finished second to Kwan four times at nationals, will have to face her nemesis again at the Olympics. But on Saturday, at least, the night was hers.
She stood at center ice here at the Savvis Center after skating her long program, her wispy body in a wispy gold outfit, and she clutched her tiny fists to her tiny chest. She stared into the crowd and soaked up the standing ovation.
'Every year, I've always left nationals a bit disappointed,' she said. 'You're not always going to win, but it's just nice when it happens sometimes.'
Cohen, 21, said she had 'a lot of silvers in shoe boxes and in a lot of storage units all over the place.'
But she ran away with the gold medal this year. Skating to romantic music titled, 'Romeo and Juliet,' she scored 199.18, more than 28 points ahead of Meissner (171.04).
Hughes, the younger sister of Sarah Hughes, the 2002 Olympic gold medalist, was third with a score of 165.72. Beatrisa Liang, 17, fell from third to fifth after falling several times during her program and scored 151.41.
Meissner climbed to second from a fourth-place finish in the short program. She completed seven triple jumps, and later said she was thrilled to be on the cusp of making it to the Olympics.
'It's just crazy because I've been dreaming about this a very long time,' Meissner said between giggles. 'I just feel like, 'Is it even real?' It's just awesome.'
Hughes was subdued at the post-event news conference before she found out she would not be on the Olympic team. She went into the long program in second, but fell on a triple loop and popped a triple Salchow to end up third. She said that she relished the experience to win a medal at nationals, and that making the Olympic team would be a perk.
In third place, though, Hughes was the odd woman out.
Cohen was the only woman, even an hour after the finals ended, who knew she was going to Turin. Sitting with the other medal winners, she said: 'It would be nice for them to go since they've earned their spots.'
After Kwan was named, Cohen said the committee made the right decision because Kwan would be one of the top skaters in Turin.
The United States Figure Skating Association has until Monday to give the United States Olympic Committee a list of its three female single skaters. In turn, U.S.O.C. has until Jan. 30 to hand over its list of athletes to the Turin organizing committee.
OLYMPICS",1
Top/News,"IRAQ PROCLAIMS KUWAIT'S ANNEXATION;   'MERGER' DECLARED
LEAD: Responding to an airlift of United States forces to Saudi Arabia and the international embargo that has stilled the flow of his country's oil, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq today defiantly announced his outright annexation of Kuwait, the tiny state his army overran six days ago.
Responding to an airlift of United States forces to Saudi Arabia and the international embargo that has stilled the flow of his country's oil, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq today defiantly announced his outright annexation of Kuwait, the tiny state his army overran six days ago.
The announcement of the 'comprehensive and eternal merger' of Iraq and Kuwait came as other Arab leaders scrambled for appropriate responses to the annexation and the arrival of American troops.
'Thank God that we are now one people, one state that will be the pride of the Arabs,' President Hussein said in brief televised remarks at a meeting of the Iraqi leadership.
Martial Music and Slogans
Throughout the day, Baghdad television resounded with martial music reminiscent of broadcasts in the early days of the Persian Gulf war. Announcers proclaimed that Iraq and Kuwait shared 'one nation, one fate.'
In a speech here, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt appealed for a face-saving 'Arab umbrella' to defuse the crisis and to avert outside intervention, calling for an emergency Arab summit meeting within 24 hours.
Mr. Mubarak said Egyptian troops were not joining the force sent by the United States to guard Saudi Arabia. He said they would join a proposed Arab peacekeeping force that he said could be placed in Kuwait while negotiations began.
'I see a very black picture,' Mr. Mubarak said. 'If we don't move, things will be imposed on us. Why? God gave us brains. It would be more honorable not to have things imposed on us.'
Qaddafi Arrives in Cairo
Saudi Arabia, Syria, Algeria and Yemen immediately endorsed the call for a meeting, and Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, arrived in the evening, ready to take part. A spokesman for the Egyptian President said the meeting would begin on Thursday evening and that nearly all the Arab leaders would attend.
But it was unclear what the leaders might accomplish, particularly if Iraq continues to press its own defiant course.
One possibility, an Egyptian official familiar with Mr. Mubarak's thinking said, would be to form a joint Arab force that would station itself in front of the Iraqi lines. Should Iraq press forward into Saudi Arabia, the Arab force would serve as a kind of 'trip wire,' he said, and justify a bigger response that would include the participation of the United States.
As the unease among Arab leaders over the takeover of an Arab country by another mingled with nervousness over the massing of foreign troops, King Hussein of Jordan also rejected the annexation of Kuwait.
'We continue to recognize the Emiri regime in Kuwait and the system of government there,' the King, who has recently been Iraq's closest ally, said tonight at a news conference in Amman. 'We have not altered our position.'
The Jordanian monarch also said he planned to attend the emergency meeting on Thursday.
The announcement of Kuwait's annexation, issued in the name of Iraq's ruling Revolutionary Command Council, appeared to pose a direct challenge to the United States.
'We will fight your criminal force,' the statement said, referring to the American-led military buildup in the gulf. 'The blood of our martyrs will burn you.'
'All the fleets, planes in the world, whether inside or outside the Arab homeland, will not shake the palm fronds,' it added.
'The Revolutionary Command Council had decided to return the part and branch, Kuwait, to the whole and the Iraq of its origins,' the announcement said. 'Fellow citizens, history has proved that Kuwait is part of Iraq.'
Historical Claims
The historical assertion seemed somewhat tenuous, resting mainly on the fact that during the reign of the Ottoman Empire, Kuwait was part of a province governed from Basra, in what is now Iraq.
In 1899 the Emir, Mubarak the Great, signed a treaty with Britain making Kuwait a protectorate. After independence in 1961, Iraq tried to take over Kuwait, but was blocked by British troops.
The announcement of the annexation followed what was described as an appeal for a merger by the new nine-member provisional government in Kuwait, believed to be composed of Iraqi military officers.
There was wild shooting in the air in Baghdad to celebrate the merger announcement. People danced in the streets and splashed water from fountains on one another.
CONFRONTATION IN THE GULF: U.S. MAY SEND SAUDIS A FORCE OF 50,000",1
Top/News,"WEST IS ALARMED AS WARFARE GROWS IN BALKANS AGAIN
Fierce fighting has broken out in this Balkan nation, which until now has escaped the ethnic carnage of Kosovo to the north.
Today, for the third day, police forces fired for several hours at ethnic Albanian rebels taking cover in the hills above the city. The insurgents are trying to claim parts of Macedonia that are overwhelmingly Albanian, and the population is quickly dividing between Slavs and Albanians, just as in Kosovo.
One Macedonian Slav in town said today of the rebels: 'The only solution is for them to lay down their arms, or we will have to kill them all. It's the only way.'
German troops, stationed here as a backup for a NATO-led peacekeeping mission at a base guarded by Macedonians, came under attack today from the rebels, perhaps inadvertently.
These early stages of war are causing alarm in the West, though so far the allies show no intention to intervene. The NATO secretary general, Lord Robertson, said the alliance would not allow 'a small number of extremists' to destabilize Macedonia. But on a visit to Athens, he said NATO, which devoted immense resources to defending the Albanians in Kosovo against Serbs,  had no military mandate to move into Macedonia and did not believe that the government wanted it to.
In Washington, Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, made similar comments, saying, 'We are indeed very concerned about the extremist violence in Macedonia,' but added, 'There has at this point not been any kind of decision to move troops from Bosnia to Kosovo or in any way across the border.'
He said a senior American diplomat, James Pardew, met with Macedonian leaders this week to 'express our strong support for the Macedonian government and its response to these provocations.'
Anxiety was also expressed at the United Nations. Ruud Lubbers, chief of the United Nations refugee agency, said, 'We simply cannot afford another humanitarian tragedy in the Balkans.'
And Carl Bildt, the United Nations envoy for the Balkans, said he was reminded of the spiral of events that led to the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. 'I am very alarmed,' he said in London at a seminar at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. 'This is one of the worst pieces of news to come out of the Balkans for many years.' If the conflict takes root, it could upset Greece, Bulgaria, Albania and Yugoslavia. Mr. Bildt arrived today in Skopje, the Macedonian capital, to express support for the government. He said of the Albanian separatists: 'You cannot talk of politics with weapons in your hands. That is not what democracy is.'
Despite the expressions of support, little practical help is being offered to the Macedonian government, which is taking more forceful measures against the rebels both in the north, near Kosovo, and west, near Albania.
With the fighting at the fringes of Tetovo, the nation's second largest city, just 25 miles from the capital, the government held crisis meetings all day, and Parliament called a closed session to consider forming a government of national unity and imposing a state of emergency on the Tetovo region.
The main opposition parties were in negotiations to form a government together with the ruling coalition, uniting Slavs and moderate Albanians. The aim is to unite all political parties in Macedonia, a fragile nation that broke from Yugoslavia a decade ago and since has made progress toward democracy. But a unified government would bring together some strange partners.
Arben Xhaferi, leader of the Democratic Party of Albanians, said he would leave the government coalition if a state of emergency was declared in Tetovo, where he has his party headquarters.
As the day wore on, it appeared that neither the government nor the police on the ground in Tetovo had any swift solutions to the insurgency. Mistrust between the two ethnic groups is increasing.
Macedonian Slavs living in the western quarter of Tetovo, just beneath the wooded hill where rebels have dug in, were demanding tougher action from the government.
Sitting in the walled courtyard of his cafe-bar, Zivko Gagrovski, 80, had a perfect view of the white television station building 300 yards above where rebel snipers were supposed to have lodged.
'The police are trying to push them off the ridge, but they keep coming back,' he said. 'They need to bring in helicopters to finish them off. The government has to do something, whether they bring in a state of emergency or whatever else.'
He dismissed any thought of negotiating with the rebels. 'No chance,' he said. 'These men have deserted their country.'
Outside, armored vehicles maneuvered down the cobbled street that runs along the base of the hillside between two Orthodox churches, St. Nikola and St. Cyril. Men hugged the doorways and alleys, in the din of mortar and machine gun fire. Just the men remained to guard their properties, residents said. The women and children had been sent away.
Someone opened fire from a roof of a nearby house, blasting single shots from an automatic weapon into the hills. Later several mortar shells landed in the deserted main square,  the first missiles to land in the city center.
Mistrust between the mainly Albanian population and the police is increasing, a police officer warned today, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Tetovo is 80 percent Albanian, yet the police force is 90 percent Macedonian Slav. The police chief, Rauf Ramadani, is an ethnic Albanian, but he has been sidelined in the operation against the rebels, and the talk is that he has been suspended.
Mr. Ramadani denied the rumors but appeared deeply worried about the situation.
He called the rebels 'criminals and pseudo-patriots' whose aim was not to penetrate the city, but to stir up tensions among the population. 'The situation is not that bad, but the psychological ripple effect of the rebel action is very bad,' he said.
'What is very disappointing is that people are leaving town,' he added.
Other police officers said there was growing mistrust between the Albanian and Macedonian police officers in Tetovo. Slavic policemen  have been accusing the Albanian police of siding with the rebels, although three of the seven policemen wounded Wednesday were Albanian.
Albanian police officers have said Slavic policemen were responsible for the few civilian injuries in the last few days. A Slavic policeman was reported to have fired at a car carrying four elderly Albanians on the edge of town today, one officer said.
No one was hurt, but it is the sort of incident that the police chief dreads. 'A single bit of craziness, if reflected in the state institutions, is not a good thing,' Mr. Ramadani said.
Reflecting the insurgency in Macedonia, the commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping troops in Kosovo, Lt. Gen. Carlo Cabigiosu, said today that he wanted to change the type of peacekeeping forces stationed in Kosovo, since the task is no longer to oppose the Yugoslav Army. Now, he said, it is to contain the Albanian insurgencies outside Kosovo.",1
Top/News,"AFRICA NATION OPENS DOORS TO THE FRENCH
LEAD: Three nights a week, the President of this Spanish-speaking country retires to a quiet room in the palace, flicks on his tape recorder, and practices his French.
Three nights a week, the President of this Spanish-speaking country retires to a quiet room in the palace, flicks on his tape recorder, and practices his French.
'It's coming along - I can talk to my neighboring presidents now,' the President, Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, said as he shifted easily from the lisp of Castilian Spanish to the rich accents of African French.
As Africa's only Spanish-speaking nation, Equatorial Guinea survived for two centuries as a charming anachronism. It has plazas, palm trees, baroque churches, wooden balconies and shaded arcades.
Children wave at visitors and cry 'Hola!' Opening its Doors to France
Soon, some of this may change.
With a certain anguish, Equatorial Guinea is opening its doors to West Africa's major power - France.
Today, Equatorial Guinea appears to be the new test of the theory that language follows power.
French economic penetration of Equatorial Guinea has been swift.
The watershed year was 1979, the year the current president overthrew his uncle, Francisco Macias Nguema, in a coup. Mr. Nguema, widely recognized as a paranoid despot, destroyed his nation's economy by expelling almost the entire Spanish population of 7,000 and killing or forcing into exile about one-third of the African population. The population is now 300,000.
Rebuffed by Spain, the new President turned to France.
Under French guidance, Equatorial Guinea changed its currency, and in 1985, became the first non-French-speaking member of the 13-country African-franc monetary zone. French Investment Poured in
To smooth the transition, French advisers were posted in the Finance Ministry. Last year, a subsidiary of a French bank opened two agencies here and in Malabo. With the collapse of a Spanish-Guinean bank, the French now offer the only banking.
Once the financial groundwork was in place, French aid and investment started pouring in.
French companies now run the national airline, manage the airports, distribute gasoline and are renovating the two major hotels.
Last month, a French company opened Equatorial Guinea's first international satellite telex and telephone connection. The previous link was an erratic radio-telephone line to Madrid.
Last week, President Obiang Nguema laid the cornerstone for a French-financed and French-built hydroelectric plant - the first for the island half of this geographically divided nation. On the continental half, a French company is restoring a Chinese-built power plant.
For security, the president relies on a 500-man palace guard of French-speaking Moroccan soldiers.
Language lessons followed closely on the heels of economic penetration. French-Language Entertainment
To further integrate Equatorial Guinea with the economies of its French-speaking neighbors, President Obiang Nguema decreed last year that by 1992 all Government forms would be bilingual in Spanish and French.
In radio addresses, he also issued 'strong recommendations' that citizens follow his example and become bilingual in Spanish and French.
Last year, responding to the call, France opened Malabo's most modern building, the Institute of French Cultural Expression.
In addition to teaching French, the Malabo center offers nightly French-language entertainment.
At the center's reading room recently, Lucas Nsue Oyono paused from flipping through a French-language African sports magazine and explained why he wanted to learn French. Shifting Linguistic Tides
'There are a lot of French companies coming here, if you can speak French you can get along better with the boss,' he said, in Spanish.
French as a second language is mandatory for all high school students, and a French aid program is training French language teachers here.
'We are not here for cultural imperialism - it is history that has separated Equatorial Guinea from their African brothers,' one French aid worker said enthusiastically.
Spanish diplomats in Malabo were reluctant to comment on the shifting linguistic tides. Lure of France Burns Brighter
'The Spanish are losing face, and they hate it,' a British resident said.
Meanwhile the lure of France burns ever brighter.
President Obiang Nguema attended military school in Spain. But today he sends his son to school in Paris. He recently bought a house in Paris and last year his wife gave birth to twins in a Parisian hospital.",1
Top/News,"NETS LOSE AGAIN
LEAD: John Long, Aleksandr Volkov and Kevin Willis scored 3 points each in a 9-0 run early in the fourth quarter, which lifted the Atlanta Hawks to a 105-96 victory over the Nets tonight.
John Long, Aleksandr Volkov and Kevin Willis scored 3 points each in a 9-0 run early in the fourth quarter, which lifted the Atlanta Hawks to a 105-96 victory over the Nets tonight.
The Nets, dropping their fifth consecutive game, led by 84-80 before a layup by Long started the rally with 11 minutes 24 seconds to play. Long hit a free throw just under a minute later and Volkov converted a 3-point play with 10:01 to go.
Willis followed with another 3-point play to give Atlanta an 89-84 lead with 9:26 remaining. New Jersey got no closer than 3 the rest of the way.
Long was playing his first game for the Hawks after signing a 10-day contract.
Moses Malone, who hit all 12 of his free throws, led the Hawks with 26 points and 12 rebounds. Dominique Wilkins added 22 points and Willis had 11 points and 13 rebounds.
Chris Morris scored 19 points and had 10 rebounds for the Nets.
The Nets built a 23-12 lead in the first seven minutes of the game and did not trail until Wilkins's layup gave the Hawks a 42-41 lead with five minutes left in the half.
Atlanta's biggest lead in the first three quarters was 68-66 midway through the third period, but the Nets took an 82-75 lead with 1:46 left in the period before the Hawks came back.
Celtics 102, Bullets 88
LANDOVER, Md. (AP) - Robert Parish made up for the absence of the injured Larry Bird with 29 points and 13 rebounds.
Reggie Lewis, who started in place of Bird, had 21 points for the Celtics, who snapped a losing streak at five games at the Capital Centre dating to Dec. 15, 1987.
With Bird at home resting a sprained left ankle, the Boston offense revolved around Parish, who was repeatedly able to establish position in the low post. Parish was 12 for 15 from the field despite frequent double-teaming.
Washington, which has lost seven of its last eight games, was led by Jeff Malone with 33 points.
Hornets 117, Pacers 111
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - Dell Curry hit two late baskets for Charlotte, including a 22-footer with one second on the shot clock and 1:03 remaining in the game.
The victory was the first this season by the Hornets against a team with a winning record. It left Coach Dick Versace of Indiana venting the frustration of four consecutive losses at Referee Hank Armstrong. Versace went after Armstrong at the end and had to be restrained by LaSalle Thompson.
Curry scored 17 of his 21 points in the second half. Armon Gilliam had a season-high 28 points and Rex Chapman added 27 for Charlotte, which won for the third time in four games.
Charlotte scored 24 points on 16 Indiana turnovers and committed only 7 of its own, leading to 6 Indiana points.
Cavaliers 123, Magic 112
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - Chucky Brown, a rookie, scored a season-high 30 points and Steve Kerr scored all of his career-high 19 in the fourth quarter for Cleveland.
Brown, a second-round pick from North Carolina State, hit 12 of 17 shots to finish nearly 24 points over his average.
Kerr's previous career high was 15 points and he beat that by hitting five 3-pointers and four free throws in the fourth period. He was 12 points over his average.
Orlando, losers of 16 of its last 18 games, led by 86-82 heading into the fourth quarter, but Kerr got Cleveland off to a fast start by hitting two 3-pointers in the first minute.
The Cavaliers outscored the Magic by 41-26 in the final period.
PRO BASKETBALL",1
Top/News,"Bickering Is Fraying The Ties That Bind
The Mets promoted the notion yesterday that a full day of meetings on Monday had extinguished the infighting that developed as players were quoted over the weekend criticizing teammates, particularly Timo Perez.
Armando Benitez yelled across the clubhouse Monday, asking which players had spoken about Perez without identifying themselves.
Manager Bobby Valentine met with several players individually and with Perez, Edgardo Alfonzo and the team captain, John Franco, in his office before that night's game.
And Lenny Harris and Darryl Hamilton acknowledged addressing teammates to remind them to confront each other individually, not in unattributed quotes to the news media.
Hamilton also spoke in the middle of the clubhouse before Monday's game, although there there was no team meeting. Franco said he did not call for a players-only meeting because he knew no one would admit to being the player who had leaked the team discord.
But some of the anger had not dissipated last night. Hamilton said anonymous quotes were 'more damaging to the ball club than losing. '
'You still want to believe in the guys in the clubhouse and the locker next to you,' he said.
Harris said keeping problems internal was 'common sense.'
Hamilton said of the situation: 'We don't need that right now because we're starting to get things going a bit, starting to feel halfway decent about ourselves.'
Perez conceded that the meeting with Alfonzo, the elder statesman among Latin-American players in the clubhouse, Franco and Valentine had eased his mind, and he played a strong game offensively and defensively Monday night. Perez batted leadoff and was 0 for 3 last night.
Players who asked not to be identified were quoted as criticizing the perceived indifferent attitude of Perez, and Valentine suggested that the perception might have been addressed earlier if not for the language barrier.
English is the third language for Perez, a 24-year-old native of the Dominican Republic who played professionally in Japan and spoke Japanese yesterday with Tsuyoshi Shinjo's interpreter.
Valentine even blamed himself for one criticism. Perez arrived at early batting practice 15 minutes late one day, angering veterans, but Valentine acknowledged that Perez had never been told the team rule that early hitting must be done on time for nonregular players.
'We tried telling him these things happen when the team's not playing well,' Franco said of the meeting. 'And if he ever has a problem or doesn't understand anything because he hasn't learned yet how to speak English, talk to Fonzie or me or Bobby and we'll handle it. But right now, it's a dead issue.'
Franco, who picked up a rare save last night, said he did not know who the source of the quotations was. Hamilton was not sure he wanted to know. 'It might be worse if we do find out who did it because maybe now who said it realizes it was the wrong thing to do,' Hamilton said.
Valentine said Perez's situation was not unique, that Jay Payton, Benny Agbayani and Rey Ordóñez had gone through similar growing pains. Payton and Hamilton nearly engaged in a fist fight last season, Valentine said, and Hamilton confirmed it.
Hamilton said he was trying to help Payton mature now, something he remembers veterans Jeffrey Leonard and Dave Parker doing for him on the Milwaukee Brewers.
Franco had his ideas about the problem. 'A lot of guys see a young player come up who hasn't earned his stripes,' he said of Perez. 'Maybe he's doing something that's annoying and we can tell him to do it differently.'
Shinjo Still Out
Tsuyoshi Shinjo (strained left quadriceps) remained out of the lineup last night and the Mets did not know when he would play again. But in a meeting with Manager Bobby Valentine and Steve Phillips, Shinjo essentially offered to go on the disabled list if it would help the team.
'He always puts the team first and wants what's best for the team,' Phillips said. 'Whatever the team needs, he's willing to abide by.'
Phillips did not know if such a move would be necessary. Asked if he expected Shinjo to go on the disabled list, Valentine said, 'Not today, I don't anticipate that, but if he doesn't show any improvement, that could happen.'
BASEBALL: METS NOTEBOOK",1
Top/News,"The Twilight of the Beats Through an Acolyte's Eyes
WHEN I WAS COOL  My Life at the Jack Kerouac School  By Sam Kashner  Illustrated. 318 pages. HarperCollins. $25.95.
Sam Kashner of Merrick, N.Y., quoted abundantly from the Ramones when he filled out his application for higher education (and seldom has that term been more accurate). This led to his acceptance at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colo., and to a postcard from one of his Beat idols. It read, in part: 'I look forward to meeting you. I hope you can type. Sincerely yours, A. Ginsberg.'
The typing would turn out to be crucial. By the time the 19-year-old Mr. Kashner arrived in the midst of the Beat pantheon in the spring of 1976, his heroes were 'not quite ready for assisted living, but famous enough to need assistants.' They included William S. Burroughs, nicknamed 'the Ol' Poisoner' by Gregory Corso, who himself was fond of exclaiming 'Penguin dust!,' along with Ginsberg, who was more or less in charge.
'You're a sweet boy,' Mr. Kashner recalls Ginsberg's telling him. 'So unborn.'
In this company he would not stay unborn for long. Mr. Kashner's well-named memoir, 'When I Was Cool,' recounts an uproarious string of character-building geriatric-Beat episodes that left their mark upon him. Burroughs, whose famous voice emerges irresistibly ('We should scram, Salmonella Sam'), contemplated a Martian invasion of the Midwest and taught a course about imaginary maps. He also enlisted Mr. Kashner to look out for Billy Burroughs, the great old reprobate's hard-drinking 30-ish son, whose diet leaned heavily on Lucky Charms cereal because the marshmallows were easy to chew.
Corso liked to threaten, extort and kidnap Mr. Kashner, although he is described here with the utmost affection. ('We're just old men,' Mr. Kashner recalls him saying. 'Soon to poof into the air.') As for Ginsberg, he apparently turned an interested eye upon this nice young helpmate he had recruited. 'I spent a lot of time in front of the mirror before going over to Allen's,' Mr. Kashner recalls, 'because I noticed that the better looking you were, the more Allen liked your poems.'
However naïve he sounds here, Mr. Kashner knew then -- and knows even better now -- that he had stumbled into a chronicler's nirvana. The Kerouac School, a not-yet-accredited offshoot of the first Buddhist college in America, the Naropa Institute (now Naropa University), had recruited him as its very first student. Mr. Kashner's memory has now streamlined that situation and turned himself into virtually the only student, even though others apparently arrived during his two-year tenure. With the help of hindsight, and after countless larger-than-life accounts of Beat exploits, he reanimates the aging renegades and places himself at the center of their attention.
That may be self-serving, but it's understandable. And it's been a long time coming. In his post-Naropa life Mr. Kashner went into his father's window-shade business, lived in Colonial Williamsburg, published some poetry and became a writer about some of the darker, James Ellroyesque aspects of show business history. He published a novel, 'Sinatraland,' whose main character is a Hoboken window-shade salesman obsessed with Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. In retrospect that book looks like a dry run for the candid, poignant, hilarious second-fiddle memoir that has finally emerged.
'When I Was Cool' can certainly be appreciated strictly for its wall-to-wall anecdotes. There was the time, for instance, that Ginsberg's Buddhist instructor required him to abandon vanity and shave off his beard, and Mr. Kashner, in his role as caretaker/typist/housekeeper, found the beard in a cigar box. There are the Beats' rivalrous dealings with rock stars. ('The goddam Rolling Stones,' Burroughs groused, adding 'You could bring most of them home to Mother.')
And there are frequent, eye-opening insights of the young acolyte, who at one point realizes that some of the female poetry admirers in his midst are also call girls. 'You must be here on one of those 'born yesterday' scholarships the Jack Kerouac School gives out,' the younger Burroughs told him.
But 'When I Was Cool' is much more captivating than the standard tales-told-out-of-school reminiscence. And if it does not fully establish Mr. Kashner as the eloquent writer that he wanted to be, it makes up in self-knowledge what it lacks in flair. Mr. Kashner now freely acknowledges trading on the kinds of unrequited crushes that made the Kerouac School go round.
He admits to feeling like a groupie at times, never more so than when Bob Dylan and the Rolling Thunder Revue came to town. And he acknowledges jealousy and resentment of Anne Waldman, a fellow poet and queen of the Kerouac roost, who disappeared with Mr. Dylan for a couple of days and refused to take off her Rolling Thunder whiteface makeup when she returned. 'She's going to hate this book,' Mr. Kashner writes frankly, 'but then, come to think of it, she never liked my poetry, either.'
Most memorably Mr. Kashner creates a touching, intimate evocation of the Beat twilight, with Kerouac and Neal Cassady only much-invoked memories and the group's rogue behavior beginning to wear thin. 'They fell in front of a cracked mirror, Sam,' he says that the younger Burroughs told him. 'And they fell in love with that cracked image. They'll just stare at it until they die.'
This book's principals had died by January 2001, when Mr. Kashner was at last ready to start writing about them. But he has brought forth a bright, resuscitating testament to their collective memory, for reasons best explained by Naropa's hard-partying, eventually scandal-plagued Buddhist leader, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
'He said the real reason I had come to the Jack Kerouac School, Mr. Kashner writes, was to be released from my heroes -- to find out the truth about them and be free of them, to be able to live my own life.' But he is mindful of how much they enriched his life. 'When I Was Cool' returns the favor.
BOOKS OF THE TIMES",1
Top/News,"Mourners of Fire Victims in India Protest Hospital as Inadequate
A crowd of some 5,000 mourners for people killed in a fire at a school ceremony here blocked the police today from hauling away bodies for cremation.
The crowd threatened to tear down a wall of Mandi Dabwali's Civil Hospital, which they said was not equipped well enough, and to burn the bodies where they lay inside.
The death toll in the fire continued to grow. Authorities said today the confirmed death toll was 538.
The fire on Saturday spread swiftly through the 30-by-30-foot, tent-like structure made of plywood and polyester, which had a corrugated metal roof and was surrounded by a 10-foot-high brick wall.
There were only two openings in the wall. One was locked and the other was too small to accommodate the fleeing crowds.
Many of the dead were mothers and their children, killed by smoke, flames or  a stampede as the frightened audience tried to escape.
The police were holding Kewal Kishan Dhamija, the owner of the structure, on  suspicion of criminal negligence. Improper wiring at the hall may have caused the blaze, an initial police investigation concluded.
The Calcutta-based Statesman newspaper said that Mr. Dhamija, whose wife, niece and nephew died in the fire, admitted the shelter was built without proper permits.
At the protest today, the police kept the crowd under control, and the protesters dispersed after about five hours without carrying out their threats.
""Is this a way to run a hospital?"" said one protester, Suresh Singh. He said  the hospital had only 10 beds for the town's 50,000 people.
The protesters blocked the police from taking away 18 bodies, and threatened  to burn the car of a state minister, Jagdish Nehra, who reportedly had said such accidents were common in India.
""I didn't say such a thing,"" Nehra said later.
There was no immediate response from the hospital.
About 250 people were injured in the fire on Saturday. Doctors at the Dabwali hospital sent all but a handful of burn cases to nearby towns.
The death toll could rise to as high as 600 if the most seriously injured survivors die. In addition, the police said some people took their dead or dying relatives home and some of those deaths have not been tallied.
Chief Minister Bhajan Lal, the top official of Haryana state, declared three  days of mourning and announced an investigation. Mandi Dabwali is in Haryana, 125 miles northwest of New Delhi.
Devi Lal, a resident of the town, said today that some people escaped the blaze after a farmer rammed his tractor through the wall.
Sukhdev Dutt Sharma, 76, said his 9-year-old grandson had the role of a parrot in the program and had just said ""Happy New Year"" when the fire broke out. The boy and eight other members of Mr. Sharma's family were killed.
""Just about every family has lost someone,"" The police chief, Hari Shankar, said. ""This town has been devastated. Everyone is in mourning.""
Funeral pyres were smoldering today in a farm field on the edge of town. The  authorities said families were burning hundreds of bodies there after the tragedy overwhelmed the town crematory, which can handle just 20 bodies a day.
Nearly all the victims were Sikhs or Hindus, whose religious traditions require cremation. The authorities said the few Muslims who died were buried in  local cemeteries.
The state Government announced it would pay families of the dead the equivalent of about $2,500 each, and survivors would get about $1,500.",1
Top/News,"Piniella Is No. 1 Choice for Blue Jays' Job
LEAD: The Toronto Blue Jays will offer Lou Piniella their managing job, if they receive permission from George Steinbrenner to do so.
The Toronto Blue Jays will offer Lou Piniella their managing job, if they receive permission from George Steinbrenner to do so.
Pat Gillick, the Blue Jays' general manager, spoke with Steinbrenner yesterday and told the Yankees' owner he was prepared to offer Piniella the job, a source with the Yankees said.
Gillick and Steinbrenner acknowledged speaking, but were not that specific in discussing their conversation.
'Gillick has asked if he could continue the talks with Piniella,' Steinbrenner said by telephone from Tampa, Fla. 'I talked to Lou and got Lou's feeling, and I have to talk to my baseball people to get their feelings. I told Gillick I would get back to him.' Discussion of Philosophy
The Blue Jays dismissed Jimy Williams as their manager 12 days ago. Cito Gaston, the team's hitting coach, is serving as the interim manager, but Gillick has said Gaston has virtually no chance of being appointed manager permanently. Piniella has been the Blue Jays' No. 1 choice almost from the time they dismissed Williams.
Piniella flew to Toronto from Seattle on Monday and, with Steinbrenner's initial permission, met with half a dozen Toronto executives that morning. They primarily discussed managerial philosophy.
The Blue Jays have needed Steinbrenner's permission because Piniella is in the first year of a three-year, $1.2 million contract with the Yankees. He received that deal when he returned to manage the team last season. Question of Compensation
Piniella has said he likes the idea of managing again, but even if the Blue Jays get permission to make an offer to him, they would have to make the offer sufficiently lucrative to induce him to give up the Yankees' contract.
If Steinbrenner were to allow Piniella to go to Toronto, a decision some people in the Yankee organization don't believe he will make, he would want compensation from Toronto.
Asked about compensation, Gillick, mindful that Piniella is doing cable television work with the Yankees, said with a chuckle, 'I suppose we'd have to send him a broadcaster.'  BASEBALL",1
Top/News,"The Drought Is Over as MetroStars Score 3 Times
A change in strategy by Coach Bora Milutinovic helped produce three goals for the MetroStars tonight, after they had gone without a goal in their previous three games at Giants Stadium.
Milutinovic moved Mark Chung wide on the left side of the attack and Chung scored the first goal to end a home scoreless drought of 316 minutes. Chung also assisted on the other goals, by Billy Walsh and Mark Semioli, to delight the crowd of 14,859 as the MetroStars beat the Miami Fusion, 3-2.
'Chung is a good player,' Milutinovic said. 'I'm happy we scored three goals, but we have to work hard not to receive two goals.' After the MetroStars took a 3-0 lead, Miami received goals from Jay Heaps and Diego Serna while playing a man short.
Chung's goal in the 36th minute was the first at Giants Stadium for the MetroStars since Mike Petke's goal with 10 minutes left in the season opener. It came from close range in front, after a low cross by Roy Myers on the left went through the hands of Jeff Cassar, Miami's goalkeeper.
With the diminutive Chung patrolling the left side of the attack, the MetroStars were dangerous every time he had possession. Chung played with enthusiasm and was very mobile, moving from side to side and entering the penalty area with speed.
Chung created the second goal when his pin-point free kick from the left side found Walsh 6 yards from the goal. Walsh capitalized with a header for his first goal of the season, just three minutes after intermission.
Three minutes later, Chung started another attack on the left side and waited for Semioli to get into position before he relayed him the ball for the shot, which ricocheted off the right post.
'This is the first time I played strictly on attack,' Chung said. 'When you don't have to retreat to center midfield, it makes it easier to pay more attention to offense.'
The MetroStars had trouble with their transition from defense to attack in the first half, but things improved in the second, thanks primarily to Chung's energy and intelligence on the left side.
'A three-goal lead was a luxury we never had before,' Walsh said, 'but we have to look at the films to see what happened after that. They got two goals on us and that's something we have to correct.'
Miami's two goals, by Heaps in the 58th minute and Serna in the 75th, came while the Fusion was playing a man short because Henry Gutierrez was ejected for hitting Myers in the 19th minute. Miami played with nine men for the last 12 minutes because of an injury to Wade Webber after it had made its three substitutions.
The game also served as a qualifier for the United States Open Cup. 'The game had a double meaning for us and I'm happy we came through,' said Semioli, the captain of the MetroStars, who made a game-saving play in the closing minutes by clearing on the line with goalkeeper Mike Ammann out of position.
SOCCER",1
Top/News,"Though Rarely Used, Leach Has the Right Stuff
LEAD: Terry Leach spends his afternoons at his locker, reading the bible, drawing instruction and strength from the scriptures. Then, he almost invariably adjourns to the bullpen, where he spends his evenings reading the writing on the wall. The message generally is deciphered to this: No work likely tonight.
Terry Leach spends his afternoons at his locker, reading the bible, drawing instruction and strength from the scriptures. Then, he almost invariably adjourns to the bullpen, where he spends his evenings reading the writing on the wall. The message generally is deciphered to this: No work likely tonight. From this, he tries to draw no conclusions too despairing.
'You can't worry about these things,' said Leach, the right-handed reliever who has been left out of matters for much of this season. 'It has, though, been getting lonely lately.'
Sunday afternoon, Leach had to get ready in a hurry, and the company he discovered himself in was that nasty group of characters that populate an active reliever's existence: base-runners.
'It got pretty crazy for a second,' said Leach. 'I couldn't find my hat, couldn't find my glove.' Effective Again
Impressively, though, he found his stuff once he hit the mound, only the third time in nearly a month that he had been out there. Leach efficiently eliminated the base-runners in the fifth inning and worked a harmless sixth. Dave Johnson, the manager of the Mets, removed him in the seventh with a runner on first, a steal of second likely and the count 2-1 to the second baseman Robby Thompson. Roger McDowell came on and ran the more important count on the scoreboard to 10-5 in favor of the Giants, who went on to a 10-6 triumph.
McDowell was charged with the defeat that left the Mets with a 4-5 record at the end of their nine-game homestand. Leach, meanwhile, was charged with his second earned run this season and had the rest of the afternoon to brood about it. Instead, he was grateful for the work, respectful of his manager's decision and happy with his performance.
'I was a lot sharper than I thought I would be,' said Leach, the 35-year-old veteran. 'I just wanted basically to throw strikes until I got my touch back. I didn't go after anyone. Just tried to get them out.' Unusual Letdown by Bullpen
That the bullpen ultimately struck out so abysmally Sunday was a rarity this season. The eclectic group, complete with the unhappy but untouchable Rick Aguilera and the wildly willful Randy Myers, began the game with an e.r.a. of 1.28, having allowed 14 runs in nearly 100 innings. In fact, they had surrendered only five runs in the last 23 games. Including Sunday's disaster, they have lost only 2 of 15 chances at saves.
'I feel more comfortable with my bullpen than any year I've been here,' said Johnson. 'Before, I'd always had at least one guy who might be affected by what they are asked to do.'
Indeed, despite the fact that working in the bullpen is the last thing Aguilera wants to do, he has been completely unaffected by his displeasure and thus almost unscored upon in his role. With the one inning he worked Sunday, the former starter has now worked 21 straight innings without permitting an earned run. Stock Rising
There is no indication that Aguilera will be promoted to the rotation, but his brilliance has gone a long way toward achieving one thing the organization wanted to see happen. His trade stock has risen with every batter he's retired. If he is traded, there is bound to be more coming back in return.
'I'm not happy with the role, but I can enjoy the way I'm throwing,' said Aguilera. 'I'm happy when I get the ball, and I'll go from there.'
The Mets left yesterday for California and nine games with some serious and additional psychological baggage. In dropping their first extended homestand in more than two years, they scored only 22 earned runs in the nine games and stranded 74 base-runners. They hit .175 as a team with runners in scoring position.
'The pitching's going to be O.K., but I'd sure like to see us put some runs on the board,' said Mookie Wilson, who drove in a run Sunday with his first hit in 11 times at bat. 'It's going to be a tough road trip.'
It's a trip that last year saw the Mets snap out of a similar drought with the bats, one keyed by Wilson.",1
Top/News,"An All-American Boy, From Australia
If it sometimes seems that Australian movie stars are more quintessentially American on the screen than many home-grown actors, the same might be said of the Australian singer David Campbell's approach to American popular song. In 'Back From Oz,' his new show at the Cafe Carlyle, this 28-year-old singer from Adelaide pays tribute to Bobby Darin (with a medley of his hits) and Sammy Davis Jr. ('Mr. Bojangles'). He rounds out his performance with a happy-go-lucky 'Alexander's Ragtime Band.'
Onstage Mr. Campbell radiates the kind of ingenuous, optimistic wholesomeness associated with a bygone ideal of the all-American boy, and his look recalls the smoothed-out Elvis iconography of early-60's teenage idols.
A natural entertainer (his father, Jimmy Barnes, is an Australian rock star who has been compared to Bruce Springsteen), Mr. Campbell dispenses a bluff, easygoing charm that never turns cloying or manipulative. It allows him to put over inspirational songs like Carol Hall's 'Do You Know What I Mean' and John Bucchino's 'Taking the Wheel' that a single drop of cynicism would have contaminated.
What Mr. Campbell doesn't do is put on an American accent or try to disguise his roots. His voice suggests an earthier hybrid of Johnny Mathis and Peter Allen inflected with a tart Australian twang. The show, which runs through March 23 at the Carlyle Hotel (35 East 76th Street, Manhattan), is an upbeat cultural dialogue that mixes mostly well-known American standards with lesser-known Australian pop songs. Accompanied on piano and bass by Christopher Denny and Jered Egan, Mr. Campbell also occasionally picks up a guitar.
The most revealing number is the Darin tribute because, as Mr. Campbell acknowledges, his forerunner blithely 'jumped styles' the same way he does.
And as Mr. Campbell navigates from rock ('Dream Lover,' 'Splish Splash'), to swing ('Beyond the Sea,' 'Mack the Knife') to folk ('If I Were a Carpenter'), he delivers everything except for Darin's furious competitive drive to be Mr. Show Business.
CABARET REVIEW",1
Top/News,"Carter, Proclaiming 'It's Yours,' Celebrates New Era for Panama
With a choir singing 'Ode to Joy' as the prelude, nearly a century of American power and presence along the shores of the Panama Canal symbolically ended today when former President Jimmy Carter exchanged diplomatic notes with President Mireya Moscoso and said simply, 'It's yours.'
Those two words spoken at the subdued celebration ushered in a new era in Panamanian life, a journey that began in 1977 when President Carter and Gen. Omar Torrijos signed two treaties to give Panama full sovereignty and responsibility for the canal and to give the two countries joint responsibility for guaranteeing its neutrality.
President Moscoso pledged to meet the challenges that came with the treaties, which she praised during the midday ceremony as a model for resolving conflicts.
'To the entire world I would like to say that the completion of the Panama Canal Treaty is proof that mutual understanding between peoples and diplomatic negotiations are the correct avenues for the resolution of conflicts between nations,' she said. 'Anything else only produces pain and destruction.'
The decades of American presence had been marked with flare-ups, from daily resentment of United States control of the canal and its surrounding land to the nationalistic riots in 1964 in which several students died trying to fly the Panamanian flag in the Canal Zone.
Those clashes led the Panamanian government to temporarily break off relations with the United States and prompted American officials to begin the process that resulted in the treaties, which officially take effect at noon on Dec. 31.
Mr. Carter was greeted by applause when he arrived at the ceremony with Ms. Moscoso and several other heads of state riding in one of the gleaming new locomotives that are used to guide boats through the passage.
Calling the treaties a passage to a new relationship, Mr. Carter offered encouragement to both sides and voiced the hope that cooperation would continue with investment as Panama began to transform the military bases that the United States was giving up into businesses like factories, cargo centers and tourist resorts that would benefit the nation.
'We want to be part of the development of the canal,' Mr. Carter said.
Some tensions remain on both sides. Panamanian officials felt slighted by the absence of President Clinton at this singular date in their nation's history of close, if sometimes testy, relations.
And some United States politicians who never supported the canal's transfer warned that the Panamanian government could endanger the waterway's security through poor management and the awarding of concessions to a Hong Kong port operating company.
In a speech that blended nationalistic pride with thanks to the late General Torrijos and Mr. Carter -- but not President Clinton -- Ms. Moscoso went out of her way to respond to her nation's critics and reassure the canal's customers.
She touched on most of the important aspects of the modernization projects that will deepen and widen parts of the route, and she vowed not to rely on canal revenues to finance unrelated projects. Her objective, she said, is to ensure the uninterrupted and safe operation of the canal.
'I reiterate most strongly,' she said, 'that as of noon, December 31, the responsibility to administer the Panama Canal in a safe and efficient manner will be solely the responsibility of the Republic of Panama and will be accomplished without any interference or interest of any political party.'
As if to underscore those pledges, the area around the locks at the Pacific entrance to the canal were spruced up with fresh paint and banners that proclaimed 'A Canal for the New Millenium.'
Dignitaries gingerly walked in single file over the gates to the control tower, where they were given a brief tour of the center where the ships are guided into the canal and through the gates.
As the audience waited for them to return, two announcers took to the podium and began a kind of scripted exchange of canal factoids that seemed like the color commentary for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. There were even moments of commercial name-dropping when they discussed the 'mules,' as the locomotives are known.
'The presidential delegation arrived in one of the new mules constructed by Mitsubishi of Japan,' said one announcer. As the official acts began, a huge carrier slipped into one of the locks, laden with cars. It slowly rose until the towering letters on its side were at eye level with the audience: TOYOTA.
Those names were probably better known to most Panamanians than were the names of some of the 29 members of the American delegation, which ranged from Commerce Secretary William Daley and David Rockefeller to Representatives Gary Ackerman of Queens and Long Island and Major Owens of Brooklyn, both Democrats. In the days leading up to the ceremony, American officials scrambled to assemble a delegation, a proposition that was fraught with concern for how it would play in the States, especially during the Presidential election campaign, where conservatives still gripe about the handover.
At the same time, some American officials were miffed by what they saw as a lack of gratitude in Panama. Ms. Moscoso did express her gratitude at least to Mr. Carter, but one of her advisers, Roberto Eisenmann, said that was not the issue. 'I do not think it is a question of 'thank you,' ' he said. 'Our relations with the United States were a love-hate relationship. When you finally solve that, it is difficult to say thank you. Fortunately, we are in a love stage.'
Recalling that the United States invaded Panama nearly a decade ago to overthrow and arrest Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, Mr. Eisenmann said, 'So soon after an invasion, when our national psyche should be affected, 70 percent of the Panamanian people are pro-Yankee. You can only call that love.'
Still, there were moments of contrast that echoed past relations.
At the close of the ceremony, a singer performed a somewhat mangled version of 'The Star-Spangled Banner.' Nonetheless, two Americans in ties stood at attention with their hands over their hearts while a nearby Panamanian canal worker in a jumpsuit kept his arms crossed over his chest.
Soon, the Panamanian anthem was sung, ending in a crescendo of blaring air horns from locomotives and tugboats in the locks. Water sprayed from fire hoses on the boats descended onto the canal like a misty curtain that shrouded the hills as a choir sang the 'Hallelujah' Chorus.
As the dignitaries went off to a celebratory banquet, Juan Antonio Samudio stood in the sunny plaza dressed in folkloric costume and holding a large Panamanian flag.
This was the culmination of a personal journey for him: every time the United States handed over a military base, he would walk from his home with his flag and bear witness to the unfolding events. This morning he stood outside the entrance to the locks, barred from entering, he said, until President Moscoso said he should be allowed in.
'This is important because were are seeing only the Panamanian flag,' he said. 'It will be only our flag that flies over the canal.'",1
Top/News,"U.N. RIGHTS INQUIRY IN IRAN TO GO ON
LEAD: Over strong Iranian objections, the Economic and Social Council voted, 22 to 7, today to continue its two-year-old investigation of human-rights violations by Iran.
Over strong Iranian objections, the Economic and Social Council voted, 22 to 7, today to continue its two-year-old investigation of human-rights violations by Iran.
The vote came after a campaign by some Moslem countries, including Pakistan, Syria and Oman, to cancel the inquiry. It also came after a report this month by a human-rights group, Amnesty International, that said that Iran followed a 'pattern of cruelty and inhumanity' in its treatment of prisoners, including torture and executions.
Iraq joined the United States and most Western delegations in supporting the human-rights investigation. The Soviet Union and China did not vote.
The Council also voted to continue investigations of human-rights violations in Afghanistan, Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala.
On the Iran issue, an Iranian delegate accused the Council of carrying out 'a politically motivated process under the guise of human rights' and said his Government would not cooperate with the inquiry. U.N. Experts Barred
For two years, Iran has barred United Nations experts from studying Iranian prisons, on the ground that the experts are not versed in Islamic law.
According to the Amnesty International report, Iran continues to use such methods as torture, forced amputation and summary execution against political prisoners and criminals.
In Teheran alone, courts reported 6,400 sentences of physical punishment over the 12 months that ended last March, including 1,100 sentences of flogging for sexual and alcohol offenses, the report says.
At least eight people were stoned to death, and Iranian authorities have developed an electronic guillotine to carry out amputation sentences, the report says.
In what the report calls a 'long-term pattern of abuses,' thousands of political prisoners and members of ethnic minorities such as Kurds have been imprisoned indefinitely, tried in secret courts or executed since the 1979 revolution. Religious Executions
At least 200 people, most of them Bahais, have been executed because of their religion, and thousands have been seized and held hostage for the surrender of relatives and friends wanted by authorities, the report says.
Iran has refused to allow Amnesty International officials to enter the country since 1979. BRITISH DIPLOMAT RELEASED
LONDON, May 29 (AP) - Iran released a British diplomat in Teheran today after Britain protested that he was beaten and abducted at gunpoint in front of his wife and children 24 hours earlier.
The diplomat, Edward Chaplin, was 'as well as could be expected,' the Foreign Office said.
At the same time, Iran protested what it called the 'illegal arrest' of an Iranian consular official in Britain.
The Iranian, Ali Qassemi, was charged with shoplifting, reckless driving and resisting officers after his arrest May 9 in Manchester. He was freed on bail Thursday.",1
Top/News,"Evolution in Europe;   European Leaders Back Kohl's Plea to Aid Soviets
LEAD: Leaders of the European Community, under pressure from Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany to help speed German unification, agreed today on steps that he requested to reassure the Soviet Union.
Leaders of the European Community, under pressure from Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany to help speed German unification, agreed today on steps that he requested to reassure the Soviet Union.
Giving qualified endorsement to the Chancellor's appeal for billions of dollars in aid to help President Mikhail S. Gorbachev transform the Soviet Union from Communism to a market economy, the 12 leaders called for more detailed proposals for short-term credits and long-term economic aid.
They said they would consider the proposals at another meeting of European leaders expected to be held by October.
They also decided to propose Nov. 19 for a gathering in Paris of the 35-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, a meeting of leaders from East and West that Moscow wanted this year.
The United States has opposed using economic aid to prop up Soviet reforms. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said on Monday that substantial economic aid would subsidize the Soviet military.
Mr. Kohl, announcing the decision today, said negotiations on the terms of German unity would have to be completed before the Paris meeting, a position supported by the United States and other members of the NATO alliance.
Mr. Kohl, who with the help of President Francois Mitterrand of France was the most insistent backer of the Soviet aid proposal, pronounced himself 'very, very satisfied' at the end of the two-day meeting.
He made little secret of West Germany's reason for deciding last week to guarantee up to $2.9 billion in German private bank credits to the Soviet Union.
'In this connection,' he wrote to the President of the European Community's executive commission, Jacques Delors, 'I would urge the Soviet Union, for its part, to adopt a constructive approach to questions arising on the path toward German unity - and this applies in particular to anchoring a future united Germany within the North Atlantic Alliance and the European Community.'
At a news conference after the meeting today, Mr. Kohl dismissed the idea of a link between his proposal for further aid and the goal of ending Soviet objections to NATO membership for a united Germany. But his spokesman, Hans Klein, said the Chancellor had raised the possibility of Western aid amounting to many billions of dollars with Mr. Gorbachev in Moscow last winter and by telephone several times since. The Soviets had suggested a figure of $15 billion, he said.
The decision today did not commit the 12 European Community countries to pledging specific amounts.
But it confronted the United States, Japan and the other industrial democracies who will be meeting in Houston early next month with momentum and a growing European sense of urgency about the need to help Mr. Gorbachev before he and his policies go down in failure. The issue is also likely to come up at the NATO summit in London on July 5 and 6.
Last July, in an atmosphere of gathering change in Eastern Europe, President Bush and the other leaders made the European Commission their coordinating agent for aid to Poland and Hungary.
Thatcher's Misgivings
Part of Mr. Kohl's message to the other European leaders here was that without Mr. Gorbachev and the attraction of a closely integrated European Community, the revolutions in Eastern Europe would not have succeeded last year.
But Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain argued forcefully at a dinner in Malahide Castle here on Monday night for careful study of what the Soviet Union needed before any decision to throw money at it.
'We are very ready to consider financial assistance provided it is clearly linked to economic restructuring so that we know it will actually be effective,' she said today. 'I favor support for economic reform but there has to be reform to support.'
In their communique today, the leaders 'underlined the interest of the community in the success of the political and economic changes initiated by President Gorbachev.' They asked Mr. Delors's commission to consult with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international economic institutions and to prepare aid proposals urgently.
A Symbol of 'No More War'
Mr. Delors is expected to visit Moscow in mid-July, and he will take with him a Dutch proposal for a European Energy Community including the Soviet Union. The Dutch Prime Minister, Ruud Lubbers, compared the idea to the European Coal and Steel Community created after World War II. He described it to his colleagues here as a symbol and instrument of the principle of 'no more war,' as well as a means of greater European independence from imported oil.
The European leaders also agreed today to set Dec. 13 and 14 as the opening dates for conferences on greater economic and political union. These could lead to institutional and structural changes bringing community members closer together by 1993, when they have already pledged to create a barrier-free single market of 336 million people.
The leaders agreed on a sweeping statement of support for more effective protection of the environment, but could not agree on the location of a new European Environment Agency because of French insistence that Strasbourg be declared the permanent site of the European Parliament first. The Irish Prime Minister, Charles J. Haughey, said today that his successor in the six-month presidency of the European Community, Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti of Italy, would have to resolve the impasse by October.",1
Top/News,"TV NOTES
'Silver' Actor Joining 'Blue'
The search is over. With Jimmy Smits to depart the cast of ABC's 'N.Y.P.D. Blue' sometime in the fall, the producers have been auditioning dozens of actors to find the next young, good-looking, brooding partner for Detective Andy Sipowicz, played by Dennis Franz.
Like David Caruso and Mr. Smits, the winner is young and good-looking. But brooding? Hardly. Rick Schroder is best known for playing Ricky Stratton, the adorable adolescent son who moves in with his childish, divorced father, in the mid-1980's NBC sitcom 'Silver Spoons.'
But Mr. Schroder, now 28, has been honing his skills in television movie roles, including that of a young cowboy in 'Lonesome Dove,' and, the executive producer Steven Bochco says, he showed great chemistry in reading scenes with Mr. Franz.
Bill Kurtis, Host
Bill Kurtis has been in television news a long time and now, at 57, he thinks he has found a dream job. The A&E Arts and Entertainment cable network has scheduled hourlong documentaries every weeknight at 9, starting next Monday, and Mr. Kurtis will oversee and play host to all five nights. The A&E project comes  when networks are devoting more of prime time to news: 'Dateline' on NBC, '20/20' on ABC and '48 Hours' on CBS have gained additional time slots, and the cable networks CNN and Fox News Channel are producing new magazine-style programs, too.
'I've never seen so much informational programming on the air,' said Mr. Kurtis, who spent 30 years at CBS and has been an independent producer of programs for A&E and PBS since 1991. 'I think it's the golden age of documentaries.'
The reason, he said, is that 'nonfiction or informational programming is more interesting than what the networks are giving us in their entertainment programming. You get a new plot and new characters each week, but with familiar faces in the reporters and anchors who bring the news to you.'
The A&E documentary lineup will include two returning programs produced by Mr. Kurtis, 'Investigative Reports' (Mondays) and 'American Justice' (Wednesdays), another returning program called 'The Unexplained' (Thursdays) and two new ones, 'Inside Story' (Tuesdays) and 'L.A. Detectives' (Fridays).
'Inside Story,' will be a cinema-verite look inside an institution, a profession or an interest group; the first episode, for example, profiles a motorcycle gang from the Bronx. 'L.A. Detectives' will follow actual Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department homicide detectives, at work and at home. 'It won't be cops chasing guys across a backyard,' Mr. Kurtis said, 'It will show them meticulously piecing together of clues, and also show they have a human side, taking care of the kids and going to soccer games and so on.'
Some traditional documentarians criticize A&E's hour documentaries, including those on the popular 'Biography' series, for being hastily assembled and often superficial. One calls the genre 'docu-lite.'
Mr. Kurtis candidly acknowledged that to fill five hours a week 'is daunting, and I can't sit here and say every night will be of the same quality or will be Emmy Award-winning material.' But his dream is to produce enough solid and intriguing material to 'lay claim to the time period,' in viewership terms, and then  persuade A&E to let him produce multipart series. He wants to do five nights in a row on five aspects of a single topic, like drug use or Presidential candidates' platforms. 'That would be really new,' he said. 'That's my dream.'
The Nelson Adventures
Whatever the shortcomings of A&E's 'Biography' series, last Sunday night's two-hour episode about the classic 1950's sitcom 'The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet' earned generally high praise from television critics. And yesterday when the Nielsen ratings came out, A&E learned that it had been tremendously popular with viewers, too, as the second most watched program in the network's history. 'Ozzie and Harriet: America's Favorite Family,' produced for A&E by Peter Jones Productions, was watched by an average 3.4 million households, second only to the 3.7 million audience for the Jane Austen drama, 'Pride and Prejudice,' seen in 1996.
'I think two things contributed,' said Michael Cascio, A&E's senior vice president for programming. 'The Nelsons cover three generations, and the ratings breakdown shows both older and younger people watched. Also, with the movie 'The Truman Show' out, the concept of how television affects people's lives has been in the news a lot. The Nelsons are the original 'Truman Show.' '",1
Top/News,"As Syria's Influence in Lebanon Wanes, Iran Moves In
Nearly a year ago, not long after the assassination of Rafik Hariri, who was twice prime minister of Lebanon, Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon, unleashing a wave of patriotism here that prompted many to say that the Lebanese might finally be able to take control of their destiny.
But the intensity of the moment and the rush of emotions eclipsed at least one important and largely unanswerable question: With Syria gone, or at least its troops gone, who would fill the power vacuum?
At the time, Iran did not appear to be the answer. But that is what is happening, according to government officials, political leaders and political analysts here.
Iran, long a powerful player in Lebanon, has been able to increase its influence, partly through its ties to the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. That has given Tehran a stronger hand to play in its confrontation with the United States and Europe over its nuclear program.
Should the nuclear showdown go badly for Iran, the government could rely on its surrogates in Lebanon as well as its influence in Iraq, or use oil for a weapon. In Lebanon, the Iranians could contribute to the kind of retribution they have promised as a payback, from a strike across the border into Israel, to a more forceful flexing that could paralyze the Lebanese government, political analysts and government officials said.
While Iran helped create, finance and train Hezbollah, it was Syria that settled scores and managed relations between Shiite factions and Palestinians throughout Lebanon. Syria was a filter between Tehran and Hezbollah, and now that Syria has been uprooted, Iran and Hezbollah can work much more closely.
Members of Hezbollah have become members of the government for the first time, magnifying the importance of the ties between Iran and the Lebanese Shiite movement.
That is the downside for the United States, and for Lebanon as well, officials here said. Unity remains elusive as Lebanon continues to be a playing field for foreign interests.
'There is without any doubt a growing Iranian influence not only in Lebanon but in the whole region,' said Nassib Lahoud, a Maronite Christian who is a former ambassador to the United States and a legislator. 'We are trying to build normal relations with everyone, and we refuse to turn Lebanon into a battlefield for regional and international powers.'
Political leaders met here recently for what was billed as the start of a national dialogue, a chance to try to resolve long-simmering disputes. There was to be discussion about disarming militias like Hezbollah and figuring out what to do about President Émile Lahoud, a staunch ally of Syria, who has clung to his office even as his ability to govern has withered under pressure to resign.
But even before the meetings began, government officials conceded that Lebanon's ability to resolve some of its most vexing domestic conflicts would depend on decisions made in Tehran and Washington.
Charles Rizk, Lebanon's minister of justice, said that as Iran's and Hezbollah's influence grew in Lebanon, the country's hopes for unity hinged on whether Iran and the United States would at least agree to talk to each other. It is an idea, officials here acknowledge, that appears as remote as a Syria-Israel peace deal. But as a nation unusually susceptible to outside influences, officials said, that is Lebanon's reality.
'I hope that by America inaugurating a process of détente with Iran, this will reverberate into more consensus in Lebanon,' Mr. Rizk said. 'This is the only chance for us to solve our problems.'
For years, Iran had been a kind of second lieutenant to Syria, important, influential and spiritually linked to the Hezbollah militia in a way that the Alawite leadership of Syria never could have been.
But with Syrian troops dug in, and Syrian intelligence agents running the show, Tehran's role was often more behind the scenes. In the 1980's, during the Lebanese civil war, Syria established its dominant position when it brokered a deal between the Shiite militias, Amal and Hezbollah, and settled the feuds in the Palestinian camps. After that, Iran found itself one step removed from the surrogates it helped create.
Then, suddenly, Syria found itself in retreat.
Iran saw an opportunity and began to press ahead with its established relationships in Lebanon, and with trying to build new ones. Lebanese officials and academics and religious leaders were increasingly feeling the generosity of the Iranian state, officials said, with invitations to conferences in Iran and offers of aid.
Lebanese officials say that Iran has been careful not to appear heavy-handed, so as not to alienate Sunni, Druse and Christian factions. After years under the fist of Damascus, many people here said that Iranian power was preferable because of geography -- Tehran is far away -- and because the Iranians appeared to be more intent on winning allegiances, not forcing them.
'Iran is omnipresent in Lebanon, not only with Hezbollah,' said Ridwan al-Sayyid, an adviser to the prime minister and a professor of Islamic studies at Lebanese University. 'They are strong, not like Syria, but they shape their presence in different ways. They are helping many, many organizations -- Sunnis, Shias and Christians. They are benevolent.'
This is not the first time that the United States has seen Iran benefit, however unintentionally, from events that were initially regarded as strengthening the Bush administration's hand. With each American military strike in the region, first against the Taliban in Afghanistan and then against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Iran has found its influence in the region grow as its enemies have been defeated by American military might, political analysts said.
'Iran now has many more cards in confronting the United States than the United States has in confronting Iran,' said Hassan Nafaa, a professor of political science at Cairo University.
Now it appears that Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon increases the Iranian mullah's influence. A recent political alliance between Hezbollah and Gen. Michel Aoun, leader of the largest Christian bloc in Parliament, was viewed by one political analyst with close ties to the government as a 'tactical victory' for Iran.
'It's because Syria has been deflated very much, Iran is rising as a force,' Mr. Rizk said.
Ahmed Fatfat, the acting interior minister, said, 'I believe that Iran's role in Lebanon has become stronger, and if you look at its relationship with Hezbollah it is stronger.'
What this means, officials said, is that as long as the United States and Iran are at odds Lebanon will remain, at best, in limbo. Lebanon will be unable to resolve its own domestic problems while Iran continues to try to build up its strategic position.
'If there is an Iranian-American clash, it will be played out here,' Mr. Fatfat said.",1
Top/News,"Confrontation in the Gulf;   Attempts Have Been Made to Break Trade Embargo Against Iraq, U.S. Officials Say
LEAD: Several nations, including Cuba, have accepted shiploads of Iraqi oil since the United Nations imposed a worldwide ban on trade with Iraq, but those ships left Iraqi pipeline terminals before the sanctions were imposed on Aug. 6, United States officials said today.
Disclosure Seen as Deterrent
None of the oil deliveries or the payments appear to violate the United Nations sanctions, which apply only to oil sales or other trade with Iraq conducted after Aug. 6.
The Bush Administration is citing the oil shipments and efforts to break the trade ban to United Nations diplomats in an effort to underscore American resolve and to deter potential violators by making it clear that illegal trade with Iraq will be detected and revealed.
United States intelligence agencies have uncovered efforts by private concerns in two dozen nations to smuggle goods to Iraq and have immediately notified the host governments and urged them to take legal action, Administration officials said today.
One Government official said several of those concerns were 'professional sanctions-busters,' experienced in breaking embargoes against such nations as Rhodesia, that are now seeking to sell their services to President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.
That official said the companies were based in such locations as Brazil, Eastern Europe, Switzerland, Austria and Britain. They are described as 'fronts' with no real corporate structure, none of them well known internationally.
None of those Governments were aware of the concerns' secret overtures to Iraq, the official said. He said Eastern European smugglers were proving a particular problem because the region's new democratic governments were ill-equipped to track or thwart illegal deals.
Some Deals Are Reported
The Associated Press, citing a State Department document, reported today that Cuba and Romania had struck oil deals with Iraq and that two unnamed companies in Western Europe had secretly offered to smuggle food into Iraq. The report also said unidentified companies in Eastern Europe, East Asia and Africa had offered to smuggle weapons and other goods as well.
Romania's Ambassador to the United States, Virgil Constantinescu, today denied the A.P. report and issued a list of his nation's oil purchases since Aug. 5, all from nations other than Iraq.
Mr. Constantinescu said in a written statement that Iraq had offered to give Romania about one million metric tons of oil to settle past debts but that the offer had been rejected. He also said Romania had canceled two contracts with an American oil company, Chevron Corporation, for 150,000 metric tons of Iraqi oil.
An Administration official, speaking on condition that he not be named, said that Iraq had discussed oil sales to Romania but that it was uncertain which nation had raised the prospect of a sale.
Romania, like many Eastern European nations, had conducted a busy trade with Iraq and is suffering economically from the trade embargo.
Officials said the Cuban oil shipment had been unloaded from the Iraqi-flag oil tanker Amuriyah, which docked in Cuba in the last week of August. Shipping officials said the Amuriyah left the Turkish city of Ceyhan on July 31, two days before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, after taking on a cargo of crude oil at an Iraqi pipeline that terminates on the Mediterranean Sea near Turkey's border with Syria.
Cuba has been hit by oil shortages stemming from a slowdown in deliveries by its major supplier, the Soviet Union, and President Fidel Castro recently imposed drastic energy conservation measures throughout the island.",1
Top/News,"Sports People; Tests for Ashe
LEAD: Arthur Ashe, the former United States Open and Wimbledon champion, was listed in satisfactory condition at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center yesterday and said he hoped to be released by the end of the week. He was admitted last Thursday after feeling numbness in his hands while attending the United States Open at Flushing
Arthur Ashe, the former United States Open and Wimbledon champion, was listed in satisfactory condition at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center yesterday and said he hoped to be released by the end of the week. He was admitted last Thursday after feeling numbness in his hands while attending the United States Open at Flushing Meadows.
'I had some problems with my hands but I can't give more details,' said the 45-year-old Ashe, who underwent quadruple bypass heart surgery in 1979 and had a double bypass four years later after a second heart attack. He said the tests were not related to his heart problems.
Ashe won the first United States Open in 1968 as an amateur and won Wimbledon in 1975 by upsetting Jimmy Connors. After leaving the tour he was captain of the United States Davis Cup team, serving for five years and leading the United States to cup victories in 1981 and 1982.(AP)",1
Top/News,"Camby May Be Battered a Bit, but He's Not Broken
After a brief meeting today, most of the Knicks worked on their shooting. But Marcus Camby passed up the rack of basketballs and instead cradled an electronic stimulation machine in his right arm as he sat against a wall.
His right eye was swollen nearly shut with an adhesive bandage over a cut on his eyelid. That injury was the result of his taking an elbow from the Heat's Otis Thorpe during the Knicks' 82-76 victory Tuesday night in Miami.
Camby's right elbow was attached to a tangle of wires in an effort to keep the swelling down on a bruise he sustained after he crashed to the floor at American Airlines Arena in the first half.
The slender reserve was also nursing of a sore wrist as a result of that tumble, but he didn't mention the sore knees that had put him on the injured list twice this season.
'I've got a full range of motion,' Camby said of the elbow. 'I've been treating it all morning and all last night when we got in late. I'll continue to treat it all day today and tomorrow. I don't think it will affect me.'
Despite his injuries, Camby maintained his sense of humor. He laughed about the notion that he epitomized the physical Knicks-Heat Eastern Conference semifinal series.
'Yeah, the games are physical,' Camby said. 'But I don't think my being hit in the eye was deliberate. Everybody was going for the ball and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was just the nature of the game being physical under the basket and stuff. That's how the series is going to be played: both teams getting after each other, being aggressive.'
When he was acquired by the Knicks two years ago from the Toronto Raptors, Camby had a reputation as a soft player. But Tuesday night he iced his injured elbow at halftime and returned to action as the Knicks tied the four-of-seven-game series at a game apiece.
Camby said he would be ready for Game 3 on Friday night.
'They want me to get X-rays and an M.R.I. today, but I don't think it was necessary,' said Camby, who won that argument and did not have to undergo the procedures.
'I'll be fine. It was hard to sleep on it, plus my eye and my wrist, but I'll be all right. I think I'll be fine and ready to go on Friday. I could have practiced today.'
His teammate Chris Childs said: 'The guy comes in practice and works hard and plays hurt. He's not afraid of challenges. He goes in and does all the little things to help the team win.
'He's a guy I'm proud of because of the way he performed and sucked it up. He's always yelling: 'I'm tough. I'm tough.' He proved it last night.'
Ewing Does Homework
Patrick Ewing opted to work longer and harder than any other Knick player today, despite the back spasms that have plagued him for the last five days.
Ewing spent nearly an hour, first banging with Andrew Lang in an intense game of one on one, and then working with the assistant coach Brendan Malone to correct flaws that have limited him to 35.7 percent shooting in the first two games of the Eastern Conference semifinals.
'I'm trying to get back in the groove,' Ewing said when he finally came off the floor.
The 37-year-old center was so overheated that he waited until he got to the locker room to envelop himself in his usual ice-pack wrap.
'I think the fact I was hampered I kind of lost my footwork,' he said. 'I just worked on it a little bit.'
'Hampered' was as far as Ewing would go toward acknowledging that his back was even a minor problem. After spending last season limping on a strained Achilles' tendon until it finally tore in the Eastern Conference finals, he did not consider this injury worth discussing.
'I'm not worrying about my back,' he said. 'I'm able to play. It feels fine.'
His former college coach, John Thompson, said in the TNT telecast on Tuesday night that Ewing's back was hurting more than he was letting on.
Ewing, however, would not respond to that notion.
'I'm able to play,' the Knick said.
Childs Eats His Words
Chris Childs spoke up on Monday, commenting that the Knicks would have to play a more physical brand of defense.
The words drew an unfavorable response from Rod Thorn, the National Basketball Association's senior vice president for basketball operations. And it seemed to show on the floor in Game 2, when Childs fouled out in 11 minutes of action.
'Right things to say, wrong person,' Childs said. 'I don't know if it was because of that. I'm done talking about that.'
When he fouled out with 6 minutes 59 seconds remaining in Tuesday's game, Childs yelled at Miami's Tim Hardaway. Childs felt that Hardaway had thrown an intentional elbow at his face. He then left the bench and went to the locker room to cool off.
'I mean, the fouls were my fault,' Childs said. 'I didn't adjust to the way the game was being called. But I only know one way to play, and that's as hard as possible. That's what my teammates and coaches expect of me. But I've been around long enough. I should have adjusted and kind of backed off the pressure a little bit. I don't think it called for me to be called for a foul the time I got hit in the face with an elbow. But I didn't adjust, so I'm to blame not the refs.'
Childs added: 'I said some things to Tim afterward. He didn't say anything. I just didn't think it was necessary to do that. It's not the first time it ever happened. What's done is done. I'm not going to concern myself about that too much.'
PRO BASKETBALL: NOTEBOOK",1
Top/News,"PREMIER OF HAITI CRITICIZES ARISTIDE
Three days after formally resigning, the handpicked Prime Minister of Haiti's exiled President lashed out this weekend at the man who appointed him, describing the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide as an erratic figure and questioning his willingness to return to office under internationally negotiated conditions.
The departing Prime Minister, Robert Malval, spoke on Saturday, shortly after returning from a two-week trip abroad during which he tried and failed to organize a national conference in Haiti to break the country's political stalemate. The idea was rejected by Father Aristide, who said that the security of his supporters could not be guaranteed inside Haiti.
Mr. Malval described the Haitian President as a man with ""a serious ego problem,"" who along with his advisers in exile is ""playing with our lives, playing with the future of Haiti.""  Caught in a Trap
It is the first time that Mr. Malval has publicly accused Father Aristide of hampering efforts to settle the crisis. The Prime Minister still blames the military for the collapse of a brokered accord that was to have reinstated Father Aristide by Oct. 30.
In an interview at his house, Mr. Malval described Haiti as caught in a trap between Father Aristide, the country's first democratically elected President, and the man who presided over the President's ouster in September 1991, Lieut. Gen. Raoul Cedras.
He said neither man seemed willing to make the compromises needed to reach a political solution that would halt Haiti's steep economic decline and prevent disaster for its people.
""The country is stuck between a man who refuses to resign and a man who has made a choice to remain abroad as a sort of flag bearer, a mythic symbol,"" Mr. Malval said of General Cedras and Father Aristide.
""Everything Aristide is doing is meant to preserve his image among Haitians from Miami to Montreal,"" Mr. Malval said. ""But the problem is that this country is going straight to hell and one day the myth is just going to collapse.""
To step up pressure on the military, the United Nations imposed an embargo on oil sales to Haiti in October that has aggravated the suffering of the country's poor.
Aides to Father Aristide said he had vetoed the national conference not just out of security concerns but also because he feared that the proposed political gathering would result in new limits on his powers.
""When you go into a conference like this, you know they are going to squeeze you,"" said Robert E. White, a former American Ambassador to El Salvador who advises Father Aristide. ""If the President had accepted the conference and then refused to go along with any new constraints on him, he would have looked all the more intransigent.
""As it is, no serious pressures have ever been brought on the military,"" Mr. White said. ""They have all been applied to Aristide.""
Informed about Mr. Malval's criticism by a reporter, Mr. White that said he had conferred with Father Aristide today and that the deposed President had ""nothing to add"" to his adviser's remarks. Malval Virtually Powerless
Mr. Malval, a 50-year-old publisher who had not previously been involved in politics, was appointed Prime Minister in August by Father Aristide after playing a crucial role negotiating the July accord with the military providing for the President's return to office.
General Cedras later refused to resign as commander of the armed forces, violating the agreement he had signed. The security forces also organized violent demonstrations in October to deter international monitors and soldiers from paving the way for Father Aristide's return.
Since then Mr. Malval's Government has been virtually powerless. Though he formally resigned on Wednesday, he still technically has authority over the Government's day-to-day affairs. Last week, President Aristide stripped him of his authority to undertake political initiatives.
Mr. Malval said that when he was appointed in August he had expected that the military would try to block Father Aristide's reinstatement. But he said that the president's behavior had surprised him.
Both Mr. Malval and diplomats who were involved in trying to organize the aborted conference said that Father Aristide, apparently distrustful of Mr. Malval, had repeatedly approved steps to resolve the political stalemate during his Prime Minister's trips to Washington, New York, Paris and Rome, only to suddenly withdraw his support. Aristide Distrust of Washington
Prime Minister Malval said that Father Aristide had abruptly withdrawn his backing for the national conference and the relaunching of an international military mission to Haiti last Tuesday after it had been painstakingly arranged with the White House and leaders in the United States Senate.
The reversal came a day after President Clinton received both Father Aristide and Mr. Malval at the White House to express support for the initiative, he said.
Aides to Father Aristide have said privately that the exiled President had grown distrustful because he suspected that Washington and diplomats at the United Nations were positioning Mr. Malval to somehow supersede him. Relations between United States officials and Father Aristide, a leftist priest, have long been uneasy.
An aide to Mr. Malval, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that even some aides in the Prime Minister's camp had shared that suspicion during their recent stay in Washington.
""Americans did everything they could to build up Malval at the expense of Aristide,"" the aide said. ""His invitations and meetings around Washington had every appearance of a coup d'etat in the making.""
A Western diplomat who was involved in those meetings and has played a leading role in organizing diplomacy in Haiti dismissed the suspicion as ""ridiculous.""
Senior Administration officials in Washington have often privately expressed exasperation, however, with what they assert has been a lack of cooperation from Father Aristide.
Many diplomats concede that efforts to restore Father Aristide are now completely stalled, although the oil embargo remains in place and a delegation of military officers from the United States, France, Canada and Venezuela is due in Port-au-Prince this week to meet with Haitian Army leaders.
The delegation hopes to revive the idea of separating the Haitian police and army and involving them in efforts to rebuild the country's infrastructure under the July accord.",1
Top/News,"A Relaxed Approach By Faldo
The big man and the young woman were strolling across the stepstones today at Doral Resort and Spa. Hand in hand, through the flowers and past the big marble fountain in front of the hotel, they bounced like a couple of carefree school kids, into the lobby and down the stairs.
This is how Nick Faldo makes entrances these days. Happy, smiling, at ease, with his friend Brenna Cepelak at his side, Faldo, 38, returns very relaxed to defend his title in the Doral-Ryder Open.
Given the occurrences of the last three and a half months -- the acrimonious breakup of his 10-year marriage with his wife, Gill, the impending loss of millions of pounds in a divorce settlement and the British tabloids' relentless  pursuit of Faldo and the 21-year-old Cepelak -- this is somewhat remarkable. It  is even more so considering Faldo's reputation as a stoic and somewhat dour personality.
But all is now propitious for Faldo, and he believes he is past the turbulence in his personal life and back on track in his profession.
""When all this broke around the Tour Championship in October, we had a month  of hell, courtesy of the British tabloids,"" Faldo said. ""It's old hat now, fortunately, it's old news.""
But Faldo chose this hot, tropical morning at the site of his last victory to discuss it all publicly for the first time. He recalled a period of siege, during which Cepelak, a former University of Arizona golfer, was hounded by tabloid reporters, during which paparazzi sat outside his home in Orlando, Fla., and his home in London where his wife and three children live with telephoto lenses focused on the doors and windows. That, he said, wasn't the worst of it.
""They go through trash cans, they listen in on phone calls and things like that,"" he said of the tabloids. ""It's just the incessancy of it. They leave 27 messages on your phone from the same guy. He just puts the phone down and redials, puts the phone down and redials, basically just keeping going until you crack, which is a weird way to treat another human being, I think.""
A huge tabloid contingent has followed him everywhere. Meanwhile, in Tucson,  Ariz., Cepelak has had to climb into the trunk of a car to try to get past reporters and to her classes. One particularly insistent photographer, who refused requests to leave, was physically removed from one of her classrooms and arrested. Cepelak has since dropped out of school.
The two now travel together to tournaments on the Professional Golfers Association Tour and Faldo awaits word from England on the progress of the divorce, which will be his second. One London newspaper reported that Faldo had  offered a $12 million settlement. But Gill Faldo is reportedly pushing for a larger percentage of Faldo's wealth, which is estimated at $60 million. She has  hired the legal firm that is working for Diana, the Princess of Wales, in her divorce proceedings.
Celebrity divorces don't often attract quite so much scrutiny. Certainly, golf divorces don't. In the early 1980's, Lee Trevino got away with joking about his split and remarriage to a much younger woman by saying that since his new wife had the same name (Claudia) as his previous wife, he ""won't even have to change the monogrammed towels.""
But Faldo is a huge celebrity in Britain, certainly one of the top three sports figures in the nation. Whatever he does is news. He hadn't won a major golf championship in three years, but it turned out his search to recapture that magic was only part of what brought him to America last year to play full time.  In addition to his golf game, his marriage was also shaky, and when the scent of his dalliance with the young college golfer was picked up in London, the ""rotweillers"" lept on the story.
Now that much of the smoke has cleared, Faldo is palpably relieved and loose. Always a man with an underrated sense of humor, he has taken to cutting up in public -- he donned a wig and mugged for cameras during the rain-shortened AT&T  Pebble Beach National Pro-Am -- and joking with galleries. Perhaps not coincidentally, he is performing better on the course, striving to recapture the form that enabled him to dominate the sport from 1987 to 1990.
""Yeah, yeah, I'm feeling good,"" he said. ""I think I've shown that. I'm having a good time out there, on and off the golf course.""
In his three West Coast appearances this season, Faldo's stroke average is 68.5. He hasn't shot an over-par round yet. He had an opportunity to win the Mercedes Championship, but his final-round 67 was not quite enough to overtake Mark O'Meara. Faldo's final-round 64 at the Buick Invitational at San Diego tied the winner, Davis Love 3d, for low round of the day and put him in a good frame  of mind coming to Florida.
This is a pivotal point in Faldo's career. With the 1992 British Open at Muirfield as his last major victory, with his lackluster performances in all four majors last year (his best finish was a tie for 24th in the Masters), questions have been raised about his motivation.
He has answered the questions about his personal life. Now he hopes to answer the ones about his professional life, starting right here at Doral, the site of  his last victory.
CHIP SHOTS
Ryder System Inc. announced that it was extending its sponsorship of the Doral-Ryder Open. After a 10-year affiliation, the Ryder chief executive officer, M. ANTHONY BURNS, said the tournament ""fits into our strategic direction."" The length of the renewal was not announced, but PGA Tour Commissioner TIM FINCHEM described it as ""long term."" . . . Golf Digest will publish a list of the richest people in golf in its April issue. No. 1 on the list is ROBERT DEDMAN, the president of Club Corporation International, with a net worth of $1 billion. There are two golfers in the top 10. JACK NICKLAUS is No. 6 with $250 million and ARNOLD PALMER is No. 7 at $200 million.
GOLF",1
Top/News,"Arts, Briefly; Making Movies
Columbia Pictures announced yesterday that Deborah Schindler and Elvis Mitchell would become executive production consultants in charge of development and production for the studio's New York office. They have already acquired the rights to remake the new documentary 'Ring of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story' into a feature film. Ms. Schindler, who began her career as Martin Scorsese's assistant in the 1980's, was head of Red Om Films and produced features with Julia Roberts for Revolution Films. Mr. Mitchell has been a film critic for several publications, most recently for The New York Times from January 2000 until April 2004. He briefly served as director of development for Paramount in the early 1990's. Reached by phone, Ms. Schindler said: 'Our mandate is to create our own entity, unlike New York offices have been in the past. We're going to make films, not just develop them.' 'Ring of Fire,' directed and produced by Dan Klores and Ron Berger, tells the story of the boxer who beat his ring opponent to death in 1962. It was acquired at the Sundance Festival by NBC-Universal and is to be broadcast April 20 on the USA Network. Mr. Klores will produce the remake with Scott Rudin.
JOEL TOPCIK",1
Top/News,"Curlin, the Early Derby Favorite, Draws a Difficult Post
Curlin is undefeated and wickedly fast, and on Wednesday he was made the morning-line favorite to win the Kentucky Derby. The untested colt is trying to outrun history and will have to do so from a difficult post: the No. 2 hole.
Curlin's trainer, Steve Asmussen, had little choice but to bury him near the rail for the 133rd running of the Derby. Asmussen drew the 16th selection in the Derby's two-tier post-position draw. What was left were the No. 1 and 2 posts, or the No. 18, 19 or 20 holes. The choice for Asmussen was stark: give up ground from the outside, or risk being crushed inside.
Asmussen believes that the mammoth chestnut Curlin, a son of Smart Strike, is quick and muscular and can stay out of trouble in what is usually a roughly run opening quarter-mile.
Besides, Curlin had run well from the No. 2 post in his record 10 1/2-length victory in the Arkansas Derby on April 14. For those looking for an omen, consider that Affirmed was the last Derby champion to win from that post, and he went on to sweep the Triple Crown in 1978. There has been no Triple Crown winner since.
'I think a horse of his size can secure a good position,' Asmussen said of Curlin, whom the Churchill Downs oddsmaker, Mike Battaglia, made the 7-2 favorite.
Whether Curlin can overcome a lack of experience is another question. He did not run as a 2-year-old and has run only three races in his career. The last winner of the Derby to miss a 2-year-old season was Apollo in 1882, and the last horse to wear the blanket of roses with so few starts was the filly Regret in 1915.
But Asmussen is convinced that he has a once-in-a-lifetime horse, and he is looking only at recent history. He compares Curlin to last year's Derby winner, Barbaro, and to the 2001 Derby favorite, Point Given, who finished fifth in the Derby but went on to sweep the Preakness and Belmont Stakes. He was thinking of Point Given, and that colt's No. 17 post position, when he decided to go inside.
'I thought the outside post beat the best horse that day,' Asmussen said. 'They were very big, talented horses. It worked out for one and it didn't for the other. That's the scenario we're faced with.'
The second choice in the morning line, Street Sense, at 4-1, may very likely be the favorite at post time. A son of Street Cry, Street Sense will break from the No. 7 post and, in theory, lope along in midpack before finding a spot near the rail to unleash a late run. At least that is how Street Sense and his jockey, Calvin Borel, won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile here last year by a record 10 lengths and became the 2-year-old champion.
Street Sense also has to overcome history. In the 22 years of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile, no winner has gone on to capture the Derby. He is trying to become the first Derby winner since Sunny's Halo in 1983 to win off only two prep races.
'He is ready to run; we have no excuses,' said his trainer, Carl Nafzger, who won the 1990 Derby with Unbridled.
Nafzger put little stock in Curlin's status as the morning-line favorite.
'Like I always say, we're all 19-1 when we go to the gate,' said Nafzger, referring to the Derby's 20-horse field. 'I just want to be No. 1 at the wire.'
Nobiz Like Shobiz and Circular Quay were installed as the co-third choices. Nobiz Like Shobiz, who will leave from the 12 post, and his trainer, Barclay Tagg, arrived here late Wednesday afternoon after training in the morning at Belmont Park.
In 2003, the Tagg-trained Funny Cide broke from the No. 5 post and went on to victory. But that post was gone when it was time to select. He also wanted to give his jockey, Cornelio Velásquez, the best chance to get Nobiz into a comfortable stalking trip.
'I'm happy,' he said. 'Originally, I kind of wanted to select between 4 and 8, but I did some research and talked to some people and changed my thinking, and wanted a post between 9 and 13.'
For the late-running Circular Quay, his No. 16 hole hardly mattered.
'He'll drop back and come running,' his trainer, Todd Pletcher, said of Circular Quay, the Louisiana Derby champion.
Circular Quay is one of a five record-tying entries for Pletcher. Only Pletcher's former boss D. Wayne Lukas (in 1996) and Nick Zito (2005) have mustered that much horsepower for a single Kentucky Derby. On Saturday, Pletcher will also send the Florida Derby victor Scat Daddy (10-1) from the No. 14 spot and the Illinois Derby winner Cowtown Cat (20-1) from the No. 6. Any Given Saturday (12-1) will break from the No. 18 position and Sam P. (20-1) from the No. 13.
Ultimately, Asmussen believes they will all be chasing Curlin. He is more afraid of them than the history book.
'This is a talented group of horses,' he said. 'They are in excellent shape and came here confident and expecting to win. We feel that is our mind-set as well.'
HORSE RACING",1
Top/News,"With West's Help, Bosnian Serb President May Form Cabinet
Despite her poor showing in the parliamentary elections, the Bosnian Serb President, Biljana Plavsic, looks set to form a new government -- with the help of her Western backers.
Ms. Plavsic's candidates won only 15 of 83 seats in elections in November, but her Western supporters have worked to block backers of her rival, Radovan Karadzic, from obtaining a parliamentary majority.
In fact, within a week, Western diplomats say, the government of the Bosnian Serb republic will be in her hands, despite the fact that supporters of Dr. Karadzic, the wartime leader who is now under indictment on war-crimes charges, hold 39 of the 42 seats needed for a majority.
The Parliament met here today, but continued the stalemate that will probably be resolved only with international intervention. And under the present circumstances, the outside forces have the power to form the government.
The Spanish diplomat Carlos Westendorp, who is in charge of carrying out the Dayton peace agreement, warned today that he would remove obstructionist deputies from the Parliament by the end of the week if the wrangling that characterized today's meeting continued.
Dr. Karadzic's supporters, who include 15 deputies from the ultra-national Radical Party, would, in effect, be banned from the assembly.
Mr. Westendorp, given broader powers last December by industrialized nations involved in overseeing the peace plan in Bosnia, has been increasingly ruling by fiat. He has set up his own commission to create a common flag after the Bosnian Serbs, Muslims and Croats did not meet a deadline to do so. He has drafted foreign investment legislation, rammed through a common passport and a citizenship law and is working on a common currency after the Muslims, Croats and Serbs did not meet imposed deadlines.
'The international community cannot stay here 10 years,' he said.  'A government has to be formed, and the peace agreement has to be respected. When I see that a decision needs to be taken, and I have the feeling one side is obstructing its implementation, I will take the decision.'
There are hundreds of millions of dollars of the $5.1 billion in reconstruction and development aid waiting to be disbursed to the Bosnian Serbs. The refusal by the Bosnian Serb leadership to abide by the Dayton accord, which calls for a united Bosnia and the return of more than a million displaced people to their homes in the Bosnian Serb republic, has meant that aid to the Serbs has been withheld for the fiscal years 1996, 1997 and 1998.
Ms. Plavsic, desperately short of money, has been unable to pay pensions and government salaries or to pay for the operations of schools and hospitals. Western diplomats say her support is eroding. They hope that an infusion of money to a government under her control will bolster her popularity, show Serbs the benefits of cooperating with the international peace effort and further isolate the wartime leadership.
Dr. Karadzic, who despite having promised to retire from public life wields enormous influence, sent a rambling letter to his followers last month calling on them 'to block the formation of a new government.'
There will be parliamentary and presidential elections in September,  and Western diplomats said the Serbian hard-liners were trying to cling to power until the new vote.
Karadzic supporters, like Momcilo Krajisnik, the Serbian representative of Bosnia's three-member Presidency, are incensed.
'We get very angry when we are threatened,' he said. 'This is a transparent attempt to destroy us and our republic.'
Ms. Plavsic, with backing from NATO troops who seized police stations and television transmitters last summer on her behalf, controls the western half of the Serbian Republic, where two-thirds of the 800,000 Bosnian Serbs reside. Dr. Karadzic controls Pale, outside Sarajevo.
Dr. Karadzic threatened to walk out of today's meeting over the issue of control of television transmitters.",1
Top/News,"A Stew of Americana Served Up as a Serene Soundtrack
Bill Frisell's music easily became a soundtrack when it accompanied images by the cartoonist Jim Wood-ring at Zankel Hall on Sunday night. A little too easily, perhaps. Billed as a multimedia collaboration, the concert led Mr. Frisell back to the wistful, reticent, watercolor arrangements he has regularly visited on his own.
Both Mr. Frisell and Mr. Woodring make the familiar unfamiliar. In Mr. Frisell's compositions, cozy, archetypal Americana -- country tunes, blues, waltzes -- is slowed down, melted at the edges, eerily reharmonized or disassembled and contemplated part by part. Mr. Woodring's work, in the tradition of 1960's underground comic books, sets homely characters (notably a puffy-cheeked cat named Frank) in hallucinatory landscapes populated by strange, biomorphic emanations.
Mr. Woodring and Mr. Frisell have collaborated before, building on each other's images and music with 'Mysterio Simpatico' in 2002. This reunion apparently used more ready-made materials. For the first part of the concert, Mr. Woodring provided slowly changing still images. Then came animated Frank cartoons from Japan, with Mr. Frisell's music substituted for their original soundtracks.
Mr. Frisell, on guitar, led his 858 Quartet -- with Jenny Scheinman on violin, Eyvind Kang on viola and Hank Roberts on cello -- plus Ron Miles on cornet and Greg Tardy on saxophone and clarinet. With this group, Mr. Frisell leans toward chamber music: hovering chords or pizzicato patterns from the strings, gentle melodies and an occasional flurry of improvisation from the horns. He plays guitar with preternatural smoothness, wafting notes into existence with barely a hint of attack, teasing out melodies or warming the harmonies with sustained chords.
The group played Mr. Frisell's own pieces and idiosyncratic versions of 'You Are My Sunshine' and 'What the World Needs Now.' There was a bluesy waltz that allowed Mr. Miles's muted cornet to growl a little; a drone-based piece in which Mr. Kang played raga-like viola lines; harmonically convoluted ballads; transparent contrapuntal mobiles; and tunes with hints of country fiddle and of jazzy swing, though nothing too pushy. Delicate and leisurely, the music seemed to float in suspended gravity. Only one piece, with a bebop guitar lick set against the strings lilting a chromatic scale, sounded anything like typical cartoon music.
Mr. Frisell's pensive, constrained pieces played against films that have Frank always on the move, surrounded by metamorphoses. They were homey and soothing rather than footloose, and they would have been more vivid on their own. On Sunday, they were usually overshadowed by a cartoon cat.
The New York Guitar Festival continues through Feb. 8.
NEW YORK GUITAR FESTIVAL REVIEW",1
Top/News,"Sports People; Blyleven Traded
LEAD: For the fifth time in his 19-year major league career, Bert Blyleven is shifting teams, but this time the move will bring the pitcher home. Blyleven, winner of 254 games (and loser of 226), was sent from the Minnesota Twins to the California Angels yesterday for three minor league players. Although he was born in the Netherlands 37 years ago, the right-handed Blyleven grew up in southern California and lives in Villa Park, 10 minutes from Anaheim Stadium.
For the fifth time in his 19-year major league career, Bert Blyleven is shifting teams, but this time the move will bring the pitcher home. Blyleven, winner of 254 games (and loser of 226), was sent from the Minnesota Twins to the California Angels yesterday for three minor league players. Although he was born in the Netherlands 37 years ago, the right-handed Blyleven grew up in southern California and lives in Villa Park, 10 minutes from Anaheim Stadium.
The Angels also obtained Kevin Trudeau, a pitcher, for Mike Cook and Rob Wassenaar, pitchers, and Paul Sorrento, an outfielder.
The Twins traded Blyleven less than 48 hours before he could have filed for free agency.(AP)",1
Top/News,"G.I. Gets Support for Shunning U.N. Insignia
As United States troops prepare for a NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, a  22-year-old American soldier is facing a military trial here for refusing to wear United Nations insignia for a mission elsewhere in the Balkans.
The trial of the soldier, Specialist Michael G. New, of Conroe, Tex., has struck a chord in Washington, where scores of legislators opposed to United States involvement in United Nations operations have signed a petition supporting the soldier.
Specialist New is being tried for disobeying orders on Oct. 10 when he refused to wear a United Nations blue beret and shoulder patch as his 550-member infantry unit assembled at its barracks in Schweinfurt, Germany, for deployment  to Macedonia.
American troops have been part of a United Nations mission in Macedonia since 1993. Their presence is supposed to prevent the spread of war from the north.
As the troops went on inspection parade, Specialist New was the only soldier  wearing a United States Army uniform without the United Nations additions. The rest of the unit left for the Balkans without him on Oct. 20.
Specialist New argues that the order to serve under United Nations command is illegal because he has sworn his oath of allegiance to the United States, not the United Nations.
His refusal is believed to be the first of its kind in the recent history of  American involvement in United Nations peacekeeping missions.
""I am not a United Nations citizen or a U.N. soldier,"" he said in a statement issued recently by his lawyers. ""I am an American and an American soldier.""
One of his lawyers, Ronald R. Ray, told reporters: ""Nobody else but him stood up for the U.S. Army uniform in a sea of people wearing U.N. uniforms. I think that took a lot of guts.""
""Michael New was willing to obey any lawful order,"" Mr. Ray said after brief  proceedings in a military courtroom. ""We are arguing that he was given an illegal order."" The trial is to continue in December.
The Army argues that the order was legal under the classified Presidential Decision Directive 25. Along with the United Nations Participation Act of 1945,  the directive sets out the conditions under which American troops may be placed  under United Nations command.
Defense lawyers are demanding that confidential American directives be made public for the purposes of the trial.
If convicted, Specialist New faces a maximum penalty of reduction to the rank of private, six months' confinement, loss of pay and a bad conduct discharge.",1
Top/News,"A Tightened Defense Does All the Talking For the Giants
After the Giants lose, Coach Tom Coughlin usually steps before the news media and, without prompting, offers an animated and forceful dissection of the game.
When the Giants beat the Washington Redskins, 19-3, at Giants Stadium on Sunday, Coughlin stepped to the lectern and did not offer an opening soliloquy. He casually asked for questions. And then he became angry.
After saying he was pleased with his team's performance, Coughlin displayed little joy when asked whether such an emphatic victory could 'quiet things down' from the turmoil of the previous two weeks -- the ones that followed an embarrassing loss in Seattle and the utterance of the dreaded 'outcoached' word by tight end Jeremy Shockey.
'You know what?' Coughlin said to reporters. 'There never was anything that had to be quieted down. You take one statement and run with it, which you all did, and enjoyed it, for two weeks. There wasn't any problem in the locker room, O.K.?'
Whatever had been in the locker room -- whether doubt, disillusionment or just the smell of dirty laundry -- was swept away by the victory, replaced by relief and much-needed confidence. In a reversal of previous games, the Giants (2-2) systematically shut down the opposing offense, moved the ball consistently, took a halftime lead and won easily enough to chase the fans out of the stadium to enjoy the rest of a cloudless, room-temperature fall afternoon.
'Just what the doctor ordered,' receiver Amani Toomer said.
The Giants, considered a likely postseason contender when the season began, had been falling precipitously toward pretender status. They played decently in a season-opening loss to Indianapolis, horribly for most of a stunning come-from-behind victory at Philadelphia and wretchedly in the loss to the Seahawks before last week's bye.
They vowed to straighten up a loose defense and an inconsistent offense. The key might have been exorcising an unhealthy attitude.
'I feel like the first three games we were playing with a sense of entitlement,' center Shaun O'Hara said. 'And today we played with a sense of urgency.'
Quarterback Eli Manning was good against the Redskins, as he has been this season with few exceptions, completing 23 of 33 passes for 256 yards with one touchdown and no interceptions. Running back Tiki Barber had 123 yards on 23 carries, routinely sliding through the first line of Washington's defense like a button through a buttonhole.
The offense moved with certainty and pizazz, but it made a habit of stopping short of the goal line. The Giants, in compiling 411 yards and holding the ball for nearly 10 minutes more than the Redskins (2-3), produced one touchdown -- a 2-yard lob from Manning to receiver Plaxico Burress in the third quarter -- and four field goals by Jay Feely.
But the offense's inability to dominate the scoreboard was rendered moot by the defense. The Giants' defense had allowed more points, on average, than all but one of the other 31 N.F.L. teams. It had looked, at times, porous and confused.
Yet against the Redskins, who had gained 976 yards and scored 67 points combined in the previous two games, the Giants' defense unexpectedly dominated. The coordinator Tim Lewis and his assistants simplified the defensive assignments by limiting the number of changes at the line of scrimmage -- 'Just go and don't think too much,' defensive end Michael Strahan said in describing the philosophy.
The Giants rebuilt their flagging confidence by limiting the Redskins to one field goal. They never allowed the Redskins to drive inside the Giants' 20.
The Giants held the Redskins to 164 yards. They kept running back Clinton Portis (19 carries for 76 yards) from gaining momentum, and prevented the Pro Bowl receiver Santana Moss (three catches for 39 yards) from creating his usual chaos. The Giants also had three sacks, one more than they had in the season's first three games combined.
It was the best defensive performance since last October, when the Giants beat the Redskins, 36-0.
'When this team is flying and playing with confidence and swagger, and just believing and not getting overly hyped or overly down, I think this is the result you can get,' linebacker Antonio Pierce said. 'Yeah, yeah, we don't have the best of everything right now. We don't have everything that we'd like to have be perfect. But we do have what we need to win and to be a good defense.'
Linebacker LaVar Arrington, like Pierce, previously played for the Redskins. Arrington left in a bitter split last off-season, and his play had been unspectacular through three games with the Giants. Last week, a former Washington teammate and an assistant said Arrington understood little about the Redskins' defense.
On Sunday, he was quietly solid, starring in a highlight by batting down a pass by Mark Brunell as he pursued him.
'There was a lot to try and juggle these past two weeks,' Arrington said. 'But the one thing, myself, that I'm proud of was that the whole team stayed focused enough to really push through and really believe in themselves and believe in the scheme and get it done.'
More than anything, the defense allowed the typically potent Giants offense to stick to its strategy. In the first three games, the Giants were outscored, 82-24, in the first three quarters. They were thrust into a hurry-up mode, with little time for running and clock hogging, their preferred strategy.
'We have to give them credit for giving us great field position,' Barber said of the defense. 'And to allow our offense to function in its normal way, which was back to Giant football, running the ball.'
The Giants leapfrogged the Redskins in the National Football Conference East standings. And they lifted their division record, important in tie breakers, to 2-0.
The only bad news for the Giants appeared to be another injury to Shockey, whose foot was examined after the game. When he finally emerged in the locker room, two weeks after his now-infamous 'outcoached' utterance in a different locker room 3,000 miles away, Shockey was not his usual unscripted self.
He had more penalties (two) than receptions (one, for 13 yards). He played down the injury, declining to say whether it was new or the latest tweak to a sore ankle.
'We did a good job winning this game,' Shockey said, taking no questions. 'We defeated the Washington Redskins, which is a positive thing. Now we can build on this win and keep continuing to get better as a team. The overall team effort was great today. I'm very excited for the win, and that's about all I have to say. Thanks.'
Those are the types of words that should make Coughlin happy. And beating the Redskins, too.
PRO FOOTBALL",1
Top/News,"In Church of Nativity, the Refuse of a Siege
Between columns of amber marble, darkened by age and burnished by worshipers, the occupiers had laid grubby mattresses and brown blankets, tangled and rumpled. At the low entrance, called the Door of Humility, the air was acrid with urine. Under the high wooden vaulted ceiling, empty sardine tins dripped oil among spilled votive candles.
The only visible damage was to the Franciscan priory next to the church, which had been scorched by one of three fires reported during the occupation till all that remained was blackened floors and ceilings.
All in all, some priests said, it could have been worse.
Early today, after 39 days under siege, over 130 people -- Palestinian gunmen and civilians, clerics and foreign protesters -- filed out of the Church of the Nativity, which marks the supposed birthplace of Jesus and where many of the Palestinians had sought refuge as Israeli troops pushed into the town on April 2.
Hours after those who had occupied the church left, the Israeli soldiers who had besieged them packed away everything from portable generators to ammunition boxes and rolled in brisk, dusty convoys of jeeps and armored personnel carriers across Manger Square, leaving it eerily empty for just a second.
With trepidation at first, then with a mounting bounce to their stride, residents who had lived under nearly constant curfew for more than a month stepped out of shuttered homes over battered streets. Crouching and jostling, they pushed into the low side door leading into the 1,700-year-old church, and gaped.
A baptism font, festooned with bottles of Ajax bleach, appeared to have been used to wash dishes. An altar had served as a table. Cooking pots and gas stoves shared floor space with abandoned camouflage fatigues. Black garbage bags choked dark recesses. As in other parts of Bethlehem, the air was heavy with the tang of burned refuse.
Yet some from the West Bank's dwindling Christian population brushed past those signs of defilement, moving to the marble steps leading down into the grotto that marks that exact place where Christians believe their Savior was born.
There, they prostrated themselves before a many-pointed star, weeping openly, embracing. Some lit candles and caressed icons, ignoring the non-Christians and the reporters with cameras and notebooks and lights.
The tumult was chaotic, spontaneous, breaking the careful and jealously guarded protocols that divide administration of the church between Orthodox and Roman Catholic denominations.
'I was so crazy, so happy,' said Diana Masri, a 45-year-old Orthodox worshiper. 'I haven't entered my church for 40 days,' she said, bending strict chronology to match the biblical period that Jesus is said to have spent in the wilderness.
Those 39 or 40 days now seem set to enter the canon of Palestinian mythology -- events when mere survival is cast as victory over Israel's vast military superiority. Indeed, the siege of the church had been accompanied by a curfew that added pressure on those inside the church to surrender. So Israel's withdrawal tonight released the entire town of 100,000.
According to some of those who endured the siege, the people inside the church were dominated by armed Palestinians known as shebab, or the guys, the term given to militants by Palestinians since the first intifada, or uprising, of the late 1980's.
They set up committees for food and decision-making on issues like whether people should leave the church, as scores did during its occupation.
They maintained contact with the outside world on mobile phones and a radio. Meals were reduced to a single daily serving of rice and pasta soup, some of those who left the church said in interviews today.
A Franciscan priest who spent the entire 39 days in the church, and declined to be identified by name, said: 'We were hostages only of peace. We could have left but chose to remain.'
A Mexican priest trapped in the church, the Rev. Nicolás Márquez, said that in the early days some gunmen stole articles from the Armenian section of the church -- a bishop's gold chain and pectoral cross, a candelabra, an icon. But they put them back later.
Greek Orthodox priests said that, initially, some gunmen or youths slept in the grotto where Jesus' birth is venerated, before priests persuaded them to sleep elsewhere behind the church's thick walls.
Among the various groups there, 10 pro-Palestinian foreign activists had shown disrespect for the church, smoking and drinking, Orthodox priests complained to reporters.
When they slept, some occupiers said, the priests kept to their own quarters and the Palestinians lay on the church's marble floor.
'There was a well and we would wash, but there was no privacy,' said Salah Ajarmi, 29, one of the 84 Palestinian civilians in the siege.
Muhammad Madani, a senior representative of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, said there had also been a committee for the disposal of the dead. Israeli troops, he said, shot to death eight people and wounded 27 others during the siege. Israeli officials said their snipers opened fire only on armed men. But Mr. Ajarmi disputed this. 'One of the dead was the bell-ringer,' he said.
The days of the siege, Mr. Ajarmi said, went by in talking and discussing the big issues. Israeli officials said the occupiers did more than that.
After the Palestinians and others left the church today, American agents collected tens of assault rifles left behind by the gunmen under the terms of their release. Israeli officers said their experts had found 40 'explosive devices,' including booby traps.
But that claim conflicted with subsequent events.
Even though the Israeli military said the church might be booby-trapped, monks and friars crammed through the door just after 5 p.m. to chant and pray in relief as the church's bells pealed for the first time in over five weeks.
Then the Israeli troops withdrew, and people flooded into the church and saw no trace of bombs or explosives.
Soon afterward, as the church reopened, Pietro Sambi, the Vatican's Jerusalem representative, in tailored robes trimmed in purple, entered the church, surveyed the evidence of recent occupation -- abandoned soup bowls and cooking gas cylinders -- and pronounced that this did not amount to formal desecration.
The ornate golden cross still reigned above the nave of the church, the brass chandeliers and globes and lamps still hung from its ceiling. In the fading evening light, the mosaics high on the wall did not seem damaged.
True, as Mrs. Masri, the worshiper said, 'men with guns should not be here.' But, at the end, this region's tangle of faiths reasserted themselves.
Saheeya Khamees, a Muslim woman who said her son was one of the gunmen deported to Cyprus today, came to thank the Virgin Mary for protecting him and to ensure that the church 'is safe.'
Shortly afterward, as the citizenry milled in Manger Square, or just took the unfamiliar evening air to munch an olive or smoke a cigarette, the muezzin called the Muslim faithful to prayer from the Omar mosque opposite the Church of the Nativity. That, too, people said, was a first in the 39 days.
MIDEAST TURMOIL: AFTERMATH",1
Top/News,"Climbing Tooth and Claw to the Top of the Heap
THIS WEEK, A NEW CHAMP breaks the endurance record and becomes the longest-running show in Broadway history. It's a concept musical that features 1) a chorus of dancers who tell their characters' stories in song and movement; 2) an over-the-hill female character attempting a sentimental comeback, and 3) a competition among the performers to be selected for a coveted, life-altering assignment.
Hmm. Dancers, personal stories, competition. Didn't 'A Chorus Line' retire as the Street's king of the long run five years ago, after 6,137 performances? Well, yeah. But Michael Bennett's fabled ensemble show is not the one in question.
The musical that will, at Thursday evening's curtain, surpass 'A Chorus Line' as Broadway's reigning Methuselah is 'Cats,' Andrew Lloyd Webber's wildly successful adaptation of T. S. Eliot's 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.'
The eerie narrative parallels between the two shows -- each has an episodic storyline built around a lengthy audition process, in the one case for a dance job and the other for a ticket to cat heaven -- suggest that there may be some winning formula for producers seeking to enter the longevity sweepstakes. But the truth is that contests are a staple of the contemporary musical, in shows as diverse as 'Starlight Express' and 'Steel Pier.'
No, the fact that the two musicals use similar plot devices only goes to show how conservative much of the modern musical theater truly is, and how much the crowd-pleasing shows -- no matter how innovative they at first appear -- fall back on the conventional.
And yet, the passing of the mantle from 'A Chorus Line' to 'Cats,' as it completes its 6,138th performance on Thursday, could not be a richer symbol of the artistic and financial shifts that have occurred on Broadway. 'Cats' was the production, after all, that ushered in the era of the megaspectacle, the heavily merchandised and immensely profitable model for a succession of lavish British musicals that in the 1980's and early 1990's not only came to dominate Broadway, but also shifted the balance of creative power in the musical theater from Times Square to Leicester Square.
That 'Cats' would be the show to dethrone 'A Chorus Line' -- one of the most beloved American musicals of all time and conceived by one of the American musical theater's most gifted visionaries -- won't be applauded by theatrical patriots, or even by critics, many of whom had unkind words when the show opened at the Winter Garden on Oct 7, 1982. 'As it happens, 'Cats' does attempt a story,' Frank Rich wrote in The New York Times, 'and it also aspires to be the first British dance musical in the Broadway tradition. In neither effort does it succeed.'
Interestingly, the triumph of 'Cats' has not inspired anything like the hoopla that preceded the ascension of 'A Chorus Line' to the longest-running perch. (The show's producers are planning to close Broadway between 50th and 51st streets after Thursday night's performance for a party-and-light show.) There just isn't that much enthusiasm in the air for a celebration of the 6,138 Broadway appearances by Mr. Mistoffolees, Rum Tum Tugger and Gus, the Theater Cat.
So the question arises: Why has 'Cats' -- its 1983 Tonys for best musical, book, score, direction, costumes, lighting and featured actress (Betty Buckley) notwithstanding --  endured? What is it about this whimsical musical, with its trash heap of a set by John Napier -- considered daring in its day -- and cast of 22 felines who prowl the aisles of the Winter Garden, that has allowed it to live and breathe on Broadway longer than any other show, longer, in fact, than the original runs of 'Fiddler on the Roof' and 'Hello, Dolly!' combined?
There is a degree of serendipity about the way shows run and run and run. 'The Mousetrap,' a London mainstay for 45 years, and 'The Fantasticks,' the longest running show in U.S. history, on Sullivan Street in Greenwich Village, have a curiosity value not unlike those mountain villagers in Central Asia who live to 110 on yogurt. The two shows have made an industry of their own longevity. Both are creaky  yet entertaining.
But how to explain the durability of 'Perfect Crime,' a truly peculiar work that has run for more than 4,000 performances at various Manhattan theaters and is now ensconced at the Duffy Theater in Times Square?
I recently bought a ticket to 'Perfect Crime' at the TKTS booth and sat through a Thursday evening performance, along with 23 other people scattered about the auditorium. The whodunit by Warren Manzi was as impenetrable for me as a crossword puzzle in Sanskrit. Not only can I not tell you why the murder occurred, I could not even figure out who was murdered. Its survival year in and out is the mystery I most want solved.
A visit to 'Cats' and a perusal of the audience was more enlightening. As the first real tourist musical -- those trademark cat's eyes are as familiar as the strains of the show's hit song 'Memory' -- it has the advantages of a high profile and no language barrier. You don't have to be even marginally acquainted with English to follow the acrobatic antics of Macavity and Munkustrap and all those other singing and dancing felines.
The experience, though, was a bit like a trip through the time tunnel, back to 1982, when Gillian Lynne's claws-out, arched-back choreography and Mr. Napier's costumes for tabbies and toms did communicate a theatrical freshness. But 'Cats' is now an artifact, not a living work. Peter Brook, in his famous 1968 study of the theater, 'The Empty Space,' concluded that a particular staging of a play has a shelf life of about five years.
'It is not only the hairstyles, costumes and makeups that look dated,' he wrote. 'All the different elements of staging -- the shorthands of behavior that stand for certain emotions; gestures, gesticulations and tones of voice -- are all fluctuating on an invisible stock exchange all the time. In the theater, every form once born is mortal.'
Don't tell that to the producers of 'Cats.' It's a terrifying thought, but could they have really meant 'now and forever' literally?
STAGE VIEW",1
Top/News,"Fate of Raiders' Move Now Rests With League
Al Davis won the approval of National Football League owners today to move the Raiders from Los Angeles back to Oakland, but it is still not a done deal. A major financial hurdle, involving how much of the personal seat licenses revenue the league will get from Oakland, has to be cleared before the Raiders actually return after a 13-year absence.
Davis and Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, in a show of unity, appeared at a news conference following the vote in which 23 of 30 teams voted in favor of the move and 5 abstained (Washington, Jets, Raiders, St. Louis and Tampa Bay). The 49ers and the Cardinals left the meeting before a vote could be taken.
Both Davis and Tagliabue sounded optimistic, yet cautious, about the move. The Raiders first home preseason game is Aug. 12 against the St. Louis Rams.
""While it's not a fait accompli, we appreciate the vote of the league for the opportunity to move to Oakland,"" Davis said. ""There are still some issues to be worked out, and they have to be worked out quickly, between the Oakland community, Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, the Raiders and more importantly between the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum and the league.""
Davis acknowledged there's a possibility that if the deal falls through, he could wind up playing the 1995 season in Los Angeles.
Davis walked away from the meeting here relatively unscathed from a financial standpoint, compared to the Rams, who were assessed a $29 million relocation fee and had to give up the $20 million derived from St. Louis's sale of personal seat licenses.
Tagliabue said the situations were different. He said the Raiders met league requirements to relocate, while the Rams did not. In Tagliabue's estimation, the Rams, by going to St. Louis, took away an expansion location for the league and sought out the best possible deal.
""A lot of what was going to the Rams was value established by the N.F.L., not the Rams,"" Tagliabue said. ""You have to ask if there is any other team in the league that would generate the kind of fan response in Oakland that the Raiders have.""
That's why the Raiders weren't assessed a relocation fee. But there remains a question of how much the league will get from the sale of personal seat licenses in Oakland once they come up for renewal after they expire in 10 years. Davis has agreed to a 16-year lease with the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. The Coliseum authority intends to use money from the licenses to help pay for a $225 million bond issue for improvements in the stadium.
It's not a major issue to Davis, because he'll get to keep all of the revenue from luxury boxes.
John Shaw, the Rams' president, was unhappy over the developments. ""We expect all teams to be treated the same,"" Shaw said. ""Unless we find out that teams are not treated equally, then we'll take action."" Injured Boselli Out 6-8 Weeks
STEVENS POINT, Wis., July 21 (AP) -- Tony Boselli, the Jacksonville Jaguars' top draft pick, is expected to miss six to eight weeks after having arthroscopic surgery on his left knee this morning. He will miss the entire preseason and perhaps the first two games of the regular season, which opens on Sept. 3.
Boselli, the 6-foot-7-inch, 323-pound lineman from U.S.C., was selected No. 2 in the N.F.L. draft. He was scheduled to start at left tackle for the expansion team, but sprained the knee and dislocated the kneecap on Monday in a one-on-one drill with defensive end Jeff Lageman. Ex-Giant Loses in Court Again
TRENTON, July 21 (AP) -- Lance Hamilton, a defensive back from Penn State who sued the Giants for discrimination in 1992 and lost in court, lost his appeal on Thursday.
Hamilton, who is black, contended that he was promised an assistant coaching job by Coach Bill Parcells but was later denied the job because of his race. Parcells left the Giants after the 1992 season and was replaced by Dan Reeves.
A lower court found no merit in the claim and the appellate judges said they found no merit in the appeal. Trouble for Vikings' Thomas
HOUSTON, July 21 (AP) -- Minnesota Vikings linebacker Broderick Thomas was arrested at Houston Intercontinental Airport this morning while trying to board a plane, the police said. The arrest occurred after a metal detector revealed an unloaded .40-caliber Smith & Wesson semi-automatic in his luggage.
Houston Police Department spokesman Fred King said Thomas was charged with carrying a weapon in a secured area of an airport. A conviction on the third-degree felony could get Thomas up to 10 years in jail and a $10,000 fine.
The arrest comes after Thomas's arrest on Thursday in Houston for unpaid traffic tickets, KHOU-TV of Houston reported.  PRO FOOTBALL  Correction:  July 26, 1995, Wednesday
A brief sports article on Saturday about the appeal of a lawsuit that charged discrimination against Bill Parcells, the former New York Giants football coach, misstated the year he resigned and misidentified the coach who replaced him. It was 1991, not after the 1992 season; the successor was Ray Handley, not Dan Reeves.",1
Top/News,"A Band's Return To Yesteryear: The 90's
With so many enterprising bands cashing in on the styles and sounds of 'the 1980's' (a mythical new decade that bears little resemblance to those 10 years between 1979 and 1990), it makes sense that an enterprising band has found a way to cash in on the 1990's. And perhaps it's only fair that the band is Garbage, the unabashedly professional alt-rock act that released its self-titled first album in 1995.
The group's fourth album, 'Bleed Like Me' (Geffen), makes an impressive debut at No.4 on this week's Billboard charts. And on Tuesday night the band celebrated with a packed concert at Hammerstein Ballroom.
Of all the bands that prospered during that alt-rock heyday, perhaps none was colder than Garbage. The band is led by a well-connected industry pro (the producer-drummer Butch Vig), fueled by a snarling but precise guitar sound and fronted by a Scottish singer, Shirley Manson, who seems icy and tough even (or especially) when crawling on all fours or lying flat on her back -- two things she did during her appealingly feline performance on Tuesday.
Back in the 90's, when moody irony was all the rage, Garbage seemed to epitomize an era. Even the band's name meant the opposite of what it said, and the band's biggest hit celebrated incongruity. In 'Only Happy When It Rains,' Ms. Manson sang, 'I feel happy when things are going wrong,' adding a beseeching refrain: 'Pour your misery down on me.' Ah, the 90's, a decade when a singer could order a mug (or is that a bath?) of misery without cracking a smile.
Garbage's coldness and obsession with contradiction have aged less well than Ms. Manson herself. When it came time for the title track from 'Bleed Like Me,' the band traced out a subdued chord progression (a welcome change of pace), but the lyrics were pure caricature: five stanzas about an anorexic, a cross-dresser, a self-mutilator, a former drug addict and a karaoke barfly, respectively; it sounds like the treatment for the world's worst indie film.
Near the end of the concert, the band played its current single, 'Why Do You Love Me?,' a loud, sketchy song that has some nice little details (including a lurching hard-rock riff that disappears as suddenly as it appears), plus a contrarian refrain ('Why do you love me/Why do you love me/Why do you love me/It's driving me crazy'). And fans could imagine themselves back in an alt-rock world where that was all you needed.
ROCK REVIEW",1
Top/News,"The Latest Gear to Get Down the Mountain
Some hot names for the new skiing and riding gear this season: Autodrive, Pilot, Freeglide, Super Light.
Get the feeling somebody is trying to make the sport easier?
You know what I say to that? Don't stop now. Give me more.
This comes from someone, who when asked in school to name the three Americans with the greatest impact on the country, answered: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Howard Head.
When my teacher scoffed at the last name, I said, 'But we'd all still be on wood skis without Howard Head!' And, I'll add, on a recent visit to the Smithsonian Institution, I came upon an exhibit dedicated to Head. I felt like calling my teacher.
Head engineered new ski materials, he said, because he was embarrassed by his own meager skiing abilities. The latest technologies, led by the shaped ski revolution and more flexible, snappy snowboards, are making all of us better, too.
Here are some highlights of the best new snow-sliding playthings.
Stand atop the oversized hump that makes up the driving platform at the core of the Dynastar Autodrive skis, and you will do more than look down on your friends. It has been named ski of the year in some industry magazines. Better than that, it is simply fun to try out a funky new mix of proven ski technologies.
There is a rounded cap construction at the tip, which makes it easier to start turns, the high vertical mid-ski wall is for better grip and the floating mounting system is for midturn control -- it can shift on the ski as much as a quarter-inch.
'I compare these skis to the oversized golf club revolution,' Charlie Adams, Dynastar's vice president of marketing, said. 'It's a high performance ski still accessible to the less-accomplished skier. Like oversized golf clubs, the pro will use them and the weekend player will use them.'
The Dynastar Autodrive won one World Cup giant slalom race last year. Atomic, which has had an incredible run as the world's greatest racing ski, won all the others.
'Now we want to convince people that we make more than race skis,' Atomic's Matt Miller said.
Still, if it is sweeping giant slalom turns -- not to mention hard-snow grip and high-speed stability -- you seek, Atomic has a variety of skis for you, beginning with their top of the line Beta Race 10.22. The Atomic 9.20 is a lively compromise with a little more short-turn versatility. The Atomic 10.Ex is a new widebody ski for the thick stuff. The Beta Ride 9.22 Super Light is designed to be as it sounds, quick and light for shorter radius turns. As with most Atomic skis, be forward or beware.
One other thing: Unlike most of the rest of the ski world, most Atomic's skis are not orange or yellow.
The new K2 Modx Pro is a top-end, highly rated combination of power and flexibility. Its hard-snow colleague is the K2 Patriot GT6. Worthy rivals in the same category: Volkl's P40 Platinum Energy and its Vertigo G31, Salomon's X-Scream Series and Head's Cyber X80 Ti. In the more forgiving ski class: Rossignol's Cobra X 10.2 Suspension and Rebel X, Fischer DRS 104 Air Carbon Ti and Volant SuperKarve.
You could call Salomon's Pilot integration system a major innovation of ski or of binding. Instead of affixing the binding with top-mounted screws, there are axles under the toe and heel placed entirely through the ski's sidewalls. Salomon's designers say this lets the binding rock without sitting on a rigid flat spot and allows the ski to flex more evenly.
As for boots, please do not buy them as Christmas presents. Try a gift certificate. Boots must be tried on, and often fitted. Lange's RRS boot system is new, intended to reduce catastrophic knee injuries. Dalbello has its Stance Geometry System, intended for knock-kneed and bowlegged skiers. If you are buying children's boots, do not reach for the rear-entry boots even though they are slightly easier on and off. They make it too hard to lean forward, as all good skiers must.
In snowboards, Burton's Troop is a new women's freestyle board designed for lightweight, aggressive riders. It comes in three sizes based on the rider's weight. Salomon's Fastback is an all-mountain board that includes an overall larger deck to accommodate riders with bigger feet. K2's Zeppelin has a new look with topcoat graphics and directional tip-and-tail shape.
Then there's Salomon's Freeglide snowblades, smaller, narrow boards that the company said are to be used as a cross between aggressive skating -- isn't that hockey? -- snowboarding, skiing and 'launching a Patriot missile.' It is for terrain park riding, trail skating and something called 'extreme carving.'
I don't know what that means. But it sounds fun. And I am certain Howard Head would love it.
THE SKI REPORT",1
Top/News,"Floods Keep Rising in Dresden and Now Spill Northward
As the Elbe River reached a record high level here today, about 30,000 residents were evacuated from their homes while volunteers stepped up efforts to protect centuries-old palaces and museums. But fears are mounting over the devastation that the river may still cause as it plows through northern Germany toward the North Sea.
After a night in which much of the city was blacked out, Dresden woke to fresh flooding. The four bridges crossing the Elbe were closed to all traffic but fire trucks and police cars.
The area beside the grandiose Semper Opera and the sprawling Zwinger Palace gallery was for the first time under water, which had mostly bubbled up through manholes. Four hospitals and several hotels were evacuated overnight.
By early today, the Elbe's swirling brown waters had risen to 29.5 feet, 9 inches higher than the high of 28.75 feet recorded in 1845. 'The floodwaters are still rising, and at the moment it's impossible to say exactly how far it will go,' Mayor Ingolf Rossberg told reporters. He added that experts predicted that the river would crest at about 31.5 feet early Saturday.
Across Central Europe, where at least 89 people have died as a result of the past week's flooding, cities and towns in Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are beginning to measure the vast damage caused to homes, government buildings and factories.
In Bratislava, the Slovak capital, the Danube River began receding from a 50-year high, while the authorities in Budapest were bracing for its swollen waters to reach the Hungarian capital this weekend.
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of Germany has called for a 'flood summit' in Berlin on Sunday. Leaders from Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are expected to attend, as is Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, which has offered $63 million in emergency assistance to affected regions.
Along the Elbe to the north of Dresden, flooding has already forced the evacuation of thousands of residents in some communities. Many have come to resemble ghost towns, with homes closed and shuttered, and sandbags piled up against doors. Even 100 miles to the north, in Dessau, the Elbe has already spilled out of its boundaries and flooded thousands of acres of land.
Dessau, a rundown industrial town, is home to the Bauhaus, the landmark Modernist building designed by Walter Gropius in 1925 to house the famed avant-garde art and architecture school that was closed by the Nazis in 1933. Officials have moved an exhibit to higher floors, but there is a risk of damage to the building if the Elbe breaks its banks two miles away.
Normally about 250 feet wide, the river is now a vast lake on the opposite side of Dessau. Volunteers worked feverishly today to fortify the dike protecting the town itself.
At Dessau, the Elbe meets the smaller Mulde. On Thursday, the river breached a bank separating it from a manmade lake, which is now rising and threatening the industrial town of Bitterfeld, about 30 miles south of Dessau. Thousands of people have been evacuated from Bitterfeld, but the main fear is that the waters could reach a vast complex of chemical factories.
The waters surged over the aging Spolana chemical factory in the Czech Republic this week, raising concerns about dioxin contamination. A company spokesman, Tomas Zikmund, said today that floods prevented his firm from checking whether the dioxin had leaked, but he said it was unlikely that the poisons had contaminated the river.
'It can be supposed that dioxins did not get into the water because there was no stream of water running away from Spolana,' he said.
In Bitterfeld today, the focus of prevention efforts was a low-level bank separating Lake Goitsche from the town. As trucks arrived in convoys with bags of sand, hundreds of volunteers worked under a fierce sun to build up the defenses. Dtelef Hübsch, drove 15 miles with his son, Christian, 18, to help out. 'People have come from all over the region,' he said, waving his muddy arms toward the crowds of volunteers. 'There is a lot of solidarity.'
Birk Löwenberg, 28, who works for a wholesale food company in Halle, 25 miles to the west, stood beside a van in which he had brought food and drinks for the volunteers. 'We were called by a Protestant group and asked if were willing to do something for Germany,' he said. 'We agreed without hesitation.'
The flooding in Germany has so far affected mainly regions of the former East Germany, still the poorest part of the republic. Unification in 1991 brought a sharp rise in unemployment as many government-owned factories were closed and as modernization drastically cut bloated staffs at others.
Especially in the east, the flooding has become an electoral issue. The government of Mr. Schröder, who is seeking a new term in general elections next month, has offered the region hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and has promised to invest heavily in reconstruction.
Katrin Schuchardt, a government railroad employee who drove a visitor past dozens of abandoned factories in Dessau, said her main worry was unemployment. The threat of flooding forced her to leave her home and move her family into her mother's third-floor apartment, but even with Mr. Schröder's pledging huge emergency assistance for flood victims, Mrs. Schuchardt said new jobs were the priority for the region.",1
Top/News,"Filipino Civilians Uprooted By an Anti-Rebel Offensive
LEAD: Rito Ocbian, his wife and their seven children gathered their meager belongings, including a squealing hog and three chickens, packed them in jute sacks and loaded them on a bamboo sled drawn by their water buffalo.
Rito Ocbian, his wife and their seven children gathered their meager belongings, including a squealing hog and three chickens, packed them in jute sacks and loaded them on a bamboo sled drawn by their water buffalo.
Then, along with their neighbors in the mountain village of Daluga, they trekked five miles down the winding road to the big town of Polangui, forming a caravan of refugees from search-and-destroy operations mounted by the Philippine armed forces.
This latest military offensive is the biggest undertaken in Bicol, a peninsula that forms the southern tip of Luzon, the largest Philippine island.
In September, Communist rebels bombed several bridges in the region, crippling transportation to and from Manila, 280 miles to the north. #3 Battalions of Rangers In response, the armed forces sent three battalions of elite army rangers and fresh supplies and equipment, including helicopter gunships.
Several thousand troops are now conducting what the army calls 'sweeping operations,' fanning out into the hinterland villages in the provinces of Albay and Camarines Sur in pursuit of Communist guerrillas.
As in a similar offensive taking place in Bulacan Province, just a few miles north of Manila, operations in Bicol appear to be part of a renewed effort by the armed forces' leadership to show it can use a mailed fist.
In August, mutinous troops who were part of an aborted attempt to take over the Government accused President Corazon C. Aquino and the chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, of being too soft on the insurgents. Hundreds of Refugees
The new operations have sent hundreds, perhaps thousands, of refugees like Mr. Ocbian, a 48-year-old farmer, streaming into crowded evacuation centers in the towns.
But it is doubtful that these offensives will deal severe blows to a mobile and elusive guerrilla army that has flourished through 18 years.
In private, senior military officers in Bicol acknowledge that their operations are intended more to calm the civilian population and demonstrate the army's strength rather than to rout insurgents.
After the bridge bombings, local leaders had questioned the military's ability to deal with the rebels. The Naga Chamber of Commerce and Industry passed a resolution last week urging Mrs. Aquino to declare martial law in the area in view of 'the apparent helplessness of local civil and military authorities.' Insurgent Activities Increase
The insurgents stepped up their activities after the unsuccessful coup. The national Communist leadership directed all its forces in the field to take advantage of the split in the forces.
The Bicol guerrillas apparently blew up the bridges in response to that directive. But they also suffered an unintended backlash. Manila's press portrayed the bridge bombings as part of a rebel strategy to build a base in the peninsula.
In Bicol, where blasted bridges have inconvenienced civilians, the lively local press has heaped criticism on the New People's Army, the Communist fighting force, and the Roman Catholic Church has done the same.
As the insurgency continues to demonstrate its strength, local officials expressed frustration at the Government's inability to deal decisively with it.
'In my honest opinion,' said Gov. Luis Villafuerte of Camarines Sur, 'the Government has no anti-insurgency program to speak of.'
Mr. Villafuerte contends that the Government bureaucracy is too centralized in Manila and too inefficient to be able to deliver basic services to poor villages in the provinces. This lack of an effective Government presence is often cited as the reason rebels can so easily win adherents. One of the Poorest Regions
Despite its rich volcanic soil and wealth of other resources, Bicol is one of the poorest regions in the Philippines. Government statistics show that 73 percent of its people live below the poverty line, with incomes under $110 a month.
With a population of more than four million, Bicol has only 87 government physicians and 243 nurses. Many villages have no schools or roads.
Conditions have been particularly oppressive in the last year, when farmers suffered two seasons of drought. In many areas, there has been no harvest in a year.
'The people of Bicol are a very patient lot,' said Ernesto Verdadero, Mayor of the small, impoverished town of Milaor. 'They still believe that Mrs. Aquino can bring about a deliverance. But something must be done soonest or her popularity is not going to last.'",1
Top/News,"Amid Whirlwind Of Change, Martínez Stays True to Roots
Less than 24 hours after Pedro Martínez stood inside Shea Stadium for his introduction as the Mets' newest pitcher, he was on an island in the Caribbean Sea.
He and several team executives, including General Manager Omar Minaya and Jeff Wilpon, the chief operating officer, hopped onto a private jet and flew to the Dominican Republic on Thursday night. Four hours, 1,600 miles and a change of climate later, Martínez was home.
Because for Martínez, one news conference about joining the Mets for four years and $53 million was not enough. His agent, Fernando Cuza, scheduled a second announcement -- a midmorning event that was broadcast live in his home country -- which took place here Friday.
'I wanted to let my people know, in my own words, what happened and let them appreciate my point of view,' Martínez said after the event was over.
In a country where baseball is so integral to the culture, producing stars like Martínez and Sammy Sosa, Martínez's move to the Mets is big news. Martínez spends his off-season in a home he built in his old neighborhood outside Santo Domingo, and he has enormous numbers of fans in his home country. Several people flying from New York to Santo Domingo on Thursday night wore brand-new Mets caps and vowed to burn their Red Sox ones.
On Friday, about 70 journalists and friends of Martínez gathered at the InterContinental Hotel to hear what Martínez had to say about his decision to switch teams and leagues. While waiting for his arrival, they drank piña coladas, rum punch and mimosas served by waiters, the scene set for the arrival of perhaps the country's most famous athlete. Eight television cameras were ready to roll.
Elvira Trinidad, Martínez's public-relations manager, rushed to make three gigantic posters for the event. Each featured photos of Martínez as a member of the Red Sox, but Trinidad had designers digitally change the colors and logos on Martínez's cap and jersey to make it look as if he were dressed in Mets garb.
On each photo were the words: Pedro es un Mets (Pedro is a Met), La Gran Manzana con Pedro Martínez (The Big Apple with Pedro Martínez) and El Nuevo Rey de New York (The New King of New York).
'This is a very big thing around here,' Trinidad said with a dead-serious look.
Martínez, looking tired, walked into the room dressed less formally than in his suit-and-tie ensemble from the day before. He wore a button-down shirt with the collar wide open, and his eyes were hidden behind wraparound Chanel sunglasses.
He was introduced to the crowd as Pedro Jaime Martínez, 'the best pitcher in baseball' and 'the best of all time,' which elicited loud applause. Then Martínez pulled on a Mets jersey and a Mets hat, and reporters began asking questions.
One asked how Martínez was going to deal with the pressures of playing in New York. 'How are you going to deal with entering the wolf's mouth?' the reporter said in Spanish.
Martínez quickly responded in Spanish, switching to English only twice in the hourlong interview session: 'How am I going to deal with it? I'm going to go into the wolf's mouth and pull out his teeth!'
Minaya, the only Hispanic general manager in the major leagues, answered questions in Spanish, too. He was born in the Dominican Republic but moved to Queens when he was 8.
Now, he said to those gathered, he hoped the acquisition of Martínez would bring more Dominican fans and Dominican players to the Mets. Minaya said he felt it was his mission 'for Dominicans to impact society in a positive way' and to 'prove that Dominicans can do big things in a big city.'
'When you see the numbers of the best baseball players, most are Dominicans,' he said. Then he laughed. 'Well, a lot are Dominicans.'
To his left, Martínez -- who mentioned that he would love to share sancocho, a traditional Dominican meat soup, with fellow Dominicans in New York -- nodded vigorously.
Several times, reporters asked whether Minaya was looking to acquire Sosa, whom the Chicago Cubs are looking to trade, or one of Martínez's former Red Sox teammates, Manny Ramirez, who is of Dominican descent. But when Minaya said he did not want to talk about which players he was considering, reporters huffed and threw up their hands in frustration.
One yelled to a journalist about to ask the next question: 'Hey, ask Pedro about Sosa! Maybe he'll tell us!'
Martínez also shied away from the question. But he did not mind criticizing the Red Sox for not signing their biggest players --like him or the free-agent catcher Jason Varitek, who Martínez said was 'the best catcher in the world.'
'I don't understand what Boston is doing or what they are thinking,' he said, shaking his head. 'But I don't belong to Boston anymore.'
He added: 'If I was offered $100 million to play with Boston and $1 million to play with Detroit, I would have picked Detroit. How they act answers a lot of questions for me.'
Somebody asked if Martínez thought his criticisms of Babe Ruth had triggered the end of Boston's 86-year championship drought. 'No,' he said. Another asked if he would ever play for the Yankees, the team he called 'his daddy' earlier this year. 'No!' he answered.
At times, when Minaya or Martínez's agent was speaking, Martínez grinned and widened his eyes as he made contact with someone at the back of the room. He was interacting with his girlfriend, Carolina Cruz, who works for ESPN in the Dominican Republic.
She said that she and Martínez had been dating for four years but were not engaged.
'So that's who you were making faces at,' Wilpon said to Martínez after the news conference ended. 'Aha!'
Martínez smiled sheepishly as Wilpon said his goodbyes. They hugged as Wilpon said he was rushing to the airport to catch a plane to New York.
Martínez said: 'You want to take my Ferrari? Take my Ferrari,' as he reached for the valet slip to his yellow sports car.
When Wilpon declined, Martínez nodded.
'Well, tell daddy I said hello,' Martínez said.
'Which daddy of yours is that?' Wilpon said, smiling.
'Your real daddy,' Martínez said, referring to Wilpon's father, Fred, the Mets' principal owner.
They both laughed.
A few minutes later, without any fanfare, Martínez and Cruz left the hotel and slid into the blindingly bright Ferrari, turning right onto a road that hugs the sea.
BASEBALL",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Of Poets, Politicians and ... Pairs
This week's documentaries on Channel 13, though not up to ""A Baltic Requiem,"" shown last night, do offer variety.
Tonight at 10 P.M., ""P.O.V.,"" the showcase for independent productions, presents three half-hour pieces, beginning with ""Twinsburg, Ohio: Some Kind of Weird Twin Thing."" It's a visit to the Midwestern town's celebration of Twins Days, which attracts 2,500 sets of look-alikes each year. The pictures of the congregated pairs of all ages, many dressed identically, are fun. (""I'm Alma. She's Wilma,"" announces a helpful T-shirt, the twin of which confirms that, yes, ""I'm Wilma. She's Alma."")
But the young documentary maker, Sue Marcoux, gets bogged down in her sticky relationship with her own twin. If Ms. Marcoux can survive her self-searching phase, she seems capable of turning out lively work. The rest of tonight's 90 minutes, which can also be seen on Channel 49, is given to ""Marc and Ann,"" a report on a musical couple with an affection for Cajun life, and ""Plena,"" a tribute to Puerto Rico's version of the blues.
At 12:30 A.M., insomniacs can tune to ""Czeslaw Milosz, the Poet Remembers,"" an hourlong review of the career of a writer who has come to personify resistance to totalitarianism, from Hitler to Stalin. Among those paying their respects are Zbigniew Brzezinski, Susan Sontag and Joseph Brodsky, a fellow Nobel laureate.
Tomorrow at 8 P.M. (at 10 on Channel 21), David Frost talks with Margaret Thatcher, the former British Prime Minister. Their encounter was taped too late for previewing, but the press release promises that Mrs. Thatcher will discuss her relations with Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Mikhail S. Gorbachev. This is the final program of the first season of ""Talking With David Frost,"" which is to return in the fall with a full year of new monthly interviews.
Mrs. Thatcher's in-view of history is followed at 9 P.M. (at 10 on Channel 49) by ""Out in America,"" a discussion of the situation of homosexuals in the United States, which begins with the proposition that discrimination against homosexuals can be discussed in the same terms as the afflictions of Europe's Jews and black Americans. The panelists, prodded along by Andrew Humm, who is co-host of ""Gay U.S.A.,"" a weekly program on the Gay Cable Network, include several homosexual-rights advocates and such dignitaries as Representative Craig Washington, Democrat of Texas; Rabbi Alexander Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, and Justice Richard C. Failla of State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Everybody earns a medal for tolerance. No prizes, though, for enthralling television.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Chatting About Anything, Shark Bites Included, on HBO
With talk shows becoming a dime a dozen these days, Paula Poundstone has come up with a format worth at least a silver dollar. As a stand-up comic, Ms. Poundstone has done the HBO circuit over the last few years, including her very own ""HBO Comedy Hour,"" a special called ""Cats, Cops and Stuff."" This month, she can be seen on four half-hour editions of ""The Paula Poundstone Show,"" being shown around midnight on Fridays, with several reruns each week. (A repeat of the premiere can be seen at 11 tonight.)
Looking a bit like Geena Davis crossed with a youthful version of Julia Child, Ms. Poundstone gives the impression of being unusually tall -- maybe she is -- as she lurches onto a small stage dressed in boots, jeans, floppy shirt and perhaps a vest. Sidling up to a stool, she seems a bit shy, perhaps self-conscious about her height, but then wastes no time in demonstrating that despite the friendly manner (""You comfortable and everything?""), this is one sharp, not-to-be-meddled-with woman.
After doing a riff on parents who go to the movies with teeny-tiny babies, she zeroes in on the concept of dysfunctional families. (""Does anyone know a functional family,"" she innocently wonders.) Then she announces: ""I don't have sex. There, it's been said. I don't like it.""
And the show unfolds with more logic than might be initially apparent. Introducing a man who teaches a class in making out wills, Ms. Poundstone is soon writing away on a large blackboard, earnestly explaining how ""I always wanted to leave something to Mary Tyler Moore."" Then she confesses that she hates her entire family (""I thought I made that clear""), which provides a segue into her drawing a ""dysfunctional family tree."" Connections are eventually made.
Shrewdly, the show is kept short and swift. Music is provided by Johnny Reno and his Mondo Combo. There is one choice music performance an edition: tonight's is provided by Clarence Fountain and the Five Blind Boys; the one on Friday will be by Pat Benatar. And the guests are hardly run-of-the-mill celebrity retreads. This evening's featured trio, all interviewed at the same time, includes a meter maid who insists that the public really loves her, a postal clerk fed up with changing $20 bills (""Apparently, this has been building up for quite a while,"" the host says to the exercised clerk) and a fish diver who's been bitten twice by great white sharks (""You must really want that abalone bad"").
Show No. 2 offers an educational film strip entitled ""Preparing for a Nuclear War,"" in which the narrator soothingly advises that ""although it's unlikely that the blast will leave your head attached to your torso, sunblock may help."" The guest lineup includes a professor who propounds a theory about blowing up the moon (""It's worth it to jolt the earth a little bit""), the astronaut Scott Carpenter, who, recalling the wonders of space, attests that ""there are no atheists in orbit,"" and a cosmetologist who urges her clients to rub their hands together vigorously and then ""give your face a big hug.""
Positively beaming, Ms. Poundstone wonders why ""I feel like I'm talking to the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and the Scarecrow."" She has every reason to smile. Her peculiar land of cable is every bit as weird and charmingly seductive as Oz.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; An Unhealthy Hospital Stars in 'Titicut Follies'
""Titicut Follies"" finally makes it to television tonight, a quarter of a century overdue. Frederick Wiseman's remarkable first documentary, an unsparing visit to the Bridgewater State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, in Massachusetts, was banned by the state's Supreme Court on the grounds that it violated the privacy of inmates, several of whom were shown naked. The ban was finally overturned in 1991.
Nakedness is an apt symbol for a work that bares the daily assaults of power against the powerless. Little physical brutality is shown at Bridgewater; maybe the staff was on its best behavior. The cruelty takes the form of verbal bullying by guards and the seeming indifference of doctors. Although Mr. Wiseman offers glimpses of affection by the warders for their wards, his camera mainly finds a dim hopelessness that infects everyone consigned to the place, whether as prisoner or caretaker.
As in all his reports, Mr. Wiseman abjures narration. The pictures tell his stories, and he has never presented more powerful pictures. The 90-minute film opens and ends with a chorus line from what was evidently an annual show called ""The Titicut Follies."" You'll have to guess who among these costumed performers are inmates, who are guards. The stage, where odd behavior reigns, blurs the lines of sanity and confers an hour of equality.
In the prison yard, the inmates drift within the solitary cells of their minds. Most are silent; one plays a slide trombone; a few rant unstoppably about religion or politics, spouting phrases that you might hear at a revivalist rally or a protest demonstration. One man outtalks the doctors with a fervent yet coherent plea to be sent back to an ordinary prison. Is the fact that he can't shut up a sign of mental illness or faith in his cause? Can he be right?
Many of the encounters have an unsettling ambiguity. A psychiatrist with an accent that may remind you of a Sid Caesar takeoff questions an inmate about his sexual proclivities: ""What are you interested in, big breasts or small breasts?"" Is he working or just curious?
The hardest scene to watch is of a forced feeding. The doctor smokes a cigarette as he inserts a long rubber tube into the patient's nostril and pours a liquid into a funnel; you want to call out to him to flick the lengthening ash onto the floor before it drops into the funnel. In an untypically overt directorial intrusion, this painful scene is intercut with glimpses of the patient's corpse being prepared for burial.
Relief comes at a party put on by volunteers, women who bring a touch of ordinary life into these bleak precincts. Although the camera is directed mostly on the patients, the guards, too, can be seen as inmates. Nagging one of their naked wards into a rage, they are like adolescents picking on the weakest kid. Mr. Wiseman compels the viewer to ask what the institution or the society can expect from people who must or would take such a job.
In the years since Mr. Wiseman made ""Titicut Follies,"" most of the nation's big mental institutions have been closed or cut back by court orders. How much this ostensible victory for civil liberties has helped the mentally ill remains in dispute. But it has unquestionably made things easier for documentarians in search of distressed and distressing subjects; they need only take their cameras onto the streets of any big city. Titicut Follies  PBS, tonight at 10 (Channel 13 in New York). Produced, directed and edited by Frederick Wiseman; photography by John Marshall. Distributed by Zipporah Films.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; Sons Who Kill, Moms Who Mambo
Quarterly sweeps and sociopaths. The two go together like, well, television entertainment and blatant exploitation.
For the next few weeks, prime-time ratings will determine how much networks can charge advertisers in coming months. Competition heats up and among the more popular programming tactics called into play are the inevitable movies based on true crime stories. Once again, television will look under the rock of daily life in the nation and find all sorts of dreadful creatures scurrying underneath. Tops on the list this weekend are overprotective mothers and murderous sons.
In the four-hour ""Stay the Night,"" being broadcast on ABC this Sunday and Monday at 9 P.M., a frantic mother watches helplessly as her teen-age son enters an affair with a much older woman and ends up murdering her husband and going to prison. That's Part 1; in Part 2, Mom sets out to get revenge. Over on CBS, in ""Honor Thy Mother,"" also Sunday at 9, a mother adamantly refuses to believe that her inheritance-greedy son, a college student, plotted a vicious attack that left her severely battered and her second husband dead. As it happens, the first movie takes place in Georgia, the second in North Carolina. No sleepy time down South these days, it seems.
In ""Stay the Night,"" Mike Kettman Jr. (Morgan Weisser), good son of a tightly knit religious family, goes to a party and, spotting a sexy blonde wrapped around a high-school buddy, asks his girlfriend who the newcomer is. ""Mike,"" says the girlfriend impatiently, ""that's my mom."" Mike's hormones obviously go on full boil. And little wonder. The older woman, Jimmie Sue Finger, is played by the always extraordinary Barbara Hershey, who hits on a just-about-perfect combination of fragile innocence, diabolical calculation and baby-doll sluttishness.
When sentimental and hopelessly smitten Mike, who looks like a very young Montgomery Clift, is later convicted of murder, he refuses to implicate Jimmie Sue. His mother, Blanche (Jane Alexander), devises a plan to win the other woman's friendship and possibly get information that might legally incriminate her. But upright Blanche soon finds herself being charmed by the uninhibited Jimmie Sue. In no time at all, the two chums are taking mambo lessons together. In prison, Mike whines to his mother: ""Why do you have to horn in on everything?"" Viewers might well ask at this point, ""What is this movie trying to say, and why are we watching it?"" Ms. Hershey, be assured, is reason enough.
""Honor Thy Mother"" stars Sharon Gless as Bonnie Von Stein, whose son, Chris Pritchard (William McNamara), heavily into drugs and the controversial game Dungeons and Dragons, devises a murder plot that will leave his stepfather dead. The problem here is that none of the major participants are terribly interesting. Chris is merely an unbalanced flake. His mother is colorless, leaving Ms. Gless with little to do but look dourly troubled. Chris's friends Moog (Christian Hoff) and Neal (Paul Scherrer), the ones who carried out the crime, are only hazily sketched. And Chris's taciturn sister, Angela (Suzanne Ventulett), has to wait until the final scenes to make her modest contribution to the plot. Here's a drab rendering of a sorry story.
The lesson from all this? Although both sons in these films seem to have had reasonably comfortable, if not pampered, existences, the mothers were apparently at fault for not giving them even more attention and love. As Mike the murderer touchingly puts it in ""Stay the Night,"" not once but twice, ""Gimme a hug."" Well, not just now, Bubba. 'Miss Rose White'  NBC Sunday at 9 P.M.
New York, 1947. Rose White (Kyra Sedgwick) is the all-American fashionable girl, working her way up the merchandising ladder at Macy's. At the end of the week, though, on Fridays, she puts on a plain black dress and once again becomes Rayzel Weiss to light the Sabbath candles with her Polish relatives. Then her father, Mordechai (Maximilian Schell), announces that her long-lost sister, Lusia (Amanda Plummer), is leaving war-ravaged Europe for New York. She will have to live with Rose, who, in turn, will have to confront the family's troubled history and tough questions about her own identity. This ""Hallmark Hall of Fame"" presentation, based on Barbara Lebow's play ""A Shayna Maidel,"" is a touch too pat, but manages to hit its heart-warming target without doing damage to important issues. The fine cast also includes Maureen Stapleton, Penny Fuller and D. B. Sweeney. Ms. Plummer gets a great opportunity to shine, and she does, brilliantly. Occasionally, at least, sweeps can have their gentler moments. Stay the Night  Written by Dan Freudenberger; Harry Winer, director; Stan Margulies and J.C. Shardo, executive producers. A Stan Margulies Company production in association with New World Television. Sunday and Monday at 9 P.M. on ABC. Jimmie Sue Finger . . . Barbara Hershey Blanche Kettmann . . . Jane Alexander Mike Kettmann Jr. . . . Morgan Weisser Tom Charron . . . Matthew Posey George Malone . . . Fred Dalton Thompson Terry Finger . . . Scott Higgs Angela Finger . . . Judith Jones Mike Kettmann Sr. . . . Earl Hindman
Honor Thy Mother  Written by Richard DeLong Adams and Robert L. Freedman; David Greene, director; Harvey Frand, producer; Dan Wigutow, executive producer. Based on the book ""Blood Games,"" by Jerry Bledsoe. Universal/MCA Television Productions in association with Point of View Productions. Sunday at 9 P.M. on CBS. Bonnie Von Stein . . . Sharon Gless Chris Pritchard . . . William McNamara Neal . . . Paul Scherrer Moog . . . Christian Hoff Brew . . . Jonathan Ward Angela Pritchard . . . Suzanne Ventulett Agent Reed . . . Dion Anderson",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Reviews/Television; Turning the Indians Into Imitation WASP's
For a poignant example from American history of best intentions' going awry, tune into tonight's offering from ""The American Experience,"" at 9 on Channels 13 and 49. ""In the White Man's Image"" looks back at the nation's effort to transform the American Indian into a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant American.
Richard Pratt, a Civil War veteran and Indian scout, showed untypical compassion for the Plains warriors who were being driven back by white settlers. Unlike the Westerners who held that the Cheyenne and the Sioux and the other peoples they encountered were irredeemable savages, that the only good Indian was a dead one, Pratt set out to assimilate Indian youths the way immigrants from Europe were presumably being assimilated in the late 19th century.
Striking before-and-after photographs show the exterior transformations of boys and girls who were taken from the Dakota Territory and enrolled in Pratt's Carlisle School for Indian Children in Carlisle, Pa. Their hair was cut; they were given new names and dressed in uniforms; they were baptized. ""I felt I was no more Indian,"" one wrote, ""but would be an imitation of a white man.""
In his determination to invest his students with the skills and attitudes to succeed in an industrial society -- a trade, work habits, ambition, individualism -- Pratt did not reckon with the strength of their attachment to the families and tribes from which they had been torn.
Tonight's program suffers from melodramatic imagery and a sometimes superior, even smug narration at the expense of Pratt, an easy target in these multi-cultural times. It is strongest when it lets the story tell itself, in photographs and drawings from the period, and in the contributions of Prof. Henrietta Mann, a Cheyenne historian, and of Sid Byrd, who attended an Indian school in Nebraska. He remembers returning home, only to be devastated by the realization that he could no longer speak his grandmother's tongue.
There were success stories, too, at least by Pratt's light. Enough youngsters learned a trade and moved into the larger society to make his principle of ""kill the Indian and save the man"" a national policy. But some who sought to become part of the new America encountered discrimination, and most of the graduates of the Indian schools that spread in the early 1900's returned to the poverty of the reservation.
The well-meant social experiment, says the narrator, Stacy Keach, produced ""a generation of confused and lonely children."" In the 1930's, the effort at assimilation was given up, and a new set of reformers began to celebrate the values of tribal traditions.
It is a cautionary hour. The people who wanted to turn Indians into Europeans called themselves friends of the Indian, and compared to other Americans, they were. But as the nation keeps learning, not all problems are susceptible to friendly feelings. 'The Secret Files Washington, Israel and the Gulf'  PBS Tonight at 10 P.M. on Channels 13 and 49 and at 11:30 on Channel 21
A different sort of history lesson follows. ""The Secret Files: Washington, Israel and the Gulf"" gives the details of unpublicized agreements made by four Presidents -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy -- that committed the United States to the military support of Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Benjamin C. Bradlee, the former editor of The Washington Post, narrates with jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled up and long red tie away from neck, as though he had just come from digging up the recently declassified materials on which the report is based. Perhaps the biggest revelation is that Truman forged a security relationship with King Ibn Saud that was carried out in 1963 when Kennedy sent fighter planes to protect the Saudis from Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Nothing here is likely to revolutionize interpretations of American diplomacy in the Middle East, which, as Mr. Bradlee puts it, amounted to trying to help the Arabs without hurting Israel. But the hour does spotlight Washington's difficulties in trying to insure the defense of two countries in conflict, until, for an hour, Saudi Arabia, Israel and the United States found themselves all more or less on the same side in the war against Iraq. Thank you, Saddam Hussein. The American Experience In The White Man's Image  A report written and produced by Christine Lesiak; Matthew L. Jones, co-producer; Alexandru Moscu, editor; Anna Romero, associate producer; a presentation of WGBH/ Boston, WNET/New York and KCET/Los Angeles; Judy Crichton, executive producer of ""The American Experience""; Stacy Keach, narrator. At 9 tonight on Channels 13 and 49.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Books of The Times; Nostalgic Look at TV News by One Who Knows
Out of Thin Air The Brief Wonderful Life of Network News By Reuven Frank 415 pages. Simon & Schuster. $24.95.
When NBC announced earlier this month that it had reached an agreement with PBS to combine staffs to cover the 1992 political conventions, Reuven Frank should have permitted himself a grin of satisfaction. He was in the right place at the right time again.
As he points out in this mostly absorbing account of his remarkable career as producer and president of NBC News, exceptionally good timing has often served him well. Like the time he and David Brinkley were in Berlin, on their way to producing a special about life in Vienna, when they learned the Soviets had closed the border, and were in the process of building a wall.
Now Mr. Frank's book, which emphasizes how NBC News established its reputation through its outstanding, distinctive coverage of political conventions, arrives precisely at the time NBC is announcing the legacy of that ground-breaking coverage: a deal with PBS.
Not that Mr. Frank would disagree that conventions have become far less newsworthy than they used to be. He argues that in the 1970's conventions changed from being settings for political machinations, at which television cameras were unwelcome, to political coronations eager to use the networks as their free publicity vehicle.
Mr. Frank even cites a prophecy of sorts: In 1972, the manager of one NBC station proposed that the networks no longer cover conventions and give PBS enough money to do it ""for those who cared.""
The passage is typical of Mr. Frank's approach to telling this story: he is usually either wry or cranky. Both qualities are apparent in the book's portentous subtitle, which openly suggests that network news is not only no longer ""wonderful,"" but is in fact dead.
That it was once wonderful for Mr. Frank certainly comes through clearly, though he is not writing an autobiography but an insider's history of network news.
This approach can be refreshing, especially when compared with the egocentric memoirs of television news reporters who feel it necessary to describe their humble roots and how and why they covered the great events of our time.
We learn nothing of Mr. Frank's roots, except that he was once the night city editor of The Newark Evening News. At times he mentions a wife and children, never by name.
Still, the book is at its best when Mr. Frank allows himself to be personally involved, as in his description of the events that surrounded his award-winning 1962 documentary, ""The Tunnel,"" an as-it-happened filming of the escape of 59 East Berliners through a tunnel dug under the Berlin wall, which the American State Department tried to keep off the air for reasons about which Mr. Frank can still only speculate.
Or his passionate retelling of NBC's coverage of the explosive 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, which brings back vividly a time when the cry ""the whole world is watching"" was believable, to the point where the White House began a campaign to undermine the impact of the network news divisions.
In these two extended recollections, Mr. Frank's full voice comes through and the results are riveting. For the most part, however, Mr. Frank stays at a distance, doing his story and himself a bit of a disservice.
He is commendably unself-congratulatory, pointing out his monumental mistakes -- like trying a rotating anchor system for the evening newscast in 1970 -- far more emphatically than his strokes of genius, as in the pairing of Chet Huntley with David Brinkley in 1956. (He does point out that it was he who, pressed for an ending to the telecast, typed out the phrases ""Good night, David,"" ""Good night, Chet."")
But the events themselves are enough to reveal just how crucial a role he played in the development of network news. Mr. Frank was one of the broadcast journalism pioneers who made up the rule book of television news as they went along. As he points out, whenever he or his bitter CBS rivals (ABC is rarely a factor in his story of those years) made a decision on how to cover an event, a precedent was set.
Certainly Mr. Frank and his NBC team helped make convention coverage the competitive watershed for network news. Mr. Frank tells several well-known stories from his own vantage point: the ousting of Walter Cronkite as CBS anchor in the 1964 convention after being ""clobbered"" in the ratings by Huntley and Brinkley; the forced ejection of John Chancellor from the convention floor the same year, when Republican security was trying to clear the floor of the press.
But he also adds some moments we never saw: a sweet story of Hubert H.  Humphrey on the primary trail in 1960, worrying as much about his son getting cold as winning votes; a ""moment of terror"" in 1964 when Republican delegates shook their fists at the NBC booth in response to Dwight D. Eisenhower's denunciation of ""sensation-seeking columnists and commentators""; an embarrassing moment at the Democratic Convention the same year when he was compelled by his superiors to run home movies of the Lyndon B. Johnson family, including shots of Lynda Bird in her Doctor Dentons. As Mr. Frank puts it, ""Words cannot capture the banality.""
Mr. Frank, though originally a print journalist, quickly concluded that television news is about pictures and thus fundamentally different. ""Seeing things happen, on the other hand, was knowing about them in a totally new dimension."" And he emphasized, as producer and president of NBC News, that pictures are what distinguish television news.
Among many other things, he believes network news has lost that insight.
The book suffers at times from Mr. Frank's offhand style of reminiscing. Some references are sloppy (he twice mentions an NBC reporter as ""McGee"" and only on third reference fills it out as Frank McGee). And Mr. Frank never sketches in any depth the now celebrated people he knew and worked with.
We don't learn much about Mr. Huntley or Mr. Brinkley, or what he thought of them personally, except in occasional asides. The latter parts of his career are also far less compelling, especially a second tenure as president of NBC News, when things went far less well.
But the book certainly recaptures what truly were the glory days of broadcast news and a time when life in America played out, in astonishingly exciting, occasionally chilling detail, on the television screen.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Delta Burke As Delta, Fierce Singer
Nailing down any possible identity questions, Delta Burke is playing Delta Bishop in ""Delta,"" the new ABC comedy series having a preview at 9:30 tonight before settling into its regular Thursdays-at-8 slot.
In recent years, Ms. Burke became a fixture in tabloids with problems ranging from public spats with her co-stars and producers on CBS's ""Designing Women"" to weight battles second in intensity and frustration only to Oprah Winfrey's. Now, in a brand-new blond coiffure, a blithely plump Ms. Burke stars as an aspiring country-western singer waiting on tables in a Nashville bar. This may not be her smartest career move.
Married for eight years to a man less than enthusiastic about her singing, Delta Bishop decides to head for Nashville and move in with her always cheerful and supportive cousin Lavonne (Gigi Rice). Delta rushes over to the Green Lantern bar, where Patsy Cline supposedly once sang, and persuades the new owner, Darden (Earl Holliman), to give her a waitress job and an opportunity to perform on amateur nights. Also in the show's core group are Connie (Nancy Giles), a sassy waitress from Detroit who professes to loathe the South, and Thelma (Beth Grant), a sarcastic hairdresser who believes that house calls are beneath her.
Delta is apparently supposed to be feisty, but Ms. Burke goes for a fierce determination that usually ends up far less cute than presumably intended. Tonight Delta does get a chance to sing, miscalculating with a slow ballad but quickly recouping with ""something a little happier"": ""Blue Moon of Kentucky."" A star is born? Maybe. On Thursday, much to Darden's displeasure, Delta relentlessly pursues a customer who happens to be a big recording producer. The man finds her behavior genuinely objectionable. So, I suspect, will a good many television viewers.
Carefully lighted and dressed, Ms. Burke tries hard, too hard. The show's opening theme, ""Climb That Mountain High,"" is sung quite nicely by Reba McEntire. Delta  ABC, 9:30 tonight Produced by Jay Kleckner and Lisa Albert; written by Eric Horsted; Cassandra Clark and Debbie Pearl, co-producers; Shari Tavey, associate producer; Robin Schiff, creative consultant; a Bungalow 78 and Perseverance co-production in association with Universal Television; Delta Burke, Miriam Trogden and Ken Estin, co-executive producers; Barry Kemp, executive producer. Delta Bishop . . . Delta Burke Darden Towe . . . Earl Holliman Lavonne Overton . . . Gigi Rice Thelma Wainwright . . . Beth Grant Connie Moore . . . Nancy Giles Buck Overton . . . Bill Engvall Charlie Bishop . . . Kevin Scannell Andrew . . . Tim Choate Hoyt . . . John Voldstad Dr. Foster . . . Bruce E. Morrow",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Putting the 'Wild' in 'Wild West'
In these multi-cultural times, it may not come as unadulterated praise to credit someone with defining America's vision of the Old West, but ""Frederic Remington: The Truth of Other Days"" illuminates the artist's achievement without subjecting it to a test for political correctness. Setting Remington's paintings and sculptures against his own words, crisply delivered by Ned Beatty, the hourlong ""American Masters"" documentary, tonight at 9 on Channel 13, shows and tells how the Easterner helped create a Western myth that has not yet lost its power.
Although Gregory Peck's narration seems on the point of expiring with every slow breath, the dramatic depictions of cowboys and Indians, cavalrymen and horses make a spirited hour. Hundreds of them appeared in magazines that were just beginning to find a mass audience in the second half of the 19th century, a success that may have led some critics to shrug off Remington as a mere illustrator. No attempt is made in the program to establish his place in American art; the emphasis is on the message of his work, which is presented as a kind of rudimentary Darwinism.
His portraits of Indians are no less heroic than those of cowboys (see his painting of a Crow facing death, ""Ridden Down""), but he mocked those he called ""the friends of the Indian."" He saw and painted the Indian as ""a worthy adversary"" but also as ""a strange primitive."" Attracted always to rugged types and physical action, he appreciated the nobility in the Indians' struggle for survival, but his perspective was that of the white settlers; to him, as one of the evening's Remingtonians sums up, the fight was for land, and the fittest would survive.
Although he worked when the frontier was already giving way to the railroad, in his words to ""brick buildings, derby hats and blue overalls,"" he drew men and horses in desperate action -- as in ""A Dash for the Timber."" The drawings came at least as much from his imagination as from reality; one observer calls his technique ""supercharged realism."" Yet he prided himself on the accuracy of his draftsmanship. ""I am the first man who does horse action as it really is,"" he said, and viewers caught by the energy of his paintings and sculptures like ""The Bronco Buster"" will not be quick to call it merely a boast.
He was largely self-taught, and toward the end of his career he was still struggling with the treatment of moonlight and firelight. ""I have to find out once and for all if I can paint,"" he said three years before his death at the age of 48. But he made no apologies for his lifelong emphasis on subject matter, the main attraction of his work for his many admirers.
Whatever Remington's standing among critics, his impact down the decades comes through strikingly in scenes from John Ford's fine cavalry movie, ""She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,"" which drew faithfully not only on the artist's depictions of cavalry life but on his use of color and composition. Attention is drawn especially to the way the massed figures move on both canvas and screen, from upper right to lower left. Big men in a landscape of big nature was a steady theme of both the movie maker and the painter.
""There are no cowboys any more,"" Remington wrote late in his short, prolific life. Yet he was as responsible as anyone for making sure they would live on in America's consciousness.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; Three Short Stories About Men and Women
Women and Men 2,"" Sunday at 9 P.M. on HBO, is viewer friendly. By far the best of these dramatizations of three short stories comes first, leaving about an hour free for a good book. The offering in last year's tribute to 20th-century American writers consisted of works by Ernest Hemingway, Mary McCarthy and Dorothy Parker. Tonight brings Irwin Shaw, Carson McCullers and Henry Miller.
""Return to Kansas City,"" punchily adapted and directed by Walter Bernstein, is based on Shaw's tightly wrought story of a boxer (Matt Dillon) who is under pressure from his wife (Kyra Sedgwick) to go for the big fight and the big money before he feels ready. She wants the cash so she can take the baby to visit the folks back in Kansas City.
The simple plot is deepened by the performances. Mr. Dillon's boxer, Eddie Megeffin, is shadowed even in victory by premonitions of defeat. He knows the smart way to handle his career is to move up slowly and avoid being overmatched, but in bedroom encounters he is at the mercy of his sexy wife, Arlene. In Ms. Sedgwick's performance, honest, affectionate and tough Arlene leaves no doubt that her body is enough to subdue many men's good sense.
Mr. Bernstein's knowingly dated script (""Fighting Joe Patrick is a one-way ticket to the hospital"") fits snugly with the feel of apartment life in New York City in the Depression years. Arlene complains that a neighbor ""can hear me reading the newspaper."" Among the tunes coming over the old Zenith radio: ""In the Still of the Night,"" ""Date With an Angel"" and ""He Loves and She Loves."" Eddie loves and Arlene loves, but the quick, powerful end of ""Return to Kansas City"" strikes a knockout blow at romance.
It's not a good night for wives. In the Carson McCullers story, ""A Domestic Dilemma,"" Andie MacDowell plays Emily, who spends her days in suburbia sipping or gulping sherry. Her husband, Martin (Ray Liotta), is too worried about the safety of their two young children to concentrate on his job at the advertising agency. ""Will we ever be as we were before?"" she asks plaintively. Depressing as it is to report, Emily seems to be competing with the cute kids for Martin's attention. Bring out the sherry.
But if it's unadulterated dolor you're after, hang in for the last story, ""Mara,"" a vague dramatization of Miller's ""Mara-Marignan."" Mara (Juliette Binoche) is a sensational-looking Parisian prostitute in a very short skirt who, despite appearances, can't seem to make a success of her career. She is saved from some trouble with the other girls on the corner by Henry (Scott Glenn), a writer. Henry is carrying a torch; Mara is carrying the weight of the world. Soon she is telling him in a busy brasserie: ""I'm no whore. I'm not cut out for this. I'm pure gold."" Then it's passion in an alley. ""More, more, more,"" pants Mara. Their night's encounter, stuffed with moody looks, murky dialogue and muddy sentimentality, is pure saucisson. Women and Men 2
RETURN TO KANSAS CITY, starring Matt Dillon and Kyra Sedgwick; written and directed by Walter Bernstein, adapted from a story by Irwin Shaw; produced by David Brown and William S. Gilmore.
A DOMESTIC DILEMMA, starring Ray Liotta and Andie MacDowell; directed by Kristi Zea; adapted by Robert Breslo from a story by Carson McCullers; produced by Jonathan Demme.
MARA, starring Scott Glenn and Juliette Binoche; written and directed by Mike Figgis, adapted from a story by Henry Miller; produced by David Brown and William S. Gilmore. Sunday night at 9 on HBO.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Case Closed A Little Too Neatly
Back for a third season, its formula more finely tuned than ever, NBC's ""Law and Order"" gets involved in an incendiary case tonight and then, quite uncharacteristically, does a cop-out.
Filmed in New York City, each hourlong episode in the series is just about equally divided between a police precinct, from where detectives track down the perps, and criminal court, where assistant D.A.'s prosecute them. Most prominent in the police contingent are the detectives Phil Ceretta (Paul Sorvino), soon to be replaced by Jerry Orbach as Lennie Briscoe, and Mike Logan (Christopher Noth). Their boss is Precinct Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek). The Assistant D.A.'s are Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty) and Paul Robinette (Richard Brooks), overseen by District Attorney Adam Schiff (Steven Hill).
If the fictional scripts don't roll directly off real headlines, they certainly retain enough details of resemblance to be more than coincidental. More to the point, perhaps, the writing for the show is sharp, lean and obviously well researched. Add a cast that has evolved into a confident repertory company, and ""Law and Order"" is among television's top drama series. It deserves better than to be scheduled against ABC's ""Civil Wars,"" another series in the same class. Little wonder that weekly television dramas are so often perceived to be an endangered species.
Created by Dick Wolf, an executive producer of the show, ""Law and Order"" has the good sense to back up its regular cast with strong guest stars. Tonight's remarkably strong lineup includes Joe Morton, Gloria Foster and Eric Bogosian. Their riveting performances make the ultimate fudging of the plot all the more regrettable.
The episode opens with the killing of a black leader at a public rally. Reverberations of the Malcolm X story are no doubt intentional. The top suspect turns out to be a white man (Jeff Gendelman), a teacher seen fleeing the scene. His former wife (Cynthia Martells), whom he keeps pursuing, is black and was having an affair with the murdered leader, known for his womanizing. The dead man's wife (Ms. Foster), who was standing near him at the rally, identifies the teacher. The police detectives believe they have their man.
Moving to court, the teacher is represented by Gary Lowenthal (Mr. Bogosian), an abrasive type who will pull anything to plant seeds of doubt in the minds of jurors. The trial turns ugly. One black spectator shouts, ""That damned Jew killed Marcus and now a Jew lawyer is going to let him walk!"" One of the dead man's top aides (Mr. Morton) warns, ""That man gets off, and the Los Angeles riots will look like a pillow fight.""
A verdict is delivered, but even for Stone and Robinette, the case is probably not solved. It begins to look as if the killing may have been carried out by someone inside the black organization, perhaps the jealous wife or a lieutenant demanding more militancy.
The payoff in ""Law and Order,"" and shows like it, is nearly always an ending that does not leave the audience hanging. Yes, life does not work that way, but that's precisely why fiction can be so seductive. When ""Law and Order"" skillfully concocts a plot that exploits sensitive issues and powerful emotions, it just won't do to fade out with a shrug. ""Who did it?"" someone asks. ""Hell,"" comes the answer, ""blame it on the C.I.A.""
Or on a story-conference miscalculation. Law and Order  NBC, tonight at 10. (Channel 4 in New York) Produced by Wolf Films in association with Universal Television; Robert Nathan, Jeffrey Hayes, producers; Michael Chernuchin and Arthur Forney, co-producers; Gus Makris, director of photography; Rene Balcer, story editor; Michael Struk and Bill Fordes, technical advisers; Walton Green, co-executive producer; Dick Wolf and Joseph Stern, executive producers. WITH: Michael Moriarty, Paul Sorvino, Christopher Noth, Richard Brooks, Dann Florek, Steven Hill, Carolyn McCormick.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Lively Portrait of a Disappearing Sect
The prospect of a television retrospective is usually about as inviting as a banquet of warmed-over fast food. But occasionally the distinction is merited, and such an occasion is at hand. Inspired by a retrospective of Ken Burns's work at the Walker Art Museum in Minneapolis, PBS is bringing back four early documentaries by the creator of ""The Civil War."" The first, his 1985 hourlong program ""The Shakers: Hands to Work, Hearts to God,"" can be seen tonight at 10 on Channel 13 and is very much worth a second, or first, look.
""The Shakers"" displays many of the elements that would make ""The Civil War"" so accomplished and rewarding a series. There is the mastery of the camera in bringing the past to life by the graceful merging of grainy old stills and carefully framed new pictures; the use of diaries, letters and music to evoke the feelings of another time; the well-edited interviews and straightforward narration (delivered as usual by David McCullough), and, most affecting, the respect and affection for America's past.
The Shakers, officially, the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Coming, arrived in America from England shortly before the American Revolution. Thousands were attracted to the sect during revivalist and utopian enthusiasms of the 19th century, but the 20th century brought dissolution as young people were lured away by new opportunities and pleasures. Today the sect has fewer than 100 members, all in Maine and New Hampshire. Three of them, looking as though they had stepped out of century-old daguerreotypes, speak and sing for the camera.
For fanciers of Americana, the Shakers, who owed the name to their impulsive tremblings during worship, are remembered mainly for their houses and furniture. (Toward the end of the hour, you can see a Shaker chair auctioned off for $1,000.) The exquisite spareness of their work was meant to manifest the spirit of their lives. Bound to simplicity and celibacy, they channeled their creative impulses into artifacts, which in tonight's glowing photographs should enable even skeptics to see what the Shakers meant when they said God dwelt in details. They prized the practical and shunned the merely ornamental. ""Order,"" they held, ""is heaven's first law.""
The program notes that the Shakers were not universally admired in their time. James Fenimore Cooper wrote of their ""fanaticism and folly"" and Nathaniel Hawthorne found them appealing yet slightly ridiculous. The communitarianism, the celibacy, the frenzied dancing made them seem strange, and like other sects, they found themselves periodically persecuted.
Today they seem, at worst, to be the mildest of eccentrics, who sought only peaceful isolation and still have things to teach. In a particularly lovely scene, an elderly woman, in black against a white wall, performs a ritualized version of a Shaker dance that expresses the severe simplicity of her faith. Another sings the hour's theme: ""I will bow to be simple/I will bow to be free.""
In coming months, viewers will be offered three other memorable Ken Burns documentaries: ""Brooklyn Bridge"" (1982), ""The Statue of Liberty"" (1985) and ""Huey Long"" (1985). Like the products of the Shakers at their best, they evidence a dedication, honesty and conviction that come together as a form of faith. The Shakers Hands to Work, Hearts to God  Directed by Ken Burns; written by Mr. Burns and Amy Stechler Burns; David McCullough, narrator. At 10 tonight on Channel 13. With the voices of Julie Harris, Paul Roebling, Olga Bellin and others.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Film Institute Honors Sidney Poitier
The American Film Institute is bestowing still another Life Achievement Award, its 20th, and that means still another prime-time television special, taped at the unfailingly elegant awards ceremony in Hollywood. Standing ovations, speeches of tribute, biography mixed with film clips: the format never varies. But tomorrow night's ""A.F.I. Salute to Sidney Poitier,"" on NBC at 9:30, has a broader significance than most. Suffusing the usual glitter is the troubling issue of race and racism in Hollywood, indeed in America.
Beyond being a distinguished actor, Mr. Poitier is a powerful symbol. That's made clear at the outset when Denzel Washington recalls meeting him at a bookstore on Wilshire Boulevard in 1977. Mr. Washington was just getting started as an actor. Mr. Poitier graciously gave him his time and attention. Looking at the table of honor now, Mr. Washington says simply: ""I love you. I respect you. I imitate you.""
That's the note inevitably struck by the younger black actors now working in film, from Danny Glover, who praises ""the first African-American man to be accepted as a universal figure on screens around the world,"" to Morgan Freeman and the new director John Singleton (""Boyz N the Hood""). In his quiet way, rarely confrontational, Mr. Poitier toppled barriers. A good many exist to this day, but none is quite as formidable as when he started out.
Mr. Poitier, born in Miami in 1924 and reared in the Bahamas, moved to New York when he was 16 years old, and began working with the American Negro Theater a few years later. His friend Harry Belafonte, who is the host for the salute, recalls that at the time, he was an assistant janitor and Mr. Poitier was a dishwasher. They were both 19. In 1950, Mr. Poitier got his break in a small but prominent role in the film ""No Way Out"" with Richard Widmark.
Subsequent work proved spotty but often choice: ""Blackboard Jungle"" (1955); ""The Defiant Ones"" (1958); ""A Raisin in the Sun"" (1961); ""Lilies of the Field"" (1963), for which Mr. Poitier won an Oscar for best actor, the first ever in that category for a black; and then ""In the Heat of the Night,"" ""To Sir, With Love"" and ""Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?"" (all 1967). Mr. Poitier has also directed such films as ""Uptown Saturday Night"" (1974) and ""Stir Crazy"" (1980). Last year, he portrayed the former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in the acclaimed television film ""Separate but Equal.""
In his A.F.I. acceptance speech, he thanks everybody from his parents to an old Jewish waiter who long ago helped him with his reading. He also ticks off, pointedly, the names of Alice Childress, Canada Lee, Jackie Robinson and Lorraine Hansberry. Fittingly enough, sitting at one of the tables and getting the loudest applause -- and a kiss from the star -- is Rosa Parks, the woman who entered the history books back in 1955 when she refused to sit in the back of a Montgomery, Ala., bus.  'Clarissa'  PBS Sunday at 9 P.M.
Running to seven volumes and, according to Alistair Cooke, one million words, Samuel Richardson's 18th-century epistolary novel has been reduced by the BBC to three juicy hour-long episodes perfect for ""Masterpiece Theater."" Clarissa, a very virtuous heiress, finds herself lusted after by Robert Lovelace, an incorrigible rake. She resists, but he won't take no for an answer, triggering a plot that involves, for starters, abduction, fraud, prostitution and rape. But (shades of ""Dangerous Liaisons"") everyone wears incredibly lavish costumes and, with the exception of poor Clarissa, manages to maintain a magnificent hauteur while behaving abominably. The newcomers Saskia Wickham and Sean Bean are just fine in the lead roles. A.F.I. Salute to Sidney Poitier George Stevens Jr., producer and founding director of the American Film Institute; Caroline Stevens, co-producer; Allan Kartun, director; Michael B. Seligman, associate producer; Elvis Mitchell, writer. Tomorrow night at 9:30 on NBC.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Home Video
French Classic on Tape
Commercials on videos are generally confined to hit movies like ""Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"" (Diet Coke), ""Rain Man"" (Buick) and ""Top Gun"" (Pepsi). The hugely successful ""Home Alone"" reportedly will be released by Fox Video this summer with a commercial message from a corporate sponsor. But what about a commercial on a 46-year-old black-and-white French film with subtitles?
Later this year, Home Vision, a Chicago distributor of arts titles, plans to release for the first time on video ""Les Enfants du Paradis"" (""Children of Paradise""), Marcel Carne's picaresque classic about the lives and passions of a troupe of street performers in 19th-century Paris.
Like Fox Video, Home Vision has been looking for a company to sponsor its movie on both TV and video -- under certain conditions. A sponsor of ""Les Enfants"" would get a discreet mention before and after the film. ""We are also certainly open to discussing an appropriate commercial,"" says Christine Lundberg, a vice president of Home Vision.
The French Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques has named ""Les Enfants"" the finest French sound film of all time. ""We're told it's the most-requested foreign film not yet on video,"" Ms. Lundberg says. But that kind of enticement has not yet produced a sponsor, most of whom want to know how many viewers will see their messages. ""I tell them that it's a qualitative investment, not a quantitative one,"" Miss Lundberg says. Home Vision, she adds, plans to release the video with or without a sponsor. Adventures in Space
The stars and planets figure prominently on two new videos, both of them boxed sets. One is PBS Home Video's six-tape set ""The Astronomers,"" the PBS television series that begins on Monday. The price is $129.95. Not every video store carries PBS Home Video titles. To find the store nearest you, call 800-776-8300. (Remember, too, that PBS shows are released by many other distributors, not just PBS Home Video.)
The second release dates back to the 1930's and to the fictional exploits of the intrepid space adventurer Flash Gordon. When Earth and its people were faced with otherwordly threats like heat projectiles, or the destruction of the atmosphere by nitron lamp, or a death dust that killed only people of high intelligence, the threat invariably led Flash and his friends to the planet Mongo and its leader, Ming the Merciless. Now available is a four-cassette version of the Flash Gordon serials, starring Buster Crabbe. The set, distributed by Questar, runs a total of about six hours and costs $89.95.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Postnuptial Disagreements, on '48 Hours'
How do he and she annoy each other? ""48 Hours"" counts the ways. Some of the situations reported tonight in ""For Better, for Worse,"" a two-hour special about marriage and divorce American style, are sad. But the program (at 9 on CBS), which seems like the fruit of a marriage of real-life soap opera and ""Saturday Night Live,"" produces more laughs than tears.
In bouncy ""48 Hours"" style, the camera pops in on prenuptial negotiations between a pair of affianced M.B.A.'s; a conversation with a wife and husband who are trying to stop hating each other; a household with six children, three belonging to her, three to him; the living arrangements of a couple who have not been on speaking terms for two years as they wait for the courts to decide who gets what; a group of fathers in Georgia whose former wives have taken their children to distant parts; a meeting in a coffee shop where a woman tells her boyfriend she has learned he is married, and more.
For the people involved, there is nothing humorous about the busted relationships and messy consequences in a society where more than half of all marriages and remarriages do not last. A lawyer is seen cautioning a client, ""As much in love as you are today, that's as much out of love as you may be tomorrow.""
But it is hard to restrain a chuckle or even a guffaw watching two financial advisers who are not yet married dickering over who will get what in case of divorce. What percentage, for example, will she have of his future business if it ever earns anything? ""I thought at some point your interest will max out,"" he says. Could Woody Allen have invented this?
And how about that couple in the throes of divorce who have been living on separate floors of a house for two years, without speaking. The husband had the sense not to speak to ""48 Hours"" either; the wife spoke, the ultimate revenge. She tells how he hid the Cuisinart every time she put it on his kitchen counter. So she hid the coffee grinder.
The evening's best punch line comes when that woman in the coffee shop tells the boyfriend she used a private detective to discover he is married, not widowed as represented. His response: ""I'm shocked.""
There is even an element of parody in the segment ""Fathers Are Parents Too,"" about several men who have bonded to protest the loss of their children after divorce. In a version of stick-a-mike-in-the-mouth-of-the-victim journalism, the ""48 Hours"" reporter Bernard Goldberg keeps inquiring, ""What was it like when you lost this child?"" The camera waits for tears to develop.
The cheery news here is that one person's problem is another's prosperity. Marriage counselors, psychologists, therapists and other entrepreneurs, not counting television producers, are making comfortable careers out of marital discord. Lawyers, of course, are doing best of all. ""Divorce is bigger than it used to be,"" says a specialist who charges $375 an hour for his services. The lawyer who is handling the prenuptial negotiations recommends that everyone have such an agreement. Surprise!
Marital disarray is even providing foreign aid to one of the good neighbors to the south. For $2,500 to $5,000 and a short stay in the Dominican Republic, you can recapture single bliss by hiring a lawyer known as ""Dr. Divorce,"" the fastest legal gun in the Western Hemisphere. The whole process, including a 75-second appearance before a judge (the camera is allowed into the courtroom), takes just 48 hours. 48 Hours For Better, for Worse Al Briganti, senior producer; Andrew Heyward, executive producer. At 9 tonight on CBS.
REVIEW/TELEVISION",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; From Illusion to Knowledge to Church
It's a heady few days for Channel 13, as the station moves in a sort of theological ascent from tonight's program on imagination to tomorrow's on knowledge to Friday's on faith.
""Masters of Illusion,"" at 10:30 tonight, is a fast and fascinating look at the development of perspective by such Renaissance masters as Piero Della Francesca and Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael, Uccello and Mantegna. To James Burke's illuminating narrative, the camera shows off such tricks of the eye as vanishing points and explores the uses of light and shade and point of view that transformed the history of painting.
Speaking of point of view, a Mantegna exhibition is even now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This half hour, produced by the National Gallery of Art, should add to visitors' pleasure the kick of recognizing how they are being fooled. 'Memory and Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress'  Channel 13 Tomorrow at 10 P.M.
""Memory and Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress,"" at 10 P.M. tomorrow, is an awe-inspiring tour through America's great repository of everything worth repositing, from documents of the Founding Fathers, to maps (four million of them), to musical scores, to carefully preserved movie negatives and much, much more.
Particular attention is paid to the use of computers in making the material easier to get at. Among the personages delivering testimonials to this inestimably valuable institution are Henry Steele Commager, Julia Child, Ted Koppel, Francis Ford Coppola and Penn and Teller, who are seen doing some research on Houdini. 'Rainbow in the Clouds'  Channel 13 Friday at 9 P.M.
Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco is not up there on the tourist itinerary with the Library of Congress or the Metropolitan Museum, but Maya Angelou makes quite a case for its significance on Friday night at 9. ""Rainbow in the Clouds"" is a celebration of the church, which is in San Francisco's Tenderloin district, and of its leading spirit, the engaging Rev. Cecil Williams, who has carried his gospel into the streets.
Framed by a spirited Sunday morning service, to which Ms. Angelou contributes, the hour includes interviews with several parishioners who tell of their redemption, and shows the congregation in action, marching against drug peddlers and delivering food, clothes and less tangible goods to those whom Mr. Williams calls the city's losers. Masters of Illusion  Directed and produced by Rick Harper for Harper Films in association with the National Gallery of Art; Joseph J. Krakora, executive producer; James Burke, host. At 10:30 tonight on Channel 13.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Hidden Cameras at Day-Care Centers
You don't have to have a child in a day-care center to be pained by some of the scenes in tonight's edition of ""Prime Time Live,"" at 10 on ABC . Using hidden cameras, the program's producers caught the goings-on at three centers in the New Orleans area to which middle-class parents entrusted their babies and preschoolers. In one, the children are shown being cared for, played with, hugged. In the other two, the pictures show confusion, sloppiness, inattention and, in one instance, a sharp smack to a baby's face.
Diane Sawyer reports finding similar scenes around the country during a three-and-a-half-month investigation: ""Children running wild, screaming all day long. Children who weren't fed. Children playing on filthy floors amid dirty diaper pails. Broken cribs. Unsafe changing tables. Children who stayed in cribs all day long, no adults to play with them.""
For $45 to $65 a week, the children seem to be getting as much carelessness as care. In one center, the camera focuses on a year-old boy named Patrick. Ms. Sawyer says he wandered around, unnoticed, all morning: ""He never got a bottle, he never got a meal."" What he did manage to get was a lighted match.
Pictures of children confined in car seats all day, a child sitting in his own vomit and the boy with the lighted match are shown to Steve Phillips, the head of day-care licensing for Louisiana. ""That's terrible,"" he says. ""That's not good."" He regrets that inspectors can't be everywhere all the time. He confirms that these are Class A centers, which receive Federal funds, and are better inspected than other centers. Although tonight's program does not go deeply into public policy, it leaves the impression that the United States is not a world leader in day care.
Three child-care experts invited to look at the pictures are plainly appalled. ""They're giving children psychological thalidomide,"" says Dr. Edward Zigler of Yale University. But the most affecting reactions come from Debra and Ed Onnebane, who placed their 5-month-old son in one of the centers exposed here. One woman was assigned to watch over 17 children, some of whom sat in high chairs for as long as 90 minutes with nothing to do. Mr. Onnebane says he hoped little Adam would be smiling all day long; in fact, Adam wound up crying most of the time.
Reacting to the picture of the baby being slapped, Mr. Onnebane says, ""It makes me furious."" A lot of other people will probably be made furious tonight.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; A Very Different Oscars Broadcast
""Young, beautiful and talented -- a winning combination in any league: Daryl Hannah!"" exclaimed the off-camera announcer at Monday night's 64th annual Academy Awards presentation. ""Everybody's definition of class: Academy Award winner Audrey Hepburn!"" ""Three of Hollywood's most respected citizens: Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Geena Davis!"" Apparently nobody had notified the announcer, who provided virtually the only touches of old-style Hollywood hokum, that the game would be played a little differently this time.
Jack Palance: that's the short answer to what made Monday's uncharacteristically lively ABC telecast (produced by Gilbert Cates) a welcome departure and a winner in its own right. Of course there was nothing unusual about a best-supporting-actor award to a 72-year-old Hollywood veteran appearing in ""City Slickers,"" the year's most lucrative sentimental comedy. However, Oscar audiences ordinarily have to wait all night for the kind of loose-cannon appearance Mr. Palance put in at the beginning of the show. And Mr. Palance's cheerfully unprintable acceptance speech, not to mention his impromptu calisthenics display, provided Billy Crystal, the program's sensationally quick-witted host, with a whole evening's worth of running gags.
""A man of few words,"" Mr. Crystal observed after his ""City Slickers"" co-star had concluded his remarks, which did not include thank-yous to any of the film's other personnel. ""Jack Palance just bungee-jumped off the Hollywood sign,"" he said a little while later.
""I know why I wasn't nominated; it's because I'm a woman,"" Mr. Crystal went on. This was only one of the evening's scattered references to the fact that Barbra Streisand was not nominated for best director, the first of which was in Mr. Crystal's own song medley, which has become one of the show's most delightful features. His introduction to the medley, in which he explained that the audience would be spared the obligatory splashy production number to start the show, made it that much better.
""Seven nominations on the shelf/ Did this film direct itself?"" Mr. Crystal sang, imitating Ms. Streisand's ""Funny Girl"" musical style. When it came to ""J. F. K."" he crooned (to the tune of ""Three Coins in the Fountain""):
Three shots in the plaza  Who done it, Mr. Stone?  The C.I.A. or Homer Simpson?  The F.B.I. or Vic Damone?
Even better than Mr. Crystal's musical interlude was his opening monologue, which set the evening's clever and iconoclastic tone. ""I remember when people used to take out
trade ads
,"" he said of Warren Beatty's recent high-profile extracurricular activities and their possible promotional benefits to ""Bugsy."" Of Oliver Stone he said, ""Some say he's paranoid, but his next movie is entitled 'The
Men
Who Shot Liberty Valance.' ""
""They can't afford to have another hit,"" he said of the financially troubled Orion Pictures, which wound up sweeping the awards with ""The Silence of the Lambs."" That film's Hannibal Lecter face mask provided Mr. Crystal with the perfect prop for a wicked, show-stopping entrance.
Appearances by Thing (the ambulatory hand from ""The Addams Family""), the crew of the space shuttle Atlantis and an animated Beauty and the Beast as co-presenters provided the show with some novel touches. So did Mr. Crystal's running references to various male presenters (Kevin Costner, Nick Nolte, Patrick Swayze) as first-place winners of People magazine's annual citation for the Sexiest Man Alive. ""Know who was second?"" Mr. Crystal asked. ""Jack Palance."" In the sex-appeal category, the teaming of presenters like Antonio Banderas (""The Mambo Kings"") and Sharon Stone (""Basic Instinct"") showed the academy to be very much up to date.
In notably short supply was Hollywood's old guard, although Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor represented it radiantly when they teamed up to present the best-picture Oscar. The presenters were as current as Mike Myers and Dana Carvey of ""Wayne's World,"" the gallant Tom Hanks, the bizarrely matched Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis (the latter a head and a half taller than her pregnant co-star and apparently dressed as a can-can dancer), the film makers Spike Lee and John Singleton, and the nominated mother-and-daughter co-stars Diane Ladd and Laura Dern (of ""Rambling Rose""). They were ""the first mother-daughter team ever nominated if you don't count Faye Dunaway in 'Chinatown,' "" Mr. Crystal said. ""Rent it!"" he commanded, when the audience took a moment to get the joke.
The evening featured a number of touching and gracious acceptance speeches, particularly that of the great Indian director Satyajit Ray, who lay in his hospital bed in Calcutta and clutched the Oscar he received for lifetime achievement as he spoke about his award.
""This just in,"" Mr. Crystal said afterward, apropros of nothing.  ""Jack Palance has won the New York State Primary.""
The screenwriter Callie Khouri said fervently, ""For everyone who wanted to see a happy ending for 'Thelma and Louise,' for me this is it."" Bill Lauch, an architect and the companion of the winning lyricist Howard Ashman, accepted the Oscar for the song ""Beauty and the Beast"" with tremendous sad dignity, noting that this was ""the first Academy Award given to someone we've lost to AIDS."" Jonathan Demme, stammering through impassioned thank-yous for his award as best director for ""The Silence of the Lambs,"" remembered to single out and name some new directorial talent. Anthony Hopkins's brief remarks after accepting the Oscar as best actor were the very model of eloquent tact.
Although several of the speakers espoused causes (Richard Gere urging AIDS research, the feature-documentary winner calling for a boycott of General Electric), the evening's most radical message came from the awards themselves. In choosing ""The Silence of the Lambs"" and, for makeup, sound and visual effects ""Terminator 2,"" over more comforting and conventional choices, the academy further underscored the start of Oscar's new age. Only occasionally did the evening sound a nostalgically embarrassing note: when one of the editors of ""J. F. K."" offered a taste of what a big ""J. F. K."" win would have sounded like (""It's rare that a man has the courage to seek out the higher truth . . .""); in a modern dance number celebrating the nominated soundtracks, and in a clumsy performance of the nominated song from ""Hook"" by a half-dozen young actors. ""Jack Palance is the father of all those children,"" Mr. Crystal said.
The host's finest hour came with the kind of technical foul-up that often leaves the participants badly flustered. When the 100-year-old producer Hal Roach, speaking from the audience, expressed thanks for his honorary Oscar without realizing he had no microphone, Mr. Crystal saved the day. ""I think that's fitting, because Mr. Roach started out in silent films,"" he said. It is to be hoped, even though Mr. Crystal insisted Jack Palance would be the show's host next year, that he himself will be keeping up the good work.
Another valuable contribution came from Chuck Workman's witty montage, which spanned the full range of movie comedy from Chaplin and Keaton to ""Home Alone."" Last of all (and hardly least, from the spectators' standpoint), the clothes: Demi Moore's lace 1940's-style gown, Liza Minnelli's clinging black dress with cut-out shoulders), Daryl Hannah's black slip-like concoction, and Rebecca De Mornay's gown (no explanation necessary), made memorable impressions. Red ribbons signifying AIDS awareness were worn by most presenters. A couple of the men (like George Lucas, recipient of the Irving G. Thalberg award) wore strange shades of brown. Geena Davis, as mentioned, had the outfit for the record books. And Juliette Lewis needs hair help in a hurry. THE OSCAR WINNERS
Picture: ""The Silence of the Lambs"" Director: Jonathan Demme, ""The Silence of the Lambs"" Actor: Anthony Hopkins, ""The Silence of the Lambs"" Actress: Jodie Foster, ""The Silence of the Lambs"" Supporting Actor: Jack Palance, ""City Slickers"" Supporting Actress: Mercedes Ruehl, ""The Fisher King"" Original Screenplay: Callie Khouri, ""Thelma and Louise"" Adapted Screenplay: Ted Tally, ""The Silence of the Lambs' Foreign Film: ""Mediterraneo,"" Italy Art Direction: ""Bugsy"" Cinematography: ""J. F. K."" Costume Design: ""Bugsy"" Documentary Feature: ""In the Shadow of the Stars"" Documentary Short Subject: ""Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment"" Film Editing: ""J. F. K."" Makeup: ""Terminator 2: Judgment Day"" Original Score: ""Beauty and the Beast"" Original Song: ""Beauty and the Beast"" from ""Beauty and the Beast"" Animated Short Film: ""Manipulation"" Live Action Short Film: ""Session Man"" Sound: ""Terminator 2: Judgment Day"" Sound Effects Editing: ""Terminator 2: Judgment Day"" Visual Effects: ""Terminator 2: Judgment Day"" Lifetime Achievement Award: Satyajit Ray. Irving G. Thalberg Award: Given to a film maker for the body of his work. To George Lucas. Gordon E. Sawyer Award: For technical achievement. To Ray Harryhausen for his work in special effects. Special Tribute: To Hal Roach, the comedy film maker, who is 100 years old.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Letting Fundamentalists Tell Their Own Stories
Everyone knows that religious fundamentalism is on the upsurge around the globe, but exactly what the term signifies is less clear. It is applied to movements that are distinguished as much by their differences as by their similarities. So welcome to ""The Glory and the Power: Fundamentalisms Observed,"" an enlightening three-part PBS series on aspects of fundamentalism in the United States, Israel and Egypt.
The first part, ""Fighting Back,"" tonight at 9 on Channels 13 and 49, concentrates on Bob Jones University in South Carolina, which has been called the West Point of fundamentalism. This family enterprise -- run by Dr. Bob Jones Jr. and Dr. Bob Jones 3d, son and grandson of the founder -- holds fast to values that have lately become a subject of impassioned contention in national politics and some amusement on late-night television.
Bill Jersey, the executive producer of the series and the producer of this part, sensibly avoids comment and allows the school's staff and students to show and tell. There is a home economics class where young women learn that the Bible sets fashions for female dress that do not give young men the wrong idea. A similar teaching can be found in Islam, too.
Theology classes learn that women are inferior to men (""That is the way God made it,"" says Bob Jones 3d), but with big responsibilities of their own. The female students interviewed seem satisfied. One says admiringly that there is ""so much order here."" In an unsettled and unsettling world replete with moral ambiguities, faith evidently provides security for those who can embrace it without too many questions. The school, which was denied tax-exempt status by the Federal Government a few years ago because of its racial discrimination, has black students but does not permit interracial dating, presumably another biblical injunction.
Although all fundamentalist movements are marked by faith and fervor, the differences among them run deep. At Bob Jones University, with its separatist approach to religion, Billy Graham is considered too inclusive and Jerry Falwell too political. The Bob Jones students who go out as evangelists (""The blood is on you if you don't evangelize,"" a teacher warns) preach a personal salvation that is quite different from the anti-abortion calls of Randall Terry, the head of Operation Rescue, who is seen in action.
An exploratory spirit also imbues next week's program, ""This Is
Our
Land,"" an absorbing close-up of Israel's small but politically potent Gush Emunim movement. To its members, settlement of the West Bank is godly work. And the third program, ""Remaking the World,"" tells of some upper-class Egyptians who are making a political case for a return to Islamic values. In Egypt as in Israel, the narration makes plain, these fundamentalists so far represent a minority of orthodox believers.
From tonight through Thursday, at 6:30 P.M., National Public Radio will broadcast four half-hour documentaries on fundamentalism in the United States, Guatemala, the Middle East and India. Next week it will have a two-hour discussion of the themes in the radio and television programs. ""The Glory and the Power"" makes the sort of contribution to its audience's understanding of a significant phenomenon that justifies public broadcasting's franchise. Nightline  ABC Tonight at 11:30
The name Joel Barr is likely to ring a bell only for buffs of the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed 39 years ago this Friday for conspiring to pass atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. Mr. Barr, a close friend of Julius Rosenberg and a fellow Communist, worked on American military projects in World War II. He went to Eastern Europe in 1948, shortly before the F.B.I. began its Rosenberg-ring investigation.
Tonight, at 11:30 on ABC, ""Nightline"" tells how Mr. Barr and Alfred Sarant, another engineer close to the Rosenbergs, wound up in Leningrad as high-level scientists working on Soviet military projects, with many perks and the special blessing of Nikita S. Khrushchev. Home photographs show Mr. Barr and Mr. Sarant, who died in 1979, disporting with their new families and marching in some sort of parade. Their story makes a curious sidebar to the history of the cold war.
In an interview with a skeptical Ted Koppel, Mr. Barr denies doing any spying but seems a bit abashed at having worked for the Soviet military all these years. ""Politically, I think you're a dunce,"" Mr. Koppel informs him. The tale of intrigue turns into comedy when Mr. Barr, who has been allowed back into the United States, is seen waving his Communist Party card at a student Trotskyist at Columbia University. The humor mounts as he reports he is now collecting Social Security and looking for investors in a Russian computer-chip company. The final punch line: he says he voted for Edmund G. Brown Jr. in the New York Democratic primary. The Glory and the Power Fundamentalisms Observed  Channels 13 and 49 Tonight at 9 The first in a series of three television documentaries on religious fundamentalism. The producers for television are Bill Jersey, Jane Treays and Steven York; Rachel Lyon, series producer; Mr. Jersey, executive producer; Lewis Freedman, senior executive producer. A production of the Public Broadcasting  Service.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Jackie Mason Forgoes His Stand-Up Routine
Jackie Mason, comic, is taking himself quite seriously on ""The Jackie Mason Show,"" a new Mondays-at-8 P.M. series on Channel 9. This is the television equivalent of those radio call-in shows on which opinions, informed or not, are full to bursting with sound and fury. Here, though, the host works not off telephone callers but off a studio audience, described by the producers as Mr. Mason's ""handpicked celebrity audience of newsmakers."" Of course, one person's celebrity can be another's loudmouth.
The premiere two weeks ago featured assorted members of the working press, both print and electronic, in a heated session that touched on everything from the Ross Perot phenomenon to Irangate, even managing to conclude at one point that adultery is a pointless election issue. ""Nixon is the only President that never committed adultery,"" Mr. Mason insisted, ""and look at him."" Tonight the theme will be ""Lawyers,"" with the lineup scheduled to include Eric Naiburg, Albert Krieger. Barry Slotnick, Joel Siegal, Raoul Lionel Felder -- in short, most of the usual suspects.
Mr. Mason sees his show as ""democracy in action."" Think soapbox. Last week's session on crime featured a handpicked audience top-heavy with police officers who were periodically assured by Mr. Mason that ""I support law and order in this country more than anybody."" Applause. His unassailable point: Crime is terrible. Now, why do we tolerate it? What do we do about it? Take the handcuffs off the cops, said one speaker, and build more jails ""to put the criminals away and leave them away."" Applause. A former Federal drug official about to start a prison sentence maintained that he was ""set up by a drug cartel,"" prompting Mr. Mason to declare that ""this is the most horrible story having to do with a cop I ever heard yet."" Standing ovation.
A woman who is a Transit Police officer spoke of the enormous daily stress suffered by officers. Mr. Mason congratulated her for a point well taken, but then couldn't resist adding, ""you're not a bad-looking person, either."" Then, to the officer's obvious astonishment, he began wondering if women had enough physical strength for subduing tough criminals.
The officer, who identified herself as president of the Transit Police Women's Association, suggested that skill might be more important than strength, especially if you remember to ""think before you act."" The thought clearly bypassed Mr. Mason. Turning to another understandably exercised woman, her New Jersey State Police uniform heavy with citation ribbons, Mr. Mason wondered, ""Did you have something to say, sweetheart?""
In this sort of exercise, maintaining momentum tends to be more important than grappling with nagging details. When all else fails, tell a joke, something that Mr. Mason can do quite cleverly. Balance? Sure, he says, pointing to different sections of the audience: a genius here, a jerk over there. But even better than a laugh, evidently, is inflammatory rhetoric.
Mr. Mason was most impressed by Curtis Sliwa, co-founder of the Guardian Angels and, as it happens, co-host with his wife, Lisa, of a call-in radio show. Smoothly delivering sound bites, Mr. Sliwa managed to blast Ted Koppel and Mayor David N. Dinkins while hinting that he alone was the last line of defense against ""the jackals, the vultures and the buzzards"" of our society. That very sound bite turned out to be the one clipped Friday by a local newscast reporting that Mr. Sliwa had been seriously wounded on his way to his radio studio by an unidentified gunman. One of his first hospital visitors was Mayor Dinkins. Mr. Sliwa continues to recover.
Mr. Mason is on to a hot broadcasting phenomenon. Everybody, it seems, wants to sound off these days, and politicians aren't the only people searching for public forums. Mr. Mason's is no worse than most but, personally, I like his stand-up act better.  The Jackie Mason Show  Channel 9 Mondays at 8 P.M. Directed by Frank Ryan; Rosemary Henri, senior producer; Bob Woodruff and Jyll  Rosenfeld, co-executive producers.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Cheating On Welfare, Cheerfully
The soft spot that television news usually shows for people on welfare is not evident in tonight's edition of ""Prime Time Live."" The subject of Diane Sawyer's tough-minded report is the cheaters whose number, she says, far exceeds the official figure of 2 percent. One investigator puts the figure at closer to 50 percent, and tonight's exposure of the ease with which the system can be bilked makes that seem plausible.
The main scam, explained by several scammers for the benefit of a hidden camera, involves working at an unreported job and drawing welfare payments too. ""Absolutely I'm lying to them: right,"" one man tells Ms. Sawyer. ""But it's for my benefit. Why should I tell them the truth of the matter? I'm trying to get the maximum money I can out of them.""
That seems to be the spirit of most of the clients interviewed here, and it is far from irrational. The figures tell the story. One welfare recipient obtains $7,000 a year in cash and food stamps along with medical care for herself and her young daughter. She also holds two undisclosed part-time jobs that bring in $9,700. So she would need a job paying at least $16,000 a year after taxes and comparable medical care to make going straight worthwhile, and such jobs are not readily come by these days. She says, ""They can't give us what we really need, so you got to go for what you can get.""
A ""Prime Time"" producer in New York City is seen buying a fake birth certificate and an unsigned Social Security card, useful items for registering for welfare. Some people have been known to register under several different names.
Another popular technique is practiced by those whom a fraud investigator in Milwaukee calls ""welfare tourists."" They sign up in generous states like Wisconsin even though they live in Illinois, where they also receive welfare payments. They visit Milwaukee once a month to collect their checks. It seems to be generally agreed that the people on the official side of the desk are not inclined to challenge any hard-luck story.
A segment of tonight's program that was completed too late for review covers some of the solutions now being advanced for a flawed system. Meanwhile, the examples of cheating shown here can only add fuel to the anger that Ms. Sawyer notes is growing around the country. She talks to tobacco farmers in Kentucky who call themselves the working poor and feel they are being punished by having to support the nonworking poor. One man says, ""You wonder if they're not smarter than you are.""  Prime Time Live Welfare Fraud  ABC, tonight at 10 (Channel 7 in New York)
Directed by Roger Goodman; Elena Mannes, producer; Richard N. Kaplan, executive producer; Diane Sawyer, correspondent.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Reviews/Television; How 2 Parties Managed The S.& L. Bailout
The savings-and-loan disaster is not camera friendly -- no shootouts, no car chases, no emergency rooms -- which may be why it has inspired few documentaries. But like the gorilla in the bedroom, it is not easy to ignore. L. William Seidman, who until last week was in charge of the Federal agency entrusted with damage control of what he calls ""the mother of all Government mistakes,"" says the cost to taxpayers will probably reach $600 billion to $700 billion. He makes the estimate tonight on ""The Great American Bailout,"" a punchy ""Frontline"" report at 9 on Channels 13 and 49.
Robert Krulwich, the program's correspondent, traces the trouble to the 1982 deregulation of savings and loans, which permitted them to invest their federally insured deposits in all manner of risky speculations. He describes that bill, which was pushed by both the Republican Administration and the Democratic leadership in Congress, as an invitation to ""real estate speculators and outright crooks who turned some S.&L.'s into their private piggy banks."" When the real estate boom went bust, particularly in the Southwest, Washington was left holding a very big bag.
The focus tonight is not on the political wheeling-and-dealing that produced the disaster but on the calculations that prevented both parties from addressing the problem realistically before the 1988 Presidential election, when it would have been more manageable. Michael S. Dukakis seems to have been inhibited by Democrats' complicity in deregulation, and George Bush was campaigning on a platform of no new taxes: ""Read my lips."" Mr. Krulwich is skeptical of the explanations of M. Danny Wall, who served ingloriously as chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board that year and kept underestimating the costs to the Government until after Election Day.
Mr. Wall denies feeling any pressure from the White House, but matters only got worse under his watch. The case histories reviewed here do not inspire confidence. For example, in the rush to sell Gibraltar Savings, the biggest Texas savings and loan to go broke, the bank board made a deal with a group headed by Ronald O. Perelman, of Revlon. For an investment of $315 million, they received tax breaks worth $900 million. As Mr. Krulwich observes, taxpayers were subsidizing one of the richest men in the country.
The program is particularly good at showing how the bailout is working, if that is the word, these days. For a look at the way the Resolution Trust Corporation goes about selling off ""the empty shopping centers, the golf courses with no greens, the marinas with no water"" along with $100 billion worth of securities, Mr. Krulwich visits Austin, Tex., heart of speculationland, where the Government is now ""the biggest landlord in town."" He finds incompetence, confusion and possibly political favoritism, which keep raising the bailout bill to the Treasury.
One candid real estate speculator in Sacramento, Calif., tells of the bargains he has been picking up, like a brick house worth $80,000 for about $8,000. He says he would have paid more, but to his surprise his first offer was accepted. As an investor he thought, ""Terrific buy!"" As a taxpayer he thought, ""What a rip-off!""
The examples bring home what those somewhat abstract billions upon billions mean. And Mr. Krulwich raises an ominous question: With the savings and loans in collapse, can banks be far behind? Never mind shootouts and car chases. ""The Great American Bailout"" presents the biggest mugging in American history. Frontline The Great American Bailout Produced by Glenn Silber for ""Frontline"" and the Center for Investigative Reporting; David Fanning, executive producer for ""Frontline""; Robert Krulwich, correspondent. At 9 tonight on Channels 13 and 49.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Black Conservatives Get A Chance to Be Heard
They are a minority within a minority, and until recently television scarcely acknowledged the existence of black conservatives. But as hopes have faded that once-popular liberal programs can do much about the pathologies of the inner cities, critics of the welfare state have been getting more of a hearing. ""Black American Conservatism: An Exploration of Ideas,"" at 10 tonight on Channel 13, offers views that go smack against the policies of leaders of the major black organizations and the opinions of most black voters as well as the disposition of public broadcasting itself.
The hour, paid for largely by conservative foundations, does not have much visual kick. It consists in the main of expositions of the conservative position by Dr. Alan L. Keyes, who has served in the Reagan and Bush Administrations; Robert L. Woodson, a disenchanted N.A.A.C.P. member, who is now the president of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise; Joseph Perkins, an editorial writer for The San Diego Union, and like-minded exponents of black self-help.
In interviews with Clarence E. Page, the Chicago Tribune columnist who serves as host, they make the case that the values of family, religion, education and self-achievement that run deep in black America have been undermined by welfare programs operated by what Mr. Woodson calls ""the poverty Pentagon,"" professionals whose own welfare depends on the existence of a permanent underclass.
'It's the victim's responsibility to get up,"" says Mr. Woodson, whose organization works for local initiatives. The call here is not for more affirmative action or school busing, but for seed money for small businesses and community enterprise.
The camera visits a few apparent successes, especially a Washington housing project, whose residents, helped by some Federal money, cleaned up their neighborhood. The woman in charge points proudly to the well-kept streets, the flowers and, above all, the feeling of having done it themselves. ""Everyone wants to own their own,"" she says.
Mr. Page notes that the debate among black Americans over the best road to equality and success did not begin just the other day. Booker T. Washington's post-Civil War vision of gradual economic achievement through education was later written off as appeasement by W. E. B. Du Bois, who demanded full equality at once.
Tonight's company is on the side of Booker T. Washington and highly critical of the black Establishment, which Mr. Perkins charges with practicing ""a politics of victimization."" Despite the endless stories in newspapers and on television, he emphasizes, most blacks are not jobless or in jail. He says the significant growth of a black middle class in the past decade has been ignored.
No viewer is likely to come away from tonight's session convinced that conservatives have the answers to the crime, drugs, unemployment and broken families that continue to ravage the inner cities. But at the very least, the unorthodox opinions put forth here warrant a hearing. As with other hard subjects, public television fulfills its mandate when it spices its programming with views that question its viewers' assumptions and its own standard pieties. Black American Conservatism An Exploration of Ideas A report directed by Robin Downes; produced by Robin Downes and Zach Richter for the Corporation for Educational Radio and Television; a presentation of South Carolina ETV; Clarence E. Page, host. At 10 P.M. on Channel 13.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Controlling the Damage After an Environmental Disaster
The movie's first images are of pristine waters, sparkling ice floes, magnificent whales, seals and birds. Then the camera pans to the massive man-made skeletons of an oil refinery. The title alone, ""Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Disaster,"" indicates that this is going to be the kind of film that gives damage-control experts nightmares. The HBO-BBC co-production, having its premiere on Saturday at 8 P.M., is a triumph for anyone dedicated to the environment. Anyone else can't help but squirm.
There is no disputing what happened at 12:05 a.m. on Good Friday, March 24, 1989. The oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground off Alaska in Prince William Sound, causing an oil spill that would eventually reach nearly 11 million gallons. The pollution spread over 1,000 miles of Alaskan beaches and killed hundreds of thousands of animals. Long-term damage is still being calculated, as is the impact of the more recent giant spill off Spain.
The initial moments of the Alaska disaster are dramatized here, complete with an account of the ship's captain, who was later deemed drunk, and of Coast Guard surveillance officials who let the ship wander off their radar screens. But most of ""Dead Ahead"" focuses on what happened then or, more precisely, what didn't happen over the next several days, a period that was crucial if the spill was to be controlled. Michael Baker's script is compiled from press coverage, original research and interviews with witnesses. The direction by Paul Seed (""House of Cards""), pulling together complex story strands and a large cast of characters, is unobtrusively but ferociously lucid.
What gradually emerges is a portrait of woefully inadequate precautions, appalling incompetence, petty bureaucratic jockeying, greedy calculations and, eventually, allegations of a cover-up. The players include Exxon's top executives; the Alyeska pipeline consortium run by Exxon and six other major American oil companies; local Coast Guard officials, and a White House monitoring delegation. That group is led by Samuel K. Skinner (Kenneth Welsh), Secretary of Transportation; William Reilly (Michael Murphy), director of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Adm. Paul Yost (Rip Torn), head of the Coast Guard. It's a formidable lineup.
Among the few participants who emerge in this account as good guys, two are especially prominent. The Exxon official rushing from Texas to take charge of the cleanup effort, Frank Iarossi (Christopher Lloyd), is depicted as a decent man genuinely shaken by the disaster but fatally trapped between utter confusion in Alaska and image-spinning back in corporate headquarters. Dan Lawn (John Heard), Valdez district supervisor for the Alaska Department of Environmental Control, is a maverick whose constant criticisms of the general incompetence in containing the spill do not endear him to powerful interests, including some superiors in his own department.
Clearly, with its pointed exploration of issues and people, this is the kind of docudrama that must take the utmost tactical care. As it happens, the people behind ""Dead Ahead"" have an outstanding track record. The executive producers are Leslie Woodhead, who has considerable experience in television news, and Colin Callender of HBO, who was also behind two previous ""HBO Original Movies,"" ""Tailspin: Behind the Korean Airliner Tragedy"" and ""The Tragedy of Flight 103: The Inside Story.""
Filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, ""Dead Ahead"" uses news and home videotapes of the actual spill to supplement the dramatization. As the story unfolds, horror can understandably turn to disbelief and anger. There is the scene, for instance, in which Mr. Skinner, keeping the Federal Government out of the cleanup effort, smilingly assures relieved executives that ""Exxon doesn't have anything to worry about."" There are the final actual shots of dead, oil-saturated animals, in counterpoint with Mr. Lawn, wondering why ""the stock market and bottom line is more important than the land and the sea"" and President Bush, explaining in voice-over that he has concern for the environment but does not want to take ""irresponsible action.""
Strong stuff, indeed. The kind you would never come across on the commercial networks or even public television. HBO, take a bow. Dead Ahead The Exxon Valdez Disaster  HBO, Saturday at 8. Directed by Paul Seed; written by Michael Baker; music by David Ferguson; editor, David King; director of photography, Ian Punter; Colin Callender, executive producer for HBO Showcase; co-producers, Frank Doelger and Howard Meltzer; produced by David M. Thompson and John Smithson; an HBO Showcase/BBC Film; Leslie Woodhead, executive producer. Dan Lawn . . . John Heard Frank Iarossi . . . Christopher Lloyd Adm. Paul Yost . . . Rip Torn Samuel K. Skinner . . . Kenneth Walsh William Reilly . . . Michael Murphy",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Where Politics Is Not Government
For as long as anyone can remember, politics in Louisiana has been an entertaining embarrassment interrupted by brief fits of reform. Observers on ""Louisiana Boys: Raised on Politics,"" tonight's sassy yet serious review of the revels, agree that election campaigns are spectator sports throughout the state, fueled by cash and enlivened by marching bands, barbecues and forests of placards.
Channel 13 programmers are not doing the ""P.O.V."" offering a big favor by preceding it with Ken Burns's accomplished 1985 work ""Huey Long."" Viewers may find two and a half hours among Louisiana pols a lot to take in one evening. Still, the subject is as rich as a down-home gumbo, and for those who stay with it, ""Louisiana Boys"" carries the story up to the present.
Featured here in delectable newsreel clips, home movies and early television advertisements are, of course, Huey P. Long, the granddaddy of the state's antic tradition; Jimmie Davis, the country singer turned segregationist Governor; Earl K. Long, who spent part of one of his terms as Governor in mental institutions, and especially Edwin W. Edwards, who recently became Governor again despite his much publicized encounters with the law, women and the gambling tables in Las Vegas. He told reporters that he couldn't lose unless he was found in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.
The narrator explains that such funsters are now and then replaced by reformers, who never last more than a single term before the voters go back to the likes of Mr. Edwards, described here as ""perhaps the most colorful politician of all,"" no small claim in a state that has enjoyed the Longs. And, indeed, it is not easy to imagine a gubernatorial candidate anyplace else paying a deadpan tribute to the ascendance of women in politics with this line: ""Up with skirts and down with pants!""
Such moments give ""Louisiana Boys"" its Cajun zip, but the program does not fail to note that even the crookedest and craziest officials have left behind enduring public works and benefits for the state's poor, populism with a cracked face. At every election, the plutocrats pour money into all manner of campaigns, for governor to coroner; it trickles down to armies of campaign workers who make a few dollars while enjoying a big party. One assumes that the contributors get a generous return on their investments.
David Duke, the former Ku Kluxer and lately candidate for the Republican nomination for President, figures briefly tonight as a warning that the racism of years gone by still bubbles beneath the interracial surface. Even at a time when black politicians have taken power in major centers like New Orleans, Mr. Duke won a majority of the state's white voters in his 1990 Senate campaign.
Unlike many other states, Louisiana boasts huge voter turnouts. This hour may leave you wondering whether that is an unadulterated virtue. As Earl K. Long is reported to have said, ""Some day Louisiana is going to get good government, and they ain't going to like it.""  P.O.V. Louisiana Boys: Raised on Politics  PBS, tonight at 10 (Channel 13 in New York) Edited by Anne O. Craig; produced and directed by Paul Stekler, Andrew Kolker and Louis Alvarez; Edward Kurtz, narrator.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; Wendy Hiller as Countess With Past
Acting can sometimes be a miraculous profession. Wendy Hiller, who was 80 in August, has in the last year or so been doing some of the best work of her distinguished career. And ""Masterpiece Theater"" on public television has been a chief beneficiary. Earlier this season, there was ""The Best of Friends,"" with John Gielgud and Patrick McGoohan. This Sunday at 9 P.M. on Channel 13 there is ""The Countess Alice,"" co-starring Zoe Wanamaker.
Miss Hiller has always been a gifted actress. That much was spotted early on by none other than George Bernard Shaw, who handpicked her for two major film performances: Eliza Doolittle in ""Pygmalion"" and the title role in ""Major Barbara."" Among other career landmarks, she won an Oscar as best supporting actress in the 1958 film version of Terence Rattigan's ""Separate Tables."" Miss Hiller has rarely failed to impress, but her recent performances have assumed an even higher level of authority. The voice is more commanding, the bearing more regal. The effect can be quite astonishing.
""The Countess Alice,"" which was written by Allan Cubitt, casts Miss Hiller as Alice, Countess von Holzendorf, an octogenarian widow living with her middle-aged daughter, Connie (Miss Wanamaker), in today's London. A magazine has decided to do a ""then and now"" feature on Alice and some of her friends, all of whom were somewhat naughty debutantes back in the 1930's.
Assigned as the writer, Nick Black (Duncan Bell) senses a more important story lurking in Alice's life in prewar Germany when she fell in love with and married the Count von Holzendorf. When Alice objects vehemently to Connie's plan to visit the former family mansion in what was East Germany, Nick's snooping accelerates. Connie proceeds with her trip, only to make a shocking discovery.
The story is fragile and not entirely persuasive, but many of the details are skillfully observed. Pulling her ratty fur coat about herself, Alice sniffs, with an eye on animal-rights activists, ""I can expect to be spat on outside Harrods."" Giving German lessons to earn the bit of money that allows her to live in ""faded grandeur,"" as Miss Wanamaker puts it in a brief introduction to the play, Alice confesses that she has only two pupils left, one of them ""a fat businessman who assures me that German is now the lingua franca of Europe."" Just listen to Miss Hiller put vocal quotation marks around that Latin term.
Alice might insist, rather desperately, that the past is dead and buried, but it is clearly determined to return from the grave. Connie -- childless, getting old, bored with her work as a librarian -- will discover her life has been built on lies. Alice finds that there is no avoiding the truth. Still, Connie will go to the trouble of putting cheap tea in a Fortnum & Mason tin to keep up appearances for her mother. What's more, Alice knows about the tea and says nothing.
Incidentally, the dilapidated German home in the film is actually a house in Suffolk, England. Miss Wanamaker points this out as ""a fitting metaphor for the story of a woman who called both countries home."" 'Masterpiece Theater' 'The Countess Alice'  PBS, Sunday at 9 P.M. (Channel 13 in New York) Directed by Moira Armstrong; written by Allan Cubitt; produced by Colin Ludlow for BBC Television; George Faber, executive producer. Alice . . . Wendy Hiller Connie . . . Zoe Wanamaker Nick . . . Duncan Bell Margot . . . Patricia Quinn Jane . . . Lucinda Fisher Tilly . . . Sylvia Barter Beattie . . . Madge Ryan",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Reviews/Television; Different Show, Same Roseanne
Roseanne Arnold, television's reigning female star on the weekly charts, is clearly determined to succeed in the movies. Starring opposite Meryl Streep, she took an inglorious flop in ""She-Devil."" (She was still billed as Roseanne Barr at the time.) Now, at 9 tonight on ABC, she can be seen in ""Backfield in Motion,"" her first made-for-television movie. This is what used to be called a vehicle, carefully tailored to the star's already established public persona. It's silly, obvious and just outrageous enough not to disappoint Roseanne Arnold's more fervent fans.
Mrs. Arnold plays Nancy Seavers, recently widowed and moving to suburban Deerview from Los Angeles with her teen-age son, Tim (Johnny Galecki). ""Hey,"" says Tim, sulking about the new neighborhood, ""I've seen 'Hee Haw.' "" ""And now,"" says Mom with a wicked smile, ""you're gonna live it."" Tim finds his new neighbors weird, especially the contingent of housewives greeting them with tuna casseroles. Nancy has to agree: ""They do have that certain game-show-contestant glow about them.""
In Deerview, football is more than a sport: it is a way of life. Attending a pep rally at the high school, Nancy discovers that a highlight of the season is the traditional fathers and sons game. The women are expected to do their part by arranging a bake sale.
""I don't bake,"" Nancy announces, casting an ominous eye on the gathering. ""I want to play."" What about a mothers-sons game? Nancy's threat to file a sex discrimination suit makes the school consider the idea seriously.
The plot creakily set in place, the movie proceeds to go through all the expected motions. Initially isolated in the community, Nancy quickly makes inroads with the other women, who suddenly decide that they are not respected by their husbands and children. Crucial to Nancy's effort is Howard Peterman, the school's vice principal, who is considerably less than fond of the rah-rah football coach. He is played quite appealingly by Tom Arnold, Mrs. Arnold's husband, and his scenes with Nancy are suffused with an unmistakable warmth. Mrs. Arnold actually bats her eyes shamelessly.
The character of Nancy never gets in the way of the character television viewers know as Roseanne. This woman is tough and has a scathing tongue to prove it. There's that gleeful glint in her eye as she complains about another woman being in charge of everything: the P.T.A., the Girl Scouts, the Marilyn Quayle Fan Club. Rallying her players, she shouts, ""Let's get out there and show them we're a bunch of tough mothers!,"" opening the line to any spin required. And when someone at the big game suggests that Nancy sing the national anthem, the camera goes in for a tight close-up of Roseanne, barely able to suppress a giggle as she replies, ""I don't think so.""
Not a cinema classic, to be sure, but ""Backfield in Motion"" provides an unusual and, in many ways, an extraordinary performer with a serviceable showcase. Backfield in Motion Directed by Richard Michaels; written by Gene O'Neill, Noreen Tobin and Janet Brownell, based on a story by Mr. O'Neill and Ms. Tobin; produced by Bill Borden and Barry Rosenbush for Think Entertainment in association with Avnet/Kerner; Shelley Duvall, Jon Avnet and Jordan Kerner, executive producers. At 9 tonight on ABC. Nancy Seavers . . . Roseanne Arnold Howard Peterman . . . Tom Arnold Laurie . . . Colleen Camp Ann Bedowski . . . Conchata Ferrell Sheila . . . Carolyn Migini Tim Seavers . . . Johnny Galecki Betsy Dooley . . . Olivia Burnette Jimmy Cox . . . Michael Pniewski",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; Peggy Ashcroft in 'She's Been Away'
Made-for-television movies this weekend are dominated by three actresses giving superb performances in two disappointing vehicles. On ""Masterpiece Theater"" this Sunday, Channel 13 at 9 P.M., there's ""She's Been Away,"" starring Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Geraldine James, formerly co-stars in ""The Jewel in the Crown."" And directly opposite on CBS, there is the ""Hallmark Hall of Fame"" presentation of ""One Against the Wind,"" with Judy Davis as a World War II hero.
Long one of England's most acclaimed actresses, Dame Peggy died in June at age 83 and, Alistair Cooke points out, this presentation, augmented by a brief remembrance essay, is ""by way of paying tribute."" Her final film, ""She's Been Away"" is written by Stephen Poliakoff and directed by Sir Peter Hall. Dame Peggy plays Lillian Huckle who, after being kept in a mental hospital for 60 years, is released into the custody of her stockbroker nephew Hugh Ambrose (James Fox) and his wife Harriet (Miss James). Still a rather difficult woman, the ominously silent Lillian has family and friends guessing whether she remembers anything or is, in fact, devilishly clever.
Through flashbacks we learn that Lillian was a rebellious, disruptive young woman who was thrown into an institution primarily because of her contempt for her cold fish of a father. At the same time, it becomes increasingly clear that the pregnant Harriet loathes both her proper husband and their pudgy, pompous young son. Heading toward a breakdown herself, Harriet joins forces with the enigmatic Lillian, never being quite sure of the extent of the old woman's comprehension.
Dame Peggy and Miss James are wonderful, the older woman conveying a staggering range of emotions while hardly uttering a word, the younger sinking ever deeper into a self-destructive pit of contempt and recklessness. But Mr. Poliakoff's script attempts to encompass too much, from its unconvincing depiction of the mentally disturbed as admirable nonconformists to its smug put-downs of such modern artifacts as supermarkets. There are too many distractions, not least Sir Peter's hyperkinetic direction. Intended to be provocative, ""She's Been Away"" is too often exasperating.
""One Against the Wind,"" based on fact, has a far more standard plot. Miss Davis, an Australian actress, portrays the English-born Mary Lindell who, during World War II, operated an escape route in France for downed Allied pilots. Her first beneficiary is Capt. James Leggatt, played by the New Zealand actor Sam Neill, who co-starred with Miss Davis in the 1979 film ""My Brilliant Career.""
Mary is depicted as the embodiment of determined gumption, her inner uncertainties masked by outward bravado. Helped by her son, Maurice (Christien Anholt), but upset by her daughter, Barbe (Kate Beckinsale), who falls in love with a German officer, Mary takes heroic chances and ends up imprisoned not once but twice. But once the basic story is set up, ""One Against the Wind"" settles into a quite ordinary adventure story. Certain details are fuzzy, not least the status of Mary's never-seen and barely mentioned husband. And the Neil character is kept around for a hint of romance that never really amounts to anything. But Miss Davis has an opportunity to dazzle in a tour de force, and she handles it beautifully. 'Unfinished Stories 1991'
Bravo Sunday from 5 P.M. to 5 A.M.
The AIDS story in this country can now be told under the heading ""Before Magic, After Magic."" In the before column, television has distressingly little to be proud about. Few organizations have ventured beyond the boundary of not-very-benign neglect. The Bravo channel is among the exceptions with its annual fund-raising effort -- this is the third -- to help local AIDS organizations through the Broadway Cares agency. The evening's special presentations on World AIDS Day will include the complete ""Red, Hot and Blue,"" a music video featuring pop stars from K. D. Lang and Sinead O'Connor to Deborah Harry and Iggy Pop singing the songs of Cole Porter. An edited version, deleting most references to AIDS, was shown last year on ABC. Bravo will also have ""Talkin' About Aids,"" a helpful and frank Canadian documentary offering advice on disease prevention to younger viewers. The Bravo telethon will continue each Sunday during December. 'The Last Laugh'
Channel 13 Sunday at 7 P.M.
Often more courageous than its PBS umbrella organization when it comes to the subject of AIDS, Channel 13 is observing World AIDS Day with some related repeat programs and this hourlong documentary, produced a year or so ago by Karin Babbitt Chilcott and Deborah Jones. Taped at the Santa Cruz, Calif., AIDS Project, the film watches 10 professional comics developing stand-up comedy routines for 9 people with AIDS. All concerned then perform before an appreciative audience at the center. While the reality of death remains nearby throughout, the spirit of this offbeat and inspiring session is summed up in a comment by one participant: ""Optimism is what life is all about. A good laugh sort of cleans your system."" Masterpiece Theater
She's Been Away
Directed by Sir Peter Hall; written by Stephen Poliakoff; produced by Kenith Trodd; a BBC Films production; Rebecca Eaton, executive producer; Alistair Cooke, host. At 9 P.M. Sunday on Channel 13. Lillian Huckle . . . Dame Peggy Ashcroft Hugh . . . James Fox Harriet . . . Geraldine James One Against the Wind
Directed by Larry Elikann; written by Chris Bryant; director of photography, Dennis Lewiston; editor, Peter White; costumes by Betsy Heimann; music by Lee Holdridge; production designer, John Blezard; produced by William Hill for Republic Pictures; a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation; Karen Mack, executive producer. At 9 P.M. Sunday on CBS. Mary Lindell . . . Judy Davis Capt. James Leggatt . . . Sam Neill Father LeBlanc . . . Denholm Elliott Maurice . . . Christien Anholt Barbe . . . Kate Beckinsale Herman Gruber . . . Anthony Higgins",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; Murder, Rape, Mayhem: It Must Be Sweeps Time
Last Sunday, made-for-television movies featured a doctor who finds on her operating table the man who had raped her weeks earlier (CBS's ""Rape of Dr. Willis"") and a woman being imprisoned for a crime she did not commit and then being raped by a gang of female inmates (ABC's ""False Arrest""). This Sunday at 9 P.M. -- are you ready? -- you can have a mother who fails to stop one bullying son from driving her other son to murder (CBS's ""My Son Johnny"") or one whale of a woman whose credentials are ticked off in the title (ABC's ""Wife, Mother, Murderer"").
Obviously, gentle reader, we are in another television sweeps period, during which ratings are crucial in the pricing of network commercials for an entire business quarter. Industry researchers, those indefatigable souls who are generally proved wrong some 90 percent of the time, have evidently determined that women like to watch other women get into trouble and then, even if putting a considerable strain on credulity, get out. And so another dumb formula is born, usually carrying the fuzzy label of ""inspired by an actual event.""
Why is this Jeopardy Jamboree so prevalent in these particular times? Some analysts might trace the fascination with violence to recession anxieties. But escapism in the Great Depression took the form of sophisticated movies with glamorous stars like Carole Lombard and Irene Dunne, not to mention Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The unsettling truth these days is that popular entertainment is barreling toward creative bankruptcy.
Looking on as positive a side as possible, television movies, unlike their theatrical counterparts, do create badly needed employment opportunities for actresses over the age of 30. And students of cultural and social pathologies can have a field day cataloging just what types of aberrant behavior television executives think will sell best across the nation. The electronic landscape is littered with unsettling reflections of ourselves.
The dysfunctional family in ""My Son Johnny"" consists of Marianne Cortino (Michele Lee), a Baltimore widow; her older son, Johnny (Rick Schroder), and her other son, Anthony (Corin Nemec). Johnny is a smooth-talking bum, dedicated to drugs and tormenting his brother. He is also mama's pet. She insists on seeing his constant harassment of Anthony as little more than ""boys will be boys"" horseplay. Murder finally forces her, very reluctantly, to face the truth. Strong performances all around do wonders for a tediously repetitive script.
In ""Wife, Mother, Murderer,"" Marie Hilley (Judith Light) is discovered in Alabama poisoning her husband and trying to kill her daughter. It seems the insurance money would help Marie realize some of her social-climbing fantasies, most of them puny. Fleeing to Florida under a false identity, she meets a gentle soul who marries her and gives her a home in New Hampshire. Rarely at a loss for a quick con game, Marie eventually ends up in prison but manages to sweet-talk her way into a three-day furlough, during which her story is finally resolved. For a tale so chock full of incident, ""Wife, Mother, Murderer"" is numbingly predictable. Even an accomplished actor like David Dukes ends up standing around looking helpless.
And the lineup gets more crowded. This Monday, NBC's ""Deadly Medicine"" is about a pediatrician (Veronica Hamel) accused of killing children who were her patients. She didn't do it; her creepy nurse (Susan Ruttan) did. And then there's . . . but no need to burden you with too many dreary details. The networks will do that for you without even being asked. 'The Kathy and Mo Show' 'Parallel Lives'
HBO Tomorrow at 10:30 P.M.
Kathy Najimy and Mo Gaffney, taped onstage in San Francisco, bring their award-winning collection of offbeat characters to cable television in the form of an ""HBO Comedy Hour."" Together or separately, the women are hilarious and, not so incidentally, wicked gender benders as they flit in and out of male impersonations. Best bit: Two middle-aged girlfriends enrolled in women's studies at a community college going on a field trip to see a feminist performance called Sister Womyn Sister. 'Living With the
Living Theater' Channel 13 Sunday at midnight
The video artist Nam June Paik offers, with Betsy Connors and Paul Garrin, a fond and touching tribute to Julian Beck and Judith Malina and their Living Theater, which became an internationally renowned center of experimental theater in the 1960's. There are interviews with the married couple; clips from performances and from their 1984 trip to Switzerland to visit the grave of the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin; scenes from Beck's funeral, and interviews with the four Beck children. Underlying everything is, in the words of Ms. Malina, ""one's vision of revolutionary possibilities."" Anyone gorged on network foolishness these days will find the shrewd Mr. Paik's alternative invigorating. My Son Johnny
Directed by Peter Levin; written by Peter Nelson; director of photography, Ron Orieux; editor, John A. Martinelli; music by Dana Kaproff; production designer, Douglas Higgins; produced by Michael O. Gallant and Paul A. Mones for Capital Cities/ABC Video Productions in association with Citadel Entertainment and Carla Singer Productions; David R. Ginsburg and Carla Singer, executive producers. At 9 P.M. Sunday on CBS. Marianne Cortino . . . Michele Lee
Johnny Cortino . . . Rick Schroder Anthony Cortino . . . Corin Nemec Rhoda Cortino . . . Mariangela Pino Louie Cortino . . . Stephen Dimopoulos Judge Burke . . . Ken Pogue Anna Cortino . . . Joy Coghill Janet Davis . . . Gwynyth Walsh Brian Stansbury . . . Rip Torn Wife, Mother, Murderer
Directed by Mel Damski; written by David Eyre Jr.; director of photography, Joe Pennella; editor, Michael S. Murphy; costumes by Tom McKinley; music by Mark Snow; production designer, Ben Edwards; produced by Wilshire Court Productions.  At 9 P.M. Sunday on ABC. Marie Hilley . . . Judith Light
John Homan . . . David Ogden Stiers Carol Hilley . . . Kellie Overbey Joe Hubbard . . . David Dukes Gary Carroll . . . Whip Hubley Maggie . . . Jessie Jones Grandma . . . Mary Nell Santacroce Frank Hilley . . . Joe Inscoe Belinda . . . Robin Florence",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; The Road Less Traveled, and at Odd Times
Hot and muggy summer is with us once again, so this must be the time when public television traditionally and half-heartedly does its duty by video artists and aspiring film makers. At immediate hand are ""Alive From Off Center"" and ""New Television.""
PBS plans for them to run back to back from 10 to 11 o'clock on Thursday nights but, depending on how arbitrary local stations are, they can be scattered all over the schedule. Channel 13 in New York is showing ""Alive From Off Center"" on Mondays at 11 P.M. (except next week, when it will be delayed a half-hour) and ""New Television"" on Fridays at 11 P.M.
Does this time-juggling have anything to do with content? Perhaps. You know how these younger folk are -- questionable language and all that sort of thing. Many of the half-hour segments in these two series are prefaced with warnings that ""Viewer Discretion Is Advised,"" and at least one ""New Television"" entry, ""Son of Sam and Delilah"" by Charles Atlas, has been withdrawn because of objections from local stations. The video was described in a press release as ""a personal response to the sorrow and bewilderment over the loss of friends and to the fear and anxiety of life in the age of AIDS."" Evidently most public stations have had enough of that with the recent controversial showing of Marlon Riggs's documentary ""Tongues Untied"" on the series ""P.O.V."" Channel 13, let it be said, promises to show the Atlas piece in September.
In any event, the two summer series have gotten off to a spirited start. Entering its seventh season, ""Alive From Off Center,"" a self-described showcase for the performing arts, opened with ""Words in Your Face,"" an anthology of snippets from contemporary poetry, read by the poets themselves, sometimes on New York City streets, sometimes in studio settings. Mark Pellington was the director, and the content ranged from John Leguizamo's wry evocation of ""papaya days, merengue nights"" to Heather B. rapping on life and concluding that ""it all depends on the skin you're living in.""
Coming up on Monday on Channel 13 is ""Three Animations by Jan Svankmajer,"" the master Czechoslovak film maker. The three works here -- ""The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia,"" ""Darkness Light Darkness"" and ""Punch and Judy"" -- abound in political and social implications yet defy easy pigeonholing. Mr. Svankmajer says, ""As in psychoanalysis, there must be secrecy; without secrecy, there is no art."" In his use of clay animation, certainly, art is unmistakable.
""New Television"" occasionally fudges on its title. The first offering was Juan Downey's ""J. S. Bach,"" indeed worthy of acclaim but already favorably reviewed in these columns when released in the mid-1980's. Second on tap, scheduled for Channel 13 tomorrow night, is ""Coffee Colored Children,"" an autobiographical essay by Ngozi Onwurah about growing up as the daughter of a white mother and an absent black father in an all-white working-class neighborhood in England. ""There was this white woman with three black children,"" she tells us, ""and no one believed she was our mother."" Recalling racist hooligans smearing dog feces on the family's apartment door, Ms. Onwurah explains why ""I lost my childhood in a blur of aching self-hate."" Eventually, gaining a remarkable sense of self, she is able to wash away ""the real dirt.""
Here then is television far removed, happily, from the standard diet of inane talk shows and disease-of-the-week movies. Unusual substance can be found lurking in these particular corridors. They may sometimes be a bit difficult to find, but it is definitely worthwhile to, as they say, check your local listings.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; Caught in a Storm Over Abortion
""A Private Matter,"" having its premiere tomorrow at 8 P.M. on Home Box Office, is the kind of made-for-television movie you won't find in network prime time. For one thing, the subject is abortion, and today that subject is highly emotional and divisive, hardly the stuff of advertiser needs. For another, ""A Private Matter"" is complicated, its unmistakably pro-abortion rights stance snarled in issues and personalities not conducive to tidy upbeat endings.
Anchored securely in unflinching performances from Sissy Spacek and Aidan Quinn, this is a fact-based story involving Sherri and Bob Finkbine. The scene is Scottsdale, Ariz., in 1962. ""Miss Sherri"" is host of a Phoenix-based edition of the popular children's show ""Romper Room."" Her husband is a high school teacher. They have four children. Pregnant again, Sherri reads a newspaper article describing severe birth defects connected with a sleeping medication, the same one she used after Bob brought some home from a trip to London. Told by the family doctor that the new baby is likely to be deformed, a heartbroken Sherri and Bob decide to terminate the pregnancy.
Within weeks, the family finds it self at the center of a media storm involving hospital administrators, courts and enraged antiabortion forces. Sherri loses her ""Romper Room"" job, not surprising at a time when television was nervous about even using the word pregnant. Bob is suspended from his job. Hate mail and phone calls pour in. F.B.I. agents are assigned to protect the family. Abortion appointments are made and then nervously canceled. The couple are finally forced to fly to Sweden for the operation.
The movie, directed by Joan Micklin Silver, clearly supports the right of Sherri to make her own choices and the right of the Finkbine family to its privacy. But as depicted, Sherri doesn't necessarily make any of this easy. Although warned by her doctor that any termination of the pregnancy is technically illegal and must be kept quiet, Sherri wastes little time in telling a local reporter that someone in the area has taken the drug, assuming that her identity will be kept secret. When the story explodes, Sherri is revealed through careless handling of hospital records. Initial discretion could have fended off much of the family's subsequent pain.
Then there is the extremely sensitive linking of abortion and disability. The disability and abortion-rights movements have common political goals of self-determination and informed choice based on accurate information. But disability groups stress that abortion should not be extolled as a device to rid society of ""defectives."" ""A Private Matter"" is keenly aware of the issue. When a neighbor says she would not have the abortion, Sherri says with admiration, ""You're being a saint, thinking about everyone but yourself.""
Having the right to make the choice, obviously, is never going to be easy. ""This is going to hurt me for the rest of my life,"" Sherri realizes, ""no matter what I do."" Sherri and Bob went on to have two more children. They were later divorced. 'On the Air'  ABC Tomorrow at 9:30 P.M.
David Lynch and Mark Frost (""Twin Peaks"") are again being compulsively different, this time going back to 1957 and the fictional television studios of the Zoblotnick Broadcasting Corporation. Final touches are being put on ""The Lester Guy Show,"" whose star (Ian Buchanan) is clinging to an over-the-hill career. Also on hand are the bubbleheaded ingenue Betty Hudson (Marla Jeanette Rubinoff), a sight-impaired sound-effects technician named Blinky (Tracey Walter), the ferocious network executive Bud Budwaller (Miguel Ferrer) and the director Vladja Golchktch (David L. Lander), whose heavily accented orders have to be translated by the stage manager, Ruth Trueworthy (Nancye Ferguson). Props topple, scenery collapses, tempers flare. Different, certainly, even strange, but unfortunately about as funny as, well, an overworked foreign accent. 'HBO Comedy Hour'  'Roseanne Arnold'  HBO Tomorrow at 10:30 P.M.
With Roseanne and Tom Arnold as executive producers, this hourlong special puts the star of television's No. 1 sitcom in a gold lame pantsuit and lets her sound off uninhibitedly before loudly appreciative fans at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. People tend to upset Mrs. Arnold. ""We're so hideous,"" she says, launching into zesty attacks on everybody from supporters of smokers' and animal rights to opponents of abortion and motorcycle helmets. She is tired of fashions that make fat women look like floats in the Rose Bowl Parade. And she's had it with George Bush and the San Diego Padres. And oh, yeah, she thinks it's about time she got an Emmy Award. Her unusual argument is not, however, printable here. A Private Matter  HBO Tomorrow at 8 P.M.
Written by William Nicholson; David C. Thomas, producer; Ronnie D. Clemmer, Bill Pace, Sydney Pollack and Lindsay Doran, executive producers. A Longbow Productions film in association with Mirage Enterprises for HBO Pictures. Sherri Chessen Finkbine . . . Sissy Spacek Bob Finkbine . . . Aidan Quinn Mary Chessen . . . Estelle Parsons",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; Another Side of Mortimer's Paradise
Leslie Titmuss is back, as aggressively sour as ever. Introduced five years ago in the John Mortimer mini-series ""Paradise Postponed,"" the rather monstrous Englishman is the resentful working-class boy who grew up to be a Tory politician in Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party. Now, in Mr. Mortimer's ""Titmuss Regained,"" he has risen to the Cabinet rank of Minister of Housing, Ecological Affairs and Planning, sporting the curiously appropriate acronym HEAP. The three-part series begins its run on ""Masterpiece Theater"" on Sunday at 9 P.M. on Channel 13.
The author clearly despises Titmuss but, as might be expected from the creator of ""Rumpole of the Bailey,"" is shrewd enough to make him the kind of villain you love to hate. And Mr. Mortimer receives enormous assistance in the performance of David Threlfall (Smike in ""Nicholas Nickleby""), whose Titmuss is a symphony of sneering and dissonant haughtiness. Mr. Threlfall seems to have devised the most offended nose in the history of British television, and that does indeed take some devising.
For a while this time out, it appears that, against all odds, Titmuss could end up being softened with a touch of humanity. Now a widower, he falls in love with a young widow named Jenny Sidonia (Kristin Scott Thomas). He even wants to learn something about opera and ballet and the other kinds of things she knows so well, although on a date, he does insist on leaving a smart nouvelle-cuisine restaurant and taking her to a small cafe for a hearty feed of eggs and sausage and chips. Jenny has to admit the odd fellow is ""like no one else."" Completely smitten, Titmuss buys as a formidable wedding inducement Rapstone Manor, the mansion that loomed so large in his impoverished childhood.
The good citizens of Rapstone, nearly all colorful eccentrics, have already started protesting Government plans, in cahoots with real-estate agents, for a huge development project in the area. Actually, now that he will be returning to Rapstone, the anything-for-a-profit Titmuss begins assuming a not-in-my-backyard stance, but as usual he will have to be underhanded to get his way. Ambitious twits back at the party offices, Etonian types despised by Titmuss, would not mind seeing their boss embarrassed.
His fictional machine set in motion, Mr. Mortimer uses this collection of colorful characters to tweak the pretensions and idiocies of everyone from politicians to crusaders for animal rights. There is, for instance, the hefty young woman who, when forced to choose between having sex with her husband or continuing her sessions with a Government marriage counselor, swallows hard and swears she will do right by her husband. One or two characters in the Home Office are so slimily despicable that Mr. Mortimer seems eager to take a shotgun to them, as he eventually does.
Be assured, Titmuss remains gloriously vile. His mean little soul is far too warped to harbor the possibility of redemption for long. His nastiness is compulsive, his quest for revenge obsessive. Fans will not be disappointed. Masterpiece Theater Titmuss Regained
Directed by Martyn Friend; written by John Mortimer; designed by Bill Palmer; a New Penny production by Jacqueline Davis for Thames Television, in association with WGBH/Boston; Lloyd Shirley and Brian Walcroft, executive producers; Rebecca Eaton, executive producer for ""Masterpiece Theater."" Sunday at 9 P.M. on Channel 13, at 10 on Channel 49 and at 11 on Channel 21. Leslie Titmuss . . . David Threlfall Jenny Sidonia . . . Kristin Scott Thomas Hector Bolitho Jones . . . Bill Oddie Ken Cracken . . . Peter Capaldi Dr. Fred Simcox . . . Paul Shelley Sue Bramble . . . Jane Booker Joyce Timberlake . . . Holly De Jong Virginia Beazley . . . Tricia George Sir Willoughby Blane . . . James Grout Dot Curdle . . . Rosemary Leach 'Kathleen Battle and Wynton Marsalis Baroque Duet'  PBS Tonight at 9
Assembled by Susan Froemke, Peter Gelb, Pat Jaffe and Albert Maysles, this is a ""performance documentary"" about the soprano and the trumpet virtuoso as they work to record a new album. They are seen separately with their families -- Miss Battle movingly sings ""I Trust in God"" in her Ohio hometown church -- and together in demanding rehearsals. A formal performance session, with the St. Luke's Chamber Orchestra conducted by John Nelson, offers works by Bach and Handel. All in all, a shrewd and often thrilling showcase for two masterly stars. 'XVI Winter Olympic Games'  CBS Tomorrow at 8 P.M.
The opening ceremonies, taped earlier in the day in Albertville, France, will give CBS an opportunity to convince viewers that the gigantic publicity campaign of the last month wasn't just kidding. Over 16 days, CBS coverage will total 116 hours. For the insatiable, cable's TNT will carry an additional 45 hours on weekdays. Share a moment, indeed. There are more than enough to go around.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Robert Duvall as Stalin, the Embodiment of Evil
""Stalin,"" the nearly three-hour HBO Pictures presentation having its American premiere tomorrow at 8 P.M., is a grandly ambitious and lavish project, much of it filmed within the Kremlin even as the Soviet Union was coming unglued in the final months of 1991. Robert Duvall plays the title role. The director is the Czechoslovak-born Ivan Passer (""Cutter's Way""); the director of photography is the Hungarian-born Vilmos Zsigmond (""Close Encounters of the Third Kind""). The supporting cast comes from an international A-list.
So what went wrong?
I suspect part of the problem grew out of the production logistics. A great deal of effort was expended on obtaining authorization to film in and around Moscow, and the crews never knew if any given day would be got through without some unexpected delay. Further, thought had to be given to how the film would play in the world market, not least in Russia itself. While the monstrousness of Stalin is hardly played down -- even Russian historians are nowadays exposing the grimmer details -- the film too often seems to be walking on diplomatic eggs.
And then there is the superficiality, a familiar culprit in just about any historical film epic. ""Stalin"" begins in 1917. Before the opening credits are completed, we see Iosif Vissarionovich Dzugashvili, born 38 years earlier in Gori, Georgia, returning from exile to join the inner circle of Lenin (Maximillian Schell). The stage is set as Stalin the brutish peasant begins muttering darkly about enemies, chief among them the Jewish intellectual Trotsky (Daniel Massey). This biography then begins jumping quickly to significant years, each with an important anecdote or two to be illustrated. Hitler and World War II are reduced to a smattering of newsreel clips.
Encased in acrylic makeup and a properly imposing mustache, Mr. Duvall seems trapped in this portrait of nearly unrelenting evil somewhere between ""The Godfather"" and ""Potemkin."" He strives to give the character at least an occasional touch of humanity, but usually ends up retreating behind a curtain of mystery. In at least one dance scene, he limits his choreography to some curious hand gestures that seem inspired by Anna May Wong.
But then, few in the cast are able to transcend the film's burden of one-note characters, most of them sounding like the old-time character actor Akim Tamiroff. Some exceptions: Julia Ormond as Nadya Alliluyeva, Stalin's spirited and doomed young wife, and Roshan Seth as Lavrenti P. Beria, the coldly ambitious executioner. A postscript notes that ""Stalin's crimes caused the deaths of tens of millions of Russian lives."" Perhaps no movie, even a long one, can encompass that enormity. 'Pavarotti and  the Italian Tenor'  PBS, tonight at 9. (Channel 13 in New York.)
Posing as an essay on the art of the tenor, this bit of skillful puffery is really just an excuse to spend 60 minutes with the ebulliently ingratiating Luciano Pavarotti. He is joined by his father, Fernando, whom he says could also have had a career as a tenor, in song, playful bickering a discussion of artists who influenced them. (Father prefers Benjamino Gigli; son cites Giuseppe Di Stefano.) In performance, the younger Pavarotti offers four works he has never sung in public. And for good measure, there's a clip of Enrico Caruso singing in a 1918 movie called ""My Cousin."" 'Deadly Matrimony'
NBC, Sunday and Monday at 9 P.M.  (Channel 4 in New York.)
""Inspired"" by a true story, this four-hour movie, tautly directed by John Korty, is about a powerful Chicago mob lawyer and the police sergeant who is determined to prove him a wife-killer. Corrupt cops and judges, flashy mistresses, kinky sex games: the terrain isn't exactly unfamiliar. But Treat Williams as the lawyer and especially Brian Dennehy as the policeman bring remarkable energy and menace to the old game of cat-and-mouse. Stalin  HBO, Saturday at 8. Directed by Ivan Passer; written by Paul Monash; director of photography, Vilmos Zsigmond; music by Stanislas Syrewicz; produced by Mark Carliner and Ilene Kahn for HBO Pictures Josef Stalin . . . Robert Duvall Nadya Alliluyeva . . . Julia Ormond Bukharin . . . Jeroen Krabbe Lenin . . . Maximillian Schell Nadya's mother . . . Joan Plowright Nadya's father . . . Frank Finlay Beria . . . Roshan Seth Trotsky . . . Daniel Massey Krupskaya . . . Miriam Margolyes Sergo Ordzhonikidze . . . Jim Carter Svetlana . . . Joanna Roth",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Internal Look at Harvard Medical School
""So You Want to Be a Doctor?,"" at 9 P.M. on Channels 13 and 49, is the next best thing to going to medical school. The two-hour report, the second installment of a planned 10-year examination of medical education, is a you-are-there at Harvard Medical School, an anatomy lesson in the school's curriculum, a psychology lesson in the reactions of seven students as they are faced with courses and cadavers, clinics and clients.
All these young women and men are achievers, but medical school tests them in new ways, compelling them to diagnose their own strengths and limitations as they learn to diagnose the ailments of others. Harvard's New Pathway curriculum takes the future doctors out of the classroom and into the clinic before they can say Hippocrates, and the camera stays close and catches revealing moments.
One student, Jane, begins crying when asked to cut up a cadaver, which ""looked so lifelike and so real."" Another, Dave, tells of his discomfort at practicing a pelvic examination on a plastic model. The freshmen meet patients after only two weeks, and self-confidence comes hard. Jay seems to speak for most of the students when he says he is afraid a patient will take one look at him and holler, ""Get this incompetent away from me!""
In opening up the workings of an important institution through personal experiences, tonight's program, produced by Michael Barnes for ""Nova,"" does well one of the things that television documentaries can do best. Straightforwardly narrated by Neil Patrick Harris, of ""Doogie Howser, M.D.,"" it captures the shakiness of bright young people trying to cope with too much new information and too many unsettling experiences.
Much of the first hour focuses on Tom, a Bronx man who came to medical school at the age of 31 after several of life's knocks -- a divorce, an injury and years of hard work. He finds it more demanding than anything he has ever done and breaks the tension with a joke now and then. Confronted with what he recognizes as a liver, he cracks, ""You need a lot of onions for this.""
Of course there are rewards. Speaking about her first interview with a patient, Jane says, ""Very few people in this world have the honor of listening to people's most innermost thoughts."" Jane, who admits she isn't much of a scientist and finds drawing blood the hardest task she has been set in medical school, concedes that one of the reasons she is there is, ""I'm a little nosy."" It's enough to give patients a new perspective on their doctors.
At the same time that you are getting to know the students, they are getting to know one another well enough to worry together over how they are going to pay off their big loans. By the end of their second year, even closer connections are made. One woman says, ""These diamond rings start flying like popcorn."" By then, too, they are ready for the student show, which features a takeoff on a number from ""Fiddler on the Roof"": ""The intern! The intern! The physician!""
You can see the future doctors getting to know themselves, too. In one scene, Elliott is helping out in a caesarean section; he says he is thinking of becoming an obstetrician-gynecologist because ""it's a happy specialty."" Later, in a pause during a set of tennis, Elliott says he is leaning toward anesthesiology, partly because ""it pays well and it's got a good life style."" Doctors are human, too.
It is easy to empathize with Tom, Jane and the others as they advance uncertainly into emergency rooms and operating room. The evening's most dramatic scene comes toward the end when Jane assists at a coronary-artery by-pass graft on a patient whom she has just been been interviewing. He dies on the table, and Jane can't help thinking that she has brought him bad luck. But of course she knows it was only a routine lesson that death is as much part of doctoring as birth. Nova: So You Want to Be a Doctor? Produced by Michael Barnes for Nova; Paula Apsell, director of the WGBH Science Unit and executive producer of NOVA; Neil Patrick Harris, host. At 9 P.M. on Channels 13 and 49.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Roving Through Russia, A Dissatisfied Land
In 1989, Hedrick Smith, a former Moscow correspondent for The New York Times, traveled around what was then still the Soviet Union in search of the political, economic and social changes wrought by the famous team of glasnost and perestroika. The result was an enlightening PBS series, ""Inside Gorbachev's U.S.S.R.""
A few weeks ago Mr. Smith returned to see how some of the people he met on that earlier trip were getting along. ""After Gorbachev's U.S.S.R.,"" at 9 o'clock tonight on Channels 13 and 49, digs into the reasons for the hardships and disarray in the lately separated republics and comes up with emphasis on the tensions between entrenched bureaucrats, a new cadre of ambitious so-called privatizers and reform-minded but cautious young officials. It is a timely tour with a practiced guide.
Wherever he goes, Mr. Smith finds friction. At a food store in Moscow, angry shoppers blame Russia's President, Boris N. Yeltsin, for raising prices beyond their means. ""If he wants a civil war, he'll get it!"" one man explodes. In Yaroslav, 250 miles from Moscow, Mr. Smith revisits a state farm, whose manager, a one-time reformer, is now clinging to the perquisites of the old order. A struggling private farmer complains that the powerful state farm is denying him the land and feed he needs to compete.
Economic paralysis is exemplified by a big factory in Siberia, which is still owned by the state but can no longer obtain raw materials or orders. The difficulty is compounded by the breakup of the Soviet Union and the ensuing breakdown of relations between the republics. The acting factory director says, ""You can't make a condenser out of freedom.""
The man of the future in the new Russia may be Mark Masarsky, who was a budding capitalist when Mr. Smith met him in 1989. On that visit he seemed to be an idealist who was offering workers high wages and a share in his business. Today he claims to be a millionaire and concedes that he has changed his views about the possibility of collective ownership. He says: ""There is no higher law than private ownership of property. Private property is the same kind of brilliant human discovery as the wheel and fire."" The camera finds Mr. Masarsky making a deal with Deputy Prime Minister Yegor T. Gaidar, Russia's economic czar, for the output from a gold mine. They sound like businessmen anywhere.
The problems of reform-minded local officials trying to break out of old ways come through most clearly in the Moscow working-class district of Brateyevo. Even as they strive to loosen the bonds of Communism, the reformers worry that too quick or complete a shift to capitalism will only increase injustice. ""Today,"" one of them grants, ""no one has anything."" His fear is that ""tomorrow someone will have something, but the absolute majority of people will have nothing.""
Lacking the resources or the power to bring people the housing, food, goods and services they want, the reformers leave Mr. Smith and his viewers with the warning that the newborn Russian democracy is vulnerable from many sides. The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald  A&E Monday-Friday at 10 P.M.
Like a straggler who gets into a race long after it has started, the Arts & Entertainment network has embarked on a weeklong series called ""The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald.""
The five programs, at 10 P.M. every night through Friday this week, were made in 1986 and have already been seen on cable. A courtroom format is used to review the much-reviewed evidence about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, with Vincent T. Bugliosi, the prosecutor in the Charles Manson case, playing the prosecutor, and Gerry Spence, Imelda Marcos's lawyer, in for the defense.
Tonight you can hear the argument for the single-bullet theory. The defense opens its case tomorrow, and on Friday a group of Texans impersonating a jury will deliver their verdict. Also on Friday, the stunt concludes with a new documentary, ""Who Killed J. F. K.: On the Trail of the Conspiracies."" Believe it or not, it contains an interview with Oliver Stone.
If you need more, tonight at 8 on Channels 13 and 49 and at 9 on Channel 21, ""Nova"" repeats ""Who Shot President Kennedy?"" No definitive answer is forthcoming in this hourlong documentary, but the enhanced photographs show why so many doubts linger. Frontline After Gorbachev's U.S.S.R.  Produced by Marian Marzynski; David Fanning, executive producer; Hedrick Smith, correspondent. At 9 tonight on Channels 13 and 49.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; Remarkable Friendship Of 3 Remarkable People
Three old pros take over ""Masterpiece Theater"" this Sunday night to illuminate ways of life and methods of acting that regrettably have become endangered species. Hugh Whitemore has adapted ""The Best of Friends"" from his own play, which was staged in London in 1988.
With a script largely culled from letters, this true story explores the remarkable friendship of three quite unusual people. John Gielgud, 88 years old, portrays Sir Sidney Cockerell, curator of the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge University. Wendy Hiller, 80, is Laurentia McLachlan, the Abbess of Stanbrook Abbey. And Patrick McGoohan, a mere 65, impersonates the playwright George Bernard Shaw.
Sir Sidney met Dame Laurentia (the Dame is a religious title) in 1907 when he visited her abbey to see a rare Book of Psalms. He later introduced her to Shaw, whom he met in 1889. For the next several decades, stretching clear through World War II, they nurtured the kind of friendship that can be maintained only, in Sir Sidney's words, ""by constant thought, by visits, by little services and by abounding sympathy.""
Sir Sidney admits he never kissed a woman until he was 28, and he didn't marry until age 40. Nine years later, after bearing three children, his wife took to her bed as an invalid for the rest of her rather long life. Shaw, who looked on sex as ""hopeless as a basis for permanent relations,"" sees his wife end her days as an invalid with lumbago. Dame Laurentia sits in her cloistered world and explains that ""we look upon the grille as a barrier not to keep us in but to keep you out."" For her, the crucial question is: What kind of people are the most free, or the least caged?
Performing on a fluid set of connecting rooms that can serve as anything from a drawing room to an abbey cell, the actors wander about easily, sometimes addressing one another directly but never touching. Somewhat in the manner of a string trio, there are set pieces and motifs. For instance, the irreligious Shaw (""I'm too much in sympathy with all the world's great religions to adhere to any single one"") might describe, impishly but with feeling, a visit to the Holy Land. Or all three might suddenly decide to sing Gilbert and Sullivan's ""Tit Willow.""
Mr. McGoohan manages to make Shaw ingratiatingly testy. Gielgud turns Sir Sidney into a perfect model of British sophistication of the self-deprecating sort: ""However successful I may have been as a museum official, I am in most respects a quite insignificant person. I haven't a spark of imagination. Perhaps that's why I've always tried to be with people better than myself."" And the luminous Miss Hiller's very presence brings an added dimension to the production. A favorite of the real Shaw, the actress had great success starring in the film versions of his ""Pygmalion"" and ""Major Barbara.""
In the end, ""The Best of Friends"" has those attributes that Sir Sidney ascribes to being a gentleman: unswerving integrity, consideration for others, generosity on the sly. A different age, certainly, but no less seductive.  'Gilligan's Island'  TBS, tonight at 8:05
Canceled by CBS 25 years ago after 3 seasons and 98 episodes, ""Gilligan's Island"" has since lived on in reruns, becoming a cult classic if only as a touchstone for how dopey a television series can be. This is the pilot that never was broadcast, presumably because even the network thought it was idiotic. The theme song and three of the castaways are different, but the core cast is here: Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer. The insatiable can stay tuned at 8:35 P.M. to watch the 1978 television movie ""Rescue From Gilligan's Island."" Masterpiece Theater The Best of Friends  PBS, Sunday at 9 (Channel 13 in New York) Directed and produced by Alvin Rakoff for London Films; written by Hugh Whitemore; production designer, Eileen Diss; Rebecca Eaton, executive producer; Alistair Cooke, host. Sir Sidney Cockerell . . . John Gielgud Dame Laurentia McLachlan . . . Wendy Hiller George Bernard Shaw . . . Patrick McGoohan Girl in Search of God . . . Amma Asante Mohammed . . . Alan Rowe Conjurer . . . Paul Keown",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Pair of New Sitcoms, One Warm and One Weird
How do you prefer your American family, warmly amusing or wacko ridiculous? As far as television sitcoms are concerned, it's largely a matter of which network you choose to watch.
Traditionalist ABC, for instance, has a new series, Tuesdays at 9:30 P.M., called ""Room for Two,"" about a mom named Edie (Linda Lavin) getting reacquainted with her adult daughter Jill (Patricia Heaton). Old-style wisecracks are blended with inevitably touching moments. Warm. Tiresome, but warm.
Scrambling Fox, on the other hand, is bringing on line, this Sunday at 10 P.M., ""Stand by Your Man,"" adapted from a British series called ""Birds of a Feather."" Two New Jersey sisters, living on opposite sides of the track, are forced to move in together when their husbands are imprisoned for bank robbery. Wacko and, in the relentless manner of ""Married . . . With Children,"" happily vulgar, in what the press agents refer to as ""the Fox tradition of cutting-edge comedy."" That means the wit is about as subtle as a machete.
It's not, mind you, that ABC's conception of mom is still stuck in the ""Father Knows Best"" days of burned-pot-roast crises. Ms. Lavin's Edie is no wilting widow. Arriving in Manhattan from Dayton, Ohio, she wastes little time telling her daughter, the producer of a television show called ""Wake Up, New York,"" that her late dad's store was not his life. ""It was his hobby,"" Edie says. ""Drinking was his life, and that store was Daddy's dream, not mine."" Furthermore, after his death, Edie wasted little time having ""a rather intense few weeks"" with a divorced neighbor. ""Mindy's dad,"" the aghast Jill shrieks.
So, sitting in the audience for her daughter's show, the outspoken Edie can't help speaking out about the ridiculous clothes being touted by a fashion designer and, of course, is immediately offered a job as a regular real-person commentator on ""Wake Up, New York."" Even Edie has to admit that ""it's an unbelievable opportunity that shows up about as often as Brigadoon."" Will Mom find her own apartment? Will she be able to adjust to her new life? Will the daughter be able to lead a life of her own? And tonight's is only the second episode.
Says Rick Kellard, one of the show's creators and, along with Ms. Lavin, one of its executive producers, ""We're trying to show real events and real milestones in people's lives, things that are funny in real life."" Oh.
The Fox folks are obviously not so highfalutin. As fat-and-sassy Lorraine (Rosie O'Donnell) enters her run-down mobile home, her husband, Artie (Rick Hall), is shoving his latest girlfriend out the window, insisting he can hear the P.M.S. in his wife's voice. There is some passing business about bikini underwear bearing the initials I.G.; stands for Indira Gandhi, Artie swears.
Meanwhile, Lorraine's social-climbing sister Rochelle (Melissa Gilbert-Brinkman) is living in relative splendor with her husband, Roger, self-described ""premier builder of patios and enclosures in all of New Jersey."" The visiting Lorraine exclaims, ""My God, this place is unbelievable, like something out of 'Knots Landing,' and to think you used to be in that little apartment with all the asbestos.""
Rochelle's neighbor, Adrienne (Miriam Flynn), is a seemingly proper and pointedly snooty type who, when not cavorting with Ramon the gardener, spends most of her quieter moments watch pornographic videos. Taking a peek at one of the tapes, an impressed Lorraine notes that ""they don't waste much time, do they?"" ""Not the good ones,"" Adrienne says, ever so sweetly.
When the husbands are caught in a bank robbery and put away for eight years, Rochelle is heartbroken but Lorraine suggests having a party. Long willing to settle for a house ""that couldn't be tipped over on Halloween,"" Lorraine agrees to move in with her sister so they can face life and Adrienne's visits together.
With the humor shuttling nonstop between naughty vaudeville routines and the toilet, ""Stand by Your Man"" may finally give Fox its often sought and just as often failed opportunity to duplicate the relative success of ""Married . . . With Children."" Any success at Fox is at a premium these days. Just glance toward the bottom of the ratings charts.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Why Things Are Looking Up for the Democrats
After years of exile amid the fleshpots of Republican Administrations, Ben J. Wattenberg seems to be going home to the Democratic Party. Or, as he prefers to characterize the situation, it has come home to him and other disaffected Democrats. ""The Democrats, 1960 to 1992"" -- the first of two programs called ""America's Political Parties: Power and Principle"" -- is his account of the ups and downs and, as he sees it, this year's up of Democratic fortunes.
Mr. Wattenberg, a newspaper columnist and television commentator who served in the Administrations of Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter, identifies with the traditional Democratic coalition that was shattered by what he calls ""the cause groups"" that gave Senator George S. McGovern the Presidential nomination and, in Mr. Wattenberg's opinion, the resounding defeat of 1972. He says that to the blue-collar workers and others who had been the party's mainstay, the new Democrats seemed ""too soft, too liberal, too permissive, too squishy.""
Most of the program's news clips are familiar, and the interviews with such past and possibly future players as Mr. McGovern, Walter F. Mondale, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart and Geraldine Ferraro will knock no one off the couch. But the Wattenberg point of view -- that of the alienated Democrats who created the Coalition for a Democratic Majority -- comes through clearly enough.
For him, the 1992 Bill Clinton-Al Gore ticket represents a movement back to ""opportunity, community, responsibility"" that can once again appeal to Democrats who found themselves voting for Ronald Reagan and George Bush in the 80's. Mr. Wattenberg seems to take particular satisfaction in the way ""Clinton stiffed Jesse Jackson and the left.""
Next week, David Gergen, who served in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan Administrations before ascending to ""The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour,"" gives his view of ""The Republicans, 1960 to 1992,"" focusing particularly on the tension between moderates like himself and right-wingers like Pat Robertson and Patrick J. Buchanan. Tonight, he joins Mr. Wattenberg briefly for amiable chats, during which Mr. Gergen calls Mr. Clinton ""a Reagan Democrat.""
Paid for largely by conservative foundations, these accounts of the last 32 years of American politics from a centrist position should comfort those who criticize public broadcasting for a chronic tilt to the left. On that subject, I detect an effort by PBS to open things up this election season. Maybe the programmers are tired of being accused of being too soft, too liberal, too permissive, too squishy.
Anyway, no one can complain of a dearth of political programs. ""The Democrats"" is followed on Channel 13 tonight at 10 by ""Move Over: Women and the '92 Campaign,"" which can be seen at 9 P.M. on Channel 49. On Sunday, at 10 P.M., CNN will show ""The Battle to Lead: Bill Clinton of Arkansas,"" and on Oct. 25, it will pay similar attention to his opponent on ""The Public Mind of George Bush."" 'The Two Coasts of China' 'Asia and the Challenge of the West'  PBS (Channel 13 in New York, tomorrow at 6 P.M.)
Granted, a history of China could easily fill 10 hours of television. But faced with compressing it into a single hour, as part of an even more ambitious project, the producers of this documentary have found an approach that works.
Tomorrow's enlightening opener of ""The Pacific Century,"" a new 10-part PBS series, focuses on the tension between the insular vision of China's rulers in the interior and the outward reach of traders along its coast. The overview is no doubt simplified, but it is not simplistic. Conceived by Frank Gibney, an Asia specialist who also appears as a resident expert, the program is intelligently focused, and the production turns his thesis into a colorful tale.
Embellished by a mix of archival materials and up-to-date photography, ancient scrolls and scenes from recent movies, maps and interviews, the story begins with the 13th-century Mongol invasion. Everyone knows the Mongols were warriors, as movie clips of Genghis Khan's galloping riders attest; but Mr. Gibney emphasizes that they were also traders who established a direct route between China and Europe and the Middle East.
But when they left China in the 14th century, the Mongols were replaced by the Ming Dynasty, which mistrusted the outside world. The Great Wall stands as a symbol of the Ming efforts to keep foreigners at bay, and the heritage of inwardness was passed on to the Manchu invaders. But no wall could keep out the capitalists. Their influence can still be seen in the views of bustling Guangzhou, formerly Canton, where merchants prospered from trade with the West.
This rich history, richly presented, ends in Hong Kong, that glittering symbol of international trade and finance, which is to be taken back from Britain in 1997. The question viewers are left with is how the conservative men in Tiananmen Square will deal with the contemporary Mongols in business suits. A rock video singer cries, ""Come soon, 1997/I want to have a wild time!""
Next week, the subject is Japan (which will also be featured this month on TBS in ""Portrait of Japan,"" on Oct. 26 and 27). Then the series sweeps through Vietnam and Indonesia, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and the Philippines, with return visits to China and Japan today. I haven't watched them all, but if they come up to the quality of ""The Two Coasts of China,"" your time will not be misspent, although their scheduling by Channel 13 at 6 P.M. Saturdays may seem inscrutable.
Mr. Gibney's companion book, ""The Pacific Century: America and Asia in a Changing World,"" has just been published by Charles Scribner's Sons. The series is also being offered as a college-level video course, and videocassettes are on the market. The Western traders are at it again. 'The Missiles of October What the World Didn't Know'  ABC, tomorrow at 9 P.M. (Channel 7 in New York.)
This two-hour report makes the case that the Cuban missile crisis brought the world much closer to nuclear war than most people realized 30 years ago, or realize today. Through tape recordings of President John F. Kennedy's executive committee of the National Security Council and interviews with American, Soviet and Cuban players of the time, the documentary emphasizes what the decision makers did
not
know about their adversaries' actions and intentions. In particular, tomorrow's account emphasizes, President Kennedy did not know that the Soviet commander in Cuba had battlefield nuclear weapons and the authority to use them.
From the American point of view, the discovery that the Soviet Union had shipped missiles with nuclear warheads to Cuba meant that most of the United States would be within range of a nuclear strike. From the Soviet Union's point of view, its missiles in Cuba were only a response to American missiles in Turkey, close to Soviet soil.
President Kennedy is shown to have been under pressure from the Pentagon to strike first. Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev was under pressure from his ally, the Cuban President Fidel Castro, to shoot down an American plane or two. Peter Jennings quotes the Cuban leader's exhortation to the Soviet generals: ""The Americans are sneezing on you, just as much as they are sneezing on us.""
""The Missiles of October"" is a cautionary reminder of how narrow and fuzzy the line can be between a nuclear strike and striking a deal. America's Political Parties: Power and Principle The Democrats, 1960 to 1992  PBS, tonight at 9. (Channel 13 in New York.) Written by Ben J. Wattenberg, Todd Brewster, Michael Pack, Daniel B. Polin; Andrew Morreale, editor; Doug Abel, associate producer; Todd Brewster, co-producer; produced and directed by Michael Pack and Mr. Polin for Manifold Productions, in association with the South Carolina Educational Television Network and Great Projects Film Company; Kenneth Mandel and Mr. Polin, executive producers; David Gergen and Ben J. Wattenberg, hosts.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Palestinian Perspective On West Bank Life
""Journey to the Occupied Lands"" gives a Palestinian-eye view of life under military occupation. Farmers tell Michael Ambrosino, the producer and reporter of the 90-minute documentary, of having their property confiscated for military purposes or for the benefit of Jewish settlers, and of enduring daily harassment by the authorities.
Particular attention is paid to the 100,000 Jewish settlers who now live on the West Bank and in Gaza, with 50,000 more on the way. Assisted by state subsidies, they have built attractive suburban communities with amenities beyond the reach of most Palestinians. The camera pans slowly to give a sense of the settlements' size and the way they have changed the landscape. An Israeli official calls the sites ""state land,"" but a Palestinian negotiator in the current peace talks says, ""All the settlements are illegal.""
The legalities of property rights may be cloudy, but Mr. Ambrosino's sentiments are clear enough. The issue as presented here is between ungiving Jewish settlers, backed by state power, who base their claims to what they call Judea and Samaria on the Bible, and powerless local farmers who base their claims on generations of use. The Palestinians' advocates on the Israeli left, whose outlook Mr. Ambrosino finds congenial, say the Arab residents are being deprived of their rights and abused in ways that diminish Israel's status as a democracy.
In a technique common to television, the camera makes its own contrasts: between Palestinians scrabbling for existence and Jews living comfortably in their tidy communities; between Palestinian workers lining up for inspection and Israeli officials delaying shipments of the Palestinians' farm produce, between Palestinian civilians under close watch and Israeli soldiers waving clubs.
Zalman Shoval, Israel's Ambassador to the United States, is given time to offer the Israeli point of view, particularly its security concerns, with diplomatic moderation. But an official spokesman is no match on the tube for a farmer in his field.
Mr. Ambrosino speeds past the history of the area and its occupation and does not pause over the political divisions and internecine murders among the Palestinians or the pressures on them from their putative Arab allies. An Israeli officer's emphasis on the need to fight terrorism is treated as a pretext for torture.
Whatever Mr. Ambrosino's predilections, the Palestinian case plainly demands attention, and the complications presented by the Jewish settlements in negotiations about autonomy have to be faced. This provocative ""Frontline"" invites rebuttal, but it does bring home the pains of occupation for the occupied and its stains on the occupier. 'The Deadly Deception'
Channel 13, tonight at 8
In 1932, 400 black sharecroppers in Macon County, Ala., were lured into a Public Health Service research study with the promise that they would be treated for ""bad blood,"" a euphemism for syphilis and other ailments. They were in fact given only placebos. The study went on for 40 years, during which a score or more died as a result of untreated syphilis. Tonight ""Nova"" tells the chilling story of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male.
One of the Public Health Service doctors involved still defends the study as an effort to improve the quality of care for black men. The most benign view offered by the program -- which benefits more from the pictures of rural Alabama in the 1930's than from some awkwardly staged scenes from ""Miss Evers's Boys,"" a play based on the case -- is of a paternalistic project that went wildly out of hand. But the medical historians interviewed agree that the reason that consent was not sought and the study not questioned for many years was connected with the fact that the subjects were black and poor.
The study produced little if anything of significance. The reactions of two survivors, remarkable for their mildness, strike the conscience. One says, referring to the authorities who denied him a chance at being treated: ""They ought to have been ashamed of theirself. I wouldn't have did them like that."" 'The Gay 90's:  Sex, Power and Influence""
NBC, tonight at 10 (Channel 4 in New York)
On tonight's edition of ""First Person,"" Maria Shriver focuses on several homosexual couples in various parts of the country who are trying to make their lives in their own ways. Some are taking advantage of the nation's increasing openness to their relationships; others are still fighting local antipathies and legal constraints.
Dan and Dave are seen enjoying quiet domesticity; Dan says the AIDS epidemic has brought ""a new celibacy"" to homosexuals. Sharon is seen caring for her lover, Sidd, who is suffering from multiple sclerosis. Kate tells of fighting successfully for medical and dental coverage for her companion, Leonie. Renee and Nadja, who are already raising one child, are trying to have another by artificial insemination. Jim and Jimmy, harassed by small-town hostility, have split up, their business close to bankruptcy.
Without rubbing it in, Ms. Shriver gets across the point that although homosexuals may still be seen by many as different, their desires for a loving home and ambitions for a successful career are undistinguishable from those of straight America. Frontline Journey to the Occupied Lands  PBS, tonight at 9  (Channel 13 in New York) A report directed by Gillian Barnes; produced by Ms. Barnes and Michael Ambrosino; edited by Eric Handley; reporter, Mr. Ambrosino; executive producer for ""Frontline,"" David Fanning; presented with the Documentary Consortium (WGBH/Boston, WTVS/Detroit, WPBT/Miami, WNET/New York, KCTS/Seattle).",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Bringing Up Big Guns In Cause of Free Speech
Together for the first time! Starring, in alphabetical order, Tom Brokaw of NBC , Peter Jennings of ABC , Robert MacNeil of PBS, Dan Rather of CBS and Bernard Shaw of CNN ! All in a single hour! This coup of television journalism, tonight at 9 on Channel 13, is in the cause of freedom of speech.
Most of ""Dangerous Assignments,"" produced in cooperation with the Committee to Protect Journalists, is given to recounting the troubles of three brave reporters. The committee, not tonight's stars, has done the reporting.
The first and most serious case, narrated by Dan Rather, tells of the events leading up to the 1988 assassination in Peru of Hugo Bustios, who was gunned down while trying to cover an incident in the atrocity-filled war between the guerrillas of Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, and the Peruvian Army. The case made here, with the help of witnesses, puts the blame on the army; the prosecutor assigned to investigate has done nothing. An exasperated judge asks, ""How can the police investigate the army?""
The events are laid out clearly and dramatically. Enrique Zeleri, the editor in chief of Caretas, the publication for which Mr. Bustios wrote, says that when they were shot, Mr. Bustios and a colleague were screaming: ""We're journalists. Don't shoot. We're journalists."" And he adds, ""Of course, that's why they were killed.""
Mr. Jennings tells about the difficulties that Marites Vitug, a reporter in the Philippines, brought on herself with her charges that a millionaire timber tycoon has been using political influence to plunder the rain forest on the island of Palawan. He has filed criminal-libel charges against her, no small matter in a country where, Mr. Jennings notes, in libel cases ""you are presumed guilty until proven innocent.""
And Mr. Brokaw is entrusted with the experiences of Max du Preez, who started Vrye Weekblad, the first Afrikaans-language newspaper in South Africa to oppose apartheid, thereby earning him the name ""Mad Max."" After he published reports about right-wing death squads, Mr. du Preez received death threats of his own and the newspaper office was bombed. Brought to trial under his country's Internal Securities Act, he was found guilty and fined. Several Government officials are now suing Mr. du Preez for libel; their costs are paid by the state. If he loses, he may have to shut down his newspaper, which seems to be the idea.
In the final segment of ""Dangerous Assignments,"" Mr. Brokaw and Mr. Jennings are joined by Mr. Shaw, with Mr. MacNeil as moderator, to talk about freedom of the press. (They got together in December, when Mr. Rather was off reporting from the Middle East.) The producer might have been better advised to leave well enough alone. For the most part, the conversation of the anchors, although well intentioned, seems anticlimactic after the serious cases recounted here. At moments, as they recall incidents from their own reporting days, they seem to be competing among themselves and, in a discomfiting way, with the admirable subjects of the program.
Lest anyone come away thinking that journalists in the United States are exposing all the stories that require exposure, ""Dangerous Assignments"" is followed on Channel 13 by ""Project Censored, With Bill Moyers,"" a report on a few of ""the 10 best censored stories of 1990."" The list, made public yesterday, is this year's edition of an annual compilation done under the auspices of Sonoma State University in California.
High among the stories deemed insufficiently covered was the background to the conflict in the Persian Gulf; the multi-billion-dollar bailout of failing savings-and-loan institutions; the origins and consequences of the invasion of Panama, and George Bush's role in the Iran-contra affair.
Mr. Moyers talks with Tim Weiner, whose reporting for The Philadelphia Inquirer on what he calls the Pentagon's secret budget for arms procurement brought him a Pulitzer Prize, and with Pete Brewton, who has been tracking down the looted savings-and-loan deposits for The Houston Post. In both cases, it is suggested, most of the mass media has fallen down on the job.
He also talks to Dr. Helen Caldicott, the Australian environmentalist, who contends that the NASA space shuttle is destroying the ozone layer, and to Michael Levine, a former undercover agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, who seems to be promoting his book, ""Deep Cover,"" about what he calls America's fraudulent war on drugs. The program leaves the impression that the mainstream press has not done their stories justice either.
Although he notes that some critics call Mr. Brewton's reports ""poorly sourced,"" for the most part Mr. Moyers evidently buys the points of view as delivered. He neglects to note that he was a member of the Project Censored panel that chose the 10 best censored stories in the first place. It's good to have them broadcast, but considering the nature of the program, viewers may miss in the host a touch of the disinterested doubter so useful in the journalist.  Dangerous Assignments  Produced by the Mosaic Group in association with the South Carolina Educational Television Network; Judith Moses and Jan Legnitto, producers; written by Harry Moses, Judith Moses and Jan Legnitto; camera by Alex Zakrzewski, Dewald Aukerra and Scott Ransom; sound by Mark Roy and Tony Bensusan; Harry Moses, executive producer. At 9 tonight on Channel 13. WITH: Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Robert MacNeil, Dan Rather and Bernard Shaw. Moyers Project Censored  Produced by Public Affairs Television; Betsy McCarthy, producer and director; Andie Tucher, co-producer; Michael Collins, editor; Kelly Venardos, researcher; Judith Davidson Moyers, executive producer; Bill Moyers, executive editor. At 10 tonight on Channel 13.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Fourth Amendment: Who Is Protected?
The Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights may not be the most visually arresting subject for a television documentary, but the producers of ""Search and Seizure: The Supreme Court and the Police"" have found ways to keep things lively. In particular, the scenes of police
not
doing some searching and seizing of bad guys point up the tensions still aroused by a safeguard that Roger Mudd, the evening's reporter, calls ""central to the American idea of what the Constitutional protections ought to be.""
The history of the Fourth Amendment, originally instigated by Boston smugglers as a way of fending off the King's customs agents, is lucidly laid out, and the program moves on, with the help of constitutional scholars, to the development of interpretations of the injunction against unreasonable searches and seizures and the requirement of probable cause for search warrants. To civil libertarians, the Fourth Amendment remains a basic protection against having police burst into your home or snoop on you at will; to many police officers and others troubled by crime, it has been distorted into a protection for criminals.
Particular attention is necessarily given to the rule, adopted by the Federal courts in 1914 and extended to state courts in 1961, in the memorable case of Mapp v. Ohio: if the Fourth Amendment has been violated, any evidence thereby discovered cannot be used in a trial. In an interview with Mr. Mudd, Kenneth W. Starr, the Solicitor General, says he is no admirer of this exclusionary rule, and quotes Justice Benjamin N. Cardozo's famous question, ""Must the criminal go free because the constable blundered?""
That question seems to have been much on the minds of the more conservative justices who replaced the Warren Court. They have relieved the police of some restraints, particularly in drug cases. The impression left by the program is that public concern is as much a factor as judicial philosophy in such rulings. Wayne LaFave, a law professor at the University of Illinois says, ""The drug scourge has really played hob with the Fourth Amendment."" He adds, ""We have fewer and fewer rights than we had a few years ago.""
Mr. Mudd concludes an enlightening hour by drawing attention to the continuing difficulties of defining what the Founders might deem unreasonable in this era of technological snoopery, when peering through windows from afar, tapping telephones and examining personal records is as easily done as said. The experts differ, but viewers should be able to agree that the producers of ""Search and Seizure"" have seized the opportunity to do a searching report on an issue that touches all Americans. Search and Seizure The Supreme Court and the Police  PBS, 10 tonight (Channels 13 and 49 in New York) Written by Karen Thomas and Jack McDonald; Wayne LaFave, contributing writer; directed and produced by Ms. Thomas; Roger Mudd, correspondent and narrator. WITH: Nadine Strossen, Leonard Levy, Kenneth J. Starr, Wayne LaFave, A. E. Dick Howard, commentators.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Baseball's Self-Inflicted Sports Injury
A baseball fan need not possess too long a memory to recall $4.50 box seats, end-of-season salary drives by players to make $100,000 and talk that focused on home runs, trades and strikeouts, not arbitration, revenue-sharing and $7 million-a-year paychecks.
The baseball season is one day old, and it is nearly impossible to avoid the incessant talk about how fraught with problems baseball is, from greedy owners fighting avaricious players to the glut of games shown on television.
PBS's ""Frontline"" series weighs in tonight with ""The Trouble With Baseball,"" a languidly paced, comprehensible documentary that examines the game's myriad problems without resorting to the type of numbing micro-analysis that has drowned many phases of baseball.
There is nothing new here. There are no shocking revelations. The numbers and issues are familiar. The characters are well known. But the producer, Michael Kirk, has wisely chosen to explain a few issues very simply and does not wax unduly long about the allure of the game. More important, he examines the issues on a human scale, through the stories of Carlton Fisk, the Chicago White Sox catcher, and Jerry Reinsdorf, the White Sox owner since 1981.
A small number of talking heads describe the symptoms of baseball's sickness. Two of them, Peter Gammons, a Boston Globe and ESPN baseball correspondent, and Jack Sands, an agent and lawyer, collaborated on a new book, ""Coming Apart at the Seams,"" (Macmillan, 1993) and should thank ""Frontline"" for the publicity.
As ""The Trouble With Baseball"" shows, Mr. Fisk was a great catcher with the Boston Red Sox before free-agency rules freed players from being owners' chattel. He signed with Mr. Reinsdorf in 1981 for $3 million through 1985, suffered when owners conspired for three years not to sign free agents and were fined $280 million; made $2 million in 1991, and re-signed with Mr. Reinsdorf this season, his last, for $650,000, which is $400,000 less than last year.
""In 1992, Carlton Fisk made over a million dollars and played in about 50 games,"" Mr. Reinsdorf says. ""And I think Carlton Fisk was entitled to have a year when he got paid more than he produced, but not two years.""
Mr. Reinsdorf plays the game of baseball business better than his peers. He is a confessed ""deal guy"" who will be remembered mainly for using a sweetheart deal from St. Petersburg, Fla., and a threat to move his team as leverage to force Illinois to finance a new $150 million stadium in which his White Sox play rent free. A law-school friend, Jim Thompson, happened to be the Governor of Illinois at the time.
The contrasting tales of player and owner provoke an easy sympathy for the attractive Mr. Fisk, a hard-working 45-year-old Vermonter in the 24th season of a certain Hall of Fame career, who is battling Mr. Reinsdorf, a shrewd real-estate syndicator from Brooklyn who makes profits from baseball and denies hating Mr. Fisk. ""Frontline"" would have had a tougher time evoking sympathy if Mr. Fisk were replaced by younger and more arrogant players like Jose Canseco or Barry Bonds.
""The Trouble With Baseball"" does not have enough time to excavate all that ails the sport. It delves little into the firing of Commissioner Fay Vincent and not at all into the expansion process.
By not digging up the long and detailed history of mistrust between players and owners, which generally makes the owners look like craven simpletons, ""Frontline"" evokes pro-owner feeling for the Milwaukee Brewers owner, Bud Selig, a car dealer who struggles in a small market against larger-market teams whose local television income is many times greater. The issue pits owners who don't want to share their television bounties against those who need more revenue to stay competitive.
""The Trouble with Baseball"" is not a rousing baseball-lover's pitch for the start of the season, filled with home runs and spectacular catches. For that, one can watch the syndicated program ""This Week in Baseball."" It is a somber, depressing look at a badly managed industry. And it offers no answers. Frontline The Trouble With Baseball  PBS, tonight at 9 (In the New York area, Channel 13 and Channel 49)  Written, produced and directed by Michael Kirk; Marina Kalb, associate producer; Paul Judge, reporter; Peter Rhodes, editor. For Frontline: Michael Sullivan, senior producer; David Fanning, executive producer.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Using Fetal Transplants To Help Improve Lives
At least one group of Americans have personal cause to welcome the change of Administrations in Washington. People with degenerative ailments like Parkinson's disease can look forward to an early reversal of President Bush's ban on the use of Federal money for research into fetal transplants, which scientists believe holds out a hope for the treatment of afflictions that until now have defied cure. The political conflict is a footnote to ""Brain Transplant,"" tonight's upbeat offering from ""Nova."" (The program was held back until the latest findings could be reported in The New England Journal of Medicine; they made headlines last week.)
The story begins in California in 1982, when several young addicts who had taken factory-made facsimile heroin were suddenly unable to move or talk. Although their minds seemed normal, their bodies were frozen. Because the condition resembled the symptoms of Parkinson's, which usually strikes the elderly, Dr. J. William Langston of Valley Medical Center in San Jose, Calif., put them on the standard medication, a drug called L-dopa. It replaces dopamine, a chemical that occurs naturally in the brain and enables, for example, the thought of lifting an arm to be translated into the actual lifting. The treatment worked only for a time.
Tonight's account shows how scientific developments in various parts of the world come together. In 1987, a Mexican surgeon reported on the transplant of a patient's adrenal cells, which make dopamine, from their location above the kidneys into his brain; the patient was reported to have improved dramatically. Dr. Langston asked, ""Could this be the thing that's going to really cure Parkinson's disease?""
In St. Kitts, in the Caribbean, cells from the brain of a monkey fetus were implanted into the brain of a monkey that had been given Parkinson's; the disease was reversed.
Dr. Langston's encounter with a Swedish doctor resulted in brain transplants in Sweden in 1989 for two of the California addicts, the program's climax. A detailed explanation of the care required to obtain cells from aborted fetuses and place them into the brain builds excitement. With the help of first-rate graphics, viewers can see the cells being deposited into precisely the right areas of the brain, and then they can see, via videos, the patients' improvement over a period of two years.
Using Dr. Langston as a sort of participant commentator, ""Brain Transplant"" gets at both the scientific and human meaning of the years of research and experiment. The focus on specific patients brings home the death-in-life nature of the disease in its final stages and the sense of salvation when a treatment seems to work.
As for ethical concerns, particularly the fear that abortions may be encouraged for the sake of obtaining the fetal material, the Swedes have set out a few rules that might serve America as well: a woman's decision to have an abortion should be completely separate from a surgeon's decision to perform a fetal transplant; the woman should not be allowed to direct her fetus to a particular individual; the donor and the recipient should remain anonymous; no money should change hands.
Dr. Langston cautions against unrealistic hopes of large numbers of transplants in the near future; his young patients are far from typical. Yet this program is powerfully heartening. ""Nova,"" which first reported the story ""The Case of the Frozen Addict"" in February 1986, promises to return to the subject in time, with an assessment of how fully the prospects that have been awakened with the reawakening of a few patients' bodies are being realized. Nova Brain Transplant  PBS, tonight at 8 (Channel 13 in New York) Written, produced and directed by Jon Palfreman; Alexandra Anthony, editor; music by Peter Howell and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop; a production of WGBH in association with BBC-TV; Paula S. Apsell, executive producer, ""Nova""; Will Lyman, narrator.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Muhammad Ali: The Boxer, the Man
Tonight's biography of Muhammad Ali, at 8 on the Arts & Entertainment cable network, catches the courage, independence and sharpness that made the boxing champion an admired figure outside the ring, too. The hour, with its scenes from the big fights and the hype that accompanied them, covers his career from his youth as an amateur boxer -- when he was still known as Cassius Clay -- to his gold medal in the 1960 Rome Olympics to his interrupted years as champ.
There he is, doing his famous prefight theatrics, especially before the 1963 match with Sonny Liston that made him No. 1: ""The world did not dream when they laid down their money/That they would see a total eclipse of Sonny."" It wasn't just brashness. The challenger predicted he would win in five rounds, and Mr. Liston decided not to come out for the sixth.
When Arthur Ashe, one of the admiring observers interviewed here, says, ""He talked for all of us,"" he is speaking less of the fighter's punchy rhymes than of his defiance of power and public opinion. In the 1960's he converted to the Nation of Islam and changed his name, a thumb in the eye to the white establishment. In 1965, as tonight's audience can see, he would take revenge in the ring on Floyd Patterson, who continued to call him Clay and seemed to represent the sort of respectable black athlete whites could easily root for. Mr. Ashe is pained by the victor's cruelty in that bout, when he taunted the battered Mr. Patterson and refused to end his pain and humiliation with a final punch.
Mr. Ali's championship was lost outside the ring in 1967 when he was sentenced to five years in prison for refusing to be drafted because he opposed the Vietnam War. The sentence would be overturned, but his boxing career seemed ended at its height. His astounding comeback in the 1970's in tough fights against Joe Frazier and George Foreman, powerfully if briefly captured here, remains more than just a sports story.
Dick Schaap, the sports reporter, expresses the feelings not just of fans but of many who couldn't care less about boxing yet were knocked out by the man himself, when he says the story would have ended on the right note if Mr. Ali had stopped when he took back the championship from George Foreman in 1974. After that there were downs and ups, ending with him showing the effects of so many years of blows to the head.
Still, in 1978, the year that the 36-year-old Mr. Ali was beaten by and then beat Leon Spinks, he is seen telling the cameras: ""I'm actually a pretty man. I'm not conceited, I'm convinced."" The hour is convincing about both his beauty in the ring and his strength outside it. After all the clowning, Muhammad Ali ends up with his dignity intact. Biography Muhammad Ali
Produced by Lilibet Foster for A&E/CEL Communications; Charles Grinker, executive producer; Peter Graves, narrator. At 8 P.M. on A&E. WITH: Arthur Ashe, James Earl Jones, Dick Schaap and Thomas Hauser.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Could There Be Nuclear War?
The only laugh in ""Losing Control?,"" tonight's all-out alert on the risk of blundering into nuclear war, comes at the very end, when the narrator, Bill Kurtis, says earnestly, ""Our purpose here is not to advocate any definitive answer."" It's like having a car salesman tell you after an hour of browbeating that all he wants is for you to make up your own mind.
The documentary, at 9 on Channel 13, centers on what it calls ""a plausible scenario"" of the United States and the Soviet Union caught in a nuclear exchange through some muddy set of calculations and miscalculations. Simulated scenes of television news reports of the crisis, which begins with a war between Syria and Israel, are interspersed with comments by real former officials, think tankists and others; most caution that the ever-increasing complexity of modern weapons combined with never-diminishing human fallibility makes nuclear war only too likely.
Such warnings are not new. They have been heard since the end of World War II. The fact that no nuclear device has been set off in anger over nearly half a century has not laid the concern to rest; as the program notes, quite a number of countries, not all paragons of restraint, have what it takes to make a bomb, and others are catching up. But the role of nuclear arsenals in discouraging superpower conflict and encouraging the fall of dictatorships in Eastern Europe is not taken into account tonight, and the transformed relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States is skirted as an incidental obstacle to the program's premise.
Whatever one's opinion of the need for nuclear weapons, the possibility that they could still be set off by mistake invites steady, thoughtful attention. That is not what it receives in this scare scenario, with its specters of buccaneering submarine commanders, drunken or doped-up soldiers, officials passing out from stress, an incapacitated President (then Dan Quayle would have his finger on the button!), a loss of communications, technology running amok and more. The hyped-up simulations and factitious script will seem plausible mainly to viewers who find docudramas persuasive. Others may resist buying even as appealing a used idea as a nuclear ban from anybody who gives this sort of sales pitch.
The controversy over nuclear arms has always been shaped by attitudes toward American military power, and that comes through strongly tonight. Pentagonians like Richard Perle, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense, and Vice Adm. William E. Ramsey, retired, the former deputy commander in chief of the United States Space Command, are set up as targets for such practiced snipers at the military as Daniel Ellsberg and the Rev. William Sloan Coffin. Admiral Ramsey practically shoots himself, when he says, referring to war-by-accident, ""I just don't think it could happen."" Mr. Coffin, the head of SANE Freeze, delivers the program's final commercial for the destruction of all nuclear weapons and means of making them.
At its most useful, ""Losing Control?"" draws attention to the built-in risks of having to make quick decisions in a crisis. Doctrines like pre-emptive strike and launch on warning (use 'em or lose 'em) demand understanding by mere civilians, and this the hour provides. Unfortunately, the loaded approach explodes credibility. The effect is more to excite than to elucidate. You wouldn't want the finger on the panic button to belong to the people behind this tendentious work. Losing Control? Produced by Gary Krane; Bill Kurtis, narrator. At 9 tonight on Channel 13.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Who Snoops on Whom and How
""Private Matters,"" tonight's edition of ""48 Hours,"" is all about snooping: companies snooping on prospective employees, spouses snooping on each other, talk shows snooping on everybody.
After lively if familiar segments about investigators using high-powered cameras, electronic tapping equipment and computers to pry on the unwary for commercial or domestic reasons or just for fun, the program focuses on a photographer for supermarket tabloids who is tracking down Delta Burke, the star of the new television show ""Delta,"" with the intention of catching her looking unattractive.
Ms. Burke says she feels like a deer in hunting season. The photographer sustains the image: He says he is a ""modern-day bounty hunter"" who brings them back on film. He maintains that celebrities want to control publicity, and his job is to take the control away from them. Ms. Burke complains, but every time she spots him, she waves.
A more serious issue is raised by Arthur Ashe, who tells the ""48 Hours"" correspondent, Richard Schlesinger, that he felt his privacy was violated when the fact that he has AIDS was made public. The question of when journalists should hold back information about well-known figures remains tricky, and in its usual jumpy manner, ""48 Hours"" does not pause long enough to get very far into it.
Another interesting issue is raised by an amusing report on the Sally Jessy Raphael show, which specializes in encouraging its guests to bare all. Ms. Raphael says, ""People will pretty much tell you anything, especially if they are Americans."" So mothers come before the cameras to accuse their daughters of looking like sluts, and wives come on to accuse their husbands of acting like slobs.
Richard Sennett, a sociologist of note, finds the results appalling: ""We're watching people being humiliated, debasing themselves."" But suppose those people don't mind a bit of humiliation as long as the cameras are working? One participant grants, ""I don't have too much pride."" (Ms. Raphael, by contrast, declines to talk to Mr. Schlesinger about her private life. If more people were that reserved, she'd be out of business.)
Millions of viewers are no doubt titillated by such shows. Are they being somehow coarsened, with consequences for the society? No, you won't learn anything about that tonight. ""Private Matters"" is a skillfully put together show, but one wishes that now and then ""48 Hours"" would slow down and dig a little deeper. 48 Hours Private Matters  CBS, tonight at 10. (Channel 2 in New York.) Directed by Eric Shapiro; Mitch Weitzner, producer, Steve Glauber, senior producer; Andrew Heyward, executive producer.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Fixing U.S. Economy At Home, Not Abroad
Much as I'd like to call a work as pertinent, informative and sensible as ""Made in America?"" enthralling television, that would constitute misleading advertising.
The four-hour documentary, presided over by Robert B. Reich, the prolific Harvard University political economist, has a lot to say about American competitiveness and lack of it. Professor Reich says it well enough, but after a lively start, the pictures of factories and classrooms begin to resemble industrial training films.
A main point of tonight's two-hour segment, at 8 o'clock on Channels 13 and 49 and at 11 on Channel 21, is that America's economic problems lie not in Japan but right here at home, and Mr. Reich emphasizes that this is the only place they can be corrected. That accomplishment, in his opinion, requires that Americans adopt some Japanese habits: ""They work like hell and save like crazy.""
Japanese businesses, he shows, have often taken ideas born in the United States and developed them into big-selling products. A current example on display here is a combination toilet and bidet, which is already popular in Japan. American managers, he charges, have concentrated on making profits on stock deals instead of on goods.
The main need in the global economy, says Mr. Reich, is a skilled work force. He finds hope in an experimental school in North Carolina where youngsters with talent for science and mathematics receive special training. That's encouraging, but too much like a come-to-North Carolina promotion to get the juices running.
The second hour is an extended plug for a new Chysler model -- the LH -- that company executives say was devised and built with the sort of teamwork for which Japanese car makers are famous. Mr. Reich sounds a little like the company's front man, Lee A. Iacocca: ""Each designer finds his own way to inspiration."" But Mr. Reich does note that automobile industry executives like Mr. Iacocca continued to make millions while their companies went into reverse.
Tomorrow night, ""Made in America?"" describes the odyssey of a dress, from sheep in Australia to a Japanese mill to Bill Blass's design studio in New York City to a factory in China, and back to a Manhattan department store. And, finally, Mr. Reich examines commercial aircraft production. Everywhere he looks he finds lessons for America and signs of a comeback. That will take more in the way of innovation than these worthy programs provide. The German Way
If after four hours of ""Made in America?"" you're thirsting for more news on how America is being outdistanced by foreign competitors, PBS provides it. ""Germany's Quality Obsession,"" at 10 P.M. tomorrow on Channels 13 and 49, finds Tom Peters delivering a typically hard-sell report on three successful middle-sized German companies -- an oven maker, a machine-tool maker and a toy maker -- and one American machine-tool company.
What they all have in common, by Mr. Peters's account, is worker discipline, management flexibility and, above all, responsiveness to the consumer, elements that Mr. Reich finds in Japan, too. Let's hope the rest of corporate America is watching. Made in America?  Segments produced by Carl Charlson, Larry Engel, Peter Frumkin, Linda Garmon and Judy Katz for the WGBH Science Unit/Boston; Paula S. Apsell, director, WGBH Science Unit; William Grant, executive producer; Robert B. Reich, host. At 8 tonight on Channels 13 and 49, and at 11 on Channel 21. WITH: Jagdish Bhagwati, Charles Ferguson, Wallace L. Ford II, David Nelson, Leslie Nulty, James Sherblom and Laura Tyson.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Dear Camcorder Diary: Memoirs From All Over
""Self-Portraits"" is evidence that the age of the video diary or video garage sale is upon us. In February 1991, the producers gave cameras to 100 people in 25 countries -- exactly how they were chosen is not clear -- with an invitation to create ""video letters"" about themselves. The result, edited down to an hour, is a grab bag of mini-autobiographies, imaginings and reflections that begins with a birth and ends with a funeral.
Like most scrapbooks, the parts are better than the whole. At any rate, the best of them avoid the pretentiousness of the categories into which they have been lumped: ""Awakening,"" ""Coming of Age,"" ""Self-Expression,"" ""Suffering,"" ""Wisdom.""
Although some of the passages in ""Coming of Age"" sound like classroom exercises in confessional journalism, they have an awkward authenticity that fades when the grown-ups take over. A boy in Morocco tells of giving up the nomadic life for an oasis; a Tibetan boy tells of his journey to India to study with a monk; a boy in Scotland tells of starting public school; a Massachusetts boy tells of his feelings about his parents' divorce.
Fans of believe-it-or-nots may be attracted to the New Yorker tattooed from head to toe who does an act as ""the illustrated man""; the woman who says that as a young girl she was drugged, burned, subjected to tarantulas and snakes and otherwise annoyed by 17 members of her family, and the spirited one-armed, one-legged man on a 17,000-mile automobile trip through Africa.
More familiar are the neo-Nazi youth in eastern Germany who rants about ""human scum"" and the Holocaust survivor on a visit to what was once his concentration camp; the man dying of AIDS, the woman dying of breast cancer and the homeless man on Christmas Day. For relief, there is a dash of self-conscious pornography.
The most touching scenes are the straightforward ones, especially the 70-year-old Chinese woman telling what it is like to walk through life with bound feet. But there is plenty of self-indulgence here; artiness evidently knows no national boundaries. There ought to be a warning on camcorders that they can bring on delusions of auteurship.
For fullest enjoyment of ""Self-Portraits,"" you have to love other people's home movies. Personally, I would not have minded if more of the contributors took a lesson from the 4-year-old Swedish boy who ended his brief day-in-the-life offering with, ""Now it's enough.""
Self-Portraits  Showtime, tonight at 10 P.M. A special produced by Skip Lane and Robert Edward Altman for Those Guys International through Folk Video Networks; a presentation of Showtime Entertainment.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television: Hearts Afire; Of Love and Politics, Left and Right
Creator of ""Designing Women"" and ""Evening Shade,"" not to mention prominent consultant to Bill Clinton, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason is sticking with CBS but shifting her formidable focus to Washington in ""Hearts Afire,"" which is to have a special one-hour premiere at 8 o'clock tonight. There's great potential here but, for the moment, Dan Quayle needn't fret. This is no ""Murphy Brown,"" at least not yet.
What's served up in ""Hearts Afire,"" its roots in sitcom tugs of war going back to ""All in the Family,"" is the artful mating of a sort of conservative with a sort of liberal. On the right, there's John Hartman (John Ritter), political aide to a Southern Senator, Strobe Smithers (George Gaynes), the kind of rascal who nowadays intones that maybe it's ""time for a little trickle-down humanity."" Recently divorced and caring for two very precocious young sons, John tries to cope reasonably with being mugged on a street near his home and the rumor that his former wife is having an affair with another woman.
Coming from the left, chain-smoking Georgie Anne Lahti (Markie Post), her father in prison for some funny business concerning the teamsters, has seen her reporting career go from writing about ""Sexism in the Israeli Military"" and ""My Year With Fidel"" to, most recently, a part-time job at Euro Disney. Georgie and her surrogate mother, Miss Lula (Beah Richards), are living in a run-down motel, credit cards having run their course. Think of Murphy Brown facing food stamps. What's next? Nothing less than being hired by a dubious but smitten John as press secretary for Senator Smithers, overseeing his photo ops in jogging togs.
This may be Washington, but national issues are kept behind closed doors as the principals, feeling each other out, parry generalities. Looking to the past, John notes that everybody seemed so happy then. ""Maybe they were just acting,"" says Georgie. ""Maybe that's what we need now,"" John responds, ""better actors.""
On the sidelines, of course, are a batch of supporting characters, each with a wicked repertory of wisecracks. Most prominent is Miss Starr (Beth Broderick), the Senator's quite shapely secretary, known to exasperated colleagues as L.B.L.I.C. (Last Bimbo Left in Congress). Miss Starr -- this being a Southern politician's office, just about everybody is addressed as Mister or Miz -- is given to pithy pronouncements: ""One man's condom is another man's party balloon.""
After getting off to a surprisingly threadbare start, with the kids being tiresomely cute, ""Hearts Afire"" begins scoring frequently enough to keep itchy fingers off the remote. Mr. Ritter is still frisky and remarkably youthful, even if slightly more puffy. Ms. Post is tough and charming enough to make even her character's incessant smoking almost bearable. This week they end up in a huge bathtub. Next week they go on a date that includes the dangerously tanned George Hamilton (""I think he looks like Al Jolson,"" mutters John), who is looking even puffier than Mr. Ritter.
Will ""Hearts Afire"" ever be able to rattle political cages? The opportunity is there. The new show, scheduled from tonight on between ""Evening Shade"" and ""Murphy Brown,"" is likely to be around for a while. Hearts Afire  CBS, 8 P.M. Directed by Harry Thomason from a script by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason; produced by Doug Jackson and Tommy Thompson for Mozark Productions in association with Adam Productions; Ms. Bloodworth-Thomason, Mr. Thomason and Bob Myman, executive producers. John Hartman . . . John Ritter Georgie Anne Lahti . . . Markie Post Miss Lula . . . Beah Richards Strobe Smithers . . . George Gaynes Billy Bob Davis . . . Billy Bob Thornton Dee Dee Starr . . . Beth Broderick Mavis Davis . . . Wendy Jo Sperber Adam . . . Adam Carl Elliot Hartman . . . Clark Duke Ben Hartman . . . Justin Burnette",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; 'Frontline' Investigates the Real David Duke
All those ""Frontline"" viewers who were about to rush out and vote for David Duke for President because they thought he was a do-gooder will be stunned by ""Who Is David Duke?"" tonight at 9 on Channel 13. Others will not be knocked off their couches by evidence that he is still a Ku Kluxer and a Nazi at heart.
Through interviews with sometime colleagues and acquaintances, bolstered by years of quotes from the man himself (Mr. Duke declined to participate), the hour demonstrates that although he has shed his mustache and some of his language about white power, black pickaninnies and Jewish control of everything, his opinions remain much what they were before he decided to go mainstream.
A passing effort to get at the roots of his attitude toward blacks only makes the program's correspondent, Hodding Carter 3d, sound a bit silly. He says the 13-year-old David Duke's observation of differences between white and black rats ""had a profound impression.""
The hour traces Mr. Duke's ideological and political route from his ascendance to office in the Ku Klux Klan (""There is no more powerful symbol of the white race than the fiery cross! White victory!"") to creator and head of the National Association for the Advancement of White People (""the Jewish people have been a blight"") to electoral politics. In the course of his career, Mr. Duke has proposed that blacks be shipped to Africa and Jews be resettled on Long Island, which some may count an even crueler fate. But now, as a self-described born-again Christian, he apologizes for anything he may have said that seems intolerant. His lawyer expresses suspicion of the claim to conversion but can see its usefulness: ""Christianity by politicians is acceptable.""
The unsettling thing about the onward and upward Duke story, as a journalist who has been following it observes, is the fact that ""55 percent of the white voters in Louisiana voted for David Duke, and they're not all nut cases and crackpots and racists and haters."" Tonight's program lays out the record; an analysis of its appeal to so many white voters deserves at least equal time. 'The Happy Days Reunion Special  ABC 9:30 P.M.
Fans of the Fonz may want to tune in to ""The Happy Days Reunion Special."" The 90-minute program, complete with laugh tracks, combines segments of the hit sitcom about the Cunninghams of Milwaukee, which ran from 1974 to 1984, with reminiscences of cast members. Among the one-time favorites on the show are Ron Howard, Tom Bosley, Pat Morita and Henry (the Fonz) Winkler, who also acts as host. Sitting through the anthology requires more of a need for a nostalgia fix than this reviewer could dredge up. 'Grave Secrets The Legacy of Hilltop Drive'  CBS 9 P.M.
So how would you feel if you moved into a new house only to find that the toilet flushed of its own accord, the television set turned itself on and lights turned themselves off, the garage door misbehaved, shadows climbed the walls, and the place was a museum of creepy noises, spooky music and sinister camera angles, not to mention the wind, storm and creaking branches outside? That's what Patty Duke and David Selby are up against in ""Grave Secrets: The Legacy of Hilltop Drive."" ""The toilet flushed again,"" somebody says. Well, better that than the television set turning on to this channel. Frontline Who Is David Duke?  A report written by Elena Mannes and Hodding Carter; edited by Ned Bastille; reported by Jason Berry; produced by Ms. Mannes for a consortium of WNET/New York, WGBH/ Boston, KCTS/Seattle, WPBT/Miami and WTVS/Detroit; David Fanning, executive producer. Mr. Carter, host. Tonight at 9 on Channel 13.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Many Styles, Many Indiana Joneses
Beginning with its title, ""The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles"" seems curiously destined to being cumbersome. By far the most impressively mounted weekly show on television, at least in terms of rich production values, this ABC series keeps running up against its own unwieldy conception, devised by its executive producer, George Lucas. Latest evidence: tonight's ""Barcelona, 1917"" episode, at 8, directed by Terry Jones, once of ""Monty Python's Flying Circus.""
Mr. Lucas, of course, working as executive producer and in other capacities, shares credit for the enormous box-office success of the ""Indiana Jones"" trilogy (the ""Star Wars"" saga is also his). Then he had a perfectly admirable idea. Why not a coming-of-age series about the formative years of the fictional Indiana Jones, a series set in the early decades of this century and incorporating real events and historical characters into its plots? Aimed at younger audiences, ""Young Indy,"" as it more felicitously might have been titled, would bring new life to the concept of educational television. Great excitement, justifiably so.
From the outset, however, ""Young Indy"" has twisted itself into dramatic knots. For one thing, there is a rather superfluous Old Indy (George Hall), now 93 years old and kept around for no very good reason other than the fact that he is the weekly narrator, putting complex historical details into usually oversimplified contexts. Then there has been not one but two Young Indys: one pre-teen (Corey Carrier), the other about to become 17 (Sean Patrick Flanery). Audiences for one version of Indy won't necessarily be the same as for the other.
A consistency of tone, crucial for any weekly series, has been further diminished by what, on paper, should be an artistic coup. With his own lofty reputation, Mr. Lucas has been able to attract performers and directors who don't make a habit of working in television. Next week, for instance, Max von Sydow will portray Sigmund Freud in an episode featuring the pre-teen Indy and directed by Bille August (""Pelle the Conqueror""). Other episodes this season are being directed by Nicholas Roeg (""Don't Look Now"") and Mike Newell (""Enchanted April"").
The problem: Each program is so different in tone and style that ""Young Indy"" winds up looking like an anthology series that happens to have a floating character named Jones. A couple of weeks ago, Indy the teen-ager was off to Austria in a derring-do escapade that involved running across the top of a moving train. The director was Vic Armstrong, stunt master for ""Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."" Tonight, with Mr. Jones as director, the action suddenly turns into something resembling a Three Stooges comedy.
Once again, the series, filmed on an array of international locations, looks terrific. A theater used for what is supposed to be a performance of the Ballets Russes (working undercover, the teen-age Indy gets the role of a eunuch in ""Scheherazade"") is positively dazzling. Mr. Jones moves through a series of slapstick sequences with aplomb.
But even those viewers most supportive of the idea behind the series are likely to wind up confused about its methods. The educational aspects of the plan are not helped by historical portraits that rarely rise above stereotypes. Diaghilev and Picasso are depicted as tiresomely temperamental artistes. The German espionage gang is as buffoonish as any in a World War II propaganda movie.
In terms of technology, ""The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles"" is making most of its prime-time competition look pathetically paltry. Now it's a matter of putting its week-to-week personality and content in order. Television and Mr. Lucas obviously have a lot to teach each other. The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles Barcelona, 1917  ABC, tonight at 8 (Channel 7 in New York) Directed by Terry Jones; written by Gavin Scott, based on a story by George Lucas; director of photography, David Tattersall; editor, Louise Rubacky; costumes by Charlotte Holdich; music by Laurence Rosenthal; production designer, Gavin Bocquet; produced for Lucasfilm in association with Amblin Television; Mr. Lucas, executive producer. Young Indiana Jones . . . Sean Patrick Flanery Indiana Jones (age 93) . . . George Hall Nadia . . . Amanda Ooms Cunningham-Massiter . . . Timothy Spall Colonel Schmidt . . . Kenneth Cranham Chauffeur . . . Harry Enfield Marcello . . . Terry Jones Diaghilev . . . William Hootkins Delfina . . . Liz Smith",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; The Hard Times and Happy Feet of 1939 Harlem
The scene is Harlem and the year is 1939. The times aren't easy, especially for black people. Most of the women seem to be working in white folks' kitchens. Many of the men have no jobs at all. Temporary escape is usually found at the Savoy Ballroom -- ""home of the happy feet"" -- on Lenox Avenue. And that's where four young black women, long best friends and roommates, spend as much time as they can. Their intertwined stories are told in ""Stompin' at the Savoy,"" the CBS movie on Sunday at 9 P.M. Here's a rare television bird, a drama with music, and it flies beautifully.
An exceptionally fine cast has an opportunity to strut splendidly, and sometimes literally, under the direction of Debbie Allen. Lynn Whitfield (""The Josephine Baker Story"") is Esther, ambitious and a bit too calculating because she knows ""there's money to be made and I'm going to get some of it"" if she can only open her own beauty shop. Vanessa Williams plays Pauline, aiming to be a singer but seemingly doomed to being a maid or hat-check girl. Jasmine Guy (""A Different World"") is the gentle, romantic Alice, something of an eternal victim. And Vanessa Bell Calloway is wary Dorothy, caught up in a difficult interracial relationship.
As for the men in their lives, the leader of the pack is Walter, played by Mario Van Peebles (""New Jack City""). A modestly successful businessman, Walter looks like a smooth heartbreaker but, devoted to Esther, turns out to be unfailingly thoughtful and supportive. Darnell Williams (formerly of ""All My Children"") is boyish Ernest, struggling to do his best for Alice but never quite succeeding. Michael Warren (Bobby Hill on ""Hill Street Blues"") appears as Calvin, a shrewd club operator, and John Di Aquino is Bill, the white actor who's as naive as he is sincere.
In the beginning, the mood is light. The women are struggling but not suffering. Promising affairs are getting started, and there is always a good time to be had at the Savoy, where Chick Webb, the drummer and orchestra leader, is featuring a new singer named Ella Fitzgerald (Dawnn Lewis). The music is hard-driving swing. The dancing, from Lindy Hop to jitterbug, is joyous. The film's production numbers are choreographed by Norma Miller and Frank Manning, themselves Savoy Ballroom dancers in the 1930's and then, in 1989, winners of a Tony Award for their choreography in ""Black and Blue.""
Time passes. A World War begins, and life turns grimmer. In terms of a movie musical, ""Stompin' at the Savoy"" is much closer to 20th Century Fox domesticity -- remember Betty Grable and Dan Dailey -- than M-G-M glitz. Beverly M. Sawyer's script is stuffed with serious issues ranging from poverty and racism to ambition and betrayal. They are not hammered home, but the points are made. This drama with music is one of the more welcome surprises of the season. 'A&E Revue'  Arts & Entertainment Network Tonight at 10
As it happens, this edition of the weekly arts magazine is devoted to the American musical theater. Robert Klein, the host, has separate interviews with Marvin Hamlisch (""A Chorus Line""), Harvey Schmidt (""The Fantasticks"") and Charles Strouse. Singing some of their songs are Jerry Orbach, Andrea McArdle and Mr. Klein himself. (He starred in Mr. Hamlisch's ""They're Playing Our Song."") Harry Groener, from the current hit ""Crazy for You,"" closes the warm salute with ""They Can't Take That Away From Me."" Let's hope so. 'Superstar The Life and Times of Andy Warhol'  Channel 13 Tonight at 10
Visionary or charlatan? This 1990 Chuck Workman film provides ammunition for those taking either view of the odd man from Pittsburgh. Warhol's life is covered less effectively than his times, which are evoked vividly in all their glorious excess, from the Factory and Studio 54 to those Campbell Soup cans and a six-hour film of a man sleeping. Drugs, lunacy, wild fun, shrewd exploitation and destruction. It's a fascinating tale. 'Bob Newhart Off the Record'  Showtime Sunday at 9 P.M.
No comedian has ever made brilliant timing look so incredibly easy. Currently between network sitcoms, the almost ridiculously nondescript Mr. Newhart goes to a theater in Pasadena, Calif., to revive several routines from his early comedy recordings. There's the bus instructor telling new drivers how best to foil elderly ladies running with packages. Then there's the image consultant giving Abe Lincoln some tips on packaging himself. No foul language, no smut, no screaming. Just real laughs. This is, as they say, a dying breed. Stompin' at the Savoy  Written by Beverly M. Sawyer; Debbie Allen, director; Norm Baron, production designer; Hal Wheeler, musical score; Norma Miller, choreographer; Frank Manning and Ms. Allen, assistant choreographers; John Saviano, production supervisor; Jim Ferrell, set decorator; Michael O. Gallant, supervising producer; Richard Maynard, executive producer. A Richard Maynard Production in association with Gallant Entertainment. Sunday at 9 P.M. on CBS. Esther Tolbert . . . Lynn Whitfield Pauline Richardson . . . Vanessa Williams Alice Nichols . . . Jasmine Guy Dorothy Fanroy . . . Vanessa Bell Calloway Walter . . . Mario Van Peebles Calvin Hunter . . . Michael Warren Ernest Johnson . . . Darnell Williams Bill Jerome . . . John Di Aquino Estelle . . . Debbie Allen",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Home Video
'Fantasia' Available
For those who still want to buy ""Fantasia,"" the advice from retailers is don't run but walk, though at a purposeful pace, to the video store. Close to 13 million tapes of the Disney classic are in circulation and, in the opinion of some in the industry, the film could surpass ""E.T. the Extraterrestrial"" as the best-selling movie ever. But though there is bounty now, it doesn't mean the supplies in stores will last forever.
""What we have should carry us through January,"" said Ron Castell, a vice president of Blockbuster, the country's largest video chain.
By then many stores will have run out of ""Fantasia"" and will be unable to order more copies. Disney released the movie on Nov. 1 for a limited period, after which, the studio announced in the summer, it is to be cut apart with some sections saved for a new ""Fantasia"" planned for release in the late 1990's. The end for this ""Fantasia"" will come on Jan. 13.
""That's the last day for distributors to order,"" said Steve Feldstein of Disney. ""Then it's gone.""
The film has given the studio some trying if profitable moments since November. In the first week, demand was so heavy -- a frenzy, some dealers called it -- that Disney had to suspend orders. ""We were completely out of inventory,"" Mr. Feldstein said. Since then, distributors have been allowed to reorder twice, but Disney has limited sales to a percentage of what a customer first ordered. ""We're trying to gauge the product flow,"" Mr. Feldstein said.
In other words, Disney doesn't want to overproduce and have cassettes returned. ""Anybody who wants 'Fantasia' probably already has it,"" Mr. Castell said. TV Pilot
Next year doesn't look promising for big-movie releases on tape, but there are titles to talk about. One, in fact, is not a movie but a television program. On Jan. 21, Worldvision will release the 90-minute pilot episode of ""Beverly Hills 90210,"" the Fox show set in a California high school that has a wide following among teen-age viewers. The title is a second hot television property on video for Worldvision, which recently released ""The Addams Family"" series from the 1960's, just in time for ""The Addams Family"" the movie, one of the season's hits at the box office.
Worldvision predicted that ""Beverly Hills 90210"" would rent as if it were a movie because the show caught on gradually and not many among those in its present audience saw the pilot, which was broadcast in 1990. For that reason, ""Beverly Hills 90210"" is being priced like a movie, at $89.95. New Video Releases
Delirious
1991. MGM/UA
. $94.99. Laser disk, $24.98. 1 hour 36 minutes. Closed captioned. PG.
After suffering a whack on the head, a television writer, Jack Gable (John Candy), wakes up in the soap opera he has created. There's the pretty little soap town of Ashford Falls and the estate called Scimitar. There too are all the soap denizens he can now manipulate to help him get out of dreamland. Best of all is the unrestricted license to benefit himself with the kind of soapy devices he usually uses, like killing off characters and having pretty women fall in love with him. Though slow in places, Tom Mankiewicz's film ""does come up with some enjoyable new swipes at the same old targets"" (Janet Maslin).  Life and Nothing But  1989. Orion. $79.98. 2:15. French with English subtitles. PG.
After World War I near the French town of Verdun, soldiers and citizens from around the country sift through the rubble of battle, cataloguing the dead and looking for belongings or any other signs of lost loved ones. It is a businesslike enterprise carried out with matter-of-fact dedication by the military unit, led by Dellaplane (Philippe Noiret), and civilians who bear their loss and grief with stoic patience and occasional gallows humor. But none of the characters are allowed to draw too near in Bertrand Tavernier's film, which is content to watch them from afar as part of a larger whole in a way that is ""muted, as dark, restrained and slow moving as it is somberly beautiful"" (Maslin).  Open Doors  1989. Orion. $79.98. 1:48. Italian with English subtitles. R.
In Palermo, Sicily, in 1937, a distinguished judge (Gian Maria Volonte) absorbs himself with the intricacies of a particularly spectacular murder case. An office worker, dismissed from his job, has stabbed two fellow employees to death and then raped and murdered his wife. Details of the crimes are gradually revealed in the courtroom, but interest soon shifts from the case to the solemn elegance of the deliberations, the nobility of the judge and the deceptive orderliness that masks a chilling need for vengeance in Sicilian society. ""The whole film, which has been directed with meticulous grace by Gianni Amelio, has an eerie, watchful tone"" (Maslin).  The Glass Bottom Boat  1966. MGM/UA. $19.98. 1:51. No rating.
Doris Day, cute as a button, is mistaken for a Soviet spy when she makes too many phone calls to a character named Vladimir (her dog, actually). Rod Taylor is a scientist in Frank Tashlin's frantic 1960's farce and the newcomer Dom DeLuise plays a real spy. Arthur Godfrey is the captain of the see-through vessel, while Miss Day ""continues to project her familiar personality: that of the Little Orphan Annie of slick cinema fiction"" (Vincent Canby). Bankrupt but Best-Renting
This week Orion Home Video, a division of the studio that filed for bankruptcy protection on Dec. 11, has three titles on Billboard's best-renter list (""The Silence of the Lambs,"" ""FX2: The Deadly Art of Illusion"" and ""Dances With Wolves""). Orion, whose titles remain in stores, has many other films on tape. Here are some of them.
MURMUR OF THE HEART. In Louis Malle's film, a French adolescent (Benoit Ferreux) is charmingly attracted to his glamorous mother. 1971. $79.95. 1:58. French with English subtitles. No rating.  AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS. Two schoolboys, one a Jew, deal with the Nazis in occupied France. Louis Malle directed. 1987. $19.98. 1:43. French with English subtitles. No rating.  BULL DURHAM. Susan Sarandon, a baseball groupie, takes a couple of minor leaguers (Kevin Costner and Tim Robbins) under her wing. 1988. $19.98. 1:55. R.  MISSISSIPPI BURNING. Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe are F.B.I. agents investigating the disappearance of three civil rights workers. Alan Parker's film was nominated for seven Oscars. 1988. $19.98. 2:00. R.  BABETTE'S FEAST. A housekeeper (Stephane Audran) uses her culinary skills to teach the two sisters she works for how to live. 1987. $19.98. Danish with English subtitles. No rating.  WOMEN ON THE VERGE OF A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. An actress (Carmen Maura) gets tangled up with her philandering lover's wife and his new girlfriend, in Pedro Almodovar's comedy. 1988. $79.95. 1:28. Spanish with English subtitles. R.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Melting Pot? Simmering Nicely
Right-wing critics of public broadcasting should be cheered tonight by an essay, in prime time, that is upbeat about America from a man who has been known to consort with neo-conservatives.
""The First Universal Nation,"" at 9 P.M. on Channel 13, is an installment of ""Ben J. Wattenberg: Trends in the 90's."" It is Mr. Wattenberg's description of the American melting pot, which he finds to be poppling vigorously and productively. In this energetic hour, the author and television commentator looks at immigration, intermarriage and the worldwide taste for American pop culture.
Mr. Wattenberg, who specializes in mining the meanings of statistical data as a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, notes that the immigration rate is back up to a million a year, about the same as at the turn of the century. But the mix has changed: about 85 percent of today's newest Americans are not of European ancestry. At the Gaithersburg Intermediate School in Maryland, he finds students from 41 countries, apparently getting along just fine.
Although Mr. Wattenberg concedes that intergroup animosities have not vanished (a black New Yorker is seen shouting at a Korean New Yorker, ""This is my country, not yours""), he accentuates the positive. While attending a wedding in Baltimore between a Greek Orthodox woman and a Presbyterian man whose mother belongs to the Daughters of the American Revolution, he notes that ethnic and religious barriers to marriage have all but collapsed in the last 20 years. He finds encouragement in the fact that black-white intermarriage, too, is climbing, although it is still relatively rare.
His conclusion: At a time when ethnic and racial divisions are being emphasized by press and television, ""the melting pot is alive, flourishing, expanding.""
One must hope so; the message is much more heartening than the general run of election-year coverage. But viewers may detect a certain wishfulness in this hour, which was financed in part by the John M. Olin Foundation and the Donner Foundation, prominent supporters of conservative causes. Mr. Wattenberg, sleeves rolled up, glasses on forehead, makes an energetic salesman for America, with a salesman's tendency to play down the less shiny aspects of his product.
Relying on history and faith, he promises that the current symptoms of group dissension will be ameliorated as the American dream takes hold among the new immigrants. Matters like the nation's economic prospects, the appearance in the inner cities of youths who are notoriously resistant to assimilation and the implications of the multi-culturalism are given scant attention.
Mr. Wattenberg's optimistic revisionism is most striking in the hour's final segment, on the Americanization of world culture. Along with Hollywood movies, soap operas and Euro Disney, America is sending forth values like individualism and upward mobility, he emphasizes. He does not pause to scrutinize the content of what is being exported.
The message being delivered to the world, he says, is this: ""In America everything is possible."" That is pretty much Mr. Wattenberg's message, too. 'States of Mind'  Channel 13 Friday at midnight
This seven-part PBS series on how people are getting along these days around the United States has a somewhat less optimistic spin. Workers in Idaho are trying to figure out how to keep their jobs in the logging industry without disfiguring the land, and leaders of a poor black community in Arkansas are trying to improve life for their children. A largely Hispanic community in Denver is trying to revitalize a neighborhood battered by industry, and old-time religion is holding together the residents of a rural West Virginia town. And people in tiny Shoshone, Idaho, have been hit by crime and poverty, just like people in Milwaukee and Philadelphia, the scene of tonight's intermittently interesting opening episode, direly titled ""Crisis in Philadelphia."" 'Pillar of Fire'  TNT Sunday at 10 P.M.
This two-hour documentary is a distillation of a 19-hour Israeli version of the birth of Israel, from the Dreyfus court-martial to the establishment of the state in 1948. It is embellished with evocative old photographs and newsreel clips and the narration of Jason Robards. The First Universal Nation  Channel 13 Tonight at 9
Written by Ben J. Wattenberg; Tevi Troy, associate producer; Marilyn Weiner and Hal Weiner, producers. A co-production of Screenscope and South Carolina ETV.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; 2 Roads to the Presidential Campaign
Frontline The Choice '92  PBS, tonight at 9  (Channel 13 in New York)
Produced by Thomas Lennon; Michael Sullivan, senior producer; David Fanning, executive producer; Richard Ben Cramer, correspondent.
""The Choice '92"" is less about issues than about careers. Richard Ben Cramer, author of ""What It Takes,"" a book about the 1988 Presidential candidates, interweaves the stories of President George Bush and Gov. Bill Clinton from their childhoods to just yesterday to show how ""they clawed to the top of our political heap."" The contrasts are striking, but so are the similarities. (Ross Perot does not figure in this two-hour ""Frontline"" special, which was almost complete before he re-entered the race a few weeks ago.)
Viewers who have not had enough this season of how the two main candidates made their ways into politics can obtain a brisk recapitulation tonight, with the help of family members, friends and pictures of them on the rise. Mr. Cramer portrays Mr. Bush as a loyal party man who despite his own inclinations came out strongly against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he was running for the Senate in Texas. Later, a friend recalls, he expressed regret at taking ""some of the far-right positions that I thought I needed to get elected."" He said, ""I hope I'll never do it again."" John Sears, an aid to President Richard Nixon -- who helped the Bush career -- says, ""I don't think George Bush's positions are central to who he is.""
Issues seem to have been more urgent for Mr. Clinton, who came of age in the 1960's. Mr. Cramer reports that as a college student, shown here in a sparse beard, Mr. Clinton was deeply opposed to the Vietnam War and stayed out of it by ""working the system, sometimes baldly, every angle.""
The program's account of the two men's twists and turns as they made their way upward are revealing not only about them but about what Americans demand of their leaders. Both suffered losses that apparently taught them the importance of adapting to political exigencies. Adaptation seems to have come more easily to Mr. Bush, but Mr. Clinton, too, proved an adaptable politician as he moved closer to his state's business interests. An Arkansas critic says, ""Bill Clinton will never over-commit, not ever.""
Mr. Cramer's conclusion that both have been reinventing themselves as they go along speaks to the nature of American politics, where the price of success often includes moderating one's convictions and distorting one's personality. That may be lamentable, but it takes a remarkable figure to resist the pressures of democracy. ""The Choice '92"" leaves the impression that neither of this year's main contenders is that remarkable. World in Focus
Channel 31, tomorrow at 10 P.M.
WNYC-TV begins a new 13-week series of half-hour discussions of foreign affairs tomorrow night with Lawrence Eagleburger, the Acting Secretary of State, answering questions about ""U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era."" The sharpest exchanges between Mr. Eagleburger and his inquisitors -- Margaret Osmer, the moderator; James Hoge, editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, and Leslie Gelb, a New York Times columnist -- are over America's action or inaction regarding Bosnia.
The series, which is produced by the Council on Foreign Relations, promises more big names in international diplomacy, including, next week, the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Amre Moussa, and later, Shimon Peres, the Israeli Foreign Minister. Let's hope they are treated no more gently than Mr. Eagleburger.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; 'Dream On' and Some Other Games People Play
Steadily gaining a sitcom audience for Home Box Office, ""Dream On"" may well be television's flakiest series, as becomes evident with further samplings. Martin Tupper, whose psyche was molded by television when he was growing up in the 1950's and 60's, is offered as a contemporary Everyman: divorced, trying to maintain a connection with a son in his early teens, struggling to salvage a smidgen of dignity as an editor of questionable romance novels, all the while being bombarded with flashes of black-and-white scenes from the television shows and old movies of his childhood.
Martin's best friend is his ex-wife, Judith, who has married a candidate for a Nobel and countless other prizes. Coping with a sneering secretary and a string of beautiful but out-of-kilter girlfriends, Martin does a lot of nervous smiling. Brian Benben has an amiable stranglehold on the role.
This Sunday at 10 P.M., in an episode titled ""Futile Attraction,"" Martin confesses to Judith (Wendie Malick), who is a psychiatrist, that he has developed a sexual-potency problem. She suggests that he see an analyst named Dr. Klein (Martin Mull), who turns out to be a compulsive smoker and is not amused when Martin says he objects to smoking during their sessions. Martin pours out his heart. Dr. Klein, surrounded by bowls of hard candy, begins puffing frantically on his pen.
Leaving the doctor's office, Martin meets Elaine (Gina Hecht), and after using the Heimlich maneuver to save her from choking on a sourball in an elevator, falls in love. As it turns out, Elaine is going through analysis with Judith, who knows that she is a borderline schizophrenic with a history of violently attacking her sex partners. Should Judith tell the truth to the smitten Martin? Would he simply dismiss it as a jealous ploy? The ball is in motion and the game is played out to its wacky conclusion, which includes a glimpse of Ronald Reagan intoning in a rotten movie that ""each day is too good to waste being afraid.""
With John Landis and Kevin Bright as executive producers, ""Dream On"" enjoys venturing into offbeat, often sensitive territory. This week's episode, ""Calling the Kettle Black,"" showed Martin finding a joint of marijuana in his son's bedroom. Dad was distressed, of course, giving the boy a stern lecture, but then Martin ended up smoking the marijuana with an old friend as the two shared an uncontrollable giggle over the good old days. The son had the final lecture: ""I'm not going to yell at you. I just want you to know I'm really, really disappointed.""
The show has its weak spots, most notably in a pointless tendency to be smarmy. ""Futile Attraction"" is dotted with scenes of Martin in bed with topless women. (This may be the first series to proclaim publicly almost every week that it has a breast fetish.) And a good many of the old television clips are used for double-entendres that are sometimes less witty than painfully obvious. But ""Dream On"" takes unusual chances and has a habit of turning out to be refreshingly original. 'Carmen'  Channel 13 Tonight at 9
No, not the Bizet chestnut, but this 1983 film from Spain, directed by Carlos Saura (""Blood Wedding""), updates the same source: the Prosper Merimee novella first published in 1847. The dancer Antonio Gades plays Antonio, a choreographer seeking a Carmen for a new ballet based on the famous opera. The music of Bizet is blended skillfully with traditional flamenco music, giving Mr. Gades and his co-stars ample opportunity to pound the scenery. There are English subtitles. Pan American Games ABC Tomorrow at 1 P.M.
Telecast live from Havana, this is the quadrennial event's 11th gathering. Expected through Aug. 18 are more than 6,000 athletes from 39 nations of the Western Hemisphere. Only the Olympics, traditionally held a year later, are bigger in scope. ABC will cover the daytime competition on weekends; TNT will offer evening coverage Mondays through Fridays, in addition to Sunday broadcasts after ABC. Tomorrow: men's basketball and men's and women's marathons. 'Paul Rodriguez:' 'Behind Bars' Channel 5 Sunday at 10 P.M.
The bars belong to the cells in San Quentin prison in California. Mr. Rodriguez performs his stand-up comedy act and then interviews some of the prisoners, who talk about how they wound up there and offer some advice on how to stay out, stressing education. Also on the entertainment bill are Ice-T, the rapper, and James Stephens 3d, another comedian. Dream On Produced for HBO by Kevin Bright Productions in association with MCA Television Entertainment; story editors, Jeff Greenstein and Jeff Strauss; producers, Robb Idels and Ron Wolotzky; supervising producer, Bill Sanders; executive producers, John Landis and Mr. Bright; co-executive producers, David Crane and Marta Kauffman. Sundays at 10 P.M on HBO. Martin Tupper . . . Brian Benben Judith Tupper . . . Wendie Malick Jeremy . . . Chris Demetral Toby . . . Denny Dillon",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TVWeekend; In Child-Custody Struggle, Who's on Children's Side?
NBC's ""In the Best Interest of the Children,"" on Sunday at 9 P.M., is the kind of compelling television movie that leaves you wondering what it was really trying to say. Tackling the highly sensitive and complicated issue of child custody, the film is powerfully acted, but its script, by Peter Nelson and Judd Kinberg, seems less interested in being coherent than in not offending anybody, specifically birth parents or their close relatives or foster parents.
Once again, viewers are assured that what they are about to see is based on a true story, in this instance a legal battle in Iowa during the late 1980's. But then there is an opening credit saying that the film is based on a story by Mr. Nelson. Is Mr. Nelson's ""story"" true? How far removed from the original story is the script? Muddying matters further, all names have been fictionalized. Welcome to prime-time docu-drama.
The film opens with a harrowing portrait of family life on the poverty battlefront. Pregnant Callie Cain (Sarah Jessica Parker) is returning to her hometown of Estherville, Iowa, with her four young daughters and latest boyfriend (""At least he stuck around,"" she says in defense of his sulking, abusive ways. ""That's more than I can say for the other fathers."") Callie is a hopeless mother. The shabby home is overrun with garbage and cockroaches. The oldest daughter, Jessie (Lexi Randall), tries to hold things together, feeding the baby water and potato chips when food stamps run out. At school classmates complain that the Cain children smell bad.
The new baby, a son, is born. Boyfriend leaves. Gradually, it is apparent that Callie is mentally unstable, clinically a manic depressive. Her brother and sister-in-law try to help, but she spurns them, accusing them of wanting to take her children. But confronted with still another mental breakdown, Callie agrees to let the children be placed in a foster home, as long as it's not her brother's. The five youngsters are sent to a farm operated by Patty and Harlan Pepper (Sally Struthers and John Dennis Johnston), a childless couple ready to heap love and attention on their new family.
The Cain children are so happy with Patty and Harlan that they ask if they can call them Mom and Dad. A happy ending, it seems. But then the children find themselves pawns in battles involving several interested parties. Thinking herself ready to resume being a mother, Callie wants her children back. When they object, she accuses the Peppers of intentionally trying to alienate them. Joining the fray are a social worker (Susan Barnes) trying to abide by inadequate state rules and a lawyer (Elizabeth Ashley) who, appointed legal guardian of the children, seems bent on drumming up publicity for herself. The case attracts considerable press attention, especially when a story circulates that the two oldest daughters may have been planning to kill themselves.
Nasty allegations whiz by on all fronts, smearing even the Peppers, who for the most part are portrayed quite sympathetically in the film. For the viewer, it becomes impossible to separate what might be true from what is patently false. Everybody's to blame, it seems, therefore nobody's to blame. Perhaps that's the point, that with all of the confusion, the best interests of the children got lost. But this summary, especially in light of the case's resolution, is more frustrating than enlightening. Only the performances, paced most impressively by those of Ms. Parker (""Equal Justice"") and the young Ms. Randall, merit unqualified attention.  In the Best Interest of the Children  Directed by Michael Rhodes; written by Peter Nelson and Jud Kinberg; produced by Paul Freeman for NBC Productions; Mr. Rhodes, executive producer. Sunday at 9 P.M. Callie Cain . . . Sarah Jessica Parker Jessica Cain . . . Lexi Randall Julie Cain . . . Jessica M. Campbell Susie Cain . . . Lacey Guyon Cindy Cain . . . Amanda Laughlin John Birney . . . Gary Graham Wanda Birney . . . Jayne Atkinson Patty Pepper . . . Sally Struthers Harlen Pepper . . . John Dennis Johnston Donna Evans . . . Susan Barnes Carla Scott . . . Elizabeth Ashley Ray Jacobs . . . Tom Hodges",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; A Friendly Mayberry Get-Together
Now that ABC is faring comfortably with ""Matlock,"" a series canceled by NBC, what can CBS possibly do to compete in the Andy Griffith sweepstakes? Well, how about going back to Mayberry, N.C., and pushing the nostalgia button for an hourlong special called ""The Andy Griffith Show Reunion""? As it happens, it's on CBS at 8 tonight.
The character of Sheriff Andy Taylor was introduced on Danny Thomas's ""Make Room for Daddy"" series. The date was Feb. 15, 1960. Mr. Griffith's portrayal of the sweet-natured, drawl-dripping sheriff proved so ingratiating that CBS got ""The Andy Griffith Show"" ready for its premiere that October. It ran for eight years, and there are those who swear it has been available in reruns, on one channel or another, ever since.
Mayberry had nothing to do with reality; evidently that was its primary charm for millions of viewers. While the 1960's were exploding with civil rights marches, war protests, student rebellions and political assassinations, Mayberry was a haven, as the show's creator, Sheldon Leonard, puts it, of tolerance, patience and common sense. Jim Nabors, who played Gomer Pyle, remembers Mayberry as ""completely bypassed by the realities and difficulties of the outside world."" No matter how goofy the situations got, gentleness reigned.
Serving as host this evening, an affable, rather courtly Mr. Griffith ambles through a series of reminiscences with cast members. ""May I introduce the finest comedy actor I have ever known,"" he says, bringing on Don Knotts. The two then chuckle over Mr. Knotts's portrayal of Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife, who constantly seemed to be struggling with terminal hypertension, especially when he tried to draw his gun, which was usually unloaded. Also appearing, with home movies shot on the set by his father, is Ron Howard, who was 6 years old when he began playing the widowed Andy's son, Opie.
Curiously, Mayberry was almost entirely a male preserve. If not exactly invisible, women were scarce. The very first show introduced Andy's Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier), who would serve as middle-aged housekeeper and foster mother to Opie. Andy's girlfriend in the first season, a druggist named Ellie Walker (Elinor Donahue), got the boot, and there was no romantic interest for at least the next three years. Men were left to go their own way, which usually meant, as one episode observed, they could ""go home, have a nap, then over to Thelma Lou's for TV.""
The homespun humor clearly works, even today. Among the fans offering tribute in this special are the country singers Randy Travis and Reba McIntire, the baseball pitcher Nolan Ryan, the saxophonist Kenny G and what looks like the entire Los Angeles Raiders football team. Hearing the show's theme song, the journalist Charles Kuralt says, ""That tune and those people: it's a rural Eden."" As far as a lot of good people are concerned, Mayberry lives. The Andy Griffith Show Reunion CBS, tonight at 8. Written by Andrew Solt and Peter Elbling; directed by Mr. Solt; produced by Stuart Schreiberg for Andrew Solt Productions; Mr. Solt and Andy Griffith, executive producers. With: Don Knotts, Ron Howard, Jim Nabors, George Lindsey, Jack Dodson and guests.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Imported from Britain: A Certain Type of Humor
The dread days of PBS money-raising (known delicately as a pledge period) are upon us, that periodic assault of ostensible crowd-pleasers punctuated by public-station employees telling us over and over how important they are to our happiness.
Last weekend Channel 13 brought forth Kathleen Battle, Jessye Norman, Bob Dylan and elephants. Coming up are shows by or about Itzhak Perlman; Paul Simon; Elton John; Peter, Paul and Mary; Liza Minnelli, and dolphins. Tonight at 8 you can attend ""A Birthday Tribute to Julia Child.""
Over on Long Island, Channel 21, which specializes in imported sitcoms (a steady reminder that not all British television is ""Masterpiece Theater"") is dishing up three prime-time hours of ""Are You Being Served?"" The host is John Inman, who plays Mr. Humphries, who is in men's haberdashery.
Whether you are being served depends on your tolerance for bargain-basement antics in Grace Brothers department store. Dealing in broad characters (including such politically incorrect types as the flaming homosexual and the over-the-hill man chaser), broad jokes (mostly about sex and anatomy), drippy double-entendres (mostly about anatomy and sex) and plots straight from the clearance bin, the shows at their best have a kind of raffish music-hall fun.
Tonight's new episode, which finds the regulars in a country hotel called Millstone Manor, is not of the best.  The department-store setting is sorely missed. However, it is amply available in the repeats that occupy most of the evening.
Maybe the merchandising here is shrewd. Amid three hours of lines like ""There are a lot of big nobs in this country"" and ""I was out in the wind flicking my Zippo,"" the straight begging may come as a relief. The Best of 'Are You Being Served?' WLIW/Channel 21, tonight at 8  Written by Jeremy Lloyd and David Croft; produced by Mr. Croft for BBC Lionheart in association with KAET/Phoenix; written and produced by Don Harris for KAET; executive producer for KAET, John Wilson.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Exploring Madness's Face And the Computer's Birth
It's an ambitious night for PBS, the start of two five-part series on the mysteries of mental activity: ""Madness by Jonathan Miller,"" at 10, and ""The Machine That Changed the World,"" at 9, on Channel 13.
""Madness"" is the exploration by Mr. Miller, who is a doctor as well as a director, of a concept that has been much disputed over the centuries and remains unsettled even in this know-it-all era. Is there such an illness as madness, or does society merely impose its own diagnosis on behavior that a majority deems peculiar? If madness is an illness, then is it physical or psychological, or a bit of both? And how can it best be treated?
The series begins with the scene from ""Hamlet"" between the prince and Polonius, who has lately reported to the king, ""Your noble son is mad."" Like most people, Polonius cannot define madness, but he is sure he knows it when he sees it. The literal-minded old fellow interprets every ironic utterance of Hamlet as a sign of lunacy. Is madness in the mind of the beholder?
Mr. Miller brings his several talents to bear as he chats knowledgeably with researchers, psychiatrists and patients, presents dramatic vignettes and lectures in a somewhat spooky setting, apparently the interior of an ancient castle that has gone to pot. The stone walls are adorned only with drop cloths; the main piece of furniture is a long table cluttered with books, which might signal scholarship or just a rummage sale; a television set hangs anomalously from the ceiling and when Mr. Miller is not prowling about, he watches himself on screen. Maybe it is all meant to be a Gothic metaphor for madness.
As evidenced in his earlier PBS series, ""The Body in Question,"" Mr. Miller is an easy, eloquent and enlightening lecturer. Showing pictures of several youths with punk haircuts, he makes the point that one has to see odd behavior in context. Yet he notes that the symptoms of what is called madness have remained much the same down the centuries: hearing voices and seeing things. His conversations with patients at mental institutions in England and the United States confirm that voices are still being heard, things still being seen.
He discusses the conflict during the Middle Ages between the religious belief that some people were possessed by supernatural spirits and the secular belief that they were afflicted by humors. Either way, the attempted cures were harsh and probably not very effective. He makes pointed connections between changes in society and changes in views of madness.
At moments Mr. Miller's directorial improvisations distract from his lecture. If you were wondering why he goes up in a helicopter to shoot the English countryside, it is merely to carry forward his image that the landscape of thought was transformed by the scientific method. He could have spared himself that trip. The significant point is that by the middle of the 18th century doctors had monopolized the treatment of lunacy, without quite knowing what to do about it.
Next week's installment, ""Out of Sight,"" deals with the rise of asylums as an expression of greater compassion for those presumed mad -- and their decline for similar motives. Then come accounts of the use of electro-shock treatments, lobotomies and Freudian therapy and finally a program on schizophrenia. Dr. Miller concludes by offering his answers to the fundamental questions raised at the outset. Like most of what he says, they are respectful of the mental condition of his audience. 'The Machine That Changed the World'
These words are being written on a computer. And when the review is completed, it will travel over telephone lines to the computer system of The New York Times -- an unremarkable accomplishment in an age of communication wonders, yet it leaves this operator in awe every time. With the pressing of a key or two, I can command a miracle that I find harder to comprehend than madness.
""Giant Brains"" adds to comprehension without diminishing the awe. This first program in the series ""The Machine That Changed the World"" goes back to the 18th century for the origins of what it calls the ""universal machine.""
In that era a computer was a human being, simply a person who did arithmetic. The process was laborious and faulty: the program notes the efforts of an English schoolmaster, William Shanks, to carry through the decimal expansion of pi, the famous number that never ends. He spent 28 years at the job. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, he made a mistake at the 528th decimal place so everything that followed went for nought.
A century later Victorians turned their attention to devising machines that could carry out the speedy and accurate calculation required by industrialization. Credit is given here to the mathematician Charles Babbage for hitting on the concept of the computer, which he called, in good Victorian English, the analytical engine. But Babbage's dream failed to catch the imagination of his time, and the beginning of the computer age would have to wait until the 1930's.
Tonight's intelligently conceived and composed program carries the story along with the help of discreet dramatization, straightforward narration and the accounts of historians and a few of the people who contributed to the 20th-century advances:
*Konrad Zuse who, as a young German engineering student, figured out how to use the on-off electric switch to create a general-purpose calculator. ""You could say that I was too lazy to calculate and so I invented the computer,"" says the no-longer-young Mr. Zuse.
*John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, the American team that put thousands of vacuum tubes to the service of Eniac, their electronic numerical integrater and computer that could perform 5,000 additions every second.
*Maurice Wilkes, the Cambridge University computer scientist who developed Edsac, which could do the work of 10,000 people with old-fashioned calculators and opened up new vistas.
*Alan Turing, the English mathematician and code breaker, who pursued the principle that computers could do any logical task a human could do. In a scene from the play ""Breaking the Code,"" Derek Jacobi, who portrayed Turing, is seen telling students that the computer has the ability to learn, and credits it with an intelligence of its own.
This rich series, a co-production of the BBC and the WGBH science unit, continues next week with an account of how Univac, the first commercial computer, enabled CBS News to predict the Eisenhower landslide of 1952. Future episodes go into the rise of Apple Computer Inc. and the home computer and the nature of artificial intelligence, concluding next month with a cautionary report on computer networks that contain all manner of information about practically everybody.
Presumably someone, maybe Jonathan Miller, is even now at work on a series about the computer virus, or how madness finds its way into method. Madness by Jonathan Miller
The first of a five-part series; a Brook Production for the BBC and KCET in Los Angeles; David Herman, series development executive; Grace Kitto, associate producer; Richard Dention, director and producer; Udi Eichler, executive producer; Joyce Campbell, executive producer for KCET. Monday nights at 10 on Channel 13. The Machine That Changed the World
The first of a five-part series; a co-production of the WGBH Science Unit and the BBC in association with NDR/Germany; Fiona Holmes, producer of ""Giant Brains"" episode; Nancy Linde, producer for the series; Jon Palfreman, executive producer. Monday nights at 9 on Channel 13.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Peddling Sugar and Spice and Everything Hyped
Although ""Buy Me That 3! A Kid's Guide to Food Advertising"" delivers a bah-humbug message, the half-hour of anticommercials about junk food is anything but Scroogelike. As the awkward title indicates, this is the third special from Consumer Reports and HBO that attempts, wishfully, to protect youngsters from the flood of television advertising that crests during December and drowns any inhibitions that still exist about laying out good money for dubious products. As one of the likable children who pop up now and then to describe the effects of the commercials confesses, ""You think you absolutely need it.""
The first and funniest of the put-downs is a blind taste test for avowed fans of Coca-Cola (""You can't beat the real thing!"") and Pepsi-Cola (""You gotta have it!""), conducted like a wine tasting, complete with water to clear the palate. It turns out that without the familiar bottle, most of the 72 boys and girls could not tell which was their proclaimed favorite; some even chose R.C. Cola!
The proceedings are conducted without a touch of self-righteousness by the engaging Jim Fyfe, who plays, among other roles, a local-news anchor, a detective investigating products that have the promise of fruit on the package but barely a semblance of it inside and a crazed scientist concocting junk food out of test tubes, the point being that many packaged snacks contain more chemicals than vitamins.
A running complaint here is that the most heavily promoted foods and drinks are mainly repositories of sugar. Mr. Fyfe notes that the line commonly used on commercials for heavily sweetened cereals -- ""part of a complete breakfast"" -- is blather, since juice, toast and milk will provide just as complete a breakfast and spare young teeth the attacks by gobs of sugar. On the subject of breakfast cereals, he also notes that the likelihood of winning the million-dollar sweepstakes offered by Cookie Crisp is somewhat less than being bopped by a falling meteor.
The program's put-down of sports drinks like Gatorade as being overpriced and undernourishing -- ""Don't swallow their hype"" -- can be applied to all the products kicked around in this breezy 30 minutes. If you can get the youngsters to watch, they should find it easier to take than spinach. And they might even remember the next time they see a hamburger commercial how it is glamorized for the camera by a ""food stylist,"" with the help of glue, dye and straight pins; even the steam from the fries is fake. Buy Me That 3! A Kid's Guide to Food Advertising  HBO, tonight at 7:30.
Directed by Edd Griles; written by Alan Kingsberg; Annette Holloway, associate producer; produced by Ellen Goosenberg Kent for HBO and Consumer Reports Television; Joyce Newman, executive producer; Jim Fyfe, host.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"The Rite Of Exorcism On '20/20'
Your reaction to the scenes of exorcism displayed tonight on ""20/20"" is likely to depend on your attitude toward the Devil. If you share the faith of the two Roman Catholic priests who believe they are driving sinister spirits from a troubled girl named Gina, then you may see the encounter, at 10 P.M. on ABC, as a conflict between good and evil. Otherwise, it may strike you as a throwback to medieval attitudes toward mental illness.
Tom Jarriel, a ""20/20"" reporter, offers some background into the rite of exorcism, which the Rev. James J. LeBar calls ""the ultimate way of throwing the Devil out of the person."" Dr. James J. Gill, a Jesuit priest as well as a psychiatrist, observes that people with a background in theology are inclined to interpret inner conflict as a battle between Satan and God.
Gina, the subject of the exorcism, is described by Dr. Warren Schlanger, who treated her in the Miami Children's Hospital psychiatric ward, as ""actively psychotic."" He expresses doubts about demonic possession. But after months of investigation, church officials give their approval to exorcism, and to coverage by ""20/20.""
So tonight, you can see Father A (for anonymous) conduct portions of the rite, while Gina, thrashing about, making ugly faces, yelling words that sound like ""sanka dali,"" ""booga booga,"" ""rabaya,"" has to be tied down. Finally, Zion and Minga, two of the diabolical influences Father A believes have been controlling her, are expelled.
It makes for vivid television. Gina reportedly came out of the exorcism in a calmer state, but needed two more weeks in the psychiatric ward and is now on an antipsychotic medication. She says she is very happy and thanks God for her liberation from evil. Dr. Gill says, ""If she believes that exorcism is going to be helpful, in all probability it will be."" 20/20 Exorcism Directed by George Paul; produced by Rob Wallace for ABC News; Victor Neufeld, executive producer; Tom Jarriel, correspondent. At 10 tonight on ABC.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; Gielgud, His Own Kind of Royalty
Sir John Gielgud is introduced tonight on PBS's ""Talking With David Frost"" as ""the greatest theatrical actor alive today."" Mention of the greatest anything often smacks of exaggeration, but not in this instance. Sir John is the last of a legendary acting group that included Laurence Olivier, Edith Evans, Ralph Richardson and Peggy Ashcroft. Talk about British royalty.
Now 88 years old, Sir John sits facing Mr. Frost on the stage of London's restored Playhouse, a theater he actually never played. Wearing a brown suit, cream vest, white shirt, tie and handsome jade ring, the actor looks remarkably fit. And as becomes clear in the course of a conversation that ranges back to his childhood, he is enviably lucid. The manner is thoroughly British: bemused, amusing, artfully self-deprecating.
Although his father was a stockbroker, Sir John speaks of being born to the ""Terry purple,"" a reference to his great-aunt Ellen Terry, perhaps the most famous of all Victorian actresses. His childhood interest in theater focused on set and costume designing, but in 1921 he began his career as an actor. Among those who influenced his acting style he makes special mention of Noel Coward and, somewhat surprisingly, Claude Rains. Sir John evaluates his younger self rather severely: ""Very conceited, very effeminate, much too fond of my voice."" He recalls with a laugh that when friends became bored with his ""theatrical chat,"" they'd say, ""Oh, put a crown on his head and send him on.""
Sir John is frank about his complex and competitive relationship with Olivier, noting with satisfaction that ""Larry was burning with ambition"" but ""I was a star before him."" On the other hand, Olivier used film, most notably in ""Henry V,"" to become an international star. Comparable success for Sir John would come relatively late in his career, in television productions like ""Brideshead Revisited"" and movies like ""Arthur."" The latter snared him an Oscar in the early 1980's. He now confesses that it ""was a great surprise to me because I did it as kind of a joke: I thought it was rather common.""
He is adept at sound bites. Working on the film ""Julius Caesar,"" he found the young Marlon Brando ""very modest and very sweet."" Recalling his direction of Richard Burton in a stage version of ""Hamlet,"" he describes the ""madness"" around his star and Elizabeth Taylor as ""a lot of razzmatazz."" He also has a gossipy streak, which at one point he calls one of his more prominent failings. He reveals that Peter Lorre, who worked with him in an early Hitchcock film, was a ""morphia maniac."" And describing how he once found himself sitting near Bob Guccione, he says that the magazine publisher was ""wearing more jewelry than the Dolly Sisters.""
Children? ""I never wanted to have children. I'd be terrified they'd inherit all my worst qualities."" The hereafter? ""I don't believe in it."" Working on stage again? ""I'm terrified of becoming a sort of boring old guru and of going to theaters and being too much respected."" Last year Sir John did his first movie nude scene in Peter Greenaway's ""Prospero's Books."" Why? ""Everybody else was nude on the set, so I didn't think it was comely of me to refuse.""
Respected? No doubt. Boring? Not a chance.  'Reckin' Shop: Live From Brooklyn'  PBS, tomorrow. (Channel 13, New York, at 11:30.)
This black-and-white documentary, commissioned by the PBS series ""Alive TV"" and produced by Mindy Goldberg, goes to Brooklyn in search of hip-hop dancing and its raw explosive energy. The form, with some of its early roots in break-dancing, began on the streets and has now crossed over into music videos and television commercials. Jamal (Rubberband) Boatwright, the show's host and guide, pinpoints the underlying street-smart attitude: ""I like looking like a hoodlum for the simple fact that it keeps people wondering, 'Is he gonna rob me?' They'll walk away real fast. And they get home, they see me on TV. Ain't that something?"" In schoolyards, front porches and clubs, the dancers, singly and in combinations, provide incontrovertible proof that hip-hop is definitely, as they say, ""so hype."" Talking With David Frost Sir John Gielgud PBS, tonight. (In the New York area, Channel 13 at 10 and Channel 49 at 9.)
Robert Muller, coordinating producer; produced by Wallace Westfeldt for David Paradine Television and WETA Washington; Sue Ducat, executive in charge for WETA; John M. Florescu and David Frost, executive producers; Mr. Frost, host.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; An Ideological Nora In a BBC 'Doll's House'
Husband: ""I don't understand you."" Wife: ""That's just it. You have never understood me. This is the first time you and I have ever talked seriously to one another.""
(Later) Husband: ""Consider your conscience, some moral sense."" Wife: ""All I do know is that you and I think quite differently about all that. I must find out who's right, society or me.""
No, this isn't a feminist therapy session taking place in the late 20th century. It's ""A Doll's House,"" written by Henrik Ibsen in 1879 and still seething with insights about the roles of women in societies dominated by men. The Norwegian Ibsen (1828-1906) did not consider himself a feminist, but that denial seems to have been merely pro forma. He did believe, fervently, that ""women had equal rights with men to develop as individuals and become complete human beings.""
That's the overriding point of ""A Doll's House,"" being given a compelling new BBC reading this Sunday at 9 P.M. on Channel 13 in a special two-and-a-half hour ""Masterpiece Theater"" presentation. A new, pointedly ideological translation by Joan Tinsdale is both sharp and felicitous. And, under the direction of David Thacker, the cast is splendid. Juliet Stevenson, currently a great London success in the play ""Death and the Maiden"" (Actors' Equity rules barred her from the current Broadway production), is Nora Helmer, the wife who will walk out on husband and children, her slamming door once described by a critic as the sound heard round the world.
In terms of standard British acting, Miss Stevenson is somewhat eccentric, more Actors Studio than technical virtuosity. She also bears a rather striking resemblance, physically and emotionally, to Amanda Plummer. Perhaps best known here, if you moved quickly, for the 1991 British movie ""Truly, Madly, Deeply,"" Miss Stevenson creates a Nora who, far from being the usual icy hausfrau, is a bundle of bubbling emotions, some of them carrying her to the brink of hysteria early on. It's a daring conception, constantly teetering on a tightrope but never taking a serious tumble.
Miss Stevenson's flibbertigibbet of a wife could very well have left most of the other performers in the shadows, but this batch of British actors is far too wily to be caught in that trap. Trevor Eve (""Parnell and the Englishwoman"") gives Torvald, Nora's insufferably pompous but not entirely unsympathetic husband, the solidity required to maintain the play's balance. Geraldine James (""The Jewel in the Crown,"" ""She's Been Away"") is intensely serene as Kristina Linde, the old friend, oozing bitter emptiness, who suddenly comes back into Nora's life. And in a wonderfully shrewd exercise of barely moving a muscle or showing a hint of emotion, Patrick Malahide (""The Singing Detective"") is Dr. Rank, in love with Nora even more as death hovers near him.
The obviously gifted Miss Stevenson has, in short, the benefit of a company of colleagues who very carefully keep the play from sinking under her occasional excesses. And in the end, the actress triumphs, making Nora's final long confrontation with Torvald truly memorable. Ibsen is served brilliantly.
The Last of His Tribe'  HBO Tomorrow at 8 P.M.
Jon Voight (""Coming Home"") is the anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and Graham Greene (""Dances With Wolves"") is Ishi, the lone survivor of a lost Indian tribe, in this true-story movie. Discovered living in California in 1911, Ishi was taken by Dr. Kroeber to the University of California in San Francisco where, with the help of Dr. Saxton Pope (David Ogden Stiers), an effort would be made to document the slaughter of the Yahi tribe by white marauders. Members of many American Indian tribes appear in the film, and the language translations are authentic. In time, the student becomes the teacher, as Ishi reveals to Kroeber his beliefs concerning life and the land. Slow, but sensitively acted and finally quite moving. Masterpiece Theater A Doll's House  Directed by David Thacker; Henrik Ibsen's play translated by Joan Tinsdale; produced by Simon Curtis for BBC Productions; Rebecca Eaton, executive producer of ""Masterpiece Theater""; Alistair Cooke, host. Sunday at 9 P.M. on Channels 13 and 49. Nora Helmer . . . Juliet Stevenson Torvald Helmer . . . Trevor Eve Kristina Linde . . . Geraldine James Dr. Rank . . . Patrick Malahide Nils Krogstad . . . David Calder Anne-Marie . . . Helen Blatch Helene . . . Sonia Ritter Porter . . . Dennis Clinton Ivar Helmer . . . Joe Anderson Bob Helmer . . . Max Anderson Emmy Helmer . . . Alexandra Gill",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; The Easing of America's War on Drugs
On land, on sea, in the air, the United States is losing the fight to keep cocaine out of the country. That is the message of ""What Happened to the Drug War?,"" tonight's in-the-field expose of high-tech, high-priced, high-hyped weapons that seem to have flopped.
The action takes place along the United States-Mexico border, across which an estimated 70 percent of the nation's cocaine supply finds its way. Among the costly and apparently unavailing operations mounted by Washington to dam the flow are the use of special speedboats, helicopters and radar planes ($30 million apiece) by United States Customs; the Humvees and nightscopes used by marines, and radar blimps known as aerostats used by the military to detect smugglers.
The story of the aerostats, as related in this tough ""Frontline"" report, is particularly instructive. The Pentagon was not enthusiastic about the blimps, which cost $18 million each and have serious technical limitations, but they were pushed through Congress anyway. A main booster was Senator Dennis DeConcini, an Arizona Democrat who, NBC News reported in 1989, had close ties to lobbyists working for a company that won most of the $100 million aerostat contract.
Jack Blum, who specialized in drug matters for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calls the aerostats ""a tremendous boondoggle,"" and the program goes into detail on its defects. Senator DeConcini, their champion, might be describing the lobbying effort when he tells of ""a great big balloon, filled with gases that keep it afloat."" Explaining the campaign contributions he received from the lobbyists and their employers, he says, ""They feel I'm an honest candidate.""
Another enthusiast for the fancy weapons that by this account have done little to catch smugglers is Carol Hallett, head of the Customs Service in the Bush Administration. She tells an interviewer that the fact that in 1991 and 1992 there was only one drug bust attributed to radar surveillance demonstrates that ""for all intents and purposes, the air war has been won along the southern border."" The tone of tonight's narration is skeptical.
Turning to the smuggling by land, which no one claims has been stopped or even significantly reduced, the program reports that the Justice Department has investigated allegations of corruption of customs inspectors on the bridges between Mexico and the United States; the going price is said to be $10,000 a shipment. The Customs Service denies that any of its agents were involved.
""What Happened to the Drug War?"" concludes with the prediction that the flow of cocaine is bound to increase along with increased trade with Mexico. Since the stuff can bring $1 million for a single truckload, that seems a safe guess. The only consolation provided tonight is that some manufacturers, lobbyists and legislators are doing all right. 'Dateline NBC'
NBC, tonight at 10 (Channel 4 in New York)
Every few years somebody does an expose of the funeral industry, but nothing much seems to change; the abuses evidently enjoy eternal life. Most of tonight's edition of ""Dateline NBC"" is given to Michele Gillen's findings that mourners are still being bilked by sellers of wildly overpriced coffins and accouterments; a hidden camera catches a couple of dubious pitches. A currently popular scam involves ""pre-need contracts,"" in which a buyer pays up front for a future funeral. Better read the small print!
Most of this report, which is heavy on hand-wringing, has to do with the care of the dead. To judge by the cases described here, some embalmers and crematoriums are being rather cavalier with other people's loved ones. Ms. Gillen notes that the state boards responsible for regulating the business are dominated by funeral directors. It's enough to put a person off dying. Frontline What Happened to the Drug War?  PBS, tonight at 9. (Channel 13 in New York.) A report written and produced by Jim Gilmore and Joe Rosenbloom 3d for Frontline; edited by Jim Astrausky; Martin Smith, senior producer; David Fanning, executive producer for Frontline.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; The War Against Misery at Home
Bill Moyers says that as he walked to work in New York City during the ground war in the Persian Gulf, his attention was drawn to what he calls the paradox of America achieving victory across the seas while the numbers of the defeated at home keep growing. ""The Home Front,"" tonight at 9 on Channel 13, carries the faces of defeat amid the bulletins of victory.
Although most of what is reported here is familiar from months of coverage on national and local news programs, the miseries of unemployment and homelessness, of cutbacks in schools, hospitals and shelters, continue to resonate. Mr. Moyers makes a sympathetic listener, and the accounts are moving. ""I'm a disposable American,"" says a 55-year-old man who once earned $50,000 a year and now, after months out of work, is reduced to selling jokey hats in a flea market.
Such experiences are juxtaposed with radio and television dispatches from the Gulf. President Bush's voice is heard frequently. The technique is not subtle. You hear a correspondent reporting, ""The country of Kuwait is burning,"" and the camera goes to a fire in Queens, where two deaths are laid to the closing of a firehouse. The efficient medical care given to a wounded soldier is contrasted with the overworked emergency room of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx.
Since Mr. Moyers is not arguing that the United States should not have sent troops to the Gulf and is not blaming the recession on the war, the backs-and-forths seem mainly rhetorical. The soft point of the program is that life would be better if the sort of energy, dedication and dollars invested in saving Kuwait were invested in saving America's cities. Mr. Moyers asks, ""When will we find the same will and resources to win the war here on the home front?"" Not an original question, but one that has to keep being asked as long as the pain reported on here continues. Moyers The Home Front  Produced and directed by Marc Levin; Daphne Pinkerson and Mi Ling Tsui, associate producers; Alan Miller, editor; Judith Davidson Moyers, executive producer. At 9 tonight on Channel 13.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; It's Jane Seymour, M.D., In the Wild and Woolly West
One recipe for a successful series: take a contrived concept, sprinkle with homespun truisms updated for political correctness and mix well with tired plot devices. Process and serve. And out comes ""Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,"" CBS's new hit on Saturdays at 8 P.M. Possible subtitle: ""Little Shtick on the Prairie,"" and very little, at that.
Allegedly inspired by the ratings and artistic triumph of the Glenn Close television movie ""Sarah, Plain and Tall,"" ""Dr. Quinn"" bears no resemblance to that intensely lean story, based on an award-winning children's book by Patricia MacLachlan (a two-hour sequel, ""Skylark,"" also starring Ms. Close and Christopher Walken, will be broadcast Sunday on CBS). Developed by Beth Sullivan with CBS Entertainment, ""Dr. Quinn"" is a television construct, its every nuance calculated out of lowest-common-denominator concerns. Art, or even craft, decidedly takes a back seat to commerce.
Played by the British actress Jane Seymour, once queen of mini-series, Dr. Quinn is Michaela Quinn, one of the first women to become an M.D. in America. She calls herself Mike. Educated in the East, she has settled in Colorado, where she quickly becomes the mother of three orphaned children. The year is 1867. You couldn't tell by the coiffures, which, especially in the opening credits, suggest a shampoo commercial in the making, even as Mike informs us: ""I'm not alone anymore. I've inherited a family, and that might be the biggest challenge of all.""
One recent episode probably set a record in its opening minutes for multi-cultural sensitivity. Mike informed one of her young 'uns: ""We're all immigrants. Some of us just came to America sooner than others."" Then the camera panned to the village smithy, who happened to be black. ""Robert E. did not come here willingly,"" Mike added. Then, spotting some American Indians, she conceded: ""I was wrong. We are not all immigrants.""
Subtlety is not a strong suit. You want local color? Get the store owner to announce to the kids, ""We're still out of jawbreakers."" Or, at a picnic, have someone sit on a gorgeous patchwork quilt and shout gleefully, ""Hey, let's pitch some horseshoes!"" Then it's quickly back to the uninspired business at hand.
There are, of course, elements of conflict and sexism, but nothing that Mike can't handle. When influenza breaks out, the townsfolk are suspicious of a doctor who urges isolating the sick from the healthy and who explains that the flu is caused by a germ. ""What the hell is a germ?"" one man snarls. Undismayed, Mike even accepts the help of a town whore in tending to the sick. When the quinine medication starts to run out, a stud in suede, who turns out to be a kind of new-age loner named Byron Sully (Joe Lando), suggests trying a certain kind of tea brewed by the Cheyenne Indians. And when Mike herself falls sick, Sully goes to fetch the tribe's medicine man, who just barely escapes detection by a determined United States soldier named George Custer.
In another episode, crotchety Loren Bray (Orson Bean) gets tetchy about having Mike treat his hernia. ""Don't you go touching me,"" he warns, adding that ""I won't have you messing with my innards."" As it happens, Loren's daughter, now dead, was married to Sully, and the old codger is determined to take back land she meant to leave to her husband. When Loren finally undergoes hernia surgery, it turns out that he'll need a blood transfusion. Sully nobly steps forward as donor, with warm smiles all around.
Meanwhile, Mike's daughter, Colleen (Erika Flores), is crying about not receiving a birthday-party invitation: ""Nobody likes me just because I always know the answer."" Mom does her best to console the girl: ""People who are very popular when they're young often grow up to lead very dull lives."" Of course, this being just after the Civil War, Mom has had no opportunity to meet Madonna.
When tears aren't welling, Ms. Seymour walks with a stride that is never less than purposeful, pausing now and then to say ""Trust me.""
Not this time around, I'm afraid. Certainly not unless and until ""Dr. Quinn"" can come up with a prescription to counteract drivel.  Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman  CBS, Saturday at 8 P.M. Produced by Arthur Seidel for CBS Entertainment Productions in association with Sullivan Company; Timothy Johnson, co-producer; Ira Diamond, production designer; Roland Smith, director of photography; Brienne Glyttove, costume designer; Greg Garrison, set decorator; Beth Sullivan, executive producer. Dr. Michaela Quinn . . . Jane Seymour Byron Sully . . . Joe Lando Matthew Cooper . . . Chad Allen Colleen Cooper . . . Erika Flores Brian Cooper . . . Shawn Toovey Horace . . . Frank Collison Emily . . . Heidi Kozak Cloud Dancing . . . Larry Sellers",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Last 'Cosby' Episode Brings the Huxtables A Happy Ending
Dancing to a Miles Davis rendition of Frank Loesser's ""If I Were a Bell,"" Cliff and Clair Huxtable glide right out into the studio audience and past the other cast members, all of whom are standing and cheering. Without looking back or hesitating for an instant, the couple head straight for a stage exit door and simply disappear. Shared beautifully by Phylicia Rashad, it's a vintage Bill Cosby moment: no fuss, unassuming and brilliantly calculated.
That's the way ""The Cosby Show"" ends in an hourlong special tonight at 8 on NBC. The family, including Cliff's and Clair's parents, gathers for the graduation of Theo (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) from New York University. Bursting with pride, Cliff is determined to have everyone attend, no matter the scarcity of tickets.
Bringing matters full circle, a flashback to the show's first episode finds Dad using fake Monopoly money to impress on Theo the folly of wanting to drop out of school. ""You're going to try as hard as you can,"" Dad says. And of course, Theo, now in cap and gown, has done just that, overcoming even the obstacle of dyslexia. The Cosby message about education's importance rings loud and clear. As usual.
But the time had come for the show to go. Ratings have been sagging, especially after Fox Broadcasting, in its myopic competitiveness, decided to counterprogram with ""The Simpsons,"" doing neither show much good and leaving younger viewers confronted with a pointlessly difficult choice. Mr. Cosby, in turn, responded by becoming noticeably more preachy and falling back on the routines of excessively cute tots, those most tired sitcom cliches.
But so what? At its best, and that covers the bulk of the eight-year run, ""The Cosby Show"" soared, demolishing some pet network theories. Back in 1984, the sitcom form was being pronounced dead by a good many experts. No more, went the laments, will we see the likes of Lucy and Ricky, or Archie and Edith. Then, with not much initial network enthusiasm, along came the Huxtables. The show turned out to be the top-rated series of the 1980's, with 20 percent more viewers than ""60 Minutes,"" its nearest competitor. Tackling still another persistent network taboo, the cast consisted almost entirely of black performers who were not called upon to be silly clowns, pathetic addicts or menacing thugs.
With his executive producers, Marcy Carsey and Tom Werner, and his co-creators on the series, Ed. Weinberger and Michael Leeson, Mr. Cosby took the sitcom form and turned it into an intensely personal working space, just about obliterating the line between the performer and the character being played. To an unequalled degree on prime-time entertainment, Cosby is Huxtable, going so far as to add to the show, after the premiere, an oldest daughter so that the fictional configuration of four daughters and one son would coincide with that of his own real family.
In retrospect, the series was simply the next inevitable step in Mr. Cosby's extraordinary career. In his earlier stand-up comedy appearances and recordings, he constantly used his own experiences as basic material. Some of those routines were later incorporated into ""Cosby Show"" episodes (a tactic later used to spawn series like ""Roseanne"" and ""Seinfeld""). And even his early childhood was used to flesh out the Saturday-morning cartoon series ""Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids."" But it would be a mistake, I suspect, to think that the carefully fashioned public persona reflects the entire man.
For someone who frequently lauds the benefits of discipline, Mr. Cosby has made a habit of breaking rules. He does not, for instance, play traditional industry games, especially the ones involving prize competitions. His refusal to participate in glitzy ceremonies no doubt accounts for the fact that one of the most popular shows in television history has won only six Emmy Awards over the years.
More to the point, despite his disarming insistence that ""The Cosby Show"" is just another sitcom about a middle-class family that happens to be black, Mr. Cosby single-handedly and uncompromisingly brought a new level of consciousness to prime time. The Huxtables don't just happen to be black. They are triumphantly black and protective of their heritage, in addition to being upwardly mobile. How do they jibe with the reality of most black Americans? Never underestimate the power of images. In the role of quiet revolutionary, Mr. Cosby has been cleverly using an old lure: the American dream. Obviously, it still works. The Cosby Show  Created by Ed. Weinberger, Michael Leeson and Dr. William H. Cosby Jr., Ed.D. The final episode, ""And So, We Commence,"" was written by Janet Leahy, Gordon Gartrelle, Courtney Flavin and Hugh O'Neill. Terri Guanieri, Mr. Gartrelle and Adriana Trigiani, producers; Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner and Ms. Leahy, executive producers. A production of the Carsey-Werner Company in association with Bill Cosby. Tonight at 8 on NBC. Dr. Cliff Huxtable . . . Bill Cosby Clair Huxtable . . . Phylicia Rashad Sondra . . . Sabrina LeBeauf Theo . . . Malcolm-Jamal Warner Vanessa . . . Tempestt Bledsoe Rudy . . . Keshia Knight Pulliam Elvin Tibideaux . . . Geoffrey Owens Olivia . . . Raven-Symone",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Reviews/Television; Bright Young Lawyer Just Can't Lose
Another sweeps period is upon broadcasters, and strenuous efforts are again being made to raise the ratings that will determine what advertisers will pay in the months ahead. Not everyone can have the Olympic Games, so the others are left with the business-as-usual spate of television movies about sociopaths. Tonight's, on NBC at 9, is ""Till Death Us Do Part."" It's better than most.
The production represents a stretch in more ways than one. In terms of physical appearance and tone, the story unfolds as if it happened yesterday. In fact, it happened 25 years ago. Phil Rosenberg's teleplay is based on a book Vincent Bugliosi wrote with Ken Hurwitz. Here Mr. Bugliosi, played by Arliss Howard, is a young prosecutor with the Los Angeles District Attorney's office. Just three years out of law school, he already has a reputation for never losing a case. Later, of course, he will leap to national fame as the prosecutor in the Charles Manson case.
""Till Death Us Do Part"" pits Bugliosi against Alan Palliko, a former policeman with a fierce compulsion to control. When a man is found murdered just a month after he has remarried his wife who has taken out a large insurance policy on him, and when the wife's boyfriend turns out to be Palliko, Bugliosi is convinced he has his man. Palliko is merely contemptuous, growing increasingly bolder and openly challenging the frustrated prosecutor: ""Only losers play by the rules. You and me take chances. You can't push me around, not now, not ever."" As the villainous Palliko, barely able to contain his sadistic rage, Treat Williams puts his meandering career back on track.
Except for Bugliosi's wife (Valerie Mahaffey), here portrayed as a rather unbelievable paragon of sensitive support, the women in this brutish tale tend to be either lovesick bimbos or hopelessly naive masochists. Woman-as-victim is a popular sweeps motif. It takes far too long, for instance, for Palliko's oft-battered wife to get fed up with his viciousness. In the end, of course, there is the promise of comeuppance and, with Bugliosi on the case, that's pretty much assured from Scene 1.
An unusual aspect of the story is its handling of the concept of ""reasonable doubt,"" the indispensable weapon of defense lawyers. Bugliosi's prosecution of Polliko rests entirely on circumstantial evidence but, reminding the jury that ""we don't live in a perfect world"" and dramatically using a short rope as an illustration in his final summation, he argues that the linking of certain facts, the logical progression from one to another, can be irrefutable, no matter what possible doubts the defense can devise. ""You really were wonderful,"" says Mrs. Bugliosi, beaming.
Directed by Yves Simoneau of Canada, ""Till Death Us Do Part"" manages to be grisly, scary, silly and, making it a bit different, provocative.  Till Death Us Do Part  Directed by Yves Simoneau; written by Phil Rosenberg, based on a book by Vincent Bugliosi and Ken Hurwitz; presented by NBC. At 9 tonight on NBC. WITH: Arliss Howard, Treat Williams, Rebecca Jenkins, Embeth Davidtz, Valerie Mahaffey and John Schuck.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Chased or Chaste Around the Copying Machine?
""Sex,"" says Linda Ellerbee, doing her duty as co-host of ""Dangerous Propositions,"" tonight at 9 on the Lifetime channel, ""is all mixed up with power."" That is a theme of this fairly standard treatment of sexual harassment, apparently intended for viewers who have missed all the other programs on what has been a popular television subject for several seasons.
Groups of women and men of various ages are brought together to try to define sexual harassment and tell of their experiences with it and their attitudes toward it, however defined. One definition offered here by a psychotherapist is ""provocative sexual behavior that is not wanted,"" which reasonably enough leaves the call to the person on the receiving end.
There is general agreement that men in positions of power, like employers and supervisors, have to be especially careful about their words and actions, and that the more active forms of sexual attention, like pouncing, grabbing and chasing around the copying machine, are off limits for anyone. ""You feel so cornered,"" says a woman who brought a complaint against her former boss, a Congressman.
A funny and probably effective response to offensive practices is described by another woman, a plain-talking truck driver. When she was confronted with a selection of pornographic pictures in the company office, she complimented the man displaying them on his lovely family.
The murkier area has to do with the universal practice of flirting (""men and women doing their thing,"" as one man describes it), which some men think is generally expected, even invited, and some women find annoying or worse, depending on what form it takes and possibly the appeal of the other party. A man, interviewed in a pool hall, says that women are always in control and can always say no. A woman, interviewed at a health club, attributes unwanted overtures to male insecurity about women attaining positions of power. But mutual sympathy also emerges.
The hour ends with Harry Hamlin, the co-host, urging women to speak up. ""Dangerous Propositions"" leaves the impression that more of them are doing so and that more men, whether they like it or not, are listening. Dangerous Propositions  Lifetime Tonight at 9  Linda Ellerbee and Harry Hamlin, co-hosts; written by Ms. Ellerbee; produced by Joel Hinman; Paula de Koenigsberg, co-producer; Dalton Delan and Donna Harris, executive producers.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; A Mother Is Dying, With Her Daughter to Help
Suffering from ovarian cancer, the 76-year-old woman decides that there is no point in dying slowly -- none -- and she asks her daughter to help her ""end this."" The subject is suicide, a subject that has been leaping out of headlines and best-seller lists in recent years as the national right-to-die debate intensifies. ""Last Wish,"" Sunday's television movie on ABC at 9 P.M., supports that right, offering an impassioned and dignified argument based on fact and made all the more persuasive by the powerful performances of Maureen Stapleton and Patty Duke as the mother and daughter.
""Last Wish"" was adapted by Jerome Kass (""Queen of the Stardust Ballroom"") from the book of the same name by Betty Rollin, the television journalist. At 74, her mother, Ida, is an active, vibrant widow, attending exercise classes, watching her diet and everyone else's and even being courted by a new boyfriend seven years younger. Suddenly, stomach pains develop, and Ida must undergo surgery.
""My mother thinks if you're a good girl,"" Betty says, ""you'll never get sick."" But the tumor is malignant, and Ida begins chemotherapy.
Despite months of pain and nausea, Ida works hard to get better. There are occasional good periods. But eventually it is apparent that the disease is winning and death is approaching. It's at this point that Ida, humiliated by the lack of control over her own body, begins wondering if there is ""such a thing as a pill that can kill you."" Betty is at first reluctant to help, and not just because her action could be ruled illegal.
""How can I help my own mother kill herself?"" she asks her supportive husband, Ed (Dwight Schultz). ""I don't want her to die; I'm not ready."" In the end, she decides to help precisely because she loves her mother and doesn't want her to suffer. It is Ida's choice to make.
This network movie is clearly jittery about the sensitive nature of the subject. Various characters, including some doctors, are obviously used to provide balance in arguing the other side of the case. Betty has to call a doctor in Amsterdam to find out what pills work most effectively and in what quantity. Underlined prominently is the specter of a botched suicide that might leave the patient worse off than before.
What comes through unmistakably in ""Last Wish"" is the special love between a mother and daughter that enables them to make serious decisions with intelligence and total trust in each other. Directed by Jeff Bleckner (""Concealed Enemies""),Ms. Duke and Ms. Stapleton, supporting each other skillfully and generously, give two of the finest performances of their careers.
As a postscript notes, the truth about Ida's death was revealed only upon the publication of Ms. Rollin's book. No legal action was taken against her or her husband.
'Days of Our Lives' 'One Stormy Night'  NBC Tonight at 8
The venerable daytime drama is given a one-hour prime-time spin with a self-contained plot that is easily accessible, the network says, to potential new fans. A storm rages in the fictitious town of Salem. Among other crises, Jack and Jennifer are trapped on the set of a game show featuring loving couples. You get the idea. Immediately following, at 9, NBC will broadcast the ""Eighth Annual Soap Opera Digest Awards,"" with George Hamilton and Emma Samms, veterans of ""Dynasty,"" as hosts. Geraldo Rivera will present the best death scene award, while Marla Maples hands over the award for outstanding love story. The soaps, it seems, have a sense of humor after all.
'ACE Awards'  TNT Sunday at 9 P.M.
This celebration of cable television reaches its 13th annual outing with a live show from Los Angeles. Cybill Shepherd and Danny Glover are the hosts. CNN will get a special salute for its coverage of the Gulf war. At press time, neither Geraldo nor Marla was scheduled to appear. Last Wish Directed by Jeff Bleckner; written by Jerome Kass, based on the book by Betty Rollin; director of photography, Francois Protat; editor, Tod Feuerman; music by David Shire; art director, Tony Hall; produced by John Danylkiw for Grossbart/Barnett Productions; Joan Barnett and Jack Grossbart, executive producers. Sunday night at 9 on ABC. Betty Rollin . . . Patty Duke Ida Rollin . . . Maureen Stapleton Ed Edwards . . . Dwight Schultz Alvin . . . Lee Wallace Shany . . . Tresa Hughes Rose . . . Patricia Englund Dr. Burns . . . Ian D. Clark Maryanne . . . Diane D'Aquila",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Pearl Harbor, as Both Sides Saw It
Let no one charge that the 50th anniversary of Pearl Harbor caught television by surprise.
During a week on location in Hawaii in November, NBC's ""Today Show"" packaged a minute-by-minute recounting of the Japanese attack between scenes of Hawaii today, including Willard Scott doing the hula and a visit to a leper island. PBS delivered its early strike last month with an ""American Experience"" account of the attack titled ""Pearl Harbor: Surprise and Remembrance,"" which will be repeated on Saturday, at 2:30 P.M. on Channel 13.
Also scheduled for Dec. 7, at 8 P.M., on Channel 2, is ""Remember Pearl Harbor,"" co-produced by CBS and the Tokyo Broadcasting System and commanded by Charles Kuralt and Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf. And at noon CNN will carry live the Navy's commemorative ceremonies in Pearl Harbor.
ABC's offering, at 9 tonight on Channel 7, was produced with NHK, Japan's biggest television network. ""Pearl Harbor: Two Hours That Changed the World"" moves between memories of Japanese pilots and American sailors to create a tense account of the events leading up to the assault that pulverized America's Pacific fleet.
The background for the attack, which has been subject to considerable contention among historians, is laid out by David Brinkley in a straightforward way that avoids revisionist detours. In the view of the Japanese military, only American power -- particularly in the form of the battle force gathered at Pearl Harbor -- stood in the way of Japan's conquest of much of Asia. While diplomats were negotiating in Washington in December 1941, Japanese aircraft carriers were steaming toward their target. Mr. Brinkley shrugs off recurrent charges that President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew of Tokyo's plans but kept them from commanders in the field in hopes that a surprise attack would rouse the nation for a war he wanted.
Using photographs from both American and Japanese archives, as well as documentary film shot by John Ford (it is not always easy to tell which is which), the program goes back and forth between attackers and attacked. The memories of the Japanese pilots confirm everything you have read about the war spirit then prevailing in the Japanese military. ""I felt courageous,"" says one. ""It was very honorable to be chosen as one of the first to strike the opening blow.""
The adversaries shared serious misconceptions about each other. For most Americans, Japan was a far-off little country made up of little people who produced cheap little souvenirs. The impression of America, cultivated particularly in the Japanese military, was almost as simplistic. A naval officer, noting that America was made up of many races, says he and his comrades ""therefore assumed that the American people had no united loyalty to their country and no desire to fight for it.""
The program contrasts the purposeful dedication of the Japanese on Dec. 7, 1941, with the confusion of the Americans. A Japanese pilot recalls having a ""serene feeling that I was going to be a man, that I was about to flower and bear fruit."" Daniel K. Inouye, the Japanese-American Senator from Hawaii, says he called up to the attacking planes, ""You goddam Japs.""
To pictures of the place where the battleship Arizona went down with 1,177 crew members, Mr. Brinkley says: ""The ship's rusty hull under 40 feet of water is still leaking oil. A drop rises to the surface about every 20 seconds. It is sad and spooky, like a message silently floating up from an underwater tomb.""
Coming after such pictures, the comments of personages like George Bush, Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa of Japan and Eric Sevareid seem vapid. Among the lingering images of the changes wrought over a half century is the Honolulu skyline, which Mr. Brinkley calls ""a symbol of Japanese economic power."" He also notes that when today's Japanese think about World War II, the images that stay in their minds are not of Pearl Harbor but of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Pearl Harbor Two Hours That Changed the World An ABC News-NHK special, directed by Roger Goodman; written by David Brinkley; Lionel Chapman and Yuji Hashimoto, senior producers; Phyllis McGrady and Yoshihisa Hayashi, executive producers; David Brinkley, anchor. At 9 tonight on ABC.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TVWeekend; Marching With Sousa, The Oompah Master
Fans of military marches are in luck. ""If You Knew Sousa,"" tonight's offering in ""The American Experience"" series, is filled with the music that has been stirring patriotic juices for more than a century.
The series host, David McCullough, calls the Sousa march America's answer to the Strauss waltz. Although the rousers reached their peak of popularity in the early 1900's, bands around the country are still beating out ""The Stars and Stripes Forever"" and ""The Washington Post March,"" and you can hear them and other favorites through most of tonight's 90-minute documentary.
The program makes a connection between the march tempo and the upbeat spirit of America in Sousa's time. His were not the sounds of depression or recession, and they made him a superstar before that word was invented. His career is laid out by engaging archival photographs and old recordings; the details of his life, less stirring than his tunes, are filled in by enthusiasts, especially Loras Schissel of the Library of Congress.
In the 1920's, when jazz seemed to be taking over, Sousa commented, ""Just now it is the style to be crazy."" He kept conducting up until a few hours before his death in 1932, ending his career on an apt upnote, leading a band in ""The Stars and Stripes Forever."" Through such Sousa favorites, tonight's documentary calls up a robust, optimistic era that seems more distant all the time. 'Ute Lemper  Sings Kurt Weill'
Bravo, tomorrow at 9 P.M.
Robust and optimistic are not words that spring to mind from the music of Kurt Weill. If Sousa was imbued with 19th-century optimism, Weill reeked of 20th-century disillusion. This hourlong concert, recorded at the Bath International Festival in May 1989, is also an opportunity to meet Ute Lemper. Although her interpretations seem a touch over-emoted at times, the lovely young German cabaret singer, performing on a darkened stage to Jurgen Knieper's accompaniment, has evident feeling for Weill's work, particularly from his German period.
Here, in subtitled German, are such Weill standards as ""Mack the Knife"" and ""Surabaya Johnny"" and an affecting English version of ""Moon of Alabama."" Now and then, 1920-ish black-and-white pictures of a bleak Berlin flash on a screen behind or seemingly all around the black-attired singer as counterpoint to the lyrics. If you're taken with Ms. Lemper, who offers a few comments on this and that between songs, you may be able to catch her on tour this month and next in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago, singing songs identified with Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich. 'The Ernest Green Story'
Disney, Sunday at 7 P.M.
If virtue is its own reward, the producers of ""The Ernest Green Story"" should be richly compensated. Ernest Green was one of the nine black students who broke the racial barrier at the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., in 1957, with the help of 1,200 paratroopers. Tonight's play, told from young Ernest's point of view, pits a few brave black teen-agers against malevolent white politicians and racist mobs. That is not inaccurate as far as it goes, but it does not go nearly far enough to make for adult drama. This largely predictable exercise, with Morris Chestnut as Ernest and Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee playing familiar parts, can be recommended for youngsters. Grown-ups, stick with ""60 Minutes."" 'Telling Secrets'
ABC, Sunday and Monday at 9 P.M.
For four unenthralling hours, ""Telling Secrets,"" based on a 1989 murder in Phoenix, tells the story of some people who manage to be odd without being interesting. Cybill Shepherd is supposed to be a femme fatale; Ken Olin plays the least assertive detective west of the Rockies. Among its many other deficiencies, the screenplay has no detecting to speak of and no real focus; it drifts here and there, pausing now and then for a pleasing glimpse of Ms. Shepherd in underwear. She does wonders for a money belt. 'The American Experience' 'If You Knew Sousa'  Channel 13, tonight at 9 A portrait of John Philip Sousa produced by Tom Spain and Linda Spain for ""The American Experience,"" a co-production of WGBH/ Boston, WNET/New York and KCET/Los Angeles; written by Mr. Spain; edited by Ms. Spain and Andrew Fredericks; Judy Crichton, executive producer of ""The American Experience""; Charles Kuralt, narrator.
Correction:  January 16, 1993, Saturday
The TV Weekend column yesterday gave an incorrect time for the program ""Ute Lemper Sings Kurt Weill"" on the Bravo cable channel. It is to be shown tonight at 7, not at 9.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Mini-Visits With the Stars
Some viewers find celebrity profiles irresistible. And all networks find those cheap-to-produce collections of old clips irresistible. So ""60 Minutes: The Entertainers"" should have been a winner. The two-hour special, including excerpts from 23 years' worth of show-business interviews, will be shown on CBS tonight at 9. It's painless, but easy to resist.
The problem is not the profiles as they originally appeared, but the hit-and-run way they are edited: a few minutes of Robin Williams visiting with Jonathan Winters, a bit of Shirley MacLaine asking Mike Wallace what's wrong with reincarnation, a touch of Jackie Gleason playing pool, then on to the next truncated interview. The ""60 Minutes"" sense of celebrity has never been all that sophisticated -- no one thinks it's peculiar when George Burns takes Ed Bradley to Forest Lawn to visit Gracie -- but in their full-length form the interviews offered a satisfying sense of having spent time with an icon.
In fact, the approach of ""The Entertainers"" works best when it is taken to its extreme and interviews are literally edited into sound bites. Some of the best moments are the brief lead-ins to commercials. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton demonstrate how they insult each other during their marital spats, and Itzhak Perlman offers a deservedly irreverent answer to Mr. Wallace's question, ""Why is it that so many world-class fiddle players are Jewish?""
There are performance clips that make the special worthwhile, including a duet in which Liza Minnelli and Judy Garland sing their version of ""Hello, Dolly!"" -- ""Hello, Liza"" and ""Hello, Mama."" But ""60 Minutes"" doesn't do itself any favors by using ""That's Entertainment"" as its opening song. It only brings to mind the movie of that title -- a much better collection of clips -- and suggests what this special might have been. 60 Minutes The Entertainers Directed by Arthur Bloom; Merri Lieberthal, co-producer; Philip Scheffler, senior producer; produced for CBS News; Don Hewitt, executive producer; Mike Wallace, Morley Safer and Ed Bradley, hosts. At 9 tonight on CBS.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; A Baby Shower Can't Hurt Ratings
Johnny Carson's departure only seems as if it's been going on for nine months as NBC keeps milking the hype and ad-rate machines. In the end, on May 22, Mr. Carson will no doubt depart quietly, still nurturing his treasured privacy. Over on CBS, meanwhile, ""Murphy Brown"" will be bringing a real -- well, sort of -- nine months to a conclusion with the birth of a baby. That entails a completely different kind of nurturing.
This, friends, is a sweeps month. Ratings are crucial to the prices networks can charge advertisers in coming months. What to do? The industry calls it stunting; that is, do anything to attract more attention. Weddings, births and sentimental departures are favorite tactics.
The calculated big moments for Johnny and Murphy are hardly coincidental. Just look at the current marriage boom: the characters of Adam and Eve on ""Northern Exposure"" (CBS); Paige and Kenny on ""Life Goes On"" (ABC); Dorothy and Lucas on ""The Golden Girls"" (NBC); Woody and Kelly on ""Cheers"" (NBC); Whitely and either Dwayne or Byron on ""A Different World"" (NBC). What kind of cad would ever suggest that the networks march in a creative lockstep?
On occasion, though, the ploys do work beautifully. All it takes is a talent for spiking tired situations with a hefty shot or two of originality. ""Murphy Brown,"" as might be expected, does just that tonight at 9 with a baby shower and then again next Monday with the birth itself. Getting Murphy pregnant was not the most promising idea in the world, and a couple of the subsequent scripts decidedly bode ill for the series. But these two episodes bring the show's current season to a conclusion that finds Murphy and gang at the very top of their form.
As the blessed event draws closer, Murphy's testiness is taking on the proportions of holy terror. Murphy, who now envelops the nonpregnant Candice Bergen's performance like a second skin, waddles around the television offices of the ""F.Y.I."" news magazine looking like some dreadfully out-of-sorts Santa Claus as she mutters something about her leg veins resembling the Interstate.
She considers baby showers cruel and unusual punishment. Of course, Corky (Faith Ford) has already sent out the invitations. Calming down in Corky's chintz-covered office (""It's like walking into Victoria's Secret,"" sneers the mother-to-be), Murphy has a few pointed questions. Are gifts guaranteed or optional? Are the invited guests deadbeats or people who can afford expensive Scandinavian baby furniture? Frank (Joe Regalbuto) starts complaining that he can't go ""just because he's a guy."" In the course of 22 minutes, Michael Patrick King's script hits a good many buttons.
Well, as is obvious from the ads, the shower goes on, and the guests are Murphy's television peers, women from network news and magazine formats. NBC is generously given an opportunity to hog the CBS showcase with Katie Couric and Faith Daniels, both of ""Today,"" and Mary Alice Williams from ""Sunday Today With Garrick Utley."" But also included are Paula Zahn from CBS's ""This Morning"" and Joan Lunden from ABC's ""Good Morning, America."" Says Murphy in mock horror: ""Ohmigod, it's a blond street gang.""
Now would be a perfect opportunity for a learned essay on the fading line between news personalities and entertainers. But that's another column, a standard evergreen. What does come through clearly is the need for anyone prominent on television to be a performer. It should be noted that Walter Cronkite was one of the first newscasters to participate in ""Murphy Brown."" And just last week, Geraldo Rivera was on ""Perry Mason,"" portraying a tabloid-television host eerily like himself. So it should come as no surprise that tonight's visitors hit their marks and deliver their lines like performing pros. That's precisely what they are.
The shower? It's packed with wonderful lines and inspired poking. ""O.K., everybody,"" shouts Corky, setting up a group photograph, ""everybody say 30 share."" Next week's birth? Depend on ""Murphy Brown"" to put a memorably wacky spin on the familiar, managing in the process to drag in everything from underwear and bathing suits to a stapler and Maryland crab cakes. Slipping in the songs ""Chantilly Lace"" and ""A Natural Woman"" are just two of the more memorable touches. And, for all of the laughs, you won't get away without being deeply moved.
As Murphy might succinctly put it when happily bowled over, ""Aw, jeez.""  Murphy Brown A Chance of Showers  Directed by Peter Bonerz; written by Michael Patrick King; produced by Shukovsky/ English Productions in association with Warner Brothers Television; Diane English and Joel Shukovsky, executive producers. At 9 P.M. tonight on CBS. Murphy Brown . . . Candice Bergen Phil . . . Pat Corley Corky Sherwood-Forrest . . . Faith Ford Jim Dial . . . Charles Kimbrough Eldin Bernecky . . . Robert Pastorelli Frank Fontana . . . Joe Regalbuto Miles Silverberg . . . Grant Shaud Katie Couric . . . Herself Faith Daniels . . . Herself Joan Lunden . . . Herself Mary Alice Williams . . . Herself Paula Zahn . . . Herself",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Sex Abuse Charges Disrupt a Small Town
Goodbye Twin Peaks. Hello, Edenton. ""Innocence Lost,"" tonight's absorbing and troubling report from the wishfully named North Carolina coast town of 6,000, digs into the fears and weaknesses behind the golf and horseback riding, the cocktail parties and churchgoing that make small-town life seem so quietly inviting. The title of the two-hour edition of ""Frontline,"" at 9 on Channels 13 and 49, refers less to the scores of children between the ages of 2 and 5 who their parents and the District Attorney say were sexually abused than to the town itself.
Most viewers are likely to leave this carefully developed account with the feeling that the true victims of abuse here are not the children but the seven people who have been charged with abusing them. For the last 16 months, Robert and Betsy Kelly, the couple who owned and ran Little Rascals, the town's best day-care center, have been in prison, facing sentences of life imprisonment. Three employees and two other town residents are also awaiting trial. Mr. Kelly's trial, the first in the case, is to begin next month.
The program's producer, Ofra Bikel, interviewed several parents among the majority who say they are convinced that their children were abused and a few others who doubt it; defendants and their relatives; the District Attorney, and defense lawyers. Like the defense, Ms. Bikel was not permitted to speak to the children, whose testimony is to constitute the prosecution's case or to the three state-hired psychologists who elicited it.
The charges are traced to one child's complaint that he had been slapped at Little Rascals. His mother, then Mrs. Kelly's close friend, tells Ms. Bikel, ""At that moment I knew that life would never be the same again."" When Mrs. Kelly refused to apologize, someone began spreading rumors of physical and sexual abuse.
The interviews with the parents are disturbing. Several had been friends of the Kellys, who were part of the Edenton establishment, but anxiety about their children appears to have overwhelmed other feelings.
One former friend says: ""I despise Betsy. I hate Betsy."" The defendants, their families and their defenders have been ostracized. Mr. Kelly's lawyer, another old friend, withdrew from the case when his own son was named among those who had been molested. He says: ""I don't believe that anyone who is suspected of being a sexual molester of children could be accepted in any part of this community.""
""Suspected?"" Ms. Bikel repeats. ""Suspected,"" says the lawyer.
The parents, some of whom tell of dropping in at the center at all times of day, say they never saw anything suspicious, and they agree that their chidren gave no indication of having been abused until they were ""evaluated"" by the psychologists, who decided that most of them needed therapy. It was in these sessions that specifics emerged. ""It took quite a while,"" a parent says.
Mrs. Kelly is supposed to have fondled children, placed her finger and pencils, sticks and scissors into their genitals and had sexual intercourse with her husband in front of them. One child said that Mrs. Kelly had washed her after she had been raped by Mr. Kelly and that she had also cooked her in a microwave. The co-defendants of the Kellys face similar accusations. The youngest, a 20-year-old woman who has a 2-year-old son of her own, has been named by one 5-year-old as having urinated on children and having asked them to swallow snakes.
The viewer is left with the narrator's questions: ""Did the children talk on their own accord? Were they asked leading questions? How did they name names? Could the therapists have been influenced by the fact that they are paid by the state?""
The closest the program comes to answers is in interviews with the few mothers who believe the charges are unjustified. One tells of hearing a psychologist coaxing or coercing her son into naming the accused. For a year, she says, her little boy could not recognize any of the defendants' pictures in the newspaper, but in the psychologist's report, ""he had gotten every one of them right the first time, and she hadn't had to tell him who they were.""
Another mother says, ""If the way my son was questioned and badgered and repeatedly asked the same thing is an indication of how the other kids were interviewed, I don't find it difficult to believe that these kids are now believing something happened that didn't."" These parents tell of being pressured to conform, and two defendants, young mothers themselves, say they turned down offers of deals for a confession. After more than a year in prison, away from their children, they continue to maintain their innocence.
One parent who says she is convinced that something bad happened at Little Rascals declares that the case has ""shattered our picture of our lives."" The picture presented by tonight's inquiring documentary is not shattered, just dark.
""Innocence Lost"" is followed at 11 P.M. by ""When Children Testify,"" a half-hour discussion of some legal and psychological issues raised by the Edenton case. The evening should leave viewers with a more critical attitude toward similar cases that have been making headlines in recent years. Frontline Innocence Lost  Written and produced by Ofra Bikel; David Fanning, executive producer. At 9 tonight on Channels 13 and 49.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; The High Cost of Playing Politics
The title of tonight's ""Frontline"" offering, ""The Best Campaign Money Can Buy,"" is double edged. The program shows how six-figure contributions not only finance the campaigns of Gov. Bill Clinton and President Bush but also buy influence for the contributors.
This only too relevant hourlong documentary, co-produced by the Center for Investigative Reporting, gives troubling examples of the deals available to members of groups like the Managing Trustees (contributors of at least $200,000 to the Democrats) and the Team 100 (contributors of at least $100,000 to the Republicans).
Bill Clinton is seen telling a meeting of big givers, ""You can't imagine how important you are in this campaign."" On the evidence presented tonight, such people have no trouble at all imagining it and turning their imaginings into reality:
*As a condition for arranging a Democratic fund-raiser, Cuban-Americans in Florida, normally inclined toward the Republican Party, insisted that Governor Clinton endorse a bill that would tighten the American embargo against Fidel Castro. The candidate obliged and the meeting produced $125,000.
*A few days after organizing a million-dollar Republican fund-raising event, a major investor in California agriculture benefited from an emergency order from Washington that reversed Department of Interior policy and sent billions of dollars worth of subsidized water to corporate farms in central and southern California.
Although donors are not allowed to give more than $1,000 to a Presidential candidate, nothing stops them from giving as much as they please to the political parties, which then funnel the money to the candidates. The program's viewpoint is expressed by Fred Wertheimer, the president of Common Cause, a liberal group that has been working without great success to change campaign financing. He calls the present situation legalized corruption: ""The free flow of money is a formula for selling our government to wealthy people and special interests.""
The program confirms that some of the nation's biggest political givers are not particular about which party they support. In this year's campaign, ""Frontline"" reports, Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) has given more than $400,000 to the Republican Party and nearly $600,000 to the Democrats. Robert Krulwich, tonight's reporter, notes that ARCO wants permission from Washington to drill for oil in a national wildlife refuge in Alaska.
The biggest bipartisan contributor, according to this survey, is Dwight Andreas, the head of Archer Daniels Midland, known to viewers of Sunday morning talk shows for those dreamy commercials celebrating its dedication to the nation's welfare. Mr. Andreas has also contributed to the welfare of the Republican Party ticket to the tune of more than a million dollars.
Mr. Krulwich draws attention to the effects of Government subsidies and other regulations on Mr. Andreas's company, the world's biggest processor of agricultural products. It recently sought a waiver of the Clean Air Act to permit higher sales of ethanol, a fuel made partly from corn. This month President Bush granted the waiver, which promises to bring corn growers and ethanol makers tens of millions of dollars and will presumably enable Mr. Andreas to give even more money to politicians.
Although tonight's program is occasionally diverted to amusing but off-the-mark anecdotes (like the story of Michael Kojima, who was found to owe child support payments to two former wives after publicity for giving $500,000 to the Bush campaign), it presents an effective case. In particular, the presence of the agreeably informal Mr. Krulwich helps make ""The Best Campaign Money Can Buy"" important without seeming self-important. Frontline The Best Campaign Money Can Buy  PBS, tonight (In the New York area, Channels 13 and 49 at 9.)
Produced by Stephen Talbot; Sharon Tiller, executive producer, Center for Investigative Reporting; David Fanning, executive producer, ""Frontline""; Robert Krulwich, correspondent. WITH: Eve Pell and Dan Noyes, reporters.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; More of David Suchet As Hercule Poirot
Part of the fun in watching drama imports from England, the kind that have become ""Masterpiece Theater"" staples, is realizing that the seemingly new face you're so impressed with belongs to an actor you've seen in innumerable previous productions. England has its stars, to be sure, but the country seems overrun with positively brilliant character actors. Some even manage to hitch their careers to a role, usually in a television series, that evolves into a special stardom of its own.
Enter David Suchet, stage veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company, recipient of a spate of awards for his work in film and television. He works steadily, and sometimes quite prominently. A decade or so ago, he gave a masterly performance in the title role of the mini-series ""Freud."" But it's only in recent years, in still another title role, that Mr. Suchet has, as they say, come into his own.
Fans of ""Mystery"" on public television will have no problem identifying him as the star of ""Poirot,"" the series based on the exploits of Agatha Christie's finicky Belgian detective. Without prompting, however, they might not recognize him in still another title role, ""The Secret Agent,"" the current three-part ""Masterpiece Theater"" offering, based on the Joseph Conrad novel. ""Poirot"" may keep him reasonably busy, but Mr. Suchet, ever the tireless character actor, insists on stretching himself elsewhere.
In ""The Secret Agent,"" the actor turns sullen and lumbering, his face adorned with thick mustache and bushy eyebrows, his suspicious eyes peering from beneath a derby perched on matted hair. Living in London in the mid-1890's, Adolf Verlac is a triple agent who, among other things, supplies the London police with occasional information about the revolutionaries and anarchists in his circle of acquaintences. Also working for Russia's Czarist regime, he is forced by an official at the Russian Embassy to plot a terrorist act that might prompt the British to clamp down on foreign revolutionaries.
The plot and dialogue seem quaintly dated, until one reads accounts of Nazis and anarchists on the rise again in today's Germany. More damaging, the production is relentlessly dark and gloomy as it attempts to explore the psychological drama of Verloc. There's the kind of heaviness here reminiscent of the days when the BBC used to tackle weighty adaptations of, say, Sartre. Still, Suchet fans get another opportunity to savor a gifted actor's versatility.
And then, beginning tonight at 9 on Channel 13 and at 10 on Channel 21, there is ""Poirot."" The fourth season of this series opens with a two-part adaptation of ""The ABC Murders,"" one of Christie's most inventive plots. A murderer begins sending Poirot anonymous letters announcing, in alphabetical order inspired by the ABC Railway Guide, where around the country the next victim will be found. Working with Captain Hastings (Hugh Fraser) and Chief Inspector Jaap (Philip Jackson), an increasingly anxious Poirot works feverishly to solve a case that, as he sees it, pits ""the sanity of a town against the insanity of one man.""
It's a clever mystery, adroitly laid out. More to the point, the series itself has reached the point where it can relax and enjoy itself enormously. Mr. Suchet's Poirot is now a paragon of charming ego and unquestionable shrewdness. Ever the dandy, the little Belgian, as Diana Rigg calls him in her introductions, wields cane, gloves and homburg in grand style, quite genuinely satisfied with himself as he dashes about taking the tiniest of steps. The occasional bumbling of Hastings is corrected with a mere glance and perhaps an infinitesimal pursing of lips.
""The ABC Murders"" is crammed with delicious details, from a stuffed crocodile that Hastings has brought back from South America for a decidedly wary Poirot to the obsessive master detective arranging everything in his kitchen cupboards according to height. And it would be impossible to find another television series using a line like ""You little jackanapes!"" ""Poirot"" just keeps getting better. Much like Mr. Suchet. Mystery! Poirot IV The ABC Murders  PBS, tonight at 9 (Channel 13 in New York). Directed by Andrew Grieve; written by Clive Exton, based on a story by Agatha Christie; produced by Brian Eastman for London Weekend Television; Nick Elliott, executive producer. Hercule Poirot . . . David Suchet Captain Hastings . . . Hugh Fraser Chief Inspector Japp . . . Philip Jackson Inspector Glen . . . David McAllister Andover sergeant . . . Alex Knight Dr. Kerr . . . Allan Mitchell Mary Drower . . . Cathryn Bradshaw",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Good Manners Come From the Barrel of a Gun
The scene: A supermarket parking lot. A purse is snatched from a well-dressed businesswoman named Mrs. Dean. Running after the thief, Billy the checkout boy is fatally shot. The woman keeps screaming about her purse. Mrs. Cage, an older woman who has been watching in horror, picks up the thief's discarded gun and fires a bullet directly between Mrs. Dean's eyes.
That's one of the very few scenes in ""Mrs. Cage"" taking place outside the confines of the police station where she calmly turns herself in. This 70-minute drama, adapted by Nancy Barr from her stage play, is essentially a two-character, single-room exercise, focused on Mrs. Cage's thorough but sensitive interrogation by Lieut. Ruben Angel. The performances of Anne Bancroft and Hector Elizondo allow for no slackening in the necessary tension. The ""American Playhouse"" presentation, directed by Robert Allan Ackerman, is on Channel 13 at 9 tonight.
Mrs. Cage is a woman in her late 50's who finds herself increasingly isolated while the traditional values she has honored all her life continue to erode. As the wife of a successful criminal lawyer (Stanley Grover), she has been content to be the perfect homemaker, taking pride in her balanced meals and being able to iron shirts beautifully. Now her workaholic husband simply takes her for granted. As a mother, Mrs. Cage discovers in her only child (Amy Morton), a career-driven woman already on her first divorce, a contempt for her mother's accepting subservience.
Little wonder that Mrs. Cage concocts a flirtatious fantasy around Billy (Jack Noseworthy), the supermarket clerk who smiles warmly and treats her courteously. For the neglected housewife, the young man is winning, open, ardent, a kind of gentleman caller in reserve. When she overhears him singing the theme song from the television series ""Rawhide,"" Mrs. Cage is completely charmed. But Mrs. Dean (Tracy Brooks Swope), whom she only knew from a distance, was something else entirely. She was the type of woman who would brazenly use a parking space reserved for the handicapped and then push herself into the express checkout line with a number of items way over the clearly stated limit.
Mrs. Cage has lost her identity (it takes quite a while to learn that her first name is Lillian) and she is consumed by rage. She is intelligent and honest. She makes no effort to excuse her crime, and she doesn't even want a lawyer, especially her own husband. What she did was wrong and no doubt evil, Mrs. Cage insists, but ""it certainly wasn't insane."" Mr. Elizondo's carefully probing Lieutenant Angel is disturbed by this woman but not unsympathetic to her. Ms. Bancroft's sharply etched yet delicately shaded performance makes that response understandable as her portrait of Mrs. Cage becomes utterly convincing. What might have been a somewhat mechanical contrivance emerges as a quite compelling drama.  American Playhouse Mrs. Cage  Directed by Robert Allan Ackerman; written by Nancy Barr; director of photography, Bill Pope; editor, Steven Weisberg; costumes by Dona Granata; music by David Mansfield; production designer, David Sackeroff; produced by Dan Lupovitz for ""American Playhouse""; Lindsay Law, Marcia Nasatir and Steven Haft, executive producers. At 9 tonight on Channels 13. Mrs. Cage . . . Anne Bancroft Lieutenant Angel . . . Hector Elizondo Martin Cage . . . Stanley Grover The Detective . . . Steve Hornyack Elizabeth Cage . . . Amy Morton The Thief . . . Tom Noga Billy . . . Jack Noseworthy Phyllis Dean . . . Tracy Brooks Swope",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; The Historic Challenge to Segregation
Tracing events that led to the United States Supreme Court's school-desegregation decision in 1954, ""Separate but Equal"" is the kind of film that today is likely to be done only for television. The heart of the story is about fundamental national issues that have to be placed in historical, legal and moral contexts. Crucial information must be digested. No action-adventure pyrotechnics here. These are serious matters and, quite admirably, ""Separate but Equal"" keeps them that way in its deliberately slow, almost stately fashion. The four-hour movie, a ""G.M. Mark of Excellence"" presentation, will be broadast in two segments, Sunday and Monday, on ABC at 9 o'clock.
Of course, the writer and director George Stevens Jr. knows quite well that an audience has to be wooed and won. Network television is not interested in purely altruistic projects, no matter how worthy. So Mr. Stevens had the good sense to persuade Sidney Poitier to return to television after 35 years and portray Thurgood Marshall, who was chief counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which brought the school segregation challenge to the Supreme Court in the case known as ""Brown v. Board of Education.""
Mr. Poitier's performance is the film's linchpin. The actor bears no physical resemblance whatsoever to Mr. Marshall, but he powerfully captures the quiet passion of a determined advocate. His Marshall moves cautiously but relentlessly. He is suffused with compassion, whether it be for his colleagues and clients or for his devoted wife (Gloria Foster) who is struggling with cancer. This is an old-fashioned movie portrait of a hero, reminiscent of the days when Paul Muni would make Emile Zola larger than life. Mr. Poitier is simply splendid.
But it's hardly a one-man show. The support is remarkable across the board. Burt Lancaster is the soul of courtly but tough dignity as John W. Davis, the lawyer for the other side, himself once a candidate for the Presidency. And Richard Kiley is truly superb as Earl Warren, the new Chief Justice, who, being a politician and not a jurist, is expected by many to be little more than the colorless manager of a team of all stars. But it is Warren who, after concluding that the case is a moral issue, sets out to make the court's decision for desegregation unanimous.
""Separate but Equal"" is a story that could only have come out of the United States. It begins in a rural South Carolina school with black children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Tired of seeing his students having to walk five or six miles to school while busloads of white children speed past them, the preacher who also serves as schoolteacher (Ed Hall) asks the local superintendant for a single bus and is told it would be too costly. The preacher decides to draw up a petition, and that attracts the attention of a lawyer in New York named Marshall. What will turn out to be a historic event begins in deceptively modest circumstances.
There are setbacks, and there are legitimate differences of opinion. Some black leaders strenuously oppose the N.A.A.C.P.'s efforts, arguing that a Supreme Court defeat would set back the black cause for perhaps decades. But in the end, the law of the land recognized what a South Carolina judge had said earlier in a dissenting opinion: ""Segregation can never produce equality. It is an evil that must be eradicated.""
""Separate but Equal"" intelligently and movingly captures a turning point in the nation's history.  Also of Interest
""The Sunset Gang"" (Channel 13, tonight at 9). The first episode of this ""American Playhouse"" trilogy -- adapted by Ronald Ribman from stories by Warren Adler -- takes a fierce swipe at the concept of marital loyalty. The scene is the Florida retirement community of Sunset Village. Velvil (Harold Gould) and Genendel (Tresa Hughes) meet at the local Yiddish club and fall in love. The problem is they both have living spouses, remnants of more than 45 years of marriage. And what will the children say? No matter. The elderly lovers decide to, as they used to say in the 60's, do their own thing. Here is still further evidence that the times they really are a-changin'. Separate but Equal Written and directed by George Stevens Jr.; director of photography, Nic Knowland; costumes by Francine Jamison-Tanchuck; music by Carl Davis; production designer, Veronica Hadfield; a New Liberty Production in association with Republic Pictures Television; George Stevens Jr. and Stan Margulies, co-executive producers. Sunday and Monday at 9 P.M. on ABC. Thurgood Marshall . . . Sidney Poitier John W. Davis . . . Burt Lancaster Earl Warren . . . Richard Kiley Robert Carter . . . Cleavon Little Buster Marshall . . . Gloria Foster Gov. James F. Byrnes . . . John McMartin Josiah B. Tulley . . . Graham Beckel The Rev. J. A. DeLaine . . . Ed Hall Alice Stovall . . . Lynne Thigpen W. B. Springer . . . Macon McCalman",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Alzheimer's: The Cruelest Disease
One in three American families has been struck by Alzheimer's disease. ""Losing It All: The Reality of Alzheimer's Disease,"" tonight's poignant documentary at 10 on HBO, reports on five of those families. Competition among ailments is a no-win game, but this hour makes a painful case that Alzheimer's, which destroys the brain, eroding memory and thinking, and for which there is no cure, ""may be the cruelest disease.""
The focus is less on the sufferers themselves, the once-alert, effective people who are now, as the narrator says, ""lost in time and space forever,"" than on the wives, husbands and children who are doing their best to look after them. As one woman whose husband's Alzheimer's was diagnosed five years ago says, ""The grief never stops."" Pat Ryan forgets things, gets lost, can't manage to put on his socks without direction. When he decides to play his trombone, he picks up an electric shaver instead.
There are shattering moments. In a brief intermission of lucidity, Mr. Ryan says: ""I'm worth something."" And then he adds, vaguely, ""But I don't have any way to do it."" His wife and son are attentive and loving, yet when they leave him for two weeks at a veteran's hospital, they cry: ""Freedom!"" In Spokane, Wash., the daughter of a woman who lives in a filthy, cluttered apartment that she refuses to leave, admits she dreads visiting her mother and ""having to watch her mind die.""
Scrapbooks give viewers glimpses of Mr. Ryan and others as they were in happier days, hugging wives and husbands, playing with their children. ""My dad died five or six years ago,"" one young man says as he cries over the old pictures of the father who now forgets what he is doing while he is doing it. His wife pleads, ""You're leaving me and I don't want you to go.""
Two of the patients tonight are sister and brother. The father, too, had Alzheimer's. As the woman lies dying, the brother, who perhaps blessedly is too far gone to see his own future, sits comforting her. His son and her daughter talk about whether, given their heritage, either dare marry and have children.
About a third of Alzheimer's patients live at home and depend entirely on their families. ""Losing It All,"" produced, written and directed by Michael Mierendorf and narrated by Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, who lost her mother, Rita Hayworth, to the disease, is a compassionate look both at people clinging ""to the barest threads of who they once were"" and the loved and loving ones who are sacrificing their own lives in a hopeless struggle to help them. A 79-year-old man whose wife needs total care says: ""I was raised you look after your wife. It doesn't matter whether it's good times or bad times.""
The season's Emmy for shamelessness goes to ""Never Say Goodbye,"" tonight's soft-focus treatment of the sad case of Kimberly Bergalis at 9 on Channel 5. Ms. Bergalis, as the nation knows, is the young woman who is dying of AIDS apparently contracted from a dentist who has since died of it. The producer, Mary Hughes, who interviewed Ms. Bergalis for a ""Current Affair"" last year, now turns that show's sensibility to the issue of testing doctors and dentists, and barring those infected with AIDS from performing invasive surgical procedures without the patient's written consent.
Ms. Bergalis has been much seen on television news and talk programs, arguing for mandatory disclosure. The sight of the 70-pound woman giving a Congressional committee what may have been her last public plea a few weeks ago could not fail to move viewers, and everyone could understand her anger and that of her parents. But to use the emotions aroused by this one case to rally support for a law that would affect many thousands of people and cost many millions of dollars can arouse anger of another sort.
As spokesmen for medical organizations on tonight's program note, there is no evidence that any health-care professional besides Ms. Bergalis's dentist has passed on the infection. But the sort of reasoned discussion demanded by so far-reaching a proposal as mandatory disclosure is not encouraged by an hour devoted mainly to exploiting the last days of a dying woman.  Losing It All The Reality of Alzheimer's Disease  Produced, written and directed by Michael Mierendorf. At 10 tonight on HBO.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; How Ozzie and Archie Influenced America
Television families, from the Cleavers to the Kramdens to the Conners, have been much kidded and commended over the years, but questions remain. To what extent do they reflect reality? To what extent have some reflected an ideal that few American homes have matched? What is their influence, if any? Such matters, raised anew by Vice President Dan Quayle's attentions to ""Murphy Brown,"" are treated in ""Through the Looking Glass: Television and the Family,"" a brisk hourlong documentary that resolves none of the questions but touches the concerns behind them.
Once again, sitcoms of the 1950's, like ""Ozzie and Harriet"" and ""Father Knows Best,"" are mocked as ""squeaky-clean, picture-perfect"" visions of America. The reminders of these all-white, middle-class, sub urban households, with two parents, backyards, cars and the passing follies of adolescence that were always resolved in a half-hour minus commercials, are put in context by the host, Jim Jensen. They were made obsolete in the 1960's by demographic changes and by transformations in the nation's attitudes toward race and sex. Clips from the mild old shows seem as dated as the non-Japanese automobiles in their driveways.
Mr. Jensen reasonably gives credit to ""All in the Family"" for breaking the mold by presenting an untidy household dominated by a bigot, where matters like crime, poverty, discrimination, abortion and other social ills took turns as the issue of the week. With the advent of concoctions like ""The Simpsons"" and ""Married With Children,"" he says, ""the family as heaven"" moved toward ""the family as hell."" But to judge by series like ""The Wonder Years"" and ""Brooklyn Bridge,"" nostalgia evidently lingers for more innocent, possibly more wholesome times.
Young fans admit to being addicted (""Everything I learned about sex is from TV,"" one girl says), but they seem to take their favorites merely as shows and do not load as much significance on them as professors of communications and television reviewers, with their vested interest, are inclined to do. Mr. Jensen, apparently grasping for some sort of big-idea punch line, concludes vapidly, ""We watch them to discover we are not alone.""
Producers and writers of current hits like ""Life Goes On"" seem earnest, if a touch self-serving, but they acknowledge that their fates depend on ratings. Some things never change. Through the Looking Glass Television and the Family  Channel 2, tonight at 8. Holly Wertheimer and Elizabeth Karl, editors; Bonnie Dry, co-producer; David Turecamo, senior producer, for the WCBS-TV Broadcasting Department; Dolores Danska, executive producer; Jim Jensen, host.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; La Gloire Personified: The Career of de Gaulle
The researchers who tracked down the great old black-and-white newsreels that give context and texture to ""De Gaulle and France"" deserve a medal or two. Effectively juxtaposed with reminiscences of surviving players, they make for an absorbing account of the operatic career of a man who always defied easy analysis.
Alone among the other giants who bestrode the first half of the 20th century -- Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler, Stalin -- Charles de Gaulle bore the colors of a vanquished people. He personified a national glory that was all in the past, or perhaps only in his mind.
""A Vision of France,"" the opening section of tonight's three-hour documentary, recalls his emergence as a leader in 1940, after France's collapse before the German onslaught. If ever there was a hero created for a desperate hour, de Gaulle was it. When, in his broadcasts to his demoralized countrymen from exile in London, he proclaimed, ""I am France,"" it seemed more than hyperbole. Who else could have made so puffed-up a claim sound plausible? He is shown tonight as a hard-headed romantic, an inspiring leader and exasperating ally, an oddly archaic figure even at his times of triumph.
His greatest hour, of course, resoundingly evoked by the pictures of his Free French soldiers re-entering Paris in August 1944, was the victory over Hitler and the Vichy collaborators. But sixteen months later, he abruptly resigned as President of the provisional postwar Government. The documentary's second hour, ""Return of the General,"" captures the drama of his summons to power again during France's anguish over the Algerian war.
While avoiding the tangles of psychology, the straightforward narrative leaves the impression that de Gaulle was not comfortable in the role of democratic politician, particularly in so fractious a democracy as France. He was most himself when he could assume the mantle of savior. During the years when he was reshaping the French political structure -- dealt with in the final hour, ""Challenging the World"" -- he was suspected by opponents, not without cause, as having inclinations or pretensions to being a monarch rather than a mere president.
His final resignation in 1968 after the student-led riots that seemed to be tearing the country apart was an acknowledgment that history, which in his grandest hours he had seen himself as representing, had swept past him. Yet although de Gaulle's concept of la gloire had long been outdated, two decades after his death in 1970, his vision of a united Europe seems much less far-fetched than it did when he was among the first to advance it. De Gaulle and France  PBS, tonight at 8 (Channel 13 in New York). Produced by WGBH Boston and LMK Images, France; Sue Williams, Tom Weidlinger and Christina von Braun, segment producers; Mr. Weidlinger, senior producer; Judith Vecchione and Yves Eudes, executive producers.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; No Stone Unturned In Special on Gems
""Splendid Stones,"" tonight's National Geographic documentary, catches some of the grubbiness as well as the glitter of the mining, making and marketing of gems. Scheduled at 10 on Channel 13, amid the week's fund-raising gabble, it is a small sparkler in a tin setting.
The hourlong tour does not dig deep, but its range is wide: Perfectly formed cultured pearls are farmed in Japan, fertilized with mussel shells from Tennessee; emeralds for millionaires are still being plucked by the destitute from the riverbeds of Colombia; synthetic rubies manufactured in southern California are almost identical to the real ones that seem to be running out in Thailand; an American jeweler visits London 10 times a year to do a bit of discreet bargaining with a diamond salesman from South Africa.
The occasionally effusive script, written by Irwin Rosten, offers some catchy asides. Did you know, for example, that rubies were once thought to reduce flatulence, and emeralds to cure constipation? Or that 250 tons of ore must be moved to obtain a one-carat polished diamond or that 75 percent of Japanese brides today wear diamond engagement rings?
The liveliest scenes are of traders making deals for uncut gems; every time one changes hands, the narrator, Richard Kiley, reports, the price doubles. After a bit of routine background on the development of De Beers Consolidated Mines, the South African firm that virtually controls the world supply of diamonds (yes, they are the folks behind those soft-focus commercials, ""A Diamond Is Forever""), the program takes the viewer to New York City's jewelry center, where in up-to-date surroundings, dealers do their Old World hondling: ""Twenty-two hundred a carat."" ""Fifteen."" ""No, I couldn't take fifteen."" Every deal is concluded with a handshake and an exchange of ""Mazeltov and a brucha."" (""Good luck and blessing."")
Early in the hour, you see gem prospectors sloshing in the mud of a river in the Andes and selling their finds to dealers for cash on the spot; toward the end, an actress models a multi-million dollar necklace for the camera. It's enough to make one reflect upon the creation of wealth, the nature of beauty, the power of fashion. And in case the flashes of light and color from the jewels glamorously photographed here should leave you feeling a little deprived, take comfort from the experience of the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Riza Pahlevi; his crown, with its 3,000 diamonds, is now used to back the currency of the state from which he was expelled. National Geographic Special Splendid Stones  Written and produced by Irwin Rosten; Teresa Koenig, co-producer; Barry Nye, editor; music by Jay Chattaway; Tim T. Kelly and Thomas Skinner, executive producers; Richard Kiley, narrator. Thursday, at 8 P.M. on Channel 50 and at 10 P.M. on Channel 13.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Dr. Kildare? Well, No. But a Human Face.
It's not as if television entertainment has turned its back completely on doctors and hospitals. There's Dr. Huxtable in ""The Cosby Show"" on NBC and there's the wisecracking gang on ""Nurses,"" also on NBC. Over on ABC, Doogie Howser, M.D. does see patients between bouts of teen-age angst. But where are the serious dramas about medicine, the kind that became television staples, dating back to the days of ""Dr. Kildare"" and ""Ben Casey""? Is the form still trying to recover from the cheeky irreverence of ""St. Elsewhere""? Perhaps.
But the producers Dick Wolf (""Law and Order"" and ""Mann and Machine,"" both on NBC) and William Sackheim (the movie ""Pacific Heights"") are betting that the time for a comeback is upon us and are putting their money, for better or worse, on ""The Human Factor,"" which has its premiere on CBS at 10 tonight. Created by John Mankiewicz, the new series revolves around a Chicago teaching hospital.
At the very center is a class taught by Dr. Alec McMurtry, who emphasizes ""the emotional part of the relationship between doctor and patient."" The doctor tells his students, ""I think it's the most important part of your education."" Fortunately, McMurtry is played by John Mahoney, an exceptionally fine actor who can make dim lines like that sound positively illuminating.
McMurtry works closely with about 10 student doctors, watching them in action at the hospital and doing critiques of them in daily conferences. ""As a class,"" he grumps, ""you have about as much sensitivity as George Steinbrenner."" In terms of billing and plot prominence, of course, some students are more promising than others. On the supersensitive side, there is Matt Robbin (Kurt Deutsch) who tonight finds that his first patient, dying of Hodgkin's disease, is a young woman he had a crush on in high school. Then, for a streetwise edge, there's Joe Murphy (Matthew Ryan), who in a future episode will fight to save a boxer intent on ignoring signs of Parkinson's disease.
But there's the problem: These and other diseases have already been overexposed every which way in hospital shows. In real life, they are tragically devastating; in television entertainment, they evoke a sense of numbing familiarity. ""The Human Factor"" seems aware of this quandary, and efforts are occasionally made to strike out in new directions. In a future episode, for instance, one student decides to sell her eggs to a fertility clinic and has to confront unexpected questions and emotions.
By far the most highly charged sequence in the first few episodes is generated by Dr. Finnola Keefe (Wendie Malick), a brilliant diagnostician and fierce misanthrope. When she is discovered in a thoroughly compromising position with young Matt in a hospital closet, the brazen Finnola the Frigid, as she's known, ends up being dismissed. In turn, she files a sex-discrimination suit, claiming that ""just because I'm not Miss Congeniality, they're trying to ruin me."" Attempting to help Finnola, innocent Matt argues that he was there, too. ""Just barely,"" she sneers, adding that she might be forced to ""tell the world about -- how shall I put it? -- your shortcomings."" Finnola is nasty but not dull. The hospital should get her back.
Eager to come up with something different, ""The Human Factor"" too often seems only uncertain. McMurtry's relationship with his wife, Joan, a writer of romance novels, is dragged in periodically and, for the most part, pointlessly. Characters spotted in the opening credits have been absent from the three episodes I've seen so far. Complicated issues are sometimes resolved far too easily. (Lawyers eager either to file or to avoid suits are the villains in this series.) And yet viewers are likely to get the feeling that, given half a chance, Mr. Mahoney could pull it all together single-handedly. He just looks like that kind of guy. The Human Factor  Created and written by John Mankiewicz; Don Scardino, director; Arthur W. Forney, associate producer; Dan Sackheim, producer; Mr. Mankiewicz, co-executive producer; William Sackheim and Dick Wolf, executive producers. A Universal Television Production. Thursdays at 10 P.M. on CBS. Dr. Alec McMurtry . . . John Mahoney Joan McMurtry . . . Jan Lucas Matt Robbin . . . Kurt Deutsch Rebecca Travis . . . Melinda McGraw Joe Murphy . . . Matthew Ryan Michael Stoven . . . Eriq LaSalle Betsy Wood . . . Trini Alvarado",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Sherlock Holmes Solves A Two-Ended Mystery
Returning to ""Mystery"" in five new hourlong cases, Jeremy Brett has become television's quintessential Sherlock Holmes. These latest episodes bring to a total of 34 hours since 1984 the Granada Television productions that star Mr. Brett as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective. One curious development: the more the actor painstakingly refines and enriches his portrayal, the more he tends to suggest in his increasingly chilly cerebrations the interpretation of another actor closely associated with the role, Basil Rathbone. Even if unintentional, the effect is perfectly on target.
In these new additions to ""The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes,"" England has turned the century, shifting from a Victorian to an Edwardian mode. Holmes, however, remains remarkably resistant to change. He still lives at 221-B Baker Street, tended to by Mrs. Hudson (Rosalie Williams), the unflappable housekeeper, and assisted in his amateur sleuthing by the steady Dr. Watson (Edward Hardwicke). For important errands, he employs the local young men known as the Baker Street Irregulars because, he explains, ""they are more discreet than any telegraph.""
Tonight's story, on Channels 13 and 21 at 9, is ""The Illustrious Client,"" which has, as Diana Rigg informs us, a mystery at both ends. There is the case to be solved, of course, but in this instance Holmes doesn't even know the identity of the man who is hiring him. The courier is the aristocratic Sir James Damery (David Langton), who is worried that the notorious Baron Gruner (Anthony Valentine), an Austrian murderer, is seducing a British heiress named Violet (Abigail Cruttenden) into marrying him. Violet is the rather impressionable daughter of a respected general. ""Your problem,"" snaps Holmes, pausing dramatically, ""interests me.""
Gruner is a diabolically clever opponent, easily on a level with Professor Moriarty. He has laid bare his entire past to Violet, including accusations that he killed his wife, but in such a way that she is thoroughly convinced he is a misunderstood victim. Holmes may be a brilliant literary creation but Conan Doyle's plots sometimes get snarled in unlikely contrivances. Even after meeting one of Gruner's former girlfriends, badly disfigured by the Baron with oil of vitriol, Violet's faith in the monster remains unshaken. The supposed reason is quaintly Victorian. The poor girl, it seems, is not in her senses; she is, quite literally, madly in love and completely in his grasp.
But the fun, as usual, is in watching Holmes move into action. In a meeting with the Baron, his contempt is bottomless as he reminds the nasty Austrian that in respectable society ""you remove the band from a cigar before lighting it; otherwise you'll be put down for a bounder."" The Holmes plan to entrap the Baron involves a scheme to appeal to his passion for collecting, a scheme that requires Watson to spend 24 hours devouring books that will make him an expert on Chinese pottery. As always, Watson does what he's told with enviable competence.
There is a resolution of sorts, and the identity of the ""illustrious client"" is revealed with appropriate decorum. Holmes triumphs once again. Equally to the point, so does Mr. Brett. Mystery The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes: 'The Illustrious Client'  Directed by Tim Sullivan; adapted by Robin Chapman; produced by Michael Cox for Granada Television; Diana Rigg, host. At 9 tonight on Channels 13, 21 and 49. WITH: Jeremy Brett, Edward Hardwicke, David Langton, Anthony Valentine, Abigail Cruttenden and Rosalie Williams.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; 'The 10 O'Clock News' Gives a Nod to Its Past
If ""60 Minutes,"" ""Nightline"" and ""The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour"" can publicly celebrate their anniversaries, why not ""The 10 O'Clock News""? Television rivals the Pentagon for bursts of self-admiration, and tonight at 9 on Channel 5, the nightly news program that has been serving or exploiting the New York area for 25 years spends an hour pinning medals on itself. ""25 on 5,"" narrated by John Roland and Cora-Ann Mihalik, the anchors of the newscast, is an inexpensive piece of promotion, made up mostly of old clips.
The producers of ""The 10 O'Clock News"" -- probably most famous for bringing show-business personalities and hopefuls on to declare: ""It's 10 P.M. Do you know where your children are?"" -- take credit for putting forth an ""intense,"" ""gritty,"" ""in-your-face"" newscast that challenged the establishment or even waged guerrilla war on it.
Some of the reporters, like Bill McCreary, Bob O'Brien and Pablo Guzman, did provide a rough-and-ready look that was noticeably different from the blow-dries at the major networks. The Channel Fivers seemed to grow more naturally from the streets of New York and today all the local channels have real-looking reporters.
In most ways, however, ""The 10 O'Clock News"" has played the game at a lowish level. The program has more than its share of ambulance chases and personality chases. There is also the lick-lipping and tongue-clucking over deaths by accident or, preferably, by design. There are the quick switches from catastrophe to inanity and the relentless human interest, especially about children. And the stuff is delivered at a frenetic pace, as evidenced tonight in flurries of five-second takes.
""We always go after the big stories,"" somebody says. And there, to define a big local-news story, are pictures of Joel Steinberg and Hedda Nussbaum, principals in a notorious case of child abuse.
Tabloid journalism, of which ""The 10 O'Clock News"" is an unashamed video practitioner, has a mixed and by no means entirely dishonorable history. Newspaper tabloids, energetic and sassy, talked to the little guy with irreverence soaked in sentimentality. They introduced generations of new Americans to the workings of City Hall and to the comics. From there, it could be hoped, citizens might move up to classier examples of a free press.
That does not seem to be happening any longer. Reading is not in, and even the least-demanding newspapers seem to strain the attention of the video generation. Television being a world in itself, the tube tabloids prepare their audiences for nothing more demanding than made-for-television movies.
So forgive me, ""10 O'Clock News,"" if I can't join in the happy birthdays. My reaction is more in the spirit of the New Yorker who is seen fleetingly tonight in the background of a street report, mooning the camera. 25 on 5 The 10 O'Clock News  Written by David Spencer; Vincent T. Russo, associate producer and editor; Danica Nedela, producer; Marie Hickey, executive producer; John Roland and Cora-Ann Mihalik, hosts. A production of Fox 5 News/WNYW. Tonight at 9 P.M. on Channel 5.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; And Now, a Real Courtroom Series
With ""Verdict"" at 8 tonight, CBS becomes the first network to turn cameras in the courtroom into a prime-time series. Many outside the television industry who supported the fight to crack the courtroom barrier saw it as an opportunity to open up the workings of the law; skeptics predicted that victory would bring just a new batch of real-crime shows that would clobber the finer points of law with the blunt instruments of murder and mayhem. The first half-hour of ""Verdict"" lends support to the skeptics but offers glimmers to the hopeful.
Tonight's program -- ""No actors, no scripts, no re-enactments!"" an authoritative off-camera voice declares -- focuses on murder and sex, that irresistible prime-time combination. The defendant is a professional con man whose specialty was lovelorn women. ""He stole widows' hearts,"" says Richard Schlesinger, the evening's reporter, ""and then he stole their money."" As ""Verdict"" begins, Raymond Harry Stone, already serving a 14-year sentence for fraud, is on trial for the murder of Anita Dalfuss, an acquaintance whose remains were found in a wooded area near San Diego.
Mr. Schlesinger's reporting is punchy. He presents a quick sketch of the defendant's technique through the recollections of several women who loved and lost (the interview with Mr. Stone himself reveals none of the charm they found in him), and presses both prosecutor and public defender on apparent weaknesses in their cases. The prosecution is not able to produce any evidence on how the woman died; the defense has to convince the jury that although Mr. Stone is a criminal, he is not a violent criminal.
Attention throughout is less on the judicial system than on the defendant and his victims. Still, the story is smartly told by the same people who bring you ""48 Hours,"" and courtroom tactics are illuminated along the way. An interesting issue, debated at the bench, has to do with the defense attorney's assertion to the jury that there is no evidence that her client is violent, his possible implication in another murder not having been allowed into evidence.
Human interest rather than legal procedure is also emphasized in a future episode, the manslaughter trial of a Vietnam veteran who contends that he is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his experience in Vietnam. ""My head was empty,"" he keeps saying. Expert witnesses disagree on whether the condition caused him to shoot a man five times. The opportunity to discuss the role of expert witnesses in criminal trials gives way to standard interviews with the defendant's wife and the murdered man's mother.
Next week brings a sharp portrait of a Florida woman accused of drugging a widow and stealing her money. Other coming attractions: a father who is charged with responsibility for his 10-year-old son's accidental shooting of a friend and a reputed drug dealer charged with ordering the murder of an anti-drug crusader. If future cases are laid out as efficiently as tonight's and next week's, they should keep people watching. Whether ""Verdict"" will use its access to the courtroom to do more than that is not yet clear to this juror. CNN Specials Today and Sunday
Two of CNN's welcome expansions of its round-the-clock news are on view this weekend. Today at 10 A.M. and 10 P.M., the cable channel presents a one-hour special on famine in Africa, the culmination of a week of grim reports from Ethiopia, Somalia, Mozambique and Malawi. And on Sunday at 9 P.M. comes ""The Nuclear Graveyard,"" a half-hour look at the technical and political obstacles to Washington's efforts to find a place to bury 100,000 tons of radioactive waste. The feeling of people in towns near proposed sites is summed up by a sign: ""Hell, no, we won't glow!"" '20/20'  ABC Tonight at 10
Tonight's edition of ""20/20"" carries a report on Albania's legacy of a half-century of isolation and repression. While tens of thousands of Albanians have fled to Italy, where they are making do in camps, millions remain trapped in what a relief worker calls a man-made disaster. Food is scarce (one woman tells of having to stand in line at 3 A.M. to buy powdered milk); work is hard (women are seen plowing fields by hand); the political situation is unsettled. It's a timely program: Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d begins his first visit to Albania today. Verdict Produced by CBS News; Andrew Heyward and Al Briganti, executive producers.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Mary Tyler Moore's Smile Turns Evil
""Stolen Babies,"" tonight's movie at 9 on Lifetime, has a practically fail-safe ""inspired by actual events"" plot. Powerfully connected pillars of a Tennessee community in the 1940's are running an illegal adoption ring, listing among their customers such Hollywood celebrities as Joan Crawford and Dick Powell. The story is obviously explosive. But this version prefers to take the standard television route of milking the sentimentally obvious for all it's worth. Nevertheless, a cluster of fine performances is very much worth catching.
Lea Thompson (""Back to the Future"") plays Annie Beales, who returns to Tennessee in 1945 from the University of Chicago to begin a career as a social worker. Kathleen Quinlan is Bekka Stern, the wealthy socialite who will introduce Annie to all the right people in Memphis. One of them turns out to be Georgia Tann, a prim, somewhat icy but charismatic woman who runs the Tennessee Children's Home Society. She is portrayed to a chilling fare-thee-well by none other than Mary Tyler Moore, taking another giant step away from the sunny Mary Richards, who is right up there with Mary Pickford when it comes to America's sweethearts.
Settling into her new job, Annie keeps coming across parents, all of them poor and powerless, who have had their children taken away by court decree. She soon realizes that Georgia, working in cahoots with a local judge, is stealing and selling babies with impunity. One of her customers, unaware of any illegalities, is Rebecca. Confronted with Annie's suspicions, Georgia simply decides to destroy the social worker who threatens a lifestyle that includes secret tippling, a chauffeured Rolls-Royce and gambling jaunts to Cuba.
Sharon Elizabeth Doyle's script is partial to sensational details. Some of the babies peddled by Georgia were born to women in the local insane asylum. The fact that many of these women were deceived and abused is undeniable. But the other side of the story, the fact that some of these children would indeed be better off with other parents, is played down. That argument is put into the mouths of Georgia and the other villains.
Directed by Eric Laneuville, who once played the friendly orderly on ""St. Elsewhere,"" ""Stolen Babies"" never gets much beyond pushing all of the expected buttons. But fine performances by the Misses Moore, Thompson and Quinlan manage to make the exercise seem almost special. Stolen Babies  Lifetime, tonight at 9. Directed by Eric Laneuville; written by Sharon Elizabeth Doyle; director of photography, Paul Murphy; editor, Karen Stern; costumes by Kirsten Everberg; music by Mason Daring; production designer, Guy Barnes; produced by Ann Kindberg for ABC Video Enterprises in association with Sander/Moses Productions; Ian Sander, Kim Moses and J. Moses, executive producers. Annie Beales . . . Lea Thompson Georgia Tann . . . Mary Tyler Moore Bekka Stern . . . Kathleen Quinlan Judge Camille Kelley . . . Mary Nell Santacroce Robert Taylor . . . Brett Rice Bascom Stern . . . Tom Nowicki Mary Wester . . . Jenny Krochmal Jasper Bell . . . Judson Vaughn Jimmie Wester . . . Kenny Jones Clarisse Bell . . . Clarinda Ross",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; The Unwanted Children of Romania
Whatever the sins of television, again and again it has brought the youngest victims of nature's caprices and men's cruelties out of obscurity and into millions of homes and hearts. In just the last few weeks, painful pictures from Somalia and Bosnia have moved the world to action or at least gestures. ""Lost and Found: The Story of Romania's Forgotten Children,"" tonight's deeply felt documentary at 10:30 on Channel 13, about Romania's orphans, should awaken compassion for their suffering, too.
The children seen here, dirty, frightened, ill, wasting away in institutions for so-called irrecoverables, are a legacy of the rule of Nicolae Ceausescu, the dictator who was driven from office and executed in 1989. For almost two decades, the Communist State encouraged its people to have children. Birth control and abortion were outlawed; families with fewer than five children were penalized.
The policy, in a country where much of the population exists in poverty, resulted in scores of thousands of babies being given away to state orphanages by parents who simply could not afford to keep them. At the age of 3, those deemed healthy are sent off for schooling and may be taught a trade. The others -- the sickly, the handicapped, the emotionally disturbed, the difficult ones -- are committed to childhoods of neglect. Tonight's program reports that there are now 120,000 of these irrecoverables. The narrator says, ""The children who need the most are given the least.""
The camera finds them in warehouses around the country. Many seem frightened and withdrawn; some rock vacantly, some are bruised, some tethered to their beds. Left to the care of uneducated, untrained, overworked women -- one of whom is seen breaking down in exhaustion or exasperation or just pity -- the children pass the days and years sitting in crowded rooms. They are almost naked, fed on 26 cents a day a child, bathed in filthy water and shoved around. Children of 10 or 11, who have been confined to cribs for the whole of their young lives, look like 3 year olds.
Volunteers from the United States, seen trying to help with clothing, toys and affection, are overwhelmed by the conditions. One says that most of the children do not understand the meaning of the word ""friend."" Some of the children are seen responding to gentleness and affection, but only a handful are receiving any sort of help. The childhoods of the other tens of thousands are indeed irrecoverable. Maybe this unsparing documentary will increase the chances of at least a few Lost and Found The Story of Romania's Forgotten Children  PBS, tonight at 10:30 (Channel 13 in New York) Written, produced and directed by Joshua Seftel for Joshua Seftel Film and Video Productions; music by David Grimes; Marc Heijdeman, associate producer; Robert J. Lurtsema, narrator.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; The Age of AIDS vs. the Age of Immortality
CBS's ""Schoolbreak Special"" series, the more or less monthly dramas aimed at young audiences, opens a new season this afternoon at 4 with ""Dedicated to the One I Love.""The subject is AIDS, an understanding of which is now being widely recognized as crucial for teen-agers. One problem is getting the message across to a population segment that tends to feel immortal and pretty much immune to life-threatening issues.
This latest effort tries, quite successfully, to be neither manipulative nor hysterical. In fact, AIDS complications don't surface until halfway through the 50-minute story. It begins with the death in a car accident of a high-school student named Ron (Joey Sciacca). Amy (Lisa Dean Ryan) is devastated. Ron had been her boyfriend, although they had broken up about a year ago. She and several others would like to dedicate the yearbook to Ron's memory. But some students object, pointing out that he had become a heavy drug user.
Later, meeting Ron's mother (Georgeann Johnson) for lunch, Amy learns that, two weeks before his death, Ron had a blood test and proved HIV positive. The mother says it had something to do with ""sharing dirty needles -- at least, that's what they told me."" Distraught, and initially too ashamed to tell her parents, Amy confides in a school friend (Patrick Malone) who, pointing out that ""it's a disease, not a crime,"" persuades her to go for her own blood test.
The seriousness of the subject is not played down, but ""Dedicated to the One I Love"" carefully avoids total despair. Those who test positive are informed by special counselors that ""we have drugs today that really slow down the process -- people are buying time."" Joseph Maurer, the writer, has explained that the idea for the story emerged from a chance meeting in Los Angeles with ""a remarkable young woman, now in her early 20's,"" who was infected while in high school. For Mr. Maurer, she was ""a potent reminder that AIDS and HIV infection can strike anywhere and anyone.""
The point is made vividly through the fictional Amy, portrayed affectingly by Ms. Ryan, perhaps best known as Wanda, the girlfriend of Doogie Howser, M.D. And it is a point bearing frequent repetition. One statistic from Washington's Center for Population Options: more than a fifth of the people with AIDS are in their 20's. Because the latency period between HIV infection and the onset of symptoms is about 10 years, most of these people probably became infected in their teens.
Television programs for young audiences are not likely to find a more pressing subject these days. Schoolbreak Special Dedicated to the One I Love Directed by Bradley D. Wigor; written by Joseph H. Maurer; director of photography, Jack Whitman; editor, Jerry Eisenberg; production designer, Nanette Vanderbuilt; produced by Dale White for Helios Productions; Mr. Maurer and Mr. Wigor, executive producers. Today at 4 P.M. on CBS.  Amy Miller . . . Lisa Dean Ryan  Evelyn Somerville . . . Georgeann Johnson  Mike Harris . . . Patrick Malone  Ron Somerville . . . Joey Sciacca",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; The Image and Reality Of Hoover and His F.B.I.
""G-Men,"" tonight's slice of ""The American Experience,"" at 9 on Channels 13 and 49, investigates the creation of the crime-busting reputation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and J. Edgar Hoover, its head for nearly half a century. The reputation, which is not the same as the reality, has Mr. Hoover's fingerprints all over it.
This unflattering hour traces the F.B.I.'s ascendance to Hoover's ""public-relations genius"" for turning the post-World War I Red scares and the explosion of crime during Prohibition to personal and institutional aggrandizement. The fact that the pudgy career bureaucrat looked nothing like the model agent portrayed in the material he planted in comic books, as the photographs here attest, makes his celebrity the more remarkable.
Tonight's case study in hype brings back the newsreels and bits of old movies that starred the heroic G-man. (There's James Cagney out-toughing bad Barton MacLane.) It tells of scores of magazine articles (many of them signed by Hoover but written by an industrious pro named Courtney Ryley Cooper) that idealized the F.B.I. and its director. In the narrator's words, ""Mythology replaced history.""
Observers of Hoover's career, including reporters, historians and former agents, agree that he ran a tight, even uptight, agency. He is allowed credit for building the F.B.I. into a professional operation, but at the price of thoroughgoing conformity. The scenes of assembled agents in the 1930's looks like a convention of department store trainees. One former G-man says, ""I didn't wear a blue shirt till after Hoover died.""
Image was the thing, and Hoover guarded his jealously. The account of the career of Melvin Purvis, who was in charge of the office in Chicago when John Dillinger was killed there, is revealing. Purvis's son tells how ""the man who got Dillinger"" was considered a rival by his boss and was pushed out of the F.B.I.
Hoover found enemies everywhere. He permitted men he considered friends access to F.B.I. files; others were barred. (In the interest of full disclosure, I confess that I made the Hoover enemies list in the 1950's. It did not take much, just a mildly critical magazine article, but with the help of the Freedom of Information Act, I later discovered that Hoover had scrawled instructions to his press office to ""Give Goodman nothing."")
Much more seriously, Hoover reportedly let it be known to members of Congress and other officials that his files contained material about their private activities, a tactic that is generally credited with keeping up appropriations for the F.B.I. Walter Trohan, who covered the bureau for The Chicago Tribune, says, ""Mr. Hoover was not above polite blackmailing."" Tonight's program does not reach the period of F.B.I. surveillance of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others in the civil rights and peace movements, about the same time that ""The F.B.I.,"" a popular and adulatory series that bore the agency's seal of approval, hit the tube.
Toward the end of this sometimes heavy-handed yet cautionary hour, Hoover is seen attacking the ""scoundrels who would destroy Americanism"" in a speech to Boy Scouts at the 1939 World's Fair. If there is a lesson here, it is to beware of public figures who come bearing an Americanism shaped to their own narrow specifications. The American Experience G-Men: The Rise of J. Edgar Hoover Produced, directed and written by Irv Drasnin; Janis Ruden, associate producer; Peter Odabashian, editor; Dena Katzen and Sheila Moloney, assistant editors; principal photography by Tom Spain; additional photography by Richard Lerner, Ned Johnston and Kurt Zell; Margaret Drain, senior producer; Judy Crichton, executive producer. At 9 tonight on Channels 13 and 49.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; For Young Audiences, Reality in the Afternoon
In the Reagan-Bush era of deregulation, one of the more memorable, and notorious, sociopolitical observations came out of the Federal Communications Commission, from a commissioner who insisted that television was just another household appliance, much like a toaster. Why then burden poor broadcasters with perhaps inhibiting notions of responsibility?
A definitive sign that things are changing under the Clinton Administration was last week's F.C.C. announcement that broadcasters could no longer count programs like ""The Flintstones"" and ""The Jetsons"" as ""educational and informational"" programming. That sound emanating from television executive suites across the country is one communal ""Gulp!""
At issue is a 1990 law requiring broadcasters to show at least a minimal commitment to the educational needs of their young viewers, a commitment that would be seriously considered in the renewal of their licenses every five years. That law, the Children's Television Act, was hailed as a programming milestone. Unfortunately, its provisions are dreadfully vague, allowing some broadcasters to meet the educational-value demands by citing shows like ""G.I. Joe"" and ""Leave It to Beaver.""
Well, what's a poor broadcaster to do? Just what kind of program would be considered educational and informational? Getting beyond the hand-wringing, there's really no secret to the formula. Public television has had no problem, except for chronic financing difficulties, in acquiring quality programming for young audiences, from ""Mister Rogers' Neighborhood"" and ""Sesame Street"" to ""Shining Time Station"" and ""Mathnet."" And commercial broadcasters, on cable as well as the networks, obviously know the difference between fluff and substance.
Case in point: those periodic afternoon specials that the networks aim specifically at young audiences. This week, for instance, there's the ""CBS Schoolbreak Special"" called ""Big Boys Don't Cry."" Exploring the subject of sexual abuse, Betty Birney's script focuses on Tony Walters (Jason Wiles), a young athlete whose behavior suddenly turns erratic as he tries to repress and conceal childhood molestations by his popular Uncle Paul (Robert Pine), who lives next door with his wife and young daughter.
Tony's problem deepens when he realizes that his kid brother, Andy (Miko Hughes), is the current object of the uncle's obsessive intentions. Like many of these specials, ""Big Boys Don't Cry"" is somewhat oversimplified and occasionally even corny as it wends its way toward an inevitably uplifting conclusion. But it does deal with real and pressing issues. It is not just another episode of ""The Flintstones,"" which, incidentally, is one of the more male-chauvinist exercises ever devised for a cartoon format.
And then in television programming there is that fast-disappearing genre known as family entertainment, shows that can be watched by parents and children together. Advertisers seemingly prefer to keep them apart as targeted audience segments. One of television's more successful family shows, ""Avonlea,"" returns tonight at 8 for a fourth season on the Disney Channel.
The setting for short stories by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Avonlea is a small town on Prince Edward Island in Canada. The period series, produced by Sullivan Films, began with a four-hour mini-series based on Montgomery's ""Anne of Green Gables."" Now the series follows the adventures of the King family and friends. Tonight's ""Tug of War"" episode, a sometimes silly and overly cute caper, has the eccentric Dale family, advocates of vegetarianism and acupuncture, unexpectedly visiting their relative Jasper Dale (R. H. Thomson), now married to the former Olivia King (Mag Ruffman).
Pregnant and close to delivery deadline, Olivia is torn between defending her husband and his odd family and pacifying the stern and persnickety King brood, especially Hetty (Jackie Burroughs), the very disapproving schoolmarm. Life styles clash, misunderstandings abound and, finally, a baby is born, an occasion that does wonders for resolving petty disputes. Some of the acting is wobbly, especially among the younger cast members, but some is superb, most notably Ms. Burroughs's. The message of tolerance and openness does get through clearly. Winner of innumerable international awards, ""Avonlea"" is the highest-rated series on the Disney Channel. With good reason.
Any broadcaster still puzzled as to what constitutes an educational and informational program is hereby urged to tune in.
CBS Schoolbreak Special Big Boys Don't Cry  CBS, Tuesday at 4 P.M. (Channel 2 in New York) Directed by Jim Becket; written by Betty Birney; produced by Richard David for Churchill Entertainment; Nicky Noxon, executive producer. Tony Walters . . . Jason Wiles Uncle Paul . . . Robert Pine Andy Walters . . . Miko Hughes Tony's girlfriend . . . Renee Humphrey",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Reviews/Television; 3 Pioneers of the Wilderness Ethic
This week brings offerings from three popular PBS series. None are at the top of their class, but all have their inviting aspects.
""Wild by Law,"" tonight's contribution from ""The American Experience,"" at 9 on Channels 13 and 49, tells how the Wilderness Act of 1964, which made Washington the official protector of America's vast yet shrinking wilderness areas, came to be.
The hour focuses on three men: Aldo Leopold, an Easterner with a love of the West, whose popular books about a ""land ethic"" spread the message of conservation and who is credited or blamed for bringing the word ecology into standard usage; William Marshall, a Yale-educated millionaire socialist, who in 1935 founded the Wilderness Society, the first organization with the mission of saving what he called ""the freedom of wilderness,"" and Howard Zahniser, a sometime civil servant, who spent almost 20 years lobbying for Federal legislation.
The hour, which taps historians and environmentalists along with the children of Leopold and Zahniser, provides a look at a corner of American history that will be fresh to most viewers. It ends with the sensible caution that despite the achievement represented by the Wilderness Act, battles over development show no prospect of ending. A Bit of the Brogue
At 8 tonight, Channel 13 carries ""A Day in the Life of Ireland"" as part of its ""Travels"" series. The day is May 17, 1991, when 75 photographers from 15 countries participated in a 24-hour shoot, a promotional stunt. It is always a pleasure to see the country's scenery and hear a bit of the brogue, and the scenes of schoolchildren and horse trainers, a wedding and a First Communion, a lighthouse keeper and a flying priest and so on are appreciatively handled, but the hour might have been richer if the focus had remained on the land, unobstructed by pictures of people taking pictures. Wildlife Victims of War
Tomorrow at 8 on Channels 13 and 49 and at 9 on Channel 21 ""Nova"" reports on the damage done to wildlife in the Persian Gulf in last year's war. ""Saddam's War on Wildlife"" pays tribute to the efforts of John Walsh, of the World Society for the Protection of Animals, to save birds, sea turtles and other victims of the big oil spills. In a depressing postscript Mr. Walsh finds that few of the animals in the Kuwait City zoo survived the Iraqi occupation. His work is assuredly worthy, but the program has as much trouble flying as the oil-soaked birds.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Are Pit Bulls All Bad? And How About Romance Novelists?
Is the bite of a pit bull worse than the bark of a romance novelist? The question is inspired by tonight's quirky double bill at 10:30 on Channel 13, the week's offering from ""P.O.V."" (""Point of View""), public broadcasting's outlet for independent producers.
The opening documentary, ""A Little Vicious,"" tells the story of a five-year-old terrier named Bandit, a relative of the pit bull, a species that has earned or been invested with a bad name for aggressiveness. Bandit first got into trouble when he chased and bit a neighbor, and then got into real trouble when he sank his teeth into the arm of his loving owner, a 75-year-old named Lamon Redd, who had made the mistake of beating him for a minor indiscretion.
Under pressure from the authorities, Bandit was given over for correction to Vicki Hearne, a Connecticut dog trainer and founder of the American Pit Bull Terrier Defense Association and Literary Society. In Ms. Hearne's view, the species' reputation for viciousness is mere literary dogma, drawn from fairy tales and gothic fiction. But in punishing Bandit, observes the narrator, Kevin Bacon, society showed no interest in poetic justice. The producer, Immy Humes, does not sink his teeth into Ms. Hearne's juicier proposition that the dispute reflects America's class and racial hostilities. Most pit bulls, she says, belong to poor blacks, and the outcry against them comes from middle-class whites. The camera is drawn instead to her training methods; she is seen encouraging Bandit with echoes of Molly Bloom's dog-eared soliloquy: ""Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes."" Bandit plainly responds to higher things; he easily performs the chores set by the American Temperament Testing Association, described as a canine behavior service group.
Perhaps it is the influence of Ms. Hearne, but the sad ending, which you will have to tune in to learn, gives this offbeat documentary a literary quality.
So much for literature. The second of tonight's works, ""Where the Heart Roams,"" is George Csicsery's bemused look at the hype surrounding the romance novels that, it is reported here, occupy 20 million readers with 120 new titles every month. Barbara Cartland, the doyenne of the industry, who churns out a score or more of them every year all by herself, appears in her usual finery to lament the shift in literary fashion from love to lust. You will also meet lesser known romancers and aspiring ones, merchandisers of lines with names like Candlelight Ecstasy Romances and groupies.
Mr. Csicsery wisely allows his subjects to speak for themselves. A novice is seen asking an editor for the guidelines she ought follow for success. A nonselling writer blames her characters, who have a way of taking over and messing up the formula. At a workshop, a male practitioner (who uses a pseudonym) lectures on how to handle a kiss (describe the ""texture"" and tell what the man's hands are doing, above the waist, while his lips are occupied). Much attention is given to a trainload of writers and their fans traveling from California to a Romantic Booklovers Conference in New York.
It's enough to build respect for the romance between Lamon Redd and Bandit.
Correction:  August 3, 1991, Saturday
A television review on Tuesday about ""A Little Vicious,"" a documentary shown in the PBS series ""P.O.V.,"" referred incorrectly to the film maker, Immy Humes. She is a woman.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TVWeekend; 3 African Leaders and David Frost
South Africa's three pre-eminent political figures are honored tonight by the attentions of David Frost. You may not learn much that is new from the encounters, but it is an opportunity to catch their election-year styles, along with the style of the recently dubbed Sir David himself.
Mr. Frost is most businesslike in his opening conversation with the Zulu chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party, whose members have been involved in bloody encounters with supporters of Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress. The longtime rivals blame each another for their failure of communication. Mr. Frost, like an imperial emissary to feuding tribesmen, advises, ""The sooner the two of you get together, the better.""
One issue has to do with arrangements for the South African economy. In this election season, Mr. Mandela says that his organization has always advocated free enterprise, that it has moved away from its advocacy of nationalization of certain industries and that its Communist Party allies will be only a tiny minority of its election list.
President F. W. de Klerk uses most of his time to deliver a stump speech on his desire for consensus, unity, stability, peace and economic growth, from which neither Mr. Buthelezi nor Mr. Mandela dissents.
Like other interviewers faced with the estimable Mr. Mandela, who is given the most time tonight, Mr. Frost adopts a Barbara Walters mode: ""And when was there a moment when you decided this was going to be your whole life, fighting for a free South Africa?""
Mr. Mandela reminisces, fairly interestingly, about his years of imprisonment and says he would be willing to serve in any capacity under an elected Government. ""What a very interesting and generous offer,"" Mr. Frost allows, and ends the talk by assuring Mr. Mandela that his wish to be remembered as a ""man who has done his duty on earth"" will be granted. Being knighted evidently confers powers over history. 'The Un-Americans'
A&E, tonight at 8
The unedifying history of America's crackdown on Communists and so-called security risks is told tonight from the point of view of some of the scores of people who were jailed and the thousands who lost their jobs between the late 1940's and the early 60's. Some say they were victims of mistaken identity or political vendettas; the admitted Communists say they were idealists who were guilty, at worst, of being stupid about Stalin. Admire them or not, very few had committed anything resembling a crime.
As an early reference to ""vigilantes and victims"" suggests, the two-hour treatment is in accord with a rote leftist mythology that portrays Communists as radicals with a human face and leaves out the many anti-Communist liberals and conservatives who fought the rampages of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Nonetheless, the newsreels of the time are reminders of the poisonous spirit that infected the land.
The cruel crookedness of it all is personified in a concluding interview with Harvey J. Matusow, an admitted con artist who made a career first as an ex-Communist informer and then as an exposer of the informer racket and finally as a stand-up comedian.  'Here's Looking at You, Warner Brothers'
TNT, tomorrow at 8 P.M.
This two-hour celebration of the studio that Jack, Harry, Sam and Albert Warner built tells little about movie making in what is accurately enough known as Hollywood's golden age, but anyone with a weakness for icons in action should get their money's worth. The puffy anecdotal narration by Clint Eastwood, Barbra Streisand and others serves mainly to link star turns, from Rin-Tin-Tin's to Robert Redford's.
Sure, you've seen most of these big moments from the big years of the big studio before (although John Barrymore as Captain Ahab was new to me), but so what? There's Edward G. Robinson expiring with the line ""Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?"" and Paul Muni fading into a black night with ""I steal."" There's Bugs Bunny slipping out of tight scrapes and Errol Flynn (""All right, my hearties, follow me!"") battling out of them. There's Ruby Keeler in Busby Berkeley mosaics. There's James Cagney pushing women around and Bette Davis kicking men around. There's Humphrey Bogart turning tough toward Mary Astor, going soft over Ingrid Bergman and being provoked by Lauren Bacall. And, as they say, much more.
You can also see or tape several of the scenes in context this weekend, as TNT will be showing, mostly in the early morning hours, ""The Jazz Singer,"" ""The Sea Hawk,"" ""The Public Enemy,"" ""I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang,"" ""The Big Sleep,"" ""Key Largo,"" ""Destination Tokyo"" and ""Now, Voyager,"" in which, yes, Paul Henreid lights that cigarette for Bette Davis. Talking With  David Frost  PBS, tonight at 9 (Channel 13 in New York). A series produced by Wallace Westfeldt for David Paradine Television and WETA/Washington; coordinating producer, Robert Muller; John M. Florescu and David Frost, executive producers.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; A Belgian Detective With a Muted Approach
Georges Simenon's Chief Inspector Maigret comes to ""Mystery"" tonight at 9 on Channel 13, joining a gallery of sleuths that includes Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Inspector Morse. With Michael Gambon (""The Singing Detective"") in the title role, ""Maigret"" will offer six adaptations from the 84 novels -- 500 million copies sold worldwide -- that Simenon devoted to his detective.
Simenon, who was born in Belgium in 1903, wrote his first Maigret story in 1929, even then making it quite clear that he was more interested in character than in drama. Maigret enters the mind of the criminal, often sympathetically, trying to understand and not necessarily judge. One famous Simenon observation: ""Don't forget that the policeman was often born in the same street as the criminal, had the same sort of childhood, stole sweets from the same shop."" He added: ""Deep down the policeman understands the criminal because he could so easily have become one.""
Maigret's most prominent prop is a pipe, and, like any other self-respecting pipe-smoker, he tends to be ponderous. Unlike Poirot, also a Belgian, the serious, almost dour Maigret is not allowed fanciful speculations about ""little gray cells."" And unlike Holmes, he has no Watson-like foil to play against. Maigret does have a devoted wife (Ciaran Madden), who fusses over his cassoulets, and a staff of underlings at police headquarters, but for the most part he proceeds alone through his intellectual puzzles.
This, alas, presents a formidable problem for Maigret dramatizations. And at least the first couple of installments in the current series indicate that a solution is yet to be found. With Budapest as a stand-in for Paris during World War II, the period details ring true, but the adaptations, somewhat like the books, seem to be unfolding in a cork-lined room in which all sounds of life are muted, if not deadened. Curiously, it's as if the war didn't exist. (Actually, Simenon's refusal to write about the war led later to unjustified accusations of collaboration.)
Much depends, then, on the specific cases, on the persuasiveness of the characters and the skill of the performances. ""Maigret Sets a Trap,"" about a serial killer, begins the series on a promising note. Next week's ""Maigret and the Mad Woman,"" with a list of suspects that includes a Marseilles gangster, is unsatisfactory enough to push ""Maigret"" back to square one. The always intelligent Mr. Gambon does try to enliven the Chief Inspector with touches of humor, but they are so subtle as to be almost invisible. If he's going to survive on television, Maigret has to turn downright bold. Mystery Maigret Sets a Trap  PBS, tonight at 9. (Channel 13 in New York.) Directed by John Glenister; written by Douglas Livingstone, based on a story by Georges Simenon; produced by Jonathan Alwyn for Granada Television; Sally Head and Arthur Weingarten, executive producers. Chief Inspector Maigret . . . Michael Gambon Madame Maigret . . . Ciaran Madden Sergeant Lucas . . . Geoffrey Hutchings Inspector Janvier . . . Jack Galloway Inspector Lapointe . . . James Larkin Monsieur Corneliau . . . John Moffatt Moers . . . Christian Rodska",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Road Wars: The Carjacking Reality
It's crime-of-the-month time on ""48 Hours."" Tonight's report, ""Steal That Car,"" chases down perps in Newark, San Diego, Houston, Wilmington, N.C., and St. Petersburg, Fla.
In Newark, the much advertised problem is joy-riding youths, some not yet in their teens, who perform what are known on the streets as doughnuts and crazy eights in other people's cars. The camera catches their movements, to sometimes confusing effect, from the windows of police cars, whose drivers are under orders not to give overly hot pursuit, for fear that the youngsters will blithely run down any pedestrians in the way. Interviews with a few of the blank-faced youths leave one with a feeling of despair for them as well as for car owners.
Elsewhere, the fashion is car-jacking -- taking a vehicle and sometimes its owners at gunpoint -- because, as a jacker explains, that is less trouble than breaking in. This pastime makes the joy-riding in Newark seem benign. People have been killed, not for resisting but just for not getting out of their cars fast enough.
A Houston family tells of their horrific experience: the wife was raped repeatedly in their speeding van while her husband and 9-year-old daughter were held at gunpoint. One of the three men convicted says, ""Once you see how easy it is, you just keep on doing it.""
The jumpy program also offers some analysis of security devices. The conclusion: put no faith in mere alarms or gadgets that freeze the steering wheel. They are child's play for the children involved.
To deter these technicians, who can break into a car and start the engine within seconds, you need an elaborate security system. Probably the talented thieves will in time crack it as well. Imagine the benefits they could bring to the economy if they found productive lines of work. 48 Hours Steal That Car  CBS, tonight at 10 (Channel 2 in New York). Produced by Rand Morrison for CBS News; Andrew Heyward, executive producer; Dan Rather, anchor. WITH: Bernard Goldberg, Phil Jones, Erin Moriarty and Richard Schlesinger, correspondents.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; Norman Lear's Comedy On Life in Washington
Washington certainly deserves a few good satirical pokes these days. The targets are everywhere, ranging from loonily optimistic economic forecasts to shabby personal scandals, not to mention international vomiting incidents. Yet prime-time television has been curiously hesitant about zinging politics and politicians. For the most part, refreshingly nasty humor is relegated to late-night formats like NBC's ""Saturday Night Live.""
Things could be changing with this weekend's premiere -- on NBC tomorrow at 8:30 P.M. -- of ""The Powers That Be,"" a new series from Norman Lear's Act III Television workshop. The show, created by Marta Kauffman and David Crane, is in the off-the-wall mode of humor that worked so well for Susan Harris's ""Soap"" some 15 years ago. It may very well be the only mode that can do Washington full justice.
The very first routine, before the opening credits, sets the tone. Faith Daniels of the ""Today"" show is reporting a major election upset in the Northeast with the defeat of William Powers, ending his 26-year career as a Senator on Capitol Hill. His wife has left him. Children spit at him on the street. Then the good Senator wakes from his nightmare, turning for comfort to the woman sleeping next to him.
She: You're as moral as any man in this town.
He: Oh hell, I've got to call my wife.
Bill Powers is played by a relaxed and bemused John Forsythe, who seems thoroughly relieved to put his ""Dynasty"" days behind him. At home, Bill presides over what looks like the picture-perfect political family. That's only on the surface, of course. His relentlessly overbearing wife, Margaret (Holland Taylor), spends a great deal of time battering her cowed maid, Charlotte (Elizabeth Berridge) for perceived infractions.  (""I found this lint ball on one of the guest towels,"" or, ""Charlotte, dear, I believe I saw a thumb print on the etagere."") At a quick glance, Margaret might be easily mistaken for a recent First Lady notoriously partial to red dresses.
Bill's whining daughter, Caitlyn (Valerie Mahaffey), is anorexic, insisting that she's still just a size 3. Her miserable husband, Theodore (David Pierce), a Congressman, is suicidal and keeps trying to hide his wrist bandages. Their young son, Pierce (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), kept around for photo opportunities, tries desperately not to look embarrassed. On the professional sidelines are Jordan Miller (Eve Gordon), Bill's administrative assistant and sometime bed partner, and Bradley Grist (Peter MacNichol), the press secretary who, pondering a suggestion to ignore the polls, gasps that ""it's so crazy, it might work!""
Into this tweedy pit of schemers and scoundrels comes Sophie Lipkin (Robin Bartlett). Not only is she Jewish, which sets Margaret on edge, but she is also Bill's daughter, a love child from a liaison with a nurse during the Korean War. Loud and breezily vulgar, Sophie sends most of the inner circle into a state of shock, but Bill soon comes to appreciate her blunt honesty. Meanwhile, Margaret prepares to welcome into her home members of the press, all of whom she heartily despises. ""Why,"" she asks, ""would I serve cold roast turkey to people who would happily eat a sock on rye if it were free?""
The scattershot approach of ""The Powers That Be"" has its dangers. Some of the barbs are tasteless, if not downright offensive. That's part of outrageousness territory. But the basic mix is promising, and the producers clearly have a bead on the more absurd aspects of contemporary politics. Being just crazy enough, it might work.  Capitol Critters  ABC Saturdays at 8 P.M.
As it happens, another series that is supposed to be tweaking Washington is also broadcast on Saturdays, at 8 P.M. on ABC (except this weekend when a repeat of ""The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles"" television pilot has pre-empted the series). The animated show, ""Capitol Critters,"" produced at Hanna-Barbera Studios, comes out of Steven Bochco Productions. The Bochco name has figured prominently in such top series as ""Hill Street Blues,"" ""L.A. Law"" and, most recently, ""Civil Wars."" Question: What is he doing involved with a dud like ""Capitol Critters""?
An assortment of mice, rats and roaches living beneath the White House is evidently supposed to be telling us something about life in Washington these days. Instead, they seem bent on doing second-rate imitations of the old ""Tom and Jerry"" cartoons. The producers have described the series as ""potentially illuminating."" Not in this century, boys and girls. The Powers That Be  A comedy series created by Marta Kauffman and David Crane; produced by Patricia Fass Palmer for Act III Television, Castle Rock Entertainment and Columbia Pictures Television; Norman Lear, Charlotte Brown and Mark E. Pollack, executive producers. Saturdays at 8:30 P.M. on NBC. William Powers . . . John Forsythe Margaret Powers . . . Holland Taylor Jordan Miller . . . Eve Gordon Bradley Grist . . . Peter MacNicol Sophie Lipkin . . . Robin Bartlett Caitlyn . . . Valerie Mahaffey Theodore . . . Davie Pierce Pierce . . . Joseph Gordon-Levitt Charlotte . . . Elizabeth Berridge",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"Review/Television; Aristide as a Hero of Haiti's Downtrodden
Over the centuries, the Haitian people have known more than their share of misery. ""Haiti: Killing the Dream"" covers the most recent event, the military coup a year ago that sent the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country's first democratically elected President, into exile.
Father Aristide, a young Roman Catholic priest who was influenced by the liberation theology movement, began gathering support among the poorest of his country's mostly poor and illiterate people after the overthrow of the unlamented Duvalier dictatorship. By tonight's account, his plans to take from the rich and give to the poor angered the country's elite, which joined with Army commanders and a bought Parliament to bring him down. The camera does not fail to contrast the fancy villas of a few with the shacks of the many.
""Haiti: Killing the Dream,"" which the narrator, Ossie Davis, calls insipidly ""the saga of a priest who became President,"" follows the line set forth by the Haiti Commission for Inquiry Into the Sept. 30 Coup d'Etat, a long title for a few Americans assembled and led by Ramsey Clark, the sometime Attorney General and longtime critic of American foreign policy. Its conclusions are in accord with his predilections. Father Aristide, seen rallying supporters before the coup and in an interview afterward, is treated as a hero of the people, and the United States is criticized for being behind the coup or at least tolerating it.
Mr. Clark and Noam Chomsky are recurrent presences in this hour. Mr. Chomsky, the professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is known for his tough language about Washington, accuses American business interests of seeking to restore the wealthy class to power in Haiti to keep a supply of cheap labor.
Father Aristide's supporters who are now on the run also express certainty that Washington did it. ""With the pieces of information I have,"" says one, ""I am absolutely certain that the coup has been engineered by the American Embassy."" Few pieces of information are advanced to support the speculation, which is denied by a State Department official. In programs like this, the denials are never presented quite as forcefully as the charges.
But you don't have to accept all the premises of this well-made, if tendentious, documentary to sympathize with Father Aristide, who is to speak to the United Nations tomorrow afternoon. Whatever his failings (if he has any, they are not elaborated on here), he seems to have represented some hope to a beaten-down people.
And Washington's refusal of sanctuary to Haitians fleeing the current dictatorship may trouble even Americans who do not take the Clark-Chomsky conspiratorial line. Even if the Immigration and Naturalization Service position that most of the boat people are seeking economic improvement rather than political freedom has some truth, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion, voiced by Mr. Davis, that the fact that the refugees are black has more than a little to do with the way they have been treated. Haiti Killing the Dream  PBS, tonight at 9. (Channel 13 in New York)  A Growing Rooster Production, presented by Jonathan Demme, Edward Saxon and Harry Belafonte; Hart Perry, producer and director of photography; Marc Levin, creative consultant and senior editor; Babeth and Rudi Stern, co-producers; Babeth, Katharine Kean and Rudi Stern, executive producers.",1
Top/Features/Arts/Television,"TV Weekend; Friends Who Are Odd (Good Thing They're Rich)
""Masterpiece Theater"" seems determined this season to grab every veteran actor in England for a dazzling twirl or two across the tube.
Last week, John Gielgud, Wendy Hiller and Patrick McGoohan endowed ""The Best of Friends"" with a shrewd elegance born of experience. Sunday, on Channel 13 at 9 P.M., the youngest cast members in an adaptation of Muriel Spark's novel ""Memento Mori"" are Maggie Smith, in her late 50's, and Zoe Wanamaker, in her early 40's. The rest are probably, give or take a couple of years, octogenarians, each and every one a wicked scene-stealer.
The time is the mid-1950's. A group of elderly friends, affluent and decidedly odd, begin getting anonymous phone calls with the single message, ""Remember, you must die."" In Latin, that's ""memento mori."" There is, of course, great consternation. Godfrey Colston (Michael Hordern) already has enough problems tending to his delicate wife, Charmian (Renee Asherson), who, distressed about her beloved companion, Taylor (Thora Hird), being sent to a dreary old-age institution, seems to be drifting into senility.
Godfrey's sister, Dame Lettie (Stephanie Cole), persuades him to employ Mrs. Pettigrew (Miss Smith) as a new companion for Charmian. Mrs. Pettigrew turns out to be a nasty bit of baggage. Concerned about Charmian, Taylor gets an old friend and retired police inspector, Henry Mortimer (John Wood), to begin investigating the mysterious phone calls and Mrs. Pettigrew.
Among the other major characters: Percy Mannering (Cyril Cusack), a prickly poet; Guy Leet (Maurice Denham), a critic who will never be allowed to forget that he once dismissed Mannering as ""a quite competent versifier""; Olive Mannering (Miss Wanamaker), Percy's niece, adept at showing a bit of thigh to oldsters like Godfrey and Guy; and Eric Colston, the gay son of Godfrey and Charmian, and a total bounder.
Mix well and you have a coruscatingly witty social portrait that somehow manages to be never less than affectionate. Mr. Hordern is a wonderfully lecherous old dog. Miss Smith's Mrs. Pettigrew, a scheming parvenu, drips venom gloriously (""Whenever I allow myself to be nice to the servants, I always end up regretting it""). Under the sometimes merciless eye of the camera, the entire cast reveals the foibles and failings of old age with a combination of gallant charm and what host Alistair Cooke pinpoints as ""almost indecent zest.""  'In the Line of Duty:' 'Street Wars'  NBC, Sunday at 9 P.M.
As NBC's fifth ""In the Line of Duty"" movie about police officers, this one goes to Brooklyn to explore one especially violent part of the contemporary urban landscape: neglected housing projects, drugs and a world littered with empty crack vials and spent pistol casings.
The fact-based story stars Mario Van Peebles and Michael Boatman as Housing Authority police officers. One is killed by a drug dealer; the other goes out for revenge. Heading the official police investigation are Ray Sharkey and Peter Boyle.
""Street Wars"" was postponed last May; the reason given by the network was a need ""to be sensitive to particular programming themes."" Actually, the movie tackles, candidly and forcefully, some of the root causes of urban unrest. A tough script by T. S. Cook (""China Syndrome"") and powerful performances by all concerned, including Courtney Vance and Morris Chestnut, clearly aim to leave you rattled. They will. 'Masterpiece Theater' 'Memento Mori'  PBS, Sunday at 9 P.M. (Channel 13 in New York) Directed by Jack Clayton; written by Alan Kelley, Jeannie Simms and Jack Clayton, based on a novel by Muriel Spark; director of photography, Remi Adefarsin; produced by Louis Marks for BBC; Mark Shivas, executive producer; Rebecca Eaton, executive producer for ""Masterpiece Theater."" Mrs. Mabel Pettigrew . . . Maggie Smith Godfrey Colston . . . Michael Hordern Charmian Colston . . . Renee Asherson Dame Lettie Colston . . . Stephanie Cole Olive Mannering . . . Zoe Wanamaker Jean Taylor . . . Thora Hird Guy Leet . . . Maurice Denham Percy Mannering . . . Cyril Cusack Ex-Inspector Henry Mortimer . . . John Wood Eric Colston . . . Peter Eyre Mrs. Mortimer . . . Anna Cropper",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Studying Philanthropy, and Doling Out Real Cash
Emily Katz has $10,000 to spend and, not surprisingly, she cannot wait to spend it.
But Ms. Katz, 19, is not thinking of spending it on herself or a loved one. She and seven classmates at Colgate University, a small liberal arts college here in central New York, are taking a new seminar in philanthropy, learning how foundations operate and studying ways to give money to people in need.
'Rather than helping someone out for the day, we get to really look at the root of the problem,' she said.
Many universities offer courses in philanthropy, but Colgate's is unusual because in early May, at the end of the school year, the students will award $10,000 to nonprofit organizations of their choice, after researching worthy recipients. Only a few such courses nationwide give students the opportunity to give away real money.
'We're helping students learn the business of philanthropy,' said Ellen Percy Kraly, the professor who teaches the course.
The seminar is financed by the Brennan Family Foundation of Ohio, which has ties to the university through Jay Brennan, a family member who graduated in 1981. Earlier this year, the foundation donated $50,000 for five years of classes, with each group of students getting $10,000 a year to give away.
The seminar is not offered for credit, Dr. Kraly said, because it was put together quickly over the summer after the college received the Brennan grant. She expects that credit will be offered in the future.
Part of the goal of the course, she said, is to help the local community, especially because the Colgate campus is an affluent enclave -- where tuition, board and expenses cost about $45,000 a year -- surrounded by a rural, economically depressed region. Dr. Kraly, a geography professor, is also director of the Upstate Institute, a research center of the college whose mission, according to its Web site, is to 'create linkages between Colgate University and the regional community.'
Although the class cannot award money to an individual, it plans to choose an organization small enough so that future classes can study how the money was spent and what it achieved.
'We're not going to donate money to a huge corporation where it doesn't make a difference,' said Widad Echahly, 19.
Philanthropy courses that enable students to give away real money are also offered at Davidson College in North Carolina, the University of Virginia, Cornell and the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va.
'There are very few like it around the country,' said Robert S. Rycroft, a professor of economics who oversees the class at Mary Washington.
Dr. Rycroft said his program and the ones at Davidson, Virginia and Cornell were sponsored by the Sunshine Lady Foundation, which is run by Doris Buffett, the sister of Warren E. Buffett, who recently made a $31 billion gift to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Last year, his students, who receive credit for the course, awarded $10,000 to a battered women's shelter and a boys and girls club. This year's class chose nonprofit groups that make home repairs for low-income families and tutor economically disadvantaged children.
'It couldn't have been more successful,' Dr. Rycroft said. 'There's been a lot of interest from the community and it's generated tons of favorable publicity.'
Recently, he received calls from three other colleges, all hoping for a philanthropy program. 'I suspect other schools will encourage alumni to make contributions so they can follow suit,' Dr. Rycroft said.
Students drawn to this kind of course are not necessarily planning on becoming the next billionaire entrepreneur, he and Dr. Kraly said. Rather, they are already drawn to service professions.
Ms. Katz is a pre-med student who is thinking about joining an organization like Doctors Without Borders. Ms. Echahly has already built a lengthy résumé with internships at several large nonprofit groups like the American Red Cross; she hopes to work for the homeless.
'I think I can see people who want to make a difference in the world,' Dr. Kraly said of the class.
Students have spent the first half of the course learning how foundations work. At a recent class, they were just beginning to think about their group as a mini-foundation, weighing, among other topics, how the public would react to their project.
In an area with great need, 'I think it's hard to justify the money going to the arts,' said Cassandra Galante, 19.
Later, the group worried aloud about making the right choice.
'Basically, where are we going to get the biggest bang for the buck,' said Conley Stout, 20. 'And where can we have the most impact right now?'
Dr. Kraly urged the group to consider the 'landscape of need' as part of their coursework. 'When I think about the bigger picture, it's overwhelming,' Ms. Katz said. 'But we're going to take it one step at a time.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"In a Church's History, Helpmates for Spring
The Fordham Manor Reformed Church in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx received a spring cleaning last week from volunteers from two Michigan colleges and an Iowa church. The congregation, which is now largely Hispanic, dates to 1696, when it was Dutch Reformed. The First Reformed Church of Orange City sent 19 volunteers to the 1941 church, while 30 more came from Michigan State University and Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids. The Dutch left a long time ago, said the Rev. Irving Rivera, 'but the Dutch have come back this week.'
Correction:  March 19, 2000, Sunday  A picture caption last Sunday about student volunteers from Michigan and Iowa who helped clean the Fordham Manor Reformed Church in the Bronx misstated the year it was built. It dates from 1940, not 1941. The article also referred incorrectly to the Kingsbridge neighborhood at that time. It was already heavily settled; it had been many years since the area was farmland.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Good Nights for Alzheimer's Patients and Helpers
Lucille first noticed that her husband, Sonny, was slipping when he wrote checks. He would fill in the amount on the line for the date, and vice versa. But he did not want her to see him do it. And he denied that anything was wrong.
Bill collectors called, complaining that checks were late or unsigned. Then Sonny started to confuse the days of the week and had trouble telling time. Lucille, who agreed to an interview on the condition that her last name not be used, took him to a doctor more than a year ago, where she first heard the word 'Alzheimer's.'
Not only did she have to cope with her husband's failing health on top of ordinary household responsibilities, but she also had to do it while exhausted. Caring for her husband has occupied her around the clock. Because Alzheimer's is a degenerative brain disease that leads to dementia, many patients confuse day and night, and experts say sleep deprivation among those who care for the ill is one of the leading reasons that patients are institutionalized.
'He walks a lot at night and I don't get much sleep,' Lucille said of her husband. 'He'd get up in the middle of the night and put his clothes on. The last year's been pretty rough. I'm so tired. I need a break.'
Now she gets one, two or three times a week, when she sends her husband to an unusual program introduced in June at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.
The program, Elderserve at Night, is just like the center's daytime program, offering horticulture, art and music therapy, games and puzzles, walking groups and meals. But it takes place overnight, from 7 P.M. to 7 A.M., Wednesdays through Sundays. The Alzheimer's Association, a national nonprofit group based in Chicago, says it knows of no other program like it in the country.
Lucille, 69, enrolled Sonny in the day program at the Hebrew Home last year. A daughter, their only child, lives in Central Islip, on Long Island, and helps when she can. A grandson used to take Sonny for the weekends, until his condition grew worse and the grandson could not handle Sonny on his own.
'It's all fallen in my lap,' she said during an interview in her scrupulously neat Bronx home, her 80-year-old husband sitting in a chair across the room, oblivious to the conversation. 'I have to take care of everything, he's so turned around now.'
Daniel A. Reingold, executive vice president of the Hebrew Home, which serves about 1,000 clients, said Elderserve at Night was conceived with people like Sonny and Lucille in mind. 'We have 400 people in the home who are in various stages of dementia,' he said during an interview in his office. 'We sat around this table and asked, 'What's the next program we feel this population needs?' '
Carol Lewis, director of Elderserve at Night, said the night program fills a need that other Alzheimer's care providers should notice.
Patients 'get agitated if you try to force them to sleep,' said Mrs. Lewis, who has worked with Alzheimer's patients for almost 20 years. During an interview at the home about 2 A.M., Mrs. Lewis was nothing if not perky. 'I felt that people were demeaning this population. They're not crazy, they're not weirdos. They have special needs and we are here to provide for those needs.'
The cost, $75 per night, is covered by Medicaid for patients who qualify for long-term home health care. No reservations are necessary and it can serve up to 25 clients a night.
On a recent warm summer night, 11 clients were enrolled in the night program. Around 1 A.M., three of them were sleeping, and three others were listening to Dan Manjovi, a music consultant, as he played the piano and sang a medley of pop tunes. Two were walking the halls and three were repotting wandering Jews in Jo Ann Stern's horticulture therapy workshop while Sarah Vaughan's voice floated out of a portable cassette player.
Horticulture therapy benefits Alzheimer's patients in a number of ways, Ms. Stern said, including lowering blood pressure, stimulating the senses of smell and touch, giving patients a sense of control over their lives, and aiding in memory.
'Sometimes they can't remember their children's names but they can remember their mother's garden,' Ms. Stern said as she packed up plants for her clients to take home.
Mr. Manjovi believes that music triggers vivid memories in Alzheimer's patients.
'Music is a very powerful tool for people who are memory-impaired. They remember where they were the first time they heard Al Jolson, they might remember seeing Frank Sinatra at the Paramount.'
Earlier that very day, Mr. Manjovi said, a woman who had stopped talking and was using a wheelchair became animated when he mentioned Kate Smith. 'I played 'God Bless America' and she sang the whole thing and she hadn't spoken for weeks. When I finished she said, 'That was beautiful.' '
Care providers say the need for programs like Elderserve at Night will grow as people live longer. About four million Americans have the disease, according to the Alzheimer's Association. The number of Alzheimer's patients is expected to grow to 14 million nationwide by 2050 -- anywhere from 1 in 20 to 1 in 30 Americans -- if a cure is not found.
The program has been a godsend for Lucille. 'I know I don't have to jump up at night because there's nobody here but me,' she said.
Sonny, who worked most of his life in New York's garment district, first as a hat maker and later as a shipping clerk, thinks of the Hebrew Home as his workplace. Lucille laughs when she repeats what Sonny told her after returning home one day: 'He said to me, 'They're working me pretty hard up there, but I don't think I'm going to get paid.' '
Though she can't have a conversation or reminisce with Sonny, after 40 years of marriage she can't imagine life without him.
'I think if you put him in a home, he'd be gone,' Lucille said. 'This is his home here. It would hurt me in my heart if I had to do that.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Way We Live Now: 2-13-00; Crack Country
There wasn't much to do where I grew up, out in Minnesota dairy country. A mini-mart, a theater, two bars and, on fall Friday nights, a football game followed by a kegger at the lake. In one way, though, my friends and I had everything: acid, pot, speed, pills and even cocaine. Bought at the kitchen table of a farmhouse whose windows were sheets of plastic hung with tacks, then consumed in our cars on gravel county roads. Where were the cops? At the diner, all two or three of them, eating cherry pie.
Last month someone published a study on the matter, very rigorous, very systematic. It confirmed how little has changed. Kids in the country are more likely to use illegal drugs than city kids. And not just slightly more likely, either. Thirty-four percent more likely to smoke dope. Fifty percent more likely to use cocaine. One hundred and four percent more likely to use amphetamines. The study was titled 'No Place to Hide,' as though it were exposing some shocking loss of innocence, the closing of some unspoiled moral frontier.
Because I still live in the country (western Montana, in a company town whose company was a railroad that left, along with its jobs, some 15 years ago), the only thing that shocked me about the study was how so many people still don't understand that rural America is poor America, and that country poor is different from city poor -- different in a way that makes kids desperate for a psychedelic change of scenery. You can be poor in a city and visit an art gallery, gawk at a multinational's glass tower, watch a bus full of Wheaties-box pro athletes pull up next to a new domed stadium. If you're poor in the countryside what you see are failing farms, jobs packing chicken parts in plastic bags, shuttered stores and junk cars in crabgrass yards. The only images that give kids in the sticks something to aspire to are the ones they see in the movies or on TV.
What country kids won't see on TV, of course, are any lives resembling their own. Shows about parents who work three part-time jobs just to replace the transmission on the Ford. Shows about farmhouses heated by wood stoves fueled by log ends from the lumber mill. Maybe it's good that such shows don't mar prime time, but their absence does send a message to country kids. This message is, You don't exist out there. New York exists, Los Angeles exists and even Chicago exists, sometimes. Not you, though.
When I was growing up we found ways of making ourselves feel as though we existed. Me, I liked the drama of the drug thing. The money changing hands. The secret meetings. That moment of Oz-like transport when colors brightened and I could imagine a different life, better lit, on a wider screen, in stereo. A friend of mine -- a wasted burnout who lived with a man who wasn't his dad, in a situation he couldn't explain -- told lies. Big, crazy lies, the kind of goofy yarns that speed freaks spin when they haven't been getting enough sleep. He claimed he was visiting St. Paul once and met a world-famous heavy-metal band walking down the street. Their drummer was sick and they had a concert that night, so they asked him if he could play the drums for them. He told them that he couldn't, that he had a basketball game. He wanted to exist, in the worst way. He was like me, a fool for inner cinema, a restless Huck Finn on a methamphetamine raft.
When 'No Place to Hide' hit the wires, a lot of experts were quoted on the causes of rural drug abuse. Their theories ranged from Hollywood's influence to Washington's myopia. Joseph A. Califano Jr., the former Health secretary and president of the research group involved, called for an increase in government spending. But I can't help worrying that if that money does come, it will be used to fill more jail cells with people who will eventually get out of jail and move back to towns like mine not only as addicts, but also as seriously ticked-off criminals who know how to fashion knives from ballpoint pens.
If the government experts really want to know why so many country kids, as I was once, light so many joints and snort so many lines, I can tell them. Boredom and freedom. We had a lot of both when I was young. And until a new idea creates some drama in the hills and plains -- until chemical excitement ceases to be the only kind that these forgotten kids have access to -- the combination will produce the same results as it did for me and my friends.
We'd hop in our cars on a summer weekend night and drive down a dark dirt road to an old house where our dealer lived with lots of cats. The guy was well into his 60's, a veteran, I think. After we made our deals, he'd try to hold us by passing out beer from his fridge and telling stories about all the colorful people he hung out with back when he lived in California or somewhere. We humored the guy. We could understand his loneliness. He wanted to exist, and so did we.
Walter Kirn is a critic and a novelist. His latest book is 'Thumbsucker.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Suburban Loft, The
The loft used to be a distinctly urban animal: empty downtown factories converted first into living spaces by struggling artists, then later into trendy up-market condos. But like many city dwellers, as it has matured, the loft has moved farther away from the hustle and bustle of downtown life. Last year, the National Association of Home Builders incorporated the 'loft look' in its annual demonstration home in Las Vegas. A cross between SoHo and Pleasantville, the house featured an open plan, buffed-concrete floors and high ceilings, but it also sat amid a manicured lawn in a gated subdivision. It drew rave reviews and quickly sold for $1.9 million.
The 'loft look' -- also known as 'factory chic' -- has since proliferated across the Sun Belt and Midwest, often in so-called soft-loft condos (which are built from scratch rather than converted) but occasionally as single-family detached homes. Loft-style houses boast roll-up metal garage doors, cage-ensconced outdoor lights and exposed ductwork -- 'City living without the city,' boasts the developer of Stone Canyon, a loft subdivision in Las Vegas. Many of these lofts also come with the sort of trappings McMansion dwellers have come to expect: walk-in closets, granite countertops, sunken bathtubs.
Loft-style living is popular not just in blue-state enclaves like Boulder or Austin: this year developers in Texas announced the 10-story Tower Lofts at Town Square in Sugar Land, Tex., the heart of Tom DeLay's Congressional district.
Why is the 'loft look' suddenly so popular? Partly because urban dwellers aren't the only ones who find open floor plans appealing. And partly because the city, once the bane of middle-class existence, has again become acceptable, even alluring -- everyone wants a piece of the 'Sex and the City' lifestyle. But everyone also wants good schools, yards and the sort of square footage that's affordable only outside the city limits. Mix all those together and what do you get? Suburban lofts.
Clay Risen",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Man to Admit To Murdering 3 L.I. Patients
A former physician who the authorities say poisoned patients from Ohio to Zimbabwe but continued to find medical jobs will plead guilty in federal court Wednesday to charges that he killed three patients at a Long Island hospital in 1993, prosecutors said today.
The former doctor, Michael J. Swango, will admit that he murdered the three men with poison while working at the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center on Long Island, according to Gary R. Brown, the assistant United States attorney who is prosecuting the case. Beyond that, Mr. Brown would offer no particulars about the plea agreement.
But an official familiar with the negotiations between prosecutors and lawyers for Mr. Swango, 45, said that by accepting the deal he would avoid the death penalty in New York and extradition to Zimbabwe, where the authorities have issued a warrant for Mr. Swango's arrest on charges that he poisoned seven patients, five of them fatally, when he worked there from November 1994 to July 1995.
The official said  that the former doctor would also plead guilty Wednesday before Judge Jacob Mishler of United States District Court to mail and wire fraud charges. Within the description of those charges, Mr. Swango is accused of assaulting two patients in Africa, another elderly patient at the Veterans Hospital and a patient at Ohio State University Hospitals, all of whom died in his care, the official said.
Randi Chavis, a lawyer for Mr. Swango, would not comment on the plea agreement.
With the agreement, prosecutors say they will close the book on one of the most bizarre and unsettling stories in modern medicine. It seemed that no matter where Mr. Swango went, allegations, suspicion and death followed. According to the book 'Blind Eye: The Terrifying Story of a Doctor Who Got Away With Murder' (Simon & Schuster, 1999), by James B. Stewart, questions about Mr. Swango began to surface as early 1982, when he was a medical student at Southern Illinois University. After an inordinate number of his patients died, classmates called him Double-0 Swango, joking that he had a license to kill.
Prosecutors believe that while working as an intern the next year at Ohio State University Hospitals, Mr. Swango murdered or tried to murder a number of patients by injecting them with poison. In his plea, it is expected that Mr. Swango will also acknowledge that he lied to the hospital investigators in connection with the death of the Ohio State Hospitals patient, Cynthia McGee, 19, in January 1984. Prosecutors said that Mr. Swango murdered her by giving her a potassium injection that caused her heart to stop.
After several mysterious deaths, but no hard evidence, the Ohio State University Hospitals ended Mr. Swango's neurosurgery residency. He then returned home to Illinois, where he got a job as a emergency medical technician with the Adams County Ambulance Service. While working there, he got into a dispute with co-workers and laced their doughnuts and coffee with ant killer. Five people became ill but no one died. Mr. Swango served two years of a five-year sentence.
When released from prison, Mr. Swango applied to residency programs in West Virginia and Iowa, but administrators noticed his falsified records, and his applications were rejected. He tried a third time in 1993 at the Veterans hospital in Northport, N.Y., and was accepted. The day after he was hired, his first patient, Dominic Buffalino, fell into a coma and died.
Three more patients died of lethal injections delivered by Mr. Swango, prosecutors said: Thomas Sammarco, 73; George Siano, 60; and Aldo Serini, all of Long Island. Mr. Swango will plead guilty to their murders on Wednesday, prosecutors said.
Officials charged Mr. Swango with the three murders in July, just as he was about to be released from prison in Colorado, where he was serving a three-and-a-half-year term for lying his way into the Northport hospital. After exhuming the men's bodies, forensic experts determined that they had indeed been poisoned.
'I've heard the news this afternoon' Mr. Siano's stepdaughter, Roselinda Conroy, said today about the plea agreement. She said she had always assumed that her father had died from natural causes. 'I'm absorbing it,' she said.
Relatives of Mr. Buffalino said that they were happy that a serial killer would be removed from society, but would remain dissatisfied until the cause of his death was properly identified. 'I'm glad he can't kill anymore, but I would like to see some answers in terms of my brother,' said Andrew Buffalino, 70, of Huntington. 'My interest now is one thing. I want to see an autopsy report.'
After Northport officials learned of Mr. Swango's criminal record, they fired him. He became a physician at Mnene Mission Hospital in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, using forged documents form the Federation of State Medical Boards. He is still wanted in that country.
Mr. Swango was eventually arrested in 1997 in Chicago while waiting for a flight to Saudi Arabia, where he had a new job as a doctor.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"BOLDFACE NAMES
Miss America Speaks Up
With the there-she-is moment having passed, the new Miss America, ERIKA HAROLD, looked back to an incident that happened when she was in ninth grade and involved racial and sexual harassment and, she said, death threats. She told a news conference in Manhattan yesterday that she arrived at school one day to find that some of her classmates were pooling their money to buy a rifle.
The plan, she said as she announced that she would promote anti-violence and anti-bullying programs during her year as Miss America, was to kill her.
She said she felt that school officials had not handled the situation adequately. A call to the school she attended at the time, the University Laboratory High School in Urbana, Ill., was not returned yesterday.
Clinton Diplomacy
Some Czech officials traveling with PRESIDENT VACLAV HAVEL were baffled when BILL CLINTON not only skipped a reception given by the City University of New York on Friday, but also gave his own at a nearby hotel and did not invite Mr. Havel.
Mr. Havel and Mr. Clinton appeared at a symposium with the Nobel Prize winner ELIE WIESEL at the City University's Graduate Center, at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. Officials there had spent weeks planning a post-symposium reception they believed Mr. Clinton would attend. It featured musicians Mr. Havel wanted to hear, including LOU REED, JUDY COLLINS and LAURIE ANDERSON.
Two hours before the symposium, Clinton aides told Graduate Center officials that he would not attend the reception there. Then the aides began handing out printed invitations to the Clinton reception. The invitations said that party would be at Morgan's, the Madison Avenue hotel run by IAN SCHRAGER.
'It was strange,' said a Havel confidant, adding that Mr. Havel was nonetheless pleased with his visit. 'If someone can explain what was going on, please do so, because we are not that experienced in New York social communication.'
A Clinton spokeswoman would not discuss the matter for publication.
A Starless Opening
The crime-and-comedy film 'The Good Thief,' starring NICK NOLTE, opened the San Sebastian Film Festival's 50th anniversary last week. Mr. Nolte, below, was not on hand. The week before, he checked himself into a substance abuse and psychiatric center in New Canaan, Conn., where BILLY JOEL spent time this summer and MARIAH CAREY last summer. Mr. Nolte, who described himself as a 'functioning alcoholic' before he became a fitness buff in the 1990's, arrived at the Silver Hill Hospital on Sept. 14, three days after he was arrested and booked for investigation of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs in Malibu, Calif.
An Amicable Merger
LAURENCE FISHBURNE and GINA TORRES, who kept their engagement quiet for eight months until he let it slip on the 'Tonight' show last year, were married on Sunday. Ms. Torres, who was a regular on the Lifetime program 'Any Day Now,' wore a gown by the Australian designer MIRA MANDICH. Among the guests were CICELY TYSON, KEANU REEVES, LENNY KRAVITZ and ELTON JOHN.
Absolutely Fabulous Security
The singer DEBORAH HARRY and the actress ANGIE HARMON breezed into the V.I.P. area at Vue, a nightclub on East 50th Street. But the guards there apparently do not watch much British television (or much Comedy Central), so they did not recognize JENNIFER SAUNDERS and would not let her in.
She is the star of 'Absolutely Fabulous,' the British sitcom-sendup of the fashion industry that became a hit in this country on -- pay attention here, guards -- Comedy Central. She was one of the people for whom the party was being given (the other was JOANNA LUMLEY, another 'Ab-Fab' star).
The party-giver was GLENDA BAILEY, the editor of Harper's Bazaar. She had invited such recognizable guests as the playwright WENDY WASSERSTEIN; the model HEIDI KLUM; the magician DAVID COPPERFIELD; the actors CHRISTOPHER MELONI and RICHARD BELZER of 'Law and Order: Special Victims Unit'; and the British talk-show host GRAHAM NORTON (wearing a sparkly white Roberto Cavalli jacket and Da Vinci jeans). And, after several publicists and Harper's types intervened and explained who Ms. Saunders was, she was finally allowed in.
Boldface Names",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Old New Thing
The Newton  Some consumer products are famous for inspiring something that is more powerful than mere loyalty in their customer base. 'Customer' isn't even the right word -- 'follower' is more like it -- and what these people feel is devotion. Apple Computer is frequently used as an example of a company that makes such products. Aside from partisans for the Macintosh, there are also many determined fans of a smaller, hand-held device who are so united in their devotion that they form a kind of secret society. No, not iPod fans. Newton fans.
The devotion of Newton users is all the more extraordinary because the product, introduced in the early 1990's, was a notorious flop. The Newton, you may recall, was a forerunner of today's popular Personal Digital Assistants, like the PalmPilot, that rely on a penlike stylus. (According to the lore, a series of 'Doonesbury' installments mocking early handwriting-recognition problems was a pivotal event in the Newton's sad trajectory; in any case, this was an instance when the 'early adopters' so beloved by tech-business gurus were laughed out of the room.) The Newton was killed off by Apple in 1998; yet consumer loyalty has outlived production itself. Thousands of Newton believers congregate by way of Web sites and e-mail lists like the Newted Community and NewtonTalk and in real-world user groups or even at last month's Worldwide Newton Conference in Paris.
To some extent, Newton loyalty fits into the broader context of Apple loyalty, which is the subject of a new book, 'The Cult of Mac,' by Leander Kahney. But just as, say, Lubavitchers have beliefs that break with Orthodox Judaism, so the Newton fanatic has differences with mainstream Apple-istas. Most pointedly, they disdain Steve Jobs himself for committing the apostasy of ending Newton production.
As 'The Cult of Mac' notes, Newton loyalty has attracted the attention of the academy. Albert Muniz, an assistant professor of marketing at DePaul University, has been studying 'brand communities' for about a decade. Our real communities, it has been said, are disintegrating. We don't know who our city councilman is; we shun P.T.A. meetings; we've never met our neighbors. But Muniz argued in a paper on the subject (written with Thomas O'Guinn of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) that brand communities, 'based on a structured set of social relationships among admirers of a brand,' are real communities. He acknowledges that it's more typical to cite the culture of consumption as something that undermines social togetherness rather than creates it. 'But our point of view is: This is a human phenomenon, we are social beings,' Muniz says. 'If community gets lopped off over here, it will emerge somewhere else.' Groups of Saab, Bronco and Macintosh admirers -- all studied by Muniz and O'Guinn -- even possessed 'a sense of moral responsibility' (albeit a 'limited and specialized one').
Muniz subsequently became interested in Newton fans in particular. 'By virtue of necessity, the Newton community is far, far more devoted' than other brand communities he had studied, Muniz says. After all, if you happen to own a Newton or buy one on eBay, the only place to get service, technical support or advice is from the Newton community. That is also the only place to learn, for example, how to get software to turn your Newton into an MP3 player. But, really, what's the point? Muniz has a couple of answers. On one level, 'we-ness' is its own reward. Moreover, he says, the Newton happens to be a great product that was ahead of its time.
Um, what? It turns out Muniz was so intrigued by the enthusiasm of Newton community members that he bought one. Then he bought another one. This may or may not mean that he has drunk the Kool-Aid, but his research continues. He's working on a paper on the value that Newton users have actually added to the product that Apple gave up on. 'The Newton community has picked up where Apple left off,' Muniz says. 'It's like Cubs fans,' he adds. 'No matter what hardships you throw at these people, they figure out some way to get around it and persevere through it.'
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 10-31-04: CONSUMED E-mail: consumed@nytimes.com.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Socko Finish
My son and I were moving caskets -- an oak with Celtic crosses on the corners, a cherry with a finish like that of our dining-room table, a cardboard box with a reinforced bottom, caskets that could be buried, burned, blown into space or set adrift. (The boomers who are buying funerals now do better with a broad selection.) I was talking to him about ' protection,' about condoms and careful choices and coming of age. He'd been out too late the night before.
But my son has heard this speech already; he and his siblings, all in their 20's, occupy a place where pleasure and risk intersect, so they are experts in cautionary tales. In a display room full of caskets and cremation urns, he would rather talk about his future.
He says he wants to be a funeral director. He wonders if I'd ever sell to S.C.I. -- Service Corporation International, the Barnes & Noble of the funeral biz. They're buying up firms like ours across the globe: Frank E. Campbell's in Manhattan; Kenyon's in London, which used to bury the royals. Closer to home, in Michigan, they bought out our nearest competition last year. The talk in the trade is that they raise prices, cut services, put in a fleet of telemarketers to push 'preneed' sales and pay their shareholders handsomely. They are aggressively positioning themselves for the baby-boom years, the next 20 or 30, when the number of annual deaths in the United States will grow by a million compared with today. The boomers' presence is already being felt, of course -- some are dying, many more are buying funerals for their parents.
'The only problem is they buy your name,' I tell my son. 'It's all you really have.' The name on the sign -- ours says Lynch & Sons -- is the one they call in the middle of the night when there's trouble. It's the one that makes you accountable to the community you live in, the one asset we can't replace and dare not sell.
My father taught me about protection. It was the late 1960's, early 70's. We'd go into the casket-selection room at the funeral home. He'd play the undertaker -- no stretch for him. I'd be the bereaved client with a dead mother -- pure theater for me. My mother was going strong back then, full of life. I was floundering between college and career, not quite certain about my 'future,' interested mostly in Irish poetry and Italian women. I worked at the funeral home to finance my travels and indecision. I caught the phones at night, slept in the apartment on the second floor, kept my passport handy, my bag packed.
'The first one you show them is very important,' my father said. 'It establishes the mid-range, the average. You know, not the most expensive and not the least.' He stopped beside a steel model called Praying Hands, named for the applique in the cap panel. He lifted the velvet overlay to expose the rubber gasket. 'The most important difference between one casket and another has to do with its protective qualities,' he said earnestly. 'Most of the metal caskets in this room are what we call sealed caskets, because of this gum-rubber gasket that runs around the perimeter of the shell.'
'Who cares?' I'd say, playing the doubting Thomas. 'Isn't she dead?' He showed me the crank used to seal the lid shut, and then he handed me this 'key.'
'To some families protection is very important.' He paused. 'To others it means nothing at all.' The message was obvious: which kind of family are you from?
Then he displayed the various materials: mahogany, oak, cherry, steel and the top-of-the-line, one that shone like a bright new penny. 'This is solid copper, a permanent metal. Unlike steel, which might rust or corrode, copper oxidizes with age. It gets stronger and stronger. These
precious metals are the best value in protective caskets.' The room hummed with anticipation as I thought it through.
Stronger, protective . . . Mom?
Protection and permanence were organizing ideas of my parents' generation. Children of economic collapse and a planet constantly at war, they were schooled against waste and letting down their guard. There was general, low-grade anxiety over 'exposure' and liabilities. Well-engineered tampons, movie ratings, underarm deodorants -- each offered defense against some contagion, embarrassment or invader.
In the years that have passed since my father taught me caskets, I have sold my share of them. We don't push protection anymore. 'Choice' is the buzzword. Everything is customized. The generation now in the market for mortuary wares is redefining death in much the same way that, three decades back, it redefined sex and gender.
If my father sold caskets on protection and permanence, I offer choices, options, New Age alternatives. Where he occupied a world of black and white, custom and tradition, moral certainty, my fellow boomers still see our rights and wrongs as relative; we roll our own orthodoxies.
Always the demographic bullies on the block, boomers are now grieving and dying, so grief and death are all the rage. The market is bullish on ritual and metaphor, for acting out our hurts the way our ancients did. Whether we burn or bury our dead is less important than what we do before we dispose of them. Boomers are hustling to reinvent the rituals that got our parents and their parents through age and sickness and sadness and loss, in case, just in case, it could happen to us. Faced with the deaths of the ones we love, we are stuck between the will to do everything, anything and nothing at all.
Back at the funeral home the hot topics (forgive me) are cremation and designer funerals. Members of my parents' generation, in their 70's now, are behaving as their boomer children once did -- fast and mobile, they're buying motor homes and time shares in casino towns, and they do not want their lives or deaths to be a burden to their kids. They do not want to be 'grounded' to the graves they bought when people stayed put and always came home. Their ashes are Fed-Exed around the hemisphere in little packages, roughly the weight of a bowling ball. Not nearly the life-size burden of a casket, not nearly the bother or expense. They get sent back from Florida and Phoenix, to old homes in the cold north and Rust Belt states.
Still, their sons and daughters, in receipt of these tiny reminders, are beginning to wonder: Is that all there is? Is it enough to get out our cell phones and our Gold Cards and have our dead elders disappear with no more pause than it takes to order up sushi to go? Can we distance ourselves entirely from the physical realities of death and still expect to enjoy the physical wonders of life? Is a good bargain on a funeral really such a good deal if it doesn't do the job of properly commemorating death? Even the late Jessica Mitford, that priestess of simplicity, whose 'American Way of Death Revisited' is due out from Knopf next month, had a lavish multimedia farewell in London last year.
Hence, more and more, we boomers care for our own dying. More and more we are making up new liturgies to say goodbye. More and more we seem willing to engage fully in the process of leave-taking. We rise early to watch the televised departures of princesses and modern saints. We read the obituaries every day. We eulogize, elegize and memorialize with vigor. The trade is brisk in wakes and funerals that offer a personalized touch. My father's generation did copper and concrete and granite memorials. We do biodegradables, economy models and ecofriendly cyberobsequies. He sold velvet and satin and crepe interiors. We do urns that look like golf bags and go to cemeteries with names like golf courses. You can buy a casket off the Internet, or buy plans for a self-built 'coffin table' or one that doubles as a bookshelf until you 'need' it. There's a push for 'do it yourself' funerals -- as if grief were ever anything but. Cremated remains can be recycled as memorial kitty litter, sprinkled on rosebushes, mixed with our oil paints to add texture to fresh masterpieces.
We have, as the Batesville Casket Company calls its latest marketing approach, Options. And as the demographic aneurysm gets nearer to bursting in two or three decades, the marketplace is readying for another boom. Soon, every off-ramp on the interstate across the continent will have a Burger King, Barnes & Noble and Funerals 'R' Us. Telemarketers are busy interrupting our dinners, selling us choices from the ridiculous to the sublime, from bang to whimper, and everywhere between. The fashions change. The feelings seldom do.
The facts of life and death remain the same. We live and die, we love and grieve, we breed and disappear. And between these existential gravities, we search for meaning, save our memories, leave a record for those who will remember us.
I am the age my father was when I was my son's age. Figure that. Halfway between the half a century between those two -- sometimes it seems that we repeat ourselves. I hear my father's caution in the way I caution him about life's changes and dangers, about drugs and drink and being 'sexually active.' We talk about making responsible choices, safe sex, committed relationships, condoms and consequences: permanence and protection come round again.
One of these days I'll have to teach them caskets.
Thomas Lynch is an undertaker in Milford, Mich. A book of his poems, Still Life In Milford, will be published in September.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"What Your Genes Want You to Eat
A trip to the diet doc, circa 2013. You prick your finger, draw a little blood and send it, along with a $100 fee, to a consumer genomics lab in California. There, it's passed through a mass spectrometer, where its proteins are analyzed. It is cross-referenced with your DNA profile. A few days later, you get an e-mail message with your recommended diet for the next four weeks. It doesn't look too bad: lots of salmon, spinach, selenium supplements, bread with olive oil. Unsure of just how lucky you ought to feel, you call up a few friends to see what their diets look like. There are plenty of quirks. A Greek co-worker is getting clams, crab, liver and tofu -- a bounty of B vitamins to raise her coenzyme levels. A friend in Chicago, a second-generation Zambian, has been prescribed popcorn, kale, peaches in their own juice and club soda. (This looks a lot like the hypertension-reducing 'Dash' diet, which doesn't work for everyone but apparently works for him.) He is allowed some chicken, prepared in a saltless marinade, hold the open flame -- and he gets extra vitamin D because there's not enough sunshine for him at his latitude. (His brother's diet, interestingly enough, is a fair bit different.) Your boss, who seems to have won some sort of genetic lottery, gets to eat plenty of peanut butter, red meat and boutique cheeses.
Nobody is eating exactly what you are. Your diet is uniquely tailored. It is determined by the specific demands of your genetic signature, and it perfectly balances your micronutrient and macronutrient needs. Sick days have become a foggy memory. (Foggy memory itself is now treated with extracts of ginkgo biloba and a cocktail of omega-3 fatty acids.)
'Ultimately, the feedback you'll get will be continuous,' says Wasyl Malyj, an 'informatics' scientist at the University of California at Davis working with the new Center of Excellence for Nutritional Genomics, who is helping me blue-sky here. The appeal of this kind of laser-targeted diet intervention is hard to miss. If you turn out to be among the population whose cholesterol count doesn't react much to diet, you'll be able to go ahead and eat those bacon sandwiches. You'll no longer be spending money on vitamin supplements that aren't doing anything for you; you'll take only the vitamins you need, in precisely the right doses. And there's a real chance of extending your life -- by postponing the onset of diseases to which you're naturally susceptible -- without having to buy even a single book by Deepak Chopra.
This, then, is the promise -- and the hype -- of nutritional genomics, the second wave of personalized medicine to come rolling out of the Human Genome Project (after pharmacogenomics, or designer drugs). The premise is simple: diet is a big factor in chronic disease, responsible, some say, for a third of most types of cancer. Dietary chemicals change the expression of one's genes and even the genome itself. And -- here's the key -- the influence of diet on health depends on an individual's genetic makeup.
How does that work? Consider what happens, biologically, when we eat a meal. Until quite recently, most scientists thought food had basically one job: it was metabolized to provide energy for the cell. Indeed, that is what happens to most dietary chemicals -- but not all of them. Some of them don't get metabolized at all; instead, the moment they're ingested, they peel off and become ligands, molecules that bind to proteins involved in 'turning on' certain genes to one degree or another. A diet that's particularly out of balance, nutritional-genomics scientists say, will cause gene expressions that nudge us toward chronic illness -- unless a precisely tailored 'intelligent diet' is employed to restore the equilibrium.
Take genestein, a chemical in soy, which attaches to estrogen receptors and starts regulating genes. Different individuals may have estrogen receptors that react to genestein differently. Genetic variations like that one, some scientists say, help explain why two people can eat exactly the same diet and respond very differently to it -- one maintaining his weight, for example, and the other ballooning.
There is a buzz around nutritional genomics at the moment, which is partly a matter of timing. A sea change is under way in the approach scientists are taking to disease -- they're looking less to nature or nurture alone for answers, and more to the interactive symphony of 'systems biology' that nutrigenomics epitomizes.
At the same time, chatter around this new science has been amplified by a controversy. The idea of the biological relevance of race -- even its very existence -- is hotly debated. And the assumption of real genetic markers that distinguish one ethnic group from another is at the philosophical heart of nutrigenomics.
Here's the most familiar example: If you're of Northern European ancestry, you can probably digest milk, and if you're Southeast Asian, you probably can't. In most mammals, the gene for lactose tolerance switches off once an animal matures beyond the weaning years. Humans shared that fate as well -- until a mutation in the DNA of an isolated population of Northern Europeans around 10,000 years ago introduced an adaptive tolerance for nutrient-rich milk. The likelihood that you tolerate milk depends on the degree to which you have Northern European blood.
'That, essentially, is the model -- a very dramatic one,' says Jim Kaput, the founder of NutraGenomics, a biotechnology company. 'As humans evolved, and as our bodies interacted with foods on each of the continents, we sort of self-selected for these naturally occurring variants. And certain populations have variants that, when presented with Western-type food -- which is usually fatty and overprocessed and high in calories -- pushes them toward disease rather than health.'
Plenty of examples bear out this ill fit between certain cultures and certain diets -- suggesting, if not quite proving, some interplay of genes and nutrition: the Japanese who relocated to the United States after World War II soon saw their cholesterol levels soar. The Alaskan Inuit, whose metabolism was perfectly suited to moving around all day, looking for high-fat food, were suddenly saddled with an evolutionary disadvantage when they began living in heated homes and traveling on snowmobiles, and they now show high levels of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The Masai of East Africa have developed new health problems since they abandoned their traditional cattle-meat-and-blood-and-milk diet for corn and beans.
The cradle of nutrigenomics is the cradle of humankind itself: the original migration out of Africa created widely separated subpopulations with distinct collections of gene variants. The members of each subpopulation tend to respond similarly to diet and environmental conditions. But the genetics of race is an inexact science. And since many people have ancestors from different continents -- making them a genetic admixture -- the data are rarely clean-cut. In other words, ethnicity is relevant to nutritional genomics, but only as a starting point. Which is why the idea of sorting ourselves by race and pursuing a diet consistent with the original continental diet isn't going to be very helpful. And why, in fact, the customized diets of most people's perfect genomic future will probably not be all that different from one another.
Kaput estimates that the middle 60 percent of the bell curve are probably not going to need to deviate too much from the basic fruit-and-vegetable-heavy diet recommended by the Department of Agriculture. The folks who will benefit from customized nutritional packets, he says, will be the 20 percent at either end: those at the top who don't have to worry much about what they eat -- and will thus be able to cut corners -- and the 20 percent on the bottom, who respond disastrously to conventional diets and will discover that they need to follow special diets or eat specific supplements. The problem for everyone will be figuring out where they fall on the curve of each disease profile.
Just how far in the future are we projecting here? When will nutrigenomics be ready for public consumption? Even many of those who have faith in the science concede that the staggering complexity of interactions among genes, and between genes and the environment, will be a real challenge to solve. As a workable concept, 'eat right for your genotype' may be a decade or two -- or more -- down the road.
'Right now, no one in their right mind would offer genetic testing or tell you what drug to take,' says Dr. Muin Khoury, director of the Office of Genomics and Disease Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control. Despite that warning, a handful of companies are already offering genomics profiles and nutritional supplements to early adopters looking for an edge. One company, the North Carolina-based Great Smokies Diagnostic Laboratory, offers a genetics-testing service called Genovations. Clients pay up to $1,500 for a preventive health profile.
For nutrigenomics to realize its potential, though, vast, ethnically diverse databases of genomic profiles will have to be assembled, from which researchers will try to divine patterns.
But that, of course, opens up a whole new can of genetically modified worms. Once our genotypes are in databanks, can we really be sure they won't be sold to employers or insurance companies? And in what social gulag will those poor saps find themselves who simply cannot resist tucking into a double-cheese all-beef sub during the seventh-inning stretch?
Bruce Grierson is a writer in Vancouver. His last article for the magazine was a profile of J. J. Goldstein, a teenage spelling champion.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Hustler
1913-1996 -- He was born Rudolf Wanderone. But when Jackie Gleason made the fictional character of Minnesota Fats famous in the 1961 film 'The Hustler,' Wanderone decided that there was a real Minnesota Fats and that he was it.
So began a successful career of bluster and pronouncement. Fats knew the game and had the traveler's repertory of trick shots -- he was a master of the bank shot -- but connoisseurs saw through to the ordinariness of his play.
Fats knew how to make money. 'Shooting a game of pool without some serious money riding on the outcome,' he once said, 'is like Rudolph Valentino being chased by 400 gorgeous tomatoes, only he runs to his hotel room and reads Playboy.' Equipment makers eagerly hired him to travel and promote, as much for his patter as his play.
Fats also said, 'I always walked into the biggest and best poolroom in town . . . and said, 'Here I am boys. Come and get me.' ' I personally know of one Pittsburgh house man who challenged him, but Fats ducked him with a flurry of insults and evasions. One famous televised match between Minnesota Fats and the great Willie Mosconi was dominated by the latter. Fats would lumber around the table, lamenting his bad luck; meanwhile, Mosconi -- the fierce, kinetic genius of straight pool -- quietly thrashed him.
BERNARD HOLLAND
THE LIVES THEY LIVED: Minnesota Fats  Bernard Holland is chief music critic for The New York Times.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Bone-Dry Summer Missing a Certain Bite
Shhh. Listen.
At the campground here, there is no bzzz-bzzz-buzzing around the ears of vacationers trying to sleep under the stars. No thwack-thwacking, palm on thigh, of picnickers in the park. No scratch-scratching of children's fingernails -- nor tsk-tsking of reprimanding adults -- the next morning.
That silence is the sound of a mosquito-free summer.
'Last year I was playing connect the dots with the mosquito bites on my legs,' said 12-year-old A. J. De Marco of New Canaan, Conn., as she and her campground cronies captured and then released Leppy the leopard frog. 'I'm usually covered, but now all I have is scratches from climbing the mountain.'
As an exceptionally hot and dry summer plagues farmers throughout the Eastern Seaboard and Midwest, there has been one upside: mosquitoes are as scarce as the little puddles and pools their eggs need to hatch.
Truth be told, the season is not quite mosquito free. There have been scattered swarms of the salt-water mosquitoes that breed in coastal marshes whenever high tide comes. But the far more common species that blanket inland areas each year are largely missing.
In Connecticut, scientists found an average of 250 mosquitoes a week in each of their 37 traps during last July; this July, it was about 75. On Long Island, Suffolk County's mosquito catch for the entire month of July was 6,152 -- compared with 27,161 last summer. In Monmouth County, N.J., mosquito-watchers counted 1,711 in traps last month, about a fifth of the typical July yield over the previous six years.
'It's been, probably, the quietest summer we've had in years,' said Martin Chomsky, superintendent of the Monmouth County Mosquito Extermination Commission. 'I would say that this is a record year in terms of the lack of freshwater mosquitoes.'
Gardeners are going outside without bug nets. Summer people are eating dinner on the deck.
In Florida, mosquito researchers in Vero Beach had to travel to a different part of the state to track down their subjects. And Rite Aid and CVS both say sales of mosquito-related products, from citronella candles to bug spray, are off about 25 percent nationwide, and even more in the drought-ridden areas.
'I was very prepared with the itchy stuff, the calamine and Caladryl, and we haven't had to use it,' said Clara D'Angelo, the nurse at Camp Waneeshi in Salt Point, N.Y., where 90 Girl Scouts pitch tents each night. 'I'm well prepared for mosquitoes that don't exist.'
Scientists say the phenomenon is simple: 'If you understand that mosquitoes need water,' said Wayne Crans, director of Mosquito Research and Control at Rutgers University, 'no water, you're not going to have mosquitoes.'
But Dr. Crans cautioned that the pesky population can regenerate as quickly as a flash flood. 'They're waiting,' he said ominously.
After biting humans, female mosquitoes use the blood to nourish hundreds of eggs. They lay these eggs in places where water collects -- tree holes, tires, ditches, an empty can, a pothole -- typically near the edges. When there is enough water, the larvae mature into full-blown mosquitoes. The females go out and bite, and the cycle starts over.
Weeks without rain has left puddles dusty, tires and cans empty. The flood channel where A. J. De Marco and her friends were playing is typically a steady stream, but today barely managed a trickle.
The eggs, however, are still there, unharmed by the heat and drought. They can wait. And wait. For years. A dose of rain, or even a splash from a hose, and, after about 10 days, they'll be off and biting.
How many mosquitoes will emerge depends entirely on how much rain: Think of the place where a puddle was as blanketed with waiting eggs. If the puddle fills up again, all those eggs will hatch; if less water collects, the outer rings of eggs will remain dormant.
'My advice?' said Jan Washburn, a mosquito specialist at the University of California at Berkeley. 'Enjoy it while you can.'
As dusk descends on campsite No. 35 here, the Grom family is deep in mosquito-free enjoyment, gathering around the flickering fire, marshmallows and sticks at the ready.
The door to the screen porch in front of the mobile home is wide open. A fly swatter hangs unused on a pole, its orange plastic weave unstained by death. Later, guests gather for an outdoor screening of 'Forrest Gump.'
'I've been here two weeks and I haven't used bug spray once,' said Glen Grom, who has spent 26 of his 33 summers on this spot. The citronella candle on the picnic table, he added, 'is more for light than anything.
'It's psychological,' he said.
Others hardly noticed the difference.
'I guess since we haven't thought of it, there haven't been any,' said Janell Barnao, 20, of Dover Plains, who was lounging by the lake with her family.
'It takes a while,' said Ms. Barnao's father, Don, 'to realize what's missing.'
Though traditionally buggy sites like Lake Waramaug, the New Jersey bayfronts and many parks and beaches on Long Island seem remarkably mosquito free, certain spots have been hit hard by the salt-water mosquitoes, whose multiplication does not depend on rainfall. The lack of rain has, in some cases, given these species more places to breed, as more marshy land dries out.
When the highest tides come at the new moon and full moon, these marshes get wet, and about 10 days later, the swarms begin.
'When the baby returned from Shelter Island this weekend, she was so covered in bites that I thought she might be having a chickenpox outbreak,' said Monica Monterroso of Sea Cliff, who baby-sits for a 1-year-old girl. 'Her mother and I took her to the doctor and learned that another infant had been in that day with the same problem.'
Salt-water mosquitoes also can fly up to 15 miles to find targets, so even some inland areas are getting hit.
In areas where mosquitoes are missing, other insects have taken their place in the complaint department. At Lake Waramaug, the gnats are nasty and black flies plentiful.
In New Jersey, Mr. Chomsky said he has found unusual waves of greenhead flies and midges, tiny insects that look like mosquitoes but don't bite. Everywhere, it seems there are infestations of ants, who love the steamy heat.
'The bugs have been awful,' said Lisa Gatti, director of Pal-O-Mine, a horseback riding program for the disabled at the Willow Tree Farm in Huntington, N.Y., where administrators recently ordered a shipment of ecologically engineered nonbiting wasps to eat the excess flies. 'You can't even ride, the bugs are so bad.'
Mosquitoes are not the sole food source for any other animal, experts said, so there will be little direct impact on the larger ecosystem from the population decline. While the reduced number of mosquitoes also reduces the risk for the diseases they carry, experts noted that the high season for eastern equine encephalitis -- a deadly virus that has appeared in the region in recent years -- comes in late August and September.
Once enough rain comes, whenever it comes, mosquitoes will quickly return to their former strength. Next summer should be mosquitoes-as-normal, unless there is another drought.
'Every single spring we get a call and they say: 'We've had a mild winter and we've had a wet spring. The mosquitoes are going to be terrible, right?' And we say we cannot really predict,' laughed Dr. Crans, one of the nation's leading experts in the field. 'If you could give us long-range weather projections, we can tell you about mosquitoes.'
Mosquitoes, being scarce, were not available for interviews.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"$20 SKIDOO
After a bank employee at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire campus mistakenly filled an A.T.M.'s $5 slot with 20's, word quickly spread, and students dropped their Sunday studies -- some literally running -- to grab the extra money during a five-hour binge. Uplifting note: one youth reported the error, and two infractors surrendered to a campus cop dispatched to guard the cash cow. Bank officials won't reveal how much was initially lost, but say they adjusted students' accounts to deduct ill-gotten gains.
SUNDAY NOVEMBER, 10, 1996",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Scientists Find Signals Suggesting That Hanky-Panky, Not Monogamy, May Rule the Long Island Roost
Ruby-throated hummingbirds, red-wing blackbirds and great blue herons inhabit the salt marshes, freshwater ponds and pine swamps that make this storied island one of the last nature refuges of Long Island.
But it is the osprey, a fish-eating hawk that builds skyscraper nests out of junk, that has captured the imagination of generations of East Enders. Residents around Peconic Bay baby the big birds, building platforms in yards for the ospreys to nest. Tourists come to see them take their dramatic dives into the water to snap up flounder with their claws.
'New York has its World Trade Center, Paris has its Eiffel Tower and Shelter Island has its ospreys coming back every spring,' said Clifford P. Clark, owner of Shelter Island's south ferry.
That sort of fealty is rooted in many things, including the almost mythical loyalty of osprey mates as they return to the same nest year after year, sometimes for a decade or more.
In an animal kingdom where polygamy and incest are commonly the rule, the osprey has long been viewed as a paragon of virtue along with the monogamous goose and swan.
But a study being conducted here is beginning to rewrite the book on the bird, and it is putting the osprey's formerly spotless reputation in jeopardy. It is beginning to look like ospreys are not necessarily loyal to their mates. It is their nests of twigs mixed with fish netting, cow dung and seaweed that somehow merit their attachment, if not their affection, according to the latest findings of the researchers.
The University of Minnesota's Raptor Center launched the study in 1995, using satellite telemetry to track dozens of ospreys migrating from breeding areas in Oregon, Minnesota and Shelter Island all the way to their winter hideaways as far south as Pantanal National Park in southwestern Brazil.
Outfitted with wired backpacks that emit signals for tracking by a satellite ground station in Landover, Md., the ospreys are giving scientists precise information on where these and other birds fly and how much time they spend from place to place along their migration route.
The Nature Conservancy, a private environmental group, will supply Latin American governments with the new information as well as assistance to protect the areas where the ospreys go.
The scientists plan to work several more years before publishing a definitive paper, but have already found that parts of Cuba and Haiti are important stopover points that require protection.
The study has also found that as a species, the osprey is generally in excellent shape 25 years after it was endangered in New York State because of an overexposure to DDT. But in one disturbing new finding, scientists are finding low reproduction rates along one area on the Columbia River in Oregon. And closer to home, they are finding that the ospreys have been slow to return to the 2,000-acre Mashomack Preserve on Shelter Island this year.
These could be telltale signs of some environmental trouble.
So much for the pure science. Now to the details that are making the scientists clear their throats, blush and sometimes ask inquiring reporters to go off the record.
'Maybe I shouldn't say this, and I'm not ready to make any leaping statements yet,' said Mark Martell, conservation coordinator at the University of Minnesota Raptor Center. 'But what we're seeing is that the males and females are not wintering together. It's not very romantic.'
Mr. Martell was quick to note that the study has confirmed that the ospreys do not find mates away from their North American nests. But researchers are finding that the males generally return to their breeding grounds several weeks sooner than the females they mated with the spring before.
One 19th century naturalist described seeing an osprey mourn for a dead mate. But the researchers say they have seen no such grief and that the males are not always patient.
In one indication that the birds' newly discovered extracurricular mating habits will not spoil the high popular esteem in which they are held, one fifth-grade class in the Shelter Island School is logging on regularly to the Raptor Center's Web site (http://www.raptor.cvm.umn.edu) to follow the migrations. The children have named the three most recently tagged Shelter Island birds, which are called X-4, X-5 and X-7,  Kid, Chestnut and Fisher.
X-4, a female that spent her winter in Venezuela, appeared to be happy and healthy last Friday morning, getting ready to lay eggs at her nest above a shell beach just west of Shelter Island's south ferry station. Her mate perched on a dead oak nearby and from time to time flew around the nest with a catch of herring, which he thoughtfully brought her.
'He's trying to impress her to show what a great fisherman he is, to show he'll be a good provider,' said Michael S. Scheibel, a biologist at the Mashomack Preserve, who was making notes for the University of Minnesota study. 'There is a certain amount of pair-bonding that he has to continue to work on. Don't we all?'
Next, Mr. Scheibel drove his four-wheel-drive vehicle through the preserve to Majors Point, a secluded spot far from the island's golf courses and manicured lawns, in search of X-5, another female. X-5 wintered in Brazil, and last sent a reliable satellite signal March 22 from Richmond, Va.
But she has not returned, and her nest was disheveled and empty, with a solitary jimson weed sticking out of it like a cowlick.
'I'm beginning to get a little worried,' said Mr. Scheibel, scratching his bearded chin in bewilderment.
He speculated that perhaps X-5 as well as her mate from last year may not return to Majors Point because the survival rate of their young was lower than normal last year. Why that is the case is still a mystery, but it may be because the flounder population is too low in the area to provide a bountiful enough food supply, or because predator owls ate their young. Either way, he said, action must be taken to settle the ecological imbalance so the ospreys will return in larger numbers in future years.
'Maybe the female found such a good food supply in Virginia she decided to stay there,' Mr. Scheibel said, 'or she found another mate.'
Finally, it was time to check up on X-7, a male with a taste for Cuba's habitat, which mysteriously had not given off a signal in almost a month.
Rounding a bend onto Mashomack Point, Mr. Scheibel cried out 'I see a bird!' But its brown breast and large size indicated that it was a female and not X-7.
Suddenly, a male swooped down, and in one of the great sights of nature, he hovered above the female and then attempted to mount her. But the female would have nothing to do with him.
Mr. Scheibel reached for his binoculars to give the male a good look. 'He's not wearing a radio pack,' he said in disappointment. 'I wonder if he lost it in Cuba, or maybe somebody shot that bird in Cuba.'
As for the attempted copulation, he had another conjecture, adding, 'Maybe we are witnessing some philandering or a divorce.'
Ospreys' Reputation Takes a Sudden Dive",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Neediest Cases; Couple Finds Some Relief After Medical Problems
Mornings have not been kind lately to Victoria K.
On April 30, she woke up in her Queens home and could not see out of her right eye. Her legs felt heavy, and her right arm was limp. Three months shy of her 36th birthday, Victoria was having a mild stroke.
'It was horrible and scary, but when it was happening I couldn't even concentrate on what was going on,' she said.
Over the next few days, the facial numbness and paralysis she experienced faded, but the dizzy spells and light sensitivity continued. Her doctors advised her to leave her job as a business consultant. So Victoria, the primary breadwinner for her two sons, 5 and 19, and her husband, 47, went on disability.
Then, one morning in June, her husband's skin turned yellowish, and he found that he had difficulty walking. He had been complaining of leg pain for months, and his doctors had prescribed arthritis medication. Victoria rushed him to the emergency room at St. Joseph's Hospital in Flushing. There, blood tests and CAT scans added up to something frightening: he had third-stage squamous cell lung cancer. At the time, the family income was $169 a week from disability, down from $800 a week when Victoria was working. And the rent for April, May and June -- $3,627 -- was late.
'I called up Cancer Care and told them that I couldn't pay the rent and that I didn't know what to do,' said Victoria, who, because of all the difficulties she has been through, did not want her full name used. 'They told me to get on public assistance, and at that point I was willing to do anything to make sure my husband and children were taken care of.'
Two weeks later a caseworker from the city's Human Resources Administration visited her, and Victoria signed the paperwork needed to file for a one-shot grant to cover her past-due rent.
And then?
'That's when the mess started,' Victoria said, 'and things went from bad to much, much worse.'
Her husband underwent surgery in July to remove a third of his lung. In the following weeks there were plenty more of those hard mornings. They started with conference calls to her husband's doctors, and ended with long rides back from his sickbed in St. Vincent's Manhattan Hospital. All the while, the eviction notices kept coming.
The response from the Human Resources Administration, when it finally arrived, did not make things any easier. Tucked into a bulging purple folder of documents chronicling the family's struggles, a blue piece of paper reads, 'Disability income is sufficient to meet family needs.' Victoria's case was closed, and her rental assistance claims, she said, had not even been addressed.
Over the next several weeks, Victoria fell into another seemingly fruitless routine. Rounds and rounds of phone calls yielded other people's numbers, shelter recommendations and advice to keep harassing her caseworker.
'I'm the kind of person that takes the bull by the horns,' she said. 'If there is a way, I will find it. But there was no way. Every door was sealed.'
Finally, though, one of those doors opened. Victoria's phone calls eventually led her to the Community Service Society of New York, one of the seven charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
'What really moved me about her situation was that she'd had a stroke, but she was still advocating for herself and her family, still trying to navigate her way through public assistance,' said Natasha Baptiste, a caseworker with the agency's eviction prevention program.
Ms. Baptiste went to work right away to figure out exactly how much Victoria owed, how she could get the money and why her initial request for rental assistance remained unresolved. It was slow going because Victoria's initial application had gotten lost in the system, and according to Victoria and Ms. Baptiste, caseworkers said she needed to reapply. In the meantime, Ms. Baptiste was making calls to other charities so that Victoria, her husband and her sons wouldn't be evicted.
On Sept. 27, the total amount pledged by various agencies to help the family was about $4,350, about $2,700 of it from Neediest Cases. 'Two days later, we got a letter saying that I was approved for rental assistance,' Victoria said. 'With Ms. Baptiste advocating and me advocating, it still took forever, but she was my angel.'
These days the checks are still coming in, and Victoria's husband is on the mend. Though he still has pain and has been advised by doctors not to push himself, he has returned to work as an operations manager at a livery cab service in Queens.
Victoria's older son, a trained chef, is looking for a job, and her other child, a kindergartner, keeps up a steady commotion riding his bike and playing with his toys.
Most days, Victoria wears sunglasses because of lingering light sensitivity. She still has dizzy spells, too. But there is much less stress. She is collecting unemployment benefits and has started a nonprofit eviction prevention agency to offer the kind of assistance that Ms. Baptiste and the Community Service Society gave her family.
'I probably have a college education in the system at this point,' Victoria said, 'and I want to help other people who are in my situation so they won't have to go through what I had to deal with.'
HOW TO HELP
Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to 4 Chase Metrotech Center, 7th Floor East, Lockbox 5193, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11245, or any of these organizations:
BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE  285 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK  1011 First Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS  191 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201.
CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES  281 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10010.
UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK  Church Street Station P.O. Box 4100 New York, N.Y. 10261-4100
Donations may be made with a credit card by phone at (212) 556-5851 (ext. 7) or online, courtesy of CharityWave.com, an Internet donations service, at www.nytimesneediest.charitywave.com. For instructions on how to donate stock to the fund, call (212) 556-1137 or fax (212) 556-4450.
No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
The Times pays the funds expenses, so all contributions go directly to the charities, which use them to provide services and cash assistance to the poor.
Contributions to the fund are deductible on federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law.
To delay may mean to forget.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Man Who Promised Profits Pleads Guilty in $95 Million Fraud
A California man pleaded guilty in Manhattan yesterday to Federal charges that he defrauded nearly 1,600 investors nationwide of more than $95 million by promising them quick profits through buying the life insurance policies of terminally ill people.
Such purchases, known as viatical settlements, have become increasingly popular, especially for people with diseases like AIDS who can no longer work and have difficulty paying their medical bills.
But in this case, prosecutors said, the patients, their insurance policies, and their medical documents all were made up.
'This was a complete fraud from beginning to end,' said Mary Jo White, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. 'There were no life insurance policies, all of the critical documents were forged and the medical diagnoses were fictitious.'
The defendant, David W. Laing, 53, of Rancho Mirage, Calif., pleaded guilty before Judge Shirley Wohl Kram of United States District Court to one count of securities fraud and two counts of mail fraud. He faces up to 20 years in prison and a possible fine of up to twice his victims' losses, or $190 million.
In a typical viatical settlement -- the term derives from the Latin viaticum, for the money and supplies one takes on a journey -- a patient sells his or her life insurance policy to an investor at a discounted price. The insurance company pays the investor the full value of the policy when the patient dies; the sooner the death, the higher the investor's return.
In July 1996, Mr. Laing, the president of Personal Choice Opportunities, put together a multimedia marketing campaign that promised investors annual interest payments of up to 25 percent. His victims each put up a minimum of $25,000, and as much as several hundred thousand dollars apiece, prosecutors said.
The scheme unraveled quickly beginning last February, according to court documents, after the California Department of Corporations found that Mr. Laing's company was operating without a license. The department subpoenaed the company's records, but the company did not comply, citing confidentiality.
That response soon set off alarm bells at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where agents acting on a separate tip began an undercover investigation of Personal Choice Opportunities, offering to invest several million dollars with the company. The agents discovered that Mr. Laing had personally received more than $30 million in investors' money, which he then used for personal expenses, spending as much as $10 million gambling in Las Vegas, prosecutors said.
Robert L. Shapiro, Mr. Laing's lawyer, declined to comment after the proceeding.
A doctor involved in the scheme,  Thomas K. Hines, 62, of Carson City, Nev., pleaded guilty on Nov. 6 to a charge of conspiracy to commit securities, mail and wire fraud, prosecutors said. Dr. Hines admitted that he lied to investors, telling them that he had reviewed the medical histories of hundreds of terminally ill people who had sold their life insurance policies to Personal Choice Opportunities.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Line in the Snow
MY father used to tell me this story about when I was 4: We went outside after a snowfall, and he gave me a little shovel and a very small patch of the sidewalk. He had this big patch, and he suggested that we race to see who could get finished first. He finished first. He and my mother laughed because, they said, I threw my shovel down and cried, and it became clear to them I was very competitive. Maybe I also learned that I'd like to make the rules someday.
Once, when I was about 12, we were coming back home from church and I announced I really hated Sunday school and would like to go to the sanctuary with my parents. My father became just furious and said: 'Of course you can't leave Sunday school. If you don't like it, change it.'
When we got home, I had to make a list of all the suggestions I might make for changing Sunday school. My mother had to drive me down for a meeting with the superintendent of Sunday school. We made a plan, engaged some of the other students and we did change the Sunday school, made it more of a learning experience for all of us.
We were the family of an entrepreneur who believed he was building something that would outlive himself.
Now my son, Curtis, is the president of the company, and my daughter Wendy is working in Dallas in the restaurant company. Diana, my eldest daughter, has just gone on the board of directors, and my sister's son, Jeffrey, has also just gone on the board of directors.
After I graduated from college, when I applied for a job at Paine Webber, I really had to sell hard. I thought I wanted to be a stockbroker, but there were no women registered representatives in Minnesota at that point, so I convinced Paine Webber that I would be a securities analyst covering the Midwest region.
They were convinced that if I signed my reports 'Marilyn Nelson' that people would not buy stock recommended by a woman. The deal was, I could be an analyst, I could do the work and I could put out reports, but that I had to sign them M.C. Nelson. My daughters can't believe that I wouldn't have refused to do that, but I was thrilled to have the opportunity.
I had an early mentor, Harry Holtz, who asked me onto my first board of directors when I was in my late 30's, at one of the smaller, successful trust companies in the country.
It involved managing estates, but it also involved dealing with the founding families of 3M, Pillsbury and others. I came to understand family dynamics, trust dynamics, multigenerational expectations and also the balance sheet, profit and loss and portfolio management.
Jill Conway, a former president of Smith College, was another mentor. She was a skilled diplomat, and I also watched her build international relationships for the school.
My daughter Juliet died in an automobile accident on a highway in Vermont on her way back from Dartmouth when she was at Smith her freshman year; she was 19. For the family, it made us particularly conscious of wanting to use the time we have to make a difference.
I used to run and I love to ski, and when I started worrying about my knees, I tried Rollerblading. I absolutely fell in love with it. When I have a tough problem, if I can take a long Rollerblade break, I usually can work it out. I started probably when I was 50.
I'm a nut about poetry. I like Yeats, Keats, and I used to really like some of the French poets, Flaubert and others, because it was a nice way to keep familiar with my French. I like Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg. I got to know Rilke when Juliet died because somebody sent me a book of his poetry that was pretty amazing.
MARILYN CARLSON NELSON  Chairwoman and chief executive of the Carlson Companies, the hotel, restaurant and travel services company based in Minnetonka, Minn.  BIRTH DATE -- Aug. 19, 1939  COLLEGE -- Smith College  NIGHTS SPENT IN HOTELS LAST YEAR -- 103  NUMBER OF CARLSONS ON THE BOARD AT THE CARLSON COMPANIES -- Six
OFFICE SPACE: THE BOSS",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Possible Federal Pullout Clouds Northeast States' Pollution Suits
As the Bush administration considers withdrawing from air pollution lawsuits against power plants in the Midwest and South, people on both sides of the dispute say the Northeast states that have also sued will be hard-pressed to pursue the cases on their own.
The suits were filed under a Clean Air Act provision that the administration is reviewing and plans to overhaul. The review was originally scheduled for completion last week, but the Environmental Protection Agency announced on Tuesday that the deadline had been postponed to next month, a delay that officials said was partly due to a split within the administration.
Spencer Abraham, the energy secretary, and Christie Whitman, the E.P.A. administrator, both advocate broad changes to the enforcement program, known as new source review, to give power companies more flexibility in meeting pollution limits. But administration officials say there is substantial disagreement on the details, with Mr. Abraham's approach including withdrawal from at least some of the suits while Mrs. Whitman favors preserving them.
Without Washington's participation, most of the cases would be dropped because the states do not have legal standing to pursue them, according to state and federal officials, environmentalists and power companies. They add that the remaining actions would be made far more difficult without the vast resources of the E.P.A. and the Justice Department. And a federal government reversal could dissolve landmark agreements with two power companies that have accepted great reductions in the pollution from their plants.
Environmentalists are also concerned that even if the new source review program survives, it will be in greatly scaled-back form. They point, among other factors, to President Bush's recent nomination of Donald Schregardus as chief enforcement officer of the E.P.A., a post from which he would play a crucial role in determining whether power plants had violated the law and, if so, how to deal with them.
Mr. Schregardus, as chief environmental officer for the State of Ohio, was part of an administration that strenuously opposed the filing of new source review lawsuits. The Senate has not acted on his nomination.
'We will pursue these cases no matter what happens in Washington,' said Eliot L. Spitzer, the New York State attorney general, 'but losing out on the participation and resources of E.P.A. and the Justice Department would be a substantial loss and would make our job much harder, no question.'
In the Northeast, so much of the pollution arrives on the prevailing winds from the West and South that if New York City and some other areas were to stop all local emissions, they would still violate federal clean air standards. After two decades of steady improvement, the region's air quality leveled off and has even worsened a bit, abetted by hot summers two of the last three years. So far this year, monitoring stations around New York State have recorded 168 ozone readings that violate federal standards, the second-highest figure for any year in the last decade, and a sharp increase from 60 in all of last year.
In pursuing new source review cases without federal help, the greatest obstacle that the Northeast states would face is geographic. To win a new source review case against a power plant, a state must establish that it has legal standing by proving that its air is measurably affected by the emissions from that plant. While lawyers for the Northeast states have built cases against plants up to 400 miles away, they believe they would be unable to act against more distant plants.
The states sued 17 plants in Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana and Ohio. (Mr. Spitzer also notified the owners of seven plants in New York that he intended to sue if they did not agree to install pollution controls, and his office is in negotiations with those companies.) Northeast officials have talked with their Southern and Midwestern counterparts about filing their own suits, to broaden their reach, but so far they have found no takers.
'The states haven't targeted us, and we don't think they could,' said John Sell, a spokesman for Southern Company, a major power producer in the South that is the subject of a federal suit.
The E.P.A. has sued 34 plants and taken other enforcement actions under new source review against 20 others. The agency signaled last year that it intended to go after many more plants -- in talks with two power companies, it insisted on changes at 12 plants that were not named in its enforcement actions -- and officials said the number could top 100.
The E.P.A.'s actions have included old coal-fired plants in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and Illinois -- plants that are beyond the grasp of the Northeastern states.
'E.P.A. simply has much greater reach than we do, so there's much more they can do,' said Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general. 'And they have vastly superior resources, which are critical against these big corporations that have indicated they will fight and delay.'
Among other things, the states would have to produce sophisticated computer models showing the movement of air pollution over long distances -- the sort of work E.P.A. does already, but the states do not.
Mr. Spitzer said his office has eight lawyers working on the cases, compared with the dozens the federal government has assigned to the litigation. 'Resources are an enormous issue,' he said. 'If Washington pulls out, I would say we would have to double the number of people dedicated to these cases.'
Courts also give a certain deference to federal agencies' interpretation of relevant federal laws -- for instance, to the E.P.A.'s view of the Clean Air Act -- and lawyers on both sides say the states would not receive the same deference.
A lawyer representing a company that has been sued by both the federal government and the states said, 'There's no question: if the feds go away, my job gets a lot easier.'
John L. Kirkwood, chief executive  of the American Lung Association, said: 'There's much less the states can do than what the feds can do, and it's harder for them to do it. This really needs the Bush administration's participation.'
Over the last three decades, federal law has imposed increasingly strict air pollution standards on new power plants. But plants built before those rules were created are exempt from federal controls.
The federal and state suits charge that power companies have done such extensive work upgrading older plants, under the guise of routine maintenance, that those plants should come under new source review and meet the same standards as new plants. Power companies call that a misinterpretation of the law and say it will prevent them from doing maintenance needed at older plants, leading to more frequent breakdowns.
At issue in the suits are pre-1970 coal plants that, in some cases, produce up to 10 times as much nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide -- the major contributors to smog and acid rain -- as are permitted from new plants. Power plants produce two-thirds of the nation's sulfur dioxide emissions, and about 30 percent of the nitrogen oxides.
New York and the E.P.A. filed their first suits in 1999, and six other states -- Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Vermont -- later joined in some of the suits. In New Jersey, it was the administration of Mrs. Whitman, then the governor, that sued.
Last year, three power companies settled E.P.A. actions against them by agreeing to drastic emissions reductions at their plants. One of those settlements, with Tampa Electric in Florida, is final.
But the two larger deals, reached late in the year with Cinergy, an Ohio utility, and Virginia Electric Power, were tentative, and neither the companies nor the Bush administration has moved to make them final. Both sides have indicated that they might seek to modify the agreements. The two settlements, covering 18 plants, would be by far the largest ever under the Clean Air Act, with each company agreeing to spend more than $1 billion.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Survivor
We lived in Riverdale, Ga., me and my dad and my mother and my two brothers. We didn't know nothing about Huntington's disease back then -- even the doctors didn't know much. We didn't know the chances of us getting it till later on. Now it feels like a family curse. My dad's brother had it. He shot and killed himself. My grandmother got put in a sanitarium and died there.
We first knew my dad was sick in the 70's. He was coaching my baseball team then. He went from being everywhere outdoors to not doing practically nothing at all. It got to where somebody had to watch him all the time. Huntington's eats part of your brain, the part that controls the nervous system. I took care of him for a couple of years during the day, and my mom took care of him at night after work. He kept walking out the door, going toward the mailbox, probably 20 or 30 times a day, and finally we had to start locking the door to keep him from getting out. He always talked about going to work, needing to go to work, and we would have to tell him he didn't work anymore.
Randy came down with it about the time we put my dad in the nursing home. There wasn't any test back in the early 80's; you pretty much just waited for symptoms. Randy started wandering off, too, going to the neighbor's house, thinking one of his friends lived there. He would get upset over the least little thing. We'd go out in public, and one of us would ask, 'Where do you want to sit at?' and he would start raising Cain: 'That's my seat.' If he lost his cigarettes or something, he'd blame it on somebody. Only thing we could do was take him back home, get him away from people and talk to him. I was pretty much the only one who could talk to him. Sometimes that wouldn't work, and we'd wind up fistfighting. I'd try to calm him down before he hurt somebody, but mainly to keep him from hurting Mama.
Andy got sick, too. Randy more or less had jerky motions, but Andy shook all the time, worse and worse. Randy never shook the way Andy did. It advanced a lot faster with him for some reason. I tried to hide it for years. I wouldn't tell nobody what was wrong with my dad, tried to keep it from my friends what was wrong with my brothers. It was kind of embarrassing to me.
When they told me I had it, it wasn't nothing I wasn't expecting. I started showing symptoms in my late 20's: memory loss, jerking, muscle spasms like in my eyebrows. I'd start shaking, and it would keep going for two or three hours, sometimes longer, sometimes all day. There are certain things you can do to hide it, like if you get your hands in your pockets or you hold on to something, people don't see you shaking. I've been doing that for a long time. I just didn't want to be treated different. Sometimes I stumbled when I walked. I lost my temper a lot; you get aggravated and get ill at somebody.
I have to live. I can't just lay down and die. The more I do for myself, the more I keep my balance and memory; that's what the doctors told me. I drive and do my own cooking and cleaning. My daughter is 12. I've got her here every other weekend. I take care of myself. Don't nobody has to do nothing for me. If I quit doing it all, they say I could advance faster. I have nightmares about it a lot, Stephen King nightmares.
Really, I went public, let all my friends know, when all this happened with my mother. The night it happened, the sheriffs knocked on the door. They told me to come outside. They opened the back of my truck and told me to sit down on the tailgate. They said something happened down there at the nursing home: my brothers had been shot. At first I didn't know what to think. I didn't know my mom had got arrested until about 2 or 3 in the morning.
The last time I saw her was earlier that day. I had went out and bought something from Kentucky Fried Chicken. She said she wasn't hungry. She told me she was going down to see my brothers. I didn't know she was upset. I can't let myself go wondering what I could have done or what I couldn't have done. I can't change things now. My mom is in jail. There's people down here all over the place saying she needs to be freed, that she's already suffered enough. I agree with that. She raised them from babies; when they got old, she had to take care of them again. I know my brothers better than anybody else, and they didn't want to suffer like that. I know they're not suffering anymore.
I'm not worried about dying, but I am worried about going into a nursing home. I've grown up going to them, and I know how miserable they can be. At the end, my brothers were technically brain dead. I don't think they died that night my mother went to the nursing home. I think they died a few years ago. Randy was 42, and Andy was 41. I'm 38. The day I can't get around and walk and fish and do other stuff, I think my life is over then. Why drag it on after that? You just hurt the people around you.
LIVES",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Wallet Scrutiny
Driving to work, I found a wallet in the road containing identification and more than $300, which I suspected was the 'bag money' of a street-corner drug dealer. I did some online research, and the guy has had legal troubles and currently owes child support. May I mail him his ID, send half the money to his ex-wife to support his child and keep the rest as a reward for my good deed?
E.B., Connecticut
You should not return ill-gotten gains to the ill-getter -- if you found bags of money stolen from a bank, you would deliver them to the bank, not the bank robber -- but why are you certain that this is what you have found? That $300 is not so magnificent a sum as to require a felonious accounting. You simply don't know the source of this money. If you have a strong suspicion that the wallet is evidence of criminal behavior, turn it in to your local police station. If not, mail it back to its owner.
In neither case can you justify keeping half the money 'as a reward for my good deed.' Returning a lost wallet is ordinary decent behavior, not a remarkable heroic exploit. In addition, a reward must be offered freely by the person wishing to bestow it; it's not something you can peremptorily grab. The technical term for that, as I, a nonlawyer, understand it, is stealing. And while this guy -- any guy -- should of course pay his child support, it is not for you to enforce that obligation through vigilante cash-snatching.
Sorry to offer so unrelenting a catalog of disapproval. On the upside, I am impressed with the acuity of your vision in spotting a wallet in the road from a moving car. My compliments to your ophthalmologist.
I work for an organization that places volunteers around the United States in nonprofits that help alleviate poverty. This organization provides us volunteers with a biweekly subsistence allowance at the poverty level of the communities we serve and encourages us to apply for food stamps.
I am a college graduate who could earn a decent living, but I choose to do this work. I could perhaps live on my allowance with strict budgeting. Is it ethical to apply for food stamps?
S.B., Chicago
It is indeed ethical to apply for food stamps. And when you do, fill out those forms honestly and comply with all eligibility requirements, which refer not to some hypothetical earning power but to your actual income. Those who designed the program could have required you to seek more profitable employment (recipients of unemployment benefits must demonstrate that they are able and available to work, for example), but they chose not to. No nurse's aide or poet (or poetical nurse's aide) is compelled to return to school for an M.B.A. And you have no obligation to set more rigorous food-stamp eligibility standards for yourself than your state has.
And beyond legalisms, there's no ethical reason that your efforts to do a bit of good for others should require you to shun a federal program to which you are entitled. Ideally, of course, those who work so altruistically would make a decent living -- or at least a living -- and not have to struggle at the subsistence level. It is sad when soldiers or anti-poverty workers are so poorly paid that they need food stamps to feed their families.
As far as I know, not a single wealthy person declined his tax cut and sent the I.R.S. extra money; similarly, you need feel no reluctance to participate lawfully in a government program meant to benefit those without wealth.
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 2-20-05: THE ETHICIST",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Neediest Cases; Love for Abandoned Boy Makes Adoption Succeed
Darryl P., standing on his top bunk bed, was doing battle on Sunday.
'I want to talk to you,' said his talking grasshopper, an interactive figure from the movie 'A Bug's Life.'
'Are you scared of grasshoppers?' the toy asked.
'I'm not scared of you!' Darryl shouted, and stuffed the grasshopper into a box.
For a sick boy who was abandoned at birth by his crack-addicted mother, Darryl, 6, is faring better than many of the 39,000 children in New York City's foster care system.
His good fortune is due partly to the dogged advocacy of the Jewish Child Care Association, an affiliate of UJA-Federation of New York, one of seven charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
The rest is due to Joanna P.
About a week before Darryl was born, Mrs. P., now 57, was sick in bed with tonsilitis and saw a late-night public service announcement on the dire need for foster parents in New York City. Mrs. P., a widow since 1975, had already raised seven children of her own. But, she said, the advertisement moved her to call the telephone number in the ad.
'I'm always saying, 'Charity starts at home,' ' she said. 'That commercial, it kind of broke me up. It touched, and I think it's been touching me ever since.'
A few weeks later, she was caring for Darryl, then just a 10-day-old infant. Another week went by before tests revealed that he had H.I.V. and a condition called ventricular septal defect, a small hole in his heart that causes him to tire easily.
'By that time I was crazy about him, so it didn't really matter,' she said.
Nonetheless, the news was difficult to accept. 'I used to cry a lot,' Mrs. P said. 'I'd never felt anything like that, wondering whether he was going to survive day to day.'
Mrs. P. credits her caseworker at the Jewish Child Care Association with helping her cope with Darryl's illness. From infancy, his medical condition required close monitoring and many hospitalizations. The caseworker coordinated his many medical appointments at a neighborhood health care center and helped Mrs. P., who is on public assistance, file the financial paperwork needed to provide for his treatment without cost to her.
The caseworker also assisted Mrs. P. by demystifying the foster care system. Just because Darryl had been placed in a loving home was no guarantee he would stay there. Over the next four years, Mrs. P. and Darryl were in and out of Family Court hearings to report on Darryl's status. When Darryl's birth mother decided to forfeit her parental rights, Mrs. P. sought to adopt him, a request that was granted in 1997.
But she could not understand how a mother could give up a child and thought that with help, the woman and Darryl might make it together, somehow. 'I had to try at least to give her a chance,' she said, referring to the birth mother.
Throughout the many months that preceded the adoption, Mrs. P. repeatedly encouraged Darryl's birth mother to get treatment for her cocaine addiction, she said. Even the judge was surprised, Mrs. P. said, when she requested a six-month extension of the birth mother's parental rights, to offer the woman one last chance 'to get herself together.'
'She's such a nice person,' Mrs. P. said. 'I tried to help her as long I could, until the judge got mad' at the birth mother and terminated her parental rights.
As for Darryl, he is still too young to understand that he is adopted or that he has the virus that causes AIDS, Mrs. P. said. She has kept his H.I.V. status a secret, even from her own family. She frequently surveys friends and relatives about their attitudes toward H.I.V. and AIDS and is troubled by what she hears.
'The way some of them talk,' she said, shaking her head in disgust. 'Stupid things, just so ignorant. I don't think I could live with anybody hurting him, because he's such a nice kid. So I just carry it.'
Mrs. P. has managed to shelter Darryl so far, but she realizes these discussions are inevitable. 'I think about it all the time,' she said. 'I guess we'll have to deal with it.'
HOW TO HELP
Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to P.O. Box 5193, General Post Office, New York, N.Y. 10087, or any of these  organizations:
BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE  285 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK  1011 First Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS  191 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201.
CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES  281 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10010.
UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK  Church Street Station, P.O. Box 4100, New York, N.Y. 10261-4100
No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
The Times pays the fund's expenses, so all contributions go directly to the charities, which use them to provide services and cash assistance to the poor.
Contributions to the fund are deductible on Federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law.
To delay may mean to forget.
Previously recorded $4,701,594.78  Recorded yesterday 304,285.86
Total $5,005,880.64",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Singer-Songwriter: Sufjan Stevens, Musician
Stevens is the kind of sensitive post-folkie who draws comparisons to Nick Drake ...; Elliott Smith and Iron and Wine, but he is not just another cookie-cutter emo-boy.'  Last year, Sufjan Stevens released 'Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lake State' -- a strange, elegiac and warmly literate concept album that made his home state seem like its own reverberating lonely planet. This wasn't Michael Moore's Michigan, or the novelist Jim Harrison's, or Eminem's, or anyone else's. Stevens, who was born in Detroit and grew up there and in Alanson, a small lumber town in northern Michigan, took listeners on a kind of plaintive dream-tour, from Flint to Sault Sainte Marie to Ypsilanti, in lyrics that tended to be about not just factories and marching bands but also personal heartbreak and desolation. The album was a declaration of a serious -- and seriously idiosyncratic -- talent.
Stevens, who sings in a confident whisper, is the kind of sensitive post-folkie who draws comparisons to performers like Nick Drake, Elliott Smith and Iron and Wine. He makes, in other words, very fine music to be bummed-out to. But Stevens -- his first name is pronounced SOOF-yan -- isn't another cookie-cutter emo-boy. His meditative, lo-fi albums are speckled with small, surreal outbursts of sophisticated musicianship. (On 'Greetings From Michigan,' which he produced, he plays more than a dozen instruments -- banjo and acoustic guitar, glockenspiel, English horn, vibraphone and sleigh bells.) His lyrics are as likely to refer to William Blake and Flannery O'Connor as to his own anomie. And in the fashion of the writer Dave Eggers, Stevens, who is 29, has gathered around himself a sprawling and ragtag community of like-minded souls, most of them self-taught musicians.
'Our band, the Michigan Militia, has sort of a rotating set of members,' Stevens told me after a recent sold-out concert at the Mercury Lounge in New York. 'Who's playing depends on where I am in the country.'
Stevens's songs may be scaled to small, intimate topics, but his ambitions are outsize: he has plans to write and record albums about the other 49 states as well. ('It's daunting,' he admitted. 'But I'm a man of my word.') In the meantime, listeners will have to make do with his preternaturally lovely new CD, 'Seven Swans' -- an album that is perhaps less quirkily grand than 'Greetings From Michigan' but more accessible and filled with hooks you can't shake out of your head. The album is dominated by Stevens's banjo playing, which has an Appalachian austerity; lyrically, it touches frequently on his own Christianity. (He's an Episcopalian.) 'My listeners are fine with that,' he said, 'because they know I'm not selling them anything or making any claims.'
Stevens is so soft-spoken that I asked him if he ever felt like letting loose with a gut-twisting Roger Daltrey-type scream. 'Do I ever,' he said. 'It's a good time for yelling. And I can be a real baby, so I'd be great at it.'
By Dwight Garner
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 9-12-04: PAGE TURNER",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Mind Reader
Q: As a professor of cognitive science at Indiana University who spends his time thinking about the process of thinking, what do you make of Descartes's famed pronouncement, 'I think, therefore I am'? Who knows what that means? It's a tiny, little aphorism. You can interpret it any way you want and say, 'What a wise man he was!'
You first became known in 1979, when you published 'GÃ
del, Escher, Bach,' a campus classic, which finds parallels between the brains of Bach, M. C. Escher and the mathematician Kurt GÃ
del. In your new book, 'I Am a Strange Loop,' you seem mainly interested in your own brain. This book is much straighter. It's less crazy. Less daring, maybe.
You really know how to plug a book. Well, O.K., I don't know. Questions of consciousness and soul -- that is what the new book was motivated by.
You write movingly about your wife, Carol, who died tragically in 1993, and suggest that her soul remains embedded in your consciousness. You can imagine a soul as being a detailed, elaborate pattern that exists very clearly in one brain. When a person dies, the original is no longer around. But there are other versions of it in other people's brains. It's a less detailed copy, it's coarse-grained.
You make it sound as if a soul can be Xeroxed. You can't duplicate someone exactly. I didn't say exactly. I said coarse-grained and approximate. Lower-resolution.
Aren't you just putting a clever gloss on the phenomenon of memory? Many people believe that our lives end not when we die but when the very last person who knew us dies. Memory is part of it, yes, but I think it's much more than memory. It's the fact that my wife and I, for example, became so intimately engaged that her essence was imported into my brain.
Why do you think you are still in mourning after all these years? She died when our children were so young. The chance to watch her children grow up was taken away from her, and that was the thing that absolutely destroyed me.
In your book, you also discuss the souls of animals and your conversion to vegetarianism. I don't feel I have the right to snuff the lives of chicken and fish.
What about mosquitoes? If a mosquito has a soul, it is mostly evil. So I don't have too many qualms about putting a mosquito out of its misery. I'm a little more respectful of ants.
Your father, Robert Hofstadter, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1961 for his efforts on behalf of neutrons and electrons. I was 16 when he won. It was a good boost for my shaky ego. I was worried about whether I was a bright person or not.
Did you feel reassured when you yourself won a prize -- the Pulitzer, in 1980, for 'Godel, Escher, Bach'? I don't like the idea of prizes, which make too much of a binary distinction between people. But in this case, the prize did me some tangible good. What I gained was academic freedom, the respect of my university.
Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence. I have no interest in computers. The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kind of depresses me.
So fix it. The next day someone will fix it back.
You don't have any interest in artificial intelligence? I've taught a course called 'Hype vs. Hope in A.I.' Why does this field inspire such nonsense? People who claim that computer programs can understand short stories, or compose great pieces of music -- I find that stuff ridiculously overblown.
What does a computer lack that a person has? It has no concepts.
I know some people who have no concepts. They do have concepts. People are filled to the brim with concepts. You don't have to know what a concept is in order to have one.
DEBORAH SOLOMON
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 4-01-07: QUESTIONS FOR DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"What They Were Thinking About Race; A Doctor's Diagnosis
Dr. Donald Little, Burlington, Iowa
We staff two emergency rooms here in Iowa, both in older, predominantly white communities. These are places where a lot of the residents remember when African-mricans weereferred to as 'colored.' I've been addressed as 'colored.' It's sort of like stepping back in time. In the emergency room, sometimes the urgency of the situation doesn't allow patients to think about race, but I've had situations where people are clearly taken aback when I introduce myself as a doctor. They're clearly uncomfortable. You see it in their body language: a certain look, a certain shift. They'll ask a lot of questions that aren't medically related: 'Are you the doctor? Is there another doctor that's going to come see me?' I attempt to allay their discomfort. But it's a little more difficult with some of the personal attacks. I've had a patient's husband say, 'That little black boy needs to go back to school.' That's not something that anyone can prepare you for.
It's hard to say if their attitude changes after I've treated them. In some situations I've felt like the barrier has broken down. I'm not under any illusion that their broader perception of race has changed, but at least their perception of me as a qualified professional has changed. That's all I'm after. That they recognize I'm able to deliver quality health care.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Cost of Hanging In There
I'm from Faribault, Minn., a town of about 15,000, and the other night I went to a football game at my old high school and a guy asked me, What do you make, $40,000, $50,000 a year playing minor-league ball? I told him it's more like $9,000 or $10,000 a year. He's like: No you don't. I had no idea. A lot of people have no idea. When you figure out the hours we work, we make less than the minimum wage.
I did sign for a bonus of around $70,000, but I spent most of it. I bought a lot of cool things: a silver Chevy Silverado, camcorder, computer. I guess I'm past the spending stage now. I got all that when I was 21, after leaving the University of Minnesota two years early. Now I look back and think I should have invested more.
The two guys I lived with my first year, I got to know them really well. They were my best friends, and the next year they were gone. Released. That was difficult. The hardest part about this level is the loneliness of it. You know in high school, how your parents came to the games and your girlfriend and friends? In pro ball, those people aren't around anymore. In Fort Myers, you look up in the stands and there's 200 to 300 people, and you don't know any of them. You're alone and you're fighting for a job that only 5 percent of the people get.
Next year is pretty critical for me. I was hurt three months this season, so I've got to stay healthy and play a full season. If I get another major injury, that's probably it. It's a cutthroat kind of deal.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Gotti Is Moved to Prison Hospital For Treatment of Infected Jaw
John Gotti, the former head of the Gambino crime family who is serving a life sentence for murder and racketeering, has been transferred to a Federal prison hospital for treatment of an infected jaw, a lawyer for Mr. Gotti said yesterday.
The lawyer, Richard A. Rehbock, said in an interview that Mr. Gotti's jaw had become infected recently after he received inadequate dental care at the maximum-security Federal penitentiary in Marion, Ill. On Tuesday, Mr. Gotti was moved to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo., Mr. Rehbock said.
Since his conviction in 1992 on Federal charges, Mr. Gotti, 56, had been held in virtual solitary confinement at the Marion prison. On most days, he is allowed to leave his cell for only one hour of exercise, and all his meals are taken to his cell.
'His dental problems have been seriously neglected and he needs more immediate attention,' Mr. Rehbock said. 'Otherwise, he is physically in great shape.' Mr. Rehbock said he expected that Mr. Gotti would be returned to the Marion prison after his treatment at the hospital.
The sudden transfer, Mr. Rehbock said, had forced Mr. Gotti's relatives to cancel a holiday visit with him yesterday and on Thursday.
A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said she was barred by confidentiality laws from commenting on the reasons for Mr. Gotti's hospitalization.
Law enforcement officials say that in October, Nicholas Corozzo replaced Mr. Gotti as the boss of the Gambino family, which is based in the New York metropolitan region. On Dec. 18, Mr. Corozzo was arrested in Florida on Federal charges of racketeering, loan sharking, arson and transfer of stolen goods. He is being held without bail pending trial.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Testing Fad Is Farce For the Disabled
FIFTEEN years ago, when Linda Mischley was looking for a public school for her severely disabled son, she moved hundreds of miles from northern Michigan to this Detroit suburb, so her Bobby could attend the Wing Lake Developmental Center.
Wing Lake serves the kind of children who, in a less civilized society, would be discarded as vegetables and hidden away in institutions. The 140 students, from the ages of 3 to 26, have I.Q.'s below 30. Ninety percent, including Mrs. Mischley's 22-year-old son, Bobby, wear diapers. Half are in wheelchairs. For the rest of their lives, they will need to be cared for by relatives or in supervised group homes. What touches Mrs. Mischley is how much love and effort the staff puts into the students, even when, as she says, they are no longer young and cute and even when they become adults in diapers.
The other day, Ray Hooton, who has taught at Wing Lake since 1976, was working with eight men in their 20's. He had each sitting at a table doing a task. They were quiet and busy. Michael was putting clothespins in a jar. Chris was trying to stick square blocks in square holes; many fell to the floor. Bobby was sorting plastic objects into six color piles.
'It's taken Bobby two years to work his way up from two to six colors,' Mr. Hooton said. 'We were just talking about adding another color or two.
'Michael's toilet skills are much improved. He's not fully trained, but we've been putting him on the toilet every two hours, and it's helped. Making progress at his age is great.'
Thanks to Wing Lake, Mrs. Mischley says, she can take Bobby to a restaurant, and he no longer grabs food off strangers' plates. 'I found a church we can go to and sit through Sunday service,' she said. 'He has learned the concept of time.'
Given the students' limitations -- most cannot even use a pencil -- it is hard to believe that the federal and state governments have instituted standardized tests for these students, but it is true. And though parents like Mrs. Mischley; teachers like Mr. Hooton (Michigan's special education teacher of the year); the Wing Lake school psychologist, Bob Mossman; the principal, Thomai Gersh; and the district special education director, Carolyn Packard, all think that this testing wastes weeks of everyone's time and generates huge amounts of useless paperwork, the federal government will soon mandate even more standardized tests for these students.
When I asked Dr. James Rowley, a physician and the parent of a 9-year-old at Wing Lake, what officials were thinking, he replied, 'I'm not sure they were thinking.'
This bureaucratic adventure began with the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act of 1997 and the altruistic-sounding goal of testing every child, no matter how disabled. The Washington brain trust gave states five years to create a test.
But how to develop one test for so many children who are so severely disabled in such different ways? You can't, really. So what Michigan came up with -- and state officials say it is a national model -- are broad test categories like 'interacting with print' and 'participating in solitary physical activities.'
It then becomes the job of the teacher, who knows the child best, to take that broad category and develop a specific test challenge for each child. So Mr. Hooton, knowing that his student Eric can walk down a hall with verbal prompts, has Eric walk down a hall, gives him verbal prompts and scores him 3, 'meets criterion.' And he knows that Paul, who is autistic and becomes distracted, can walk down a hall with physical assistance. So he has Paul walk down a hall, gives him physical assistance and scores him 3, 'meets criterion.' And he knows the best that Megan can do is sit in a wheelchair, and so Mr. Hooton wheels her down the hall and scores her 3.
It takes most of March for the teachers to administer the tests. Then they send all that paperwork to Lansing, wait a few months, and get back the exact information they sent. Participating in solitary physical activities. Eric 3, Paul 3, Megan 3.
Useless? 'I can't say I'm getting anything out of it,' Mr. Hooton said. 'Parents don't either.'
When I asked Peggy Dutcher, Michigan's director of special education testing, what the point was, she said, 'It's the first time we've ever had a statewide assessment for all special education students.'
But aren't teachers and parents just getting back information that they already know? 'Reaction has been very positive,' Ms. Dutcher said. 'People are loving this. They're thrilled.'
Those bureaucrats in their cocoons. People at Wing Lake did not sound thrilled to me. Ms. Gersh, the principal said: 'We all just roll our eyes. Special ed is already so laden with paperwork, and now this.'
Alice Johnson, a teacher, said, 'We find out nothing that we didn't already know.'
Joe Yankee, another teacher said, 'We're not testing much of anything.'
And Ms. Packard, the district coordinator said, 'We have not found any good information from this.'
The saddest part? For 30 years, there has been a superb, federally mandated assessment program for severely disabled students known as the Individualized Education Program, or I.E.P. Each year, Wing Lake teachers write seven-page narratives that are shared with parents, describing each student's abilities and goals.
The I.E.P. is far more comprehensive than anything a mainstream student receives. For a 12-year-old girl, for example, Ms. Johnson described how the child used 'Beatles' as a generic word for music and could almost dress herself, 'positioning the heel of the sock in its appropriate location and determining the top and bottom of the pants without confusion.'
The I.E.P. is updated quarterly for parents.
So why the state tests? As veteran Wing Lake teachers know, they are the educational fad of the moment. And they will grow worse. Ms. Dutcher, the state official, pointed out that under the new No Child Left Behind Act, by 2005 all states have to develop math, reading and science tests for the severely retarded.
ON EDUCATION",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Heirlooms, Yes, but Without the Looming Heirs
EIGHT years ago, when Barbara and John Mich decided to move from their 10-room house to an apartment half the size in Canton, Mass., they asked their six adult children to take many of the possessions they had accumulated over the years.
The children came home to choose among those belongings -- like a grandmother's red marble table, a great-grandparent's china set and even a small ceramic Christmas tree that the family decorated each year with gumdrops. In many cases, the items may have had more sentimental than financial value.
Mrs. Mich, 73, says she and her husband intend to give away more things over the next few years and to leave a list of the rest as part of their estate. Several of her children have already expressed interest in particular items. 'I think that if they want something and it means something to them, they should have it,' she said.
In many other families, dividing the furniture, dishes, and assorted tchotchkes of a loved one doesn't go this smoothly. Parents usually leave it to their heirs to divide personal property after their deaths, giving their already overwrought children the challenge of splitting grandfather's beloved watch three ways. Instead, say people with experience in estate planning or division, the best way to avoid hurt feelings, lifelong rifts and even lawsuits is to include the children ahead of time, as the Miches did.
'Personal effects are so freighted with emotional issues that the real battle is waged over who gets the photograph albums rather than the $30 million,' said Jon Gallo, an estate planning lawyer in Los Angeles who, with his wife, Eileen, a psychotherapist, conducts seminars on the emotional issues tied to family wealth.
Family squabbles over belongings are nothing new, of course. But the questions are becoming more complex as the structures of many families change: How do you ensure that your stepchildren receive something special? If you remarry later in life, should Grandmother's crystal go to your new spouse or to your adult daughter?
Though the subject can be touchy, experts say, parents and adult children should talk about the transfer of personal property and make some distribution decisions well before problems escalate.
'It's absolutely acceptable for the parents to say, 'We have a lot of stuff here, and at some point, it's going to be yours, so let's talk about this now,'' said Linda Hetzer, co-author, with Janet Hulstrand, of 'Moving On: A Practical Guide to Downsizing the Family Home' (Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2004). They wrote the book after helping their fathers move to smaller homes, and after talking with many families. If parents don't raise the subject, Ms. Hetzer said, grown children should dismiss any concerns about appearing greedy and broach the issue themselves.
The discussions can go a long way toward averting misunderstandings, experts say. While some parents make no provision in their wills for personal possessions, others bequeath certain items without stating the reasons for their decisions. Either way, childhood conflicts can resurface.
'It may play out as, 'They knew I wanted this and they gave it to my sibling, and this proves Mom loved you best,'' said Marlene S. Stum, associate professor of family economics at the University of Minnesota. 'It helps to explain to your children why you decided to give a gift to a caregiver or reward a child who helped out financially.'
In 1999, the university extension service released 'Who Gets Grandma's Yellow Pie Plate' (www.yellowpieplate.umn.edu), a workbook and video intended to help families make decisions on passing on personal property; Dr. Stum was the lead researcher and author for the project.
Because each family is different, no single system works for everyone. Some families agree that all members should get the same treatment -- to the point that each child receives the same dollar value of appraised items. But others may decide, for example, to give a little extra to the daughter who helped her parents the most, or to a nephew who is struggling financially.
Once the subject is raised, a good way for parents to start is to ask the children if there are particular items they want. If a family is lucky, the wish lists won't overlap. Another popular method of distribution is a round robin in which family members take turns choosing objects.
In one family, Ms. Hulstrand recalled, all the adult children placed colored stickers on items they wanted, and the parents kept track in a notebook. When an item had more than one sticker, the children worked it out. 'If someone thought one person was claiming too much, they could look in the notebook and see what was fair,' Ms. Hulstrand said.
Parents can appraise items of financial value and separate them from those of purely sentimental worth; then the children make requests from one list at a time. That way, the silver service doesn't end up on the same list as the turkey-shaped salt shaker. It may be best for the parents to leave children's spouses or the grandchildren out of the decision making, even if parents eventually set aside special gifts for them.
Parents may be surprised by some of the choices. 'They see their assumptions were off base,' Dr. Stum said. 'You may think Janey will love your thimble collection, but Janey may not care at all, and parents usually want possessions to go to someone who really values them.'
A discussion also allows parents to share the history behind certain objects. 'The stories can make the things very special, and sometimes the stories are more important than the items,' Ms. Hulstrand said. Often, parents use such occasions to offer gifts early; the good dishes, for instance, might go to the child who has taken over the holiday dinners.
Colleen Barney, an estate lawyer in Irvine, Calif., said parents should make a list of who is getting what, then make sure the will refers to it. By keeping the list separate from the will, parents have the flexibility to change their minds without having to rewrite the will each time.
If you want to make gifts to people outside the immediate family -- friends, nieces or stepchildren -- make sure they are listed, said Ms. Barney, the co-author, with Victoria Collins, of 'Best Intentions: Ensuring Your Estate Plan Delivers Both Wealth and Wisdom' (Dearborn Trade, 2002). If you remarry and want to leave certain belongings to your children, she said, write it down.
Such early decision making can be a big relief for children. A woman from Fairfield County, Conn., who asked that her name not be used, said that every time her mother bought a piece of jewelry, she would decide whether it would go to her or to her sister -- and would then record the choice on a list with two columns.
When her mother died a decade ago, the two sisters divided the items accordingly. The list removed a burden at an already difficult time.
'We didn't have to deal with choosing,' the woman said. 'She always tried to make things easy for her children.'
QUICK READ  Here are considerations for dividing personal property in an estate:
UNDERSTAND family members' attachments to certain possessions. Take your time, and encourage other family members to talk openly.
DECIDE what is fair. Should everyone be treated equally, regardless of their contribution, need or marital status?
SEPARATE financially valuable items from sentimentally valuable ones. If you and others want some of the same things, take turns choosing from each list.
BE practical. Give the piano, for example, to a grandchild who likes music.
DON'T make decisions immediately after a funeral. Let emotions settle.
SUNDAY MONEY: PLANNING",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"At Dawn of New Politics, Challenges for Both Parties
The Democrats came out of the political wilderness on Tuesday. The Republicans entered it.
The Democrats set aside all the self-doubts, the years of feeling on the wrong side of history, the election nights when the proud party of Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy seemed consigned to a painful irrelevance.
Ahead is the challenge of governing, and the clear accountability that comes with controlling both Congress and the White House. No more political cover for the Democrats, no more room for fingerpointing between Capitol Hill and the White House, no more excuses.
But the Republicans face the hard, brutal struggle of deciding who they are, resolving the tensions between moderates, conservatives, evangelical Christians, country-clubbers, supply-siders, suburbanites -- all the disparate elements held together by Ronald Reagan that collapsed under President Bush. Perot Over the Shoulder
The task of both parties will be complicated by Ross Perot, who served notice this week that he has no intention of fading away.
He certainly didn't fade in the voting on Tuesday. While he did not win a state, as George Wallace did when he captured five in 1968, Mr. Perot polled 19 percent of the popular vote nationwide, compared with Mr. Wallace's 13.5 percent.  And while that showing was certainly stoked with Mr. Perot's money, people in both parties worried that it was also fueled by a disaffection with the parties themselves.
But Democrats were not much given to worries this week. It would be hard to exaggerate their euphoria, especially the generation in its 30's and 40's that spent its adulthood out of power, told again and again that it was ""out of the mainstream.""
""It was like having been a member of a religious minority in a country with a state religion,"" said David Dreyer, communications director for Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, the House majority leader. Rethinking a 'Lock'
Ronald H. Brown, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, gleefully announced that the Republican ""electoral lock"" on the White House was ""broken forever."" Allowing for overstatement, the Republicans' aura of invinicibility -- which was very real in the 1980's -- was certainly gone.
Mr. Clinton carried the popular vote in the East, the Midwest and the West, and fought Mr. Bush to a standstill in the popular vote in the South, the region that was the basis of the Republican ""electoral lock."" He held the party's base, bought home many of the Reagan Democrats and struck deep into the suburbs and the ranks of independents and moderates.
Centrist Democrats viewed the Clinton candidacy as a vindication of their long struggle to push the party to the center, to broaden its base and reconnect with the middle class, to shatter the view that the party was a mere collection of liberal constituent groups. But the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a principal spokesman for the party's left, asserted yesterday that Mr. Clinton's victory was largely a result of broader forces: a bad economy, the votes of blacks energized by black candidacies this year and the mobilization of women by what he calls ""the Anita Hill factor."" Understanding the Stakes
Those tensions will remain in the party, and will become more than debating points when Mr. Clinton takes office and begins to make policy on trade, welfare, education, jobs and taxes. Some Republicans took a little quiet pleasure yesterday in predicting the ideological tugs and pulls of a Clinton Presidency, particularly as they will play out in the Administration's relations with Congress.
But Stan Greenberg, Mr. Clinton's poll taker and a principal strategist for his campaign, said both Congressional Democrats and Mr. Clinton understood the stakes and the responsibilities of one-party government.
""Congressional Democrats understand they're on the line, and the Clinton Administration will understand it. There has to be movement,"" Mr. Greenberg said.
Hanging over both is the memory of the last Democratic Administration, when relations between President Jimmy Carter and the Democratic-controlled Congress were hardly a model of partisan cooperation, for which both paid a price. Clouds Over Republicans
Republicans, for their part, face a much more fundamental task, as any Democrat who tried to pick up the pieces after 1980, 1984 and 1988 will attest. Their long hegemony in Presidential politics is over, and it did not leave the lasting gains in Congress or below that many Republicans had hoped for. Their political professionals seem sapped by the long, enervating campaign of Mr. Bush, and the exit polls carried chilling news, notably the strength of Mr. Clinton among the young.
The faultlines in the party are clear, beginning with the social agenda of the religious right, including abortion. And ahead lies the challenge of finding a new governing conservatism that can regain the loyalties of voters who seem to demand a new domestic agenda and who simply seemed to lose faith with the Republicans on the economy, as they lost faith with the Democrats 12 years ago. All of this will play out in the early jockeying for 1996. Appeal to Perot
Many Republicans are expecting a fight as the party enters its wilderness sojourn. ""The first verbal assault will come from the right, which will argue that if the Republicans were just purer, they'd be in no trouble,"" said Representative Jim Leach, a moderate Iowa Republican. ""The second assessment, from the more mainstream and the public at large, will be that the party has become too co-opted by narrow groups.""
Mr. Leach added, ""I personally think a great challenge for the party will be to establish a sense of tolerance.""
The battle for control of the party could begin this winter, around the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee.
In the midst of all this is the Perot factor.
If the exit polls showed anything on Tuesday, they showed that Mr. Perot is a force to be reckoned with by both parties; he drew roughly equally from both.
Mr. Clinton clearly recognizes that, making a gesture of outreach Tuesday night to the Perot supporters on the issue of government reform and ""reducing the influence of the special interest,"" one of Mr. Perot's favorite themes. ""I will work with him to do that,"" Mr. Clinton said.
The major parties have long adapted to -- and co-opted -- third forces in politics, many analysts note. But not many third forces have behind them the Perot fortune, which this year proved to give Mr. Perot's movement considerable staying power.
Kevin Phillips, the conservative analyst, suggests that Perot backers could become major players in the struggle for control of Republican parties in some states.
It is all part of the mix of the politics to come.  THE 1992 ELECTIONS: THE WORLD -- NEWS ANALYSIS",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Plea Deal Is Sought for Ex-Doctor Accused of Hiding Dark Past
The lawyer for a former doctor accused of lying about his criminal record to get a job at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Northport said today that she was trying to negotiate a plea deal and did not expect the trial to begin on Monday as scheduled.
The lawyer, Randi Chavis, represents Michael Swango, who went to prison in the 1980's for poisoning co-workers in Illinois and who now faces Federal charges of fraudulently obtaining a residency in psychiatry at the veterans hospital.
Mr. Swango faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted of all the charges, which also include illegally prescribing narcotics to patients. No patients were harmed by the prescription medications, law enforcement officials said.
Ms. Chavis said today that she was trying to negotiate a deal with Federal prosecutors that would substantially reduce any time in prison Mr. Swango might have to serve.
Cecilia Gardner, who is prosecuting the case, declined to comment. The case is scheduled for 9:30 A.M. Monday before Judge Jacob Mishler of the Federal District Court in Uniondale.
According to prosecutors, Mr. Swango, using an alias, enrolled as an intern in psychiatry at the University Medical Center at Stony Brook in July 1993 and was assigned to the veterans hospital. He was expelled from the program on Oct. 13 of that year when officials of the medical center learned of his criminal record.
He left this area, but was arrested last summer at O'Hare Airport in Chicago as he was about to leave for  Saudi Arabia to work as a physician. Since his arrest, he has been held without bail at the Federal Detention Center in Brooklyn.
Mr. Swango, a 1983 graduate of the medical school at Southern Illinois University, was convicted in 1985 of putting ant poison containing arsenic in the doughnuts and coffee of co-workers while working as a paramedic in Quincy, Ill. Five people fell ill as a result. He served two years of a five-year prison term for aggravated battery. The judge in the case speculated that Mr. Swango did not intend to kill his co-workers, but wanted to observe their reactions to the poison.
While in prison, Mr. Swango came under investigation in connection with the deaths of several patients during his internship at Ohio State University's College of Medicine in Columbus, where he worked from July 1983 to June 1984. Ohio authorities later concluded that they had circumstantial evidence to link him to the deaths, but not enough to bring criminal charges.
In 1992, Mr. Swango was admitted to the University of South Dakota's residency program, but was dismissed within months after admissions officials found he had lied about his criminal record. While enrolled in the residency program, Mr. Swango treated patients at three hospitals, with no record of complaints.
When officials in South Dakota learned that Mr. Swango had obtained a position at Stony Brook's medical school, they contacted its dean, Dr. Jordan J. Cohen, and told him of Mr. Swango's past.
Dr. Cohen dismissed Mr. Swango and subsequently accepted the resignation of Dr. Alan Miller as director of the residency program for Stony Brook's department of psychiatry. Dr. Cohen said Dr. Miller had failed to verify statements Mr. Swango  made in his application.
'He's a charming, pathological liar,' Dr. Cohen said of Mr. Swango in an interview with The New York Times in 1993. 'We should have been more alert.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Surgeon Treated Wrong Side Of Two Brains, Albany Says
The New York State Health Department cited Staten Island University Hospital yesterday for 40 violations and fined the hospital $80,000 for failing to monitor and discipline its chief of neurosurgery, who the state said had operated on the wrong side of a patient's brain for the second time in five years.
The state's action was the harshest penalty and stiffest fine it had imposed on a hospital in 15 years.
In January, the neurosurgeon, Dr. Ehud Arbit, bungled a cranial procedure on a severely ill Staten Island patient who then died, Health Commissioner Antonia C. Novello said at a news conference yesterday. The doctor has surrendered his license.  He was fired from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital in 1995 for operating on the wrong side of a patient's brain after confusing two patients.
While the state investigation did not conclude that Dr. Arbit's surgery caused the death of the Staten Island  patient, it said that one other patient of his had died after a questionable procedure, and that others had become disabled. In several instances, the state said, the hospital did not report any of the medical errors, as it is required to do, and violated several provisions of New York's health laws.
In addition to the fine, which the state said could not be appealed, Dr. Novello ordered the Staten Island hospital to hire an outside consultant to monitor quality of care there.
The hospital issued a statement yesterday, in which it said it had cooperated with state investigators and would work to improve its monitoring system, in neurosurgery and throughout the hospital. It said it was preparing a line-by-line response to the state's findings.
Dr. Arbit's lawyer, Anthony Scher, said last night: 'There was an investigation into this issue and it is absolutely clear that he did not operate on the wrong side of the brain. I have not seen the state report, but it seems to me that they also understand that that is not the case.'
Several of Dr. Arbit's colleagues said in interviews that he had been unfairly maligned by other hospital workers as a result of political battles within the hospital.
The state began its investigation after receiving several complaints. It issued its findings yesterday in a strongly worded 23-page report outlining many allegations, all stemming from surgical procedures performed by Dr. Arbit.
Investigators found that Dr. Arbit and the hospital failed to prepare for surgery properly. The state also cited the hospital for its decision to allow physicians' assistants to take  critical roles during surgery, performing duties that the state said  should have been done by doctors. In one case, the state said, Dr. Arbit sought the medical advice of a salesman for spinal plates during an operation that was going badly. (The salesman, who was observing the surgery, declined to answer.)
Dr. Novello's investigators also outlined gruesome details of what it said were botched surgeries. In the case involving surgery on the wrong side of the brain, state investigators found that a 54-year-old patient, with  illnesses including brain and lung tumors, liver disease, diabetes and  pancreatitis, went into the operating room but his CAT scans were not brought in with him, and that Dr. Arbit made an incision on the left cerebellum, only to be told by a physician's assistant that she recalled that the tumor was on the right side.
Dr. Arbit told state health investigators that he had intended all along to remove the entire back of the skull, and that the side of the placement of the first incision did not matter. He asserted that he followed acceptable neurosurgical standards, the report said.
The patient, identified by those familiar with the case as Johnnie Artis, a security supervisor from Staten Island, fell into a coma and died on Feb. 2.
Aside from that case, the most serious allegation in the state's report involved treatment of a 21-year-old patient with a brain tumor who was left to bleed excessively, the state said. The doctor switched from performing a biopsy to brain surgery, catching other staff members  off guard and ill prepared.
Because the anesthesiologist had not anticipated more than a biopsy,  he had not prepared to replace large quantities of blood, the report said. A second surgical procedure was necessary to stop the bleeding, and,  'The patient was unresponsive after surgery and died several weeks later,' the report said.
Another case involved a patient requiring spinal surgery. An anesthesiologist and a physician's assistant told Health Department investigators that Dr. Arbit's hand slipped and lacerated the patient's spinal cord, leaving her partly paralyzed, the report said.
In another instance, the doctor and his staff failed to perform proper follow-up blood work on a 62-year-old patient, placing her at risk when she underwent additional surgery, the state found.
In the case involving the equipment salesman, a patient complained of weakness in her hands after an operation. A CAT scan revealed loose screws on a plate that had been implanted in the patient's spine along the back of the neck, the state noted. Dr. Arbit failed to replace the screws properly, the state said, at one point asking the salesman whether he thought the plate was positioned correctly.
These medical errors so disturbed the hospital's chief neurosurgery anesthesiologist that he refused to work with Dr. Arbit and complained to hospital officials, who declined to take action, the state said.
The state rebuked the hospital for failing to report these incidents and for failing to deal with them properly in internal reviews.
'Our investigation found an alarmingly high number of deficiencies in the hospital's controls and procedures that need to be in place to ensure patients receive proper care,' Commissioner Novello said. 'Worse yet,' she added, the hospital failed to notify the state of any worrisome cases, nor did it move to discipline the doctor or properly investigate the cases when alerted of them.'
In its statement, Staten Island University Hospital officials said they would begin instituting new monitoring procedures to ensure patient safety and quality of care within the next few days. But the hospital cautioned that the state's Office Of Professional Medical Conduct, which  disciplines doctors, had yet to complete interviews with everyone involved or to finish its investigation of Dr. Arbit.
Dr. Novello's announcement of stiff fines and a slew of health violations yesterday underscored her decision to make the disciplining of doctors and the monitoring of care at hospitals a hallmark of her tenure, which began in June. New York State has only twice suspended doctor's licenses before an investigation is complete, both times in the last few months.
Dr. Arbit surrendered his license on Feb. 18. The other doctor who surrendered his license while being investigated was Dr. Allan Zarkin, who admitted to carving his initials into the belly of a patient on whom he had performed a Caesarean section last fall.
Dr. Novello's tough stance comes as President Clinton is pressing states to adopt strict regulations for reporting medical errors, after a recent report that found that medical errors kill hundreds of thousands of people each year.
'I want to be perfectly clear,' Dr. Novello said yesterday. 'When and if the Department of Health finds that a hospital is not operating up to high standards, we will move swiftly and decisively.'
The state began its investigation into Staten Island University Hospital on Feb. 9, when it received complaints that Dr. Arbit had operated on the wrong side of Mr. Artis's brain. When state investigators called the hospital, Dr. Novello said, its administrators told them 'it was a rumor,' she said.
The state made an unannounced visit to the hospital the next day, during which several hospital staff members volunteered information about the surgeries, Dr. Novello said. A week later, investigators returned and found corroborating evidence, she said. Last Friday, the state concluded its 'intensive investigation' into the hospital, the commissioner said, concluding that 'serious quality problems' existed.
Dr. Arbit was chief of neurosurgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center when he mistakenly operated on the healthy right side of the brain of Rajeswari Ayyappan, 59,  the mother of an Indian movie star, Sridevi Ayyappan. A cancerous tumor had been found on the left side of her brain.
After the error was discovered, the patient, who had gone to the hospital with a very poor prognosis, had the tumor removed at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. She later died in India, and Dr. Arbit was fired from Sloan-Kettering. The state gave him one year's probation in that case. But he quickly found work at Staten Island University Hospital, which has been trying hard to raise its reputation from a community hospital to a world-class cancer center.
Hiring Dr. Arbit was part of that grand plan, several doctors at the hospital said. Before the incident at Sloan-Kettering, Dr. Arbit had a polished reputation in his field as the author of textbooks and an authority on neurosurgery.
He is known for taking on last-resort patients in a field that has few happy stories, and for caring for the poorest of the poor as well as the wealthy, More than a dozen patients have telephoned to express support for Dr. Arbit.
The last time a hospital was fined so much money was in 1986, when Harlem Hospital faced a $125,000 fine for allowing an unlicensed physician to perform a routine operation in which complications developed that led to the amputation of a patient's leg. The State Health Department eventually suspended $86,000 of the penalty.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"CHRONICLE
The funk musician GEORGE CLINTON and his family have been ordered to leave their 200-acre Michigan farm in a dispute over unpaid rent, The Associated Press reported.
Mr. Clinton, who bills himself as 'Dr. Funkenstein' and wears multicolored dreadlocks and moonwalk boots in performances with his P-Funk All-Stars band, has lived on the farm in Adrian, 90 miles southwest of Detroit, since 1980.
The property's owner, the music executive Armen Boladian, was charging $8,500 a month for the land. Mr. Clinton said he believed that Mr. Boladian was paying his rent to make up for $15 million in song royalties Mr. Boladian owed him.
NADINE BROZAN
CHRONICLE",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Minnesota's Ventura Tries to Lure Weicker Into the Presidential Race
Five winters ago, Lowell P. Weicker Jr. moved out of the Connecticut governor's mansion, apparently ending a 30-year career as one of the nation's best-known political mavericks. At 6 foot 6 and with a voice to match, he had tormented the Republican Party from within as a United States Senator, then led Connecticut as that uncommon American political animal, an independent.
After leaving Hartford, he settled into life as the lord of Applejack Farm, a former orchard in this town of private drives and tradesmen's entrances, taking plenty of time away for tennis, bird-watching and scuba diving with his seven sons and seven grandchildren. But he never lost his taste for the game that had been his life. He flirted with running for President as an independent in 1996, drawing national headlines, then backed away.
Now, strategists for Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota are trying to entice Mr. Weicker to offer himself as a Reform Party nominee for President. And Mr. Weicker, 68, sounds very much like a man who is willing to be enticed. In a conference call last week, he gave two of Governor Ventura's top aides permission to promote his candidacy as they prepared for a Reform Party national convention later this month.
The result could be an entertaining clash of egos in a Presidential race that had begun to look like it might be short on surprises. Ross Perot, the Reform Party's nominee in 1992 and 1996, has remained coy about his own plans for 2000. His support dropped from 19 percent of the vote in his first election to 8 percent last time.
So Governor Ventura, the former professional wrestler whose upset victory as a Reform Party candidate last November gave new hope to independents everywhere, has argued that the party needs new leaders if it is to grow. Working a second front, Mr. Ventura has endorsed a veteran of the term limits movement to replace the current party chairman, Russell J. Verney, a longtime lieutenant of Mr. Perot.
Mr. Weicker's prospects within the Reform Party may depend on the ferocious internal battle that leaders expect at the party's convention, to be held in Dearborn, Mich., from July 23 to 25. As part of his mission, Governor Ventura encouraged Mr. Weicker to run for President during a meeting in Manhattan last month, according to aides to both men. The meeting had been scheduled for half an hour and stretched to more than three, participants said.
'Would I like to run?' Mr. Weicker asked last week as he relaxed on his sun porch in a wrinkled French-cuff shirt with no cuff links. 'Yes, sure -- it's been my business, and I still think I'm pretty good at the business.'
Unprompted, he began reciting the pros and cons. 'Do I care about the fact that you might get your head handed to you?' he asked. 'Doesn't bother me -- never has. The opportunity to set a national dialogue on important subjects -- that's hugely appealing. I'm not afraid of handling myself, not afraid of the crunch -- not afraid of the campaign. What's the other side of the coin? I'm enjoying my family and enjoying a life style that I haven't had in my whole adult life.'
Family may not prove much of a hurdle. Mr. Weicker's 21-year-old son, Sonny, teased his father, 'Dad, you're running again.' Mr. Weicker cautioned, 'We don't know that, son.'
His wife, Claudia T. Weicker, 52, a former Democratic aide on Capitol Hill, said she was trying not to think about it, but seemed ready. 'Is there a void?' she asked. 'Yes, there's a void. There need to be people spending more time advocating the cause of our children and of our minorities.'
Several Reform Party officials said that although Governor Ventura has said he does not plan to run for President next year, he wants the Reform Party to field a credible candidate who will attract at least 5 percent of the vote, preserving the party's Federal financing and ballot status so he can run in 2004.
But the main motive for boosting Mr. Weicker, according to Douglas E. Friedline, who was Governor Ventura's campaign manager and now handles his licensing deals, is to give the Reform Party a face besides that of Mr. Perot. 'Perot got us where we are, but now he's a liability,' Mr. Friedline said. 'Governor Ventura feels we need new leadership if we're going to grow.'
Supporters of Mr. Weicker contend that an independent should have broad appeal this year -- partly because of what they believe will be a backlash against the ravenous fund-raising by Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, the leading Republican candidate, and partly because of disgust with the behavior by President Clinton that led to his impeachment in December.
Mr. Weicker, who endorsed Mr. Clinton in both his Presidential races, said he favored conviction on the articles of impeachment because the President apparently had lied in a legal proceeding.
'Right now, the country has to rebuild its faith in the Presidency,' Mr. Weicker said.
Dean M. Barkley, who was chairman of Governor Ventura's campaign last year and remains a close adviser, said Mr. Weicker would be the most promising candidate short of Colin L. Powell, the retired general, who said through a spokesman that he still had no plans to seek any national office.
'Lowell Weicker shares with Governor Ventura the ability to speak from the heart and to show people that he understands their disgust with the political establishment,' Mr. Barkley said, adding that he hoped Mr. Weicker would 'run against the political process itself.'
Based on the vote Mr. Perot received as the Reform Party's Presidential nominee in 1996, the party qualifies for $13 million in Federal funds for the general election, and can automatically be on the ballot in at least 19 states. Political analysts said that a Reform Party candidate could throw the outcome of the Presidential race in almost any state into doubt by attracting at least 10 percent of the vote.
Governor Ventura sent an E-mail message to the roughly 400 delegates last week endorsing a retired financial consultant, Jack Gargan, 68, for chairman to replace Mr. Verney. Mr. Gargan announced that one of his first steps would be to move the party headquarters from Dallas to his home state, Florida, which was seen as a signal that Governor Ventura was trying to take control of the party from Mr. Perot's forces.
Mr. Verney, the current chairman, said he has not decided whether to run again. Mr. Perot was traveling and could not be reached for comment, his spokesman said.
Reform Party leaders said that aside from Governor Ventura, General Powell and Mr. Weicker, the party's wish list for Presidential candidates is short. The only other names that came up during more than a dozen interviews were former Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, who now is seeking the Democratic nomination, and B. Thomas Golisano, the Independence Party candidate for governor of New York in the past two elections.
Mr. Weicker is already encountering some static within the Reform Party, in part because he has never been associated with the movement. Some members are trading E-mail  sniping at Mr. Weicker as being too establishment for their taste.
That notion might surprise those who remember him as the 'Watergate white knight,' who conducted his own investigation into wrongdoing by President Nixon, a fellow Republican.
After leaving public life, Mr. Weicker served for three years as a visiting professor at the University of Virginia, his law alma mater. He serves on six corporate boards and heads a study of possible links between environmental conditions and health problems, including asthma.
Mr. Weicker, who swims at 6:30 each morning at the Y.W.C.A. in Greenwich, said he wants to insure a centrist, independent option for voters. In his comments, a supporter might -- just might -- hear the early rumblings of a stump speech.
'The only way you're going to shape up American politics is by a third force, nationally,' he said. 'Politics -- the intellectual business -- is no different than the economic business. When you have an economic monopoly, you get high prices and bad products. You've got an intellectual monopoly in this country, and you've got bad ideas and bad candidates.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Neediest Cases; Seeking Tranquillity as the Last Hope
Allim Khan emigrated from British Guyana in 1975 and worked furiously, as a factory worker, a taxi driver and a real estate entrepreneur. By 1992, he finally had the money to buy an elegant home for himself, his pregnant wife and their first child, a son.
'It was an immaculate house,' said Mr. Khan, 41. 'A duplex with a winding staircase, and three bedrooms upstairs. It was an English Tudor. It was the real McCoy.'
But Mr. Khan was not able to enjoy his achievements: Just months after moving into the house, in Fresh Meadows, Queens, he began to suffer delusions. Mental illness claimed his day-to-day existence, and finally, he succumbed. He spent the next six years in and out of psychiatric wards around New York City.
Now he lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens, and he is thankful to have even that. Last year, Mr. Khan had a nervous breakdown and stopped paying his rent. He was hospitalized for several weeks, and when he was released, he returned home and found an eviction notice.
Social service workers at his hospital reached out to charitable groups. The Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, one of seven charities supported by the Neediest Cases Fund, paid $561 of his back rent, which enabled him to keep his home.
'Here was a man who had everything and lost everything, and we did what we could to help him hang on to one little piece of his world,' said Judy Milone, director of client services at the federation.
Mr. Khan now receives disability payments, so he is able to pay his rent. On a recent afternoon, he sat on his couch and remembered how it had all gone wrong. As he spoke, dressed in blue jeans and a tank top and with bare feet, his eyes occasionally roamed to the dusty suits and ties that hung in his closet.
His recollections are jumbled, but he knows how paranoid he became.
At first he thought that other drivers on the road were staring at him. He also feared that his phone was tapped, and that characters from his television set were going to leap out and kill him.
Mr. Khan had ample savings, but he had no insurance, and as he drifted in and out of mental hospitals, his nest egg dwindled to nothing.
Unwelcome at home, he slept wherever he could for a few nights at a time. Eventually, Mr. Khan said, his wife left him and took the children with her.
'That's what hurts the most,' he said, as tears appeared in the corners of his eyes.
Moments later, he opened a photo album. In one picture, he stands with his wife beside a three-tier wedding cake. In another, their sons lean against the family station wagon during a vacation at Lake George.
Mr. Khan has little more than memories to keep him going now. He is bored at home and wants to work, but his doctors have warned him that his delicate mental condition, high blood pressure and angina would all be aggravated by additional stress.
So Mr. Khan takes his medication for all those conditions, and he prays five times a day. Instead of the old Elvis Presley records he used to love, he plays religious tapes to soothe himself.
When asked what he prays for, Mr. Khan answered simply. 'I pray that I never lose my mind again.'
HOW TO HELP
Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to P.O. Box 5193, General Post Office, New York, N.Y. 10087, or any of these  organizations:
BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE  285 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK  1011 First Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS  191 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201.
CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES  281 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10010.
UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK  Church Street Station, P.O. Box 4100, New York, N.Y. 10261-4100
No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
The Times pays the fund's expenses, so all contributions go directly to the charities, which use them to provide services and cash assistance to the poor.
Contributions to the fund are deductible on Federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law.
To delay may mean to forget.
Previously recorded $2,059,728.86  Recorded yesterday 92,329.20
Total $2,152,058.06",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"ON SECOND THOUGHT
Investors seeking advice on how to extend their losses may want to call the Sigma Financial Corporation, a brokerage firm in Ann Arbor, Mich.
Regulators punished Sigma and its president, Jerome Rydell, last week for waging a long campaign of legal harassment against a retired couple, Jimmy L. Shawver and Evella J. Shawver. Ever since the couple, former clients, won a $318,096 arbitration award against the firm in 2001, Sigma has been suing them to get the money back, the NASD said.
Though judges deemed its claims frivolous, Sigma took its case all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court. The NASD finally persuaded Sigma to stop, pay a $135,000 fine and reimburse $110,000 that the Shawvers had spent defending themselves. Sigma's bill is now $564,596 plus its own legal costs.
'The firm's culture is to remain on the right side of the rules,' Mr. Rydell said, 'and in this instance we had inadvertently fallen short of our own high standards and the governing rules.'
Barry Goldsmith, the NASD's chief of enforcement, said, 'Cases like this sort of stick in our craw.'
Patrick McGeehan
OPENERS: SUITS",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Ohio University Tries To Get Past Problems, But New Ones Emerge
When the fall quarter began at Ohio University here, university officials hoped to put the troubles of last year behind them. Those troubles included accusations that more than 20 mechanical engineering students, some of whom had graduated nearly 20 years ago, had plagiarized their theses; a series of computer security breaches; faculty layoffs; and a no-confidence vote in the university's president, Roderick J. McDavis.
'It's unfortunate that all these problems happened at the same time,' Dr. McDavis said in a recent interview. 'But now our university is presented with great opportunities for positive change.'
But it seems that as soon as Dr. McDavis reacts to one scandal, a new one emerges. Last week, as university officials prepared for tomorrow's 'Day of Discourse' to address ways to prevent plagiarism, new accusations were made in the student newspaper against its business school.
In an article, a marketing professor, Ashok K. Gupta, accused the university's M.B.A. program that it offers at Christ College in Bangalore, India, of selling degrees for cash. Mr. Gupta later accused the dean of the university's college of business of using a philanthropic endowment as a slush fund to reward his friends with $500,000 in improper pay.
The dean, Glenn E. Corlett, called Mr. Gupta's contentions 'frivolous and ridiculous.' Still, Mr. Gupta's accusations will most likely start another round of internal investigations, Mr. Corlett said.
Ohio University is a public institution of 16,700 students in southeast Ohio. This year, U.S. News & World Report ranked the university No. 110 on its list of the top 124 universities in America.
So far, the scandals have not hurt the university's ability to raise money. This spring the journalism department received a $15 million donation from the Scripps Howard Foundation, the largest cash gift in the university's more than 200-year history. A new $60 million university center will open in January.
But outsiders are astonished by the cascade of problems. 'It certainly has raised a lot of eyebrows,' said John H. Skillings, vice provost for academic affairs at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. 'Around the country there are lots of people wondering what's going on at Ohio University.'
The first hint of trouble came in May 2005, when the student newspaper, The Post, published an article in which a graduate student, Tom Matrka, accused more than 20 mechanical engineering students of copying without attribution lengthy sections of their masters' theses from previous theses.
Doing research in the university's library, Mr. Matrka said he eventually found more than 30 papers containing what he believed was plagiarized material. Some students had copied as many as 12 pages straight, he said, and others had copied sections including typos and misspellings.
For more than a year, Mr. Matrka said in a recent interview, university officials did not address his calls for action.
Dennis Irwin, the dean of Ohio University's Russ College of Engineering and Technology, agreed that official response was slow. But he explained that was partly because some of those suspected of plagiarism had graduated as long ago as 1986, and the university's plagiarism policies applied only to matriculating students, not alumni.
The university has created a faculty committee to investigate each accusation starting next month. David C. Ingram, a physics professor who is chairman of the committee, said the group's task is to decide whether to require students and alumni to resubmit their theses in their own words or to revoke their degrees.
Later that year, in November 2005, tensions between students and the administration grew when the university's football coach, Frank Solich, was arrested after the police found him slumped in his car, which was pointed in the wrong direction on a one-way street, according to court records in Athens. Mr. Solich pleaded no contest to drunken driving, the records said.
Dr. McDavis had recently introduced tough rules to combat student drinking at the university, and students who broke the rules faced probation, suspension or expulsion for their first offense. (The university was named the sixth-best party school this year by Princeton Review, a company that sells college preparatory materials.)
But students said they felt that the university had let Mr. Solich off easy when his punishment consisted of participating in alcohol education programs on campus. He also promised not to engage in any illegal behavior for the remaining four years of his contract.
Mr. Solich declined to be interviewed for this article.
'The message to students was: Don't get caught drinking unless you're the football coach,' said Kevin M. Mattson, a history professor at Ohio University and president of the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
(Mr. Solich returned to court this summer seeking to change his plea to not guilty, saying that someone had slipped GHB, known as the date-rape drug, into his drink, causing him to appear drunk, said his lawyer, Sam Shamansky. A judge denied his request.)
Then in late April, the university announced that hackers had gained access to several university computers, some of which contained students' personal information. Weaknesses in the school's computer networks allowed hackers access to a server that held the Social Security numbers of 137,00 people, but it is still unclear whether any have been used illegally, said the university's spokesman, Joe Brennan.
A consulting firm hired by the university found that the breaches were caused largely by the technology department, which it said had few staff members capable of building secure networks.
Meanwhile, the university is facing a $9.3 million budget shortfall for 2007, with deficits projected to rise in later years, Dr. McDavis said. The administration eliminated 121 positions, including 14 nontenured faculty jobs, as part of its effort to trim $14.4 million from the university's $557 million budget.
Those cuts, plus anger over what many faculty members perceived as Mr. McDavis's top-down leadership style, prompted the professors association to mail surveys to 850 faculty members asking them to rate Mr. McDavis's performance.
Among respondents, 72 percent said they had no confidence in the president, said Mr. Mattson, who is trying to persuade the university's trustees to give faculty members an official role in evaluating the president.
But even as Dr. McDavis races to keep up with the latest crisis, he says he is trying to keep matters in perspective.
'Is this a meltdown? Absolutely not,' Dr. McDavis said. 'Would I like a little more time to deal with each of these problems? Absolutely.'
Correction:  October 4, 2006, Wednesday  An article last Wednesday about Ohio University and its recent problems, including accusations of plagiarism against mechanical engineering students, misstated the number of students at the university. It is 28,287 -- not 16,700, which is the number of undergraduates. The article also misstated the beneficiary within the university of a $15 million donation from the Scripps Howard Foundation. It was for the College of Communication, not just for the journalism department within that college.
Because of an editing error, the article also referred incorrectly to the university's 2007 budget. Although a $9.3 million shortfall was projected, the budget was balanced with cutbacks.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"U.S. Raid on Queens Factory Hits CD Counterfeiting Ring
A Secret Service raid of a Queens warehouse on Monday broke up what recording industry experts are calling the largest music CD counterfeiting operation ever, capable of churning out six million discs a year.
The raid of a 2,000-square-foot factory in Long Island City was the result of a two-month investigation by the Secret Service, which enforces copyright law, and former law enforcement officials working for the Recording Industry Association of America, said Frank Creighton, head of the antipiracy division of the organization, a trade group.
The seizure of 35,000 illegally copied music discs, 10,000 movies on DVD, 421 interconnected disc burners and expensive printing equipment made it the largest raid in the more than 30 years the trade group has been tracking such seizures, Mr. Creighton said.
The company supplied illegal copies of CD's and DVD's to distributors along the Eastern Seaboard and in the Midwest, Mr. Creighton said, but was also a major supplier for illegal Canal Street peddlers.
'It is the largest manufacturing operation involving CD-R manufacturing technology to date that we have come across,' Mr. Creighton said.
Three men were arrested, including Zhong Rong Chen, who investigators identified as the head of the counterfeiting operation. Two of his employees, Angel Ivan Espinoza and Mario Perez Flores, were also charged, investigators said.
The building where Mr. Zhong's factory was located, on 37th Street in Long Island City, has mostly garment manufacturers and artists' lofts. People who work in the building were rattled when a crowd of officers battered down the door to the second-floor loft Monday.
Mr. Zhong was quiet and secretive, a factory manager said. 'Sometimes he would come to work when we were leaving,' the man said. 'We thought maybe he was trading overseas or something.'
In recent years the trade in counterfeit CD's and DVD's has become more competitive and as a result more violent, leading to two shootouts in Midtown Manhattan, one of which left a Guinean immigrant dead last month.
Mr. Creighton said that his organization focuses on breaking up counterfeit operations, especially around the holidays, when people flood the streets of New York City looking for bargains. But as the recording industry has struggled with slumping sales in the last two years, and because technology makes mass production of flawless copies easy, piracy has become a larger problem.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Two Lives to Give
When Diahn Taylor, 38, decided to become a surrogate mother, she didn't know that she would be carrying twins or that this pregnancy would be harder than those that produced her own three children. But she made a commitment to a couple through an agency (and received a $21,000 fee). After seven weeks of bed rest, she gave birth to a boy and girl in May. Taylor then volunteered to ship her breast milk from her town of Paola, Kan., to the twins about 500 miles away. 'I wanted to give them a good start, like I did with my own,' she says.
Taylor stores the milk in her freezer in 20-ounce, presterilized water bottles she buys in bulk. When she returned to work as a third-grade teacher, she started out pumping every four or five hours when her students were in art or gym class. She's now down to once a day.
Taylor collects about 300 ounces of milk before mailing it in a Styrofoam cooler once a week. She often checks in with the parents, who pay for the shipping but not for her added time.
It used to be up to her husband, Kenny, to lug the package of milk to the post office. But since he had surgery, she does the heavy lifting. Postage usually costs about $75.
Taylor doesn't miss the babies, but says she will miss the routine: 'I've gotten so used to the pumping. It'll be weird to stop.' She and Kenny plan to try for their fourth child soon.
LIVES",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"PUBLIC LIVES
No Dead Air Here: D'Amato vs. Koch
Two of New York's most outspoken, out-of-office politicians are getting themselves a second soapbox. EDWARD I. KOCH and ALFONSE M. D'AMATO plan to go face to face on the radio.
That is perhaps an Osgoodian way of describing what could turn out to be a more Limbaughian type of encounter beneath the 'on air' sign.  'Al and I are good friends, but we often disagree on candidates and issues,' said Mr. Koch, who was mayor from 1978 to 1989. 'We disagree civilly and with good humor -- so what if on occasion I make him cry?' For his part, Mr. D'Amato, the former senator, said, 'There's nothing I love more than duking it out with my good friend Ed Koch.'
The five-minute segments on Saturdays starting Sept. 9 on WBBR-AM (1130) are not their only collaboration. Since March, they have been preparing a twice-a-month column -- these columnists do not write, they talk into a tape recorder -- for New York magazine titled 'I'm Right, You're Wrong.'
So what advice does MAER ROSHAN, the deputy editor of New York magazine and coordinator of their column, have for ANTHEA RAYMOND, who will be the moderator of their radio chats?
'Interrupt them frequently and feed them lots of cosmopolitans,' Mr. Roshan said, referring to what he called Mr. D'Amato's drink of choice.
Pete Seeger Has Lyme Disease
First it was a missing banjo, which was returned last week, a couple of weeks after it disappeared (a self-employed painter had noticed the folk singer PETE SEEGER'S name on the case when he found the instrument, but said 'it was just another name to me').
Now comes word that Mr. Seeger, 81, has Lyme disease.
His wife, TOSHI, told The Associated Press that he had received the diagnosis after feeling sick lately.
'We have ticks in the area' near their house in Beacon, N.Y., she said. There was no answer at the house last night; she told The A.P. that Mr. Seeger did not plan to cancel any performances.
Bronx Gorilla Man To Minnesota Zoo
On the Minnesota Zoo's automated telephone directory, one of those systems with a mechanized voice that instructs a caller to spell out the name of the person he or she wants to reach using the keys on the telephone, punching 'Ehmke' yesterday set off a message that said those letters 'do not spell a recognized name.'
It was only LEE EHMKE'S first day as director.
Mr. Ehmke moved to the Midwest after overseeing the $50 million Congo Gorilla Forest exhibition at the Bronx Zoo, an African rain forest habitat populated by 19 gorillas and other jungle creatures. He turned down a promotion to assistant director ('flattering and tempting,' he said yesterday) to take over a 22-year-old zoo in Apple Valley, Minn., that he said 'needs some refreshing.'
'I couldn't agree more that we need exhibits with a bit more wow appeal,' Mr. Ehmke said. The Minnesota Zoo has room to grow, what with more than 100 acres that could be developed, making it what he called 'one of the most beautiful palettes a zoo designer could ever think of working with.'
But yesterday was only his first day on the job. 'I feel like I've parachuted in,' he said. 'I'm still waiting for my furniture and clothes to arrive.'
He said that he had arrived in Minnesota 10 days ago, planning to settle in before starting the new job. 'I've been able to get a driver's license and a car that my New York existence didn't require,' he said.
JAMES BARRON",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Leaping Into a Starring Role With Aplomb
THE sign that no theatergoer wishes to see was up the day of the performance: The star of the show -- in this case Martin Short in 'Little Me' -- was out sick. As is usual in these cases, the ticket holders were hollering. At 4 P.M. on the Monday before Christmas there were already a dozen at the box office, demanding their money back, indifferent to the talent of the fellow who was taking over the starring role.
'Oh, boy, I sure wouldn't want to be that guy,' an actor, Michael McGrath, said as he walked by. This was an extreme inside joke. He was that guy.
Moreover, 'Little Me,' a farce originally written for Sid Caesar in the early 60's, demands that the star sing, dance and do 36 costume changes for seven parts, including a French crooner, a show biz agent, and a prince from a country so small 'it had been defeated in war by Luxembourg.'
Would Mr. McGrath -- who, in addition to being Mr. Short's understudy, has five roles in the show -- share his feelings about taking on the starring role on 24-hour notice?
'Shock,' Mr. McGrath, 41, says  after posing outside the Roundabout Theater on Broadway, where as usual, nobody recognizes him.
Elaborate, please.
'I knew Marty was having trouble vocally,' says Mr. McGrath (pronounced McGraw), 'but I'd understudied for him before, in 'The Goodbye Girl,' and I had never gone on. The man's got cords of steel; he never missed a show. They told me I was going on after the Sunday matinee. I went home, ran lines with my wife until 10:30, then I went to bed. I didn't sleep very well. The most fearful thing is I'm going on for Martin Short. I'm not naive, I know people won't be coming to see me.
'Then, when I stepped out on the stage, I got entrance applause and I thought, 'O.K. The people who are here want to be here.' After a while it felt like I could do no wrong, that the people were on my side. They were seeing live theater, something that doesn't happen all the time.'
There is a theater story we never tire of, perhaps because it features the underdog, to whom, with our ragged little hearts, we relate and for whom we cheer: the understudy who, with little notice, takes over for the star and brings down the house.
Mr. McGrath, who lives in Wee hawken, N.J., with his actress wife, Toni DiBuono, and their daughter, Kathleen, 3, went on for the star, who was ill with a cold, three times last week. Thinking of Mr. McGrath as an overnight sensation would not be correct. Outside his theater, there was no sensation. Also, Mr. McGrath has made a living as an actor for 20 years. He's starred in the Groucho Marx role in a revival of 'The Cocoanuts' two years ago, and has been  featured in a number of other shows.
'I'm called a quirky leading man,' Mr. McGrath says, 'quirky' being the show business euphemism for a person who does not have classic good looks and is known to cut up. (He has also been called 'puckish,' which is show biz for short.)
THERE is one problem with Mr. McGrath's assessment of his career: Except for 'The Cocoanuts,' Mr. McGrath has not had a starring role to call his own in a major New York show. When he did, he did not keep it long, moving on to a supporting role in another musical, 'Once Upon a Mattress,' where he stayed for only three weeks.
'I made a big mistake,' Mr. McGrath says, 'but I learned my lesson: Never do something for money. We had a new child; I was making less than $1,000 a week on 'The Cocoanuts.' Going to the new show, I was making nearly three times that. It just didn't work out.'
What did Mr. McGrath earn going on for the star in 'Little Me?'
'Nothing,' Mr. McGrath says, without rancor.
This is the thing that Mr. McGrath believes made him an actor: the pleasure of showing off, from the time he was a boy. He grew up in Worcester, Mass., the youngest of five children. His father was a car salesman who always sang around the house; his mother was a baker. Mr. McGraw put in three months at the Boston Conservatory of Music before quitting and got his first job, in summer stock, within the year.
The first evening Mr. McGrath went on for Mr. Short, the scene at the box office at show time would have crushed any actor: Dozens were demanding their money back.
But an interesting thing happened when Mr. McGrath went on. Fueled by the terror or excitement of a leading man who had never had a full rehearsal, the cast was energized. Mr. McGrath seized his seven roles with manic glee. When lines were blown, the cast improvised, sometimes breaking into unscripted, poorly controlled laughter themselves.
After the show, Mr. McGrath found a bottle of Dom Perignon, from Martin Short, in his dressing room. Then Mr. McGrath and his wife, who had been in the audience, went to Cafe Un Deux Trois for what was to have been their fifth anniversary dinner, and it became a double celebration. 'Little Me' is to close at the end of January. In March, Mr. McGrath is scheduled to do another off-Broadway show, 'Exactly Like You,' a Cy Coleman musical.
But he'll always have that Monday  curtain call, in which the audience -- including this reporter, who had planned on seeing Martin Short -- gave Mr. McGrath the special ovation for people who leap into impossible situations full throttle and soar. They rose to their feet, screaming, 'Bravo! Bravo!'
PUBLIC LIVES",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Traveler Who Had a Stopover In Newark Is Tested for Ebola
A woman who traveled from Congo to Toronto last weekend, with a stopover at Newark International Airport, became seriously ill on Sunday and is being tested for several contagious diseases, including meningitis and the deadly hemorrhagic fever caused by the Ebola virus.
If the Ebola virus is confirmed, the case would be the first of the disease in a human in North America. It would also validate the warnings of infectious disease experts who have long maintained that geographical boundaries are increasingly meaningless to the spread of disease.
Canadian health authorities stressed that although the patient's symptoms matched the early stages of hemorrhagic fevers, the cause of her illness had not been identified.
Blood samples from the patient have been sent for testing to a laboratory in Winnipeg and to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Results were expected by Thursday. Barbara Reynolds, a spokeswoman for the disease centers, said that if tests for Ebola were positive, epidemiologists were ready to begin tracing people who may have come into contact with the patient in the United States.
Ms. Reynolds said, however, that preliminary reports indicated that the patient was not ill while traveling, and since viral hemorrhagic fevers are generally not considered contagious until after symptoms develop, the odds were small that she spread the disease while traveling.
Canadian health authorities said they were already tracing the patient's close contacts in that country, and were monitoring 10 hospital employees and 2 people outside the hospital.
The Ebola virus, first recognized in Congo in 1976, has killed 40 percent to 88 percent of its victims during outbreaks in Africa. The most recent known outbreak occurred in Uganda last fall, killing about 170 people out of 425 who were infected.
After an incubation period of 2 to 21 days, the disease causes high fever, headache, sore throat, muscle pain, stomach pain, diarrhea, fatigue and, in later stages, bleeding and shock. Death can occur within a week. There is no specific treatment for the disease; doctors can only treat symptoms in an effort to keep patients alive through the worst of it.
The disease is spread by contact with the blood and secretions of an infected person, and hospital workers caring for Ebola patients need gloves, gowns, face shields and masks to protect themselves.
The patient, who has not been identified, is being kept in isolation at Henderson General Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. The Toronto Star reported yesterday that she was rushed there by ambulance from a private home on Sunday night and was in serious condition, drifting in and out of consciousness.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the Newark airport, said it had not been notified by federal health or airline officials that a possibly infected passenger had traveled through the airport. And it said it would not make any efforts to quarantine any passengers or crew members who may have traveled with her.
'Not at this point,' said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority, 'because the reports we're getting at this point are that she didn't become ill until she got to Canada.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Michigan Law Dean to Lead Cornell
Jeffrey S. Lehman, dean of the University of Michigan Law School, will become president of Cornell University in July, Cornell announced yesterday.
In his role as a dean at the University of Michigan, Mr. Lehman is a defendant in a lawsuit over affirmative action that the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear.
Cornell said Mr. Lehman, a 1977 graduate, is the first Cornell alumnus to become its president. He succeeds Hunter R. Rawlings III, who has been president since 1995 and will return to teaching and research.
Cornell is the latest in a string of universities, including Columbia, New York University and Yeshiva University, to name a law dean or lawyer as president.
Mr. Lehman said his legal training probably helped him to be comfortable with ambiguity, complexity and uncertainty. Like Columbia's president, Lee C. Bollinger, and N.Y.U.'s president, John Sexton, Mr. Lehman was a clerk at the Supreme Court before entering teaching; he worked under Associate Justice John Paul Stevens. Now he is deeply involved in preparing Michigan's case for the Supreme Court hearing next spring.
Affirmative action is an issue Mr. Lehman has lived with closely for a decade. In 1992, as a junior faculty member, he served on a committee to revise the Michigan law school's admissions procedures, an experience he remembers with affection.
'It was an intellectually stimulating experience -- to think deeply about the purpose of an institution of higher education,' he said. 'You don't often get to do that; often, institutions carry on by inertia.'
Since 1997, when a white applicant sued the law school, saying it had rejected her in favor of minority students with lesser credentials, Mr. Lehman has been active in defending the school's admissions practices. In May, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld its procedures.
Mr. Lehman said he had confidence in the legality of the school's admissions process because race was only one of many factors it considered. He noted that in the Supreme Court's 1978 Bakke decision, on the medical-school admissions procedures at the University of California at Davis, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., writing separately, specifically said that public colleges could consider race if they were trying to ensure a diverse student body for educational purposes.
'I understand what motivates our critics,' Mr. Lehman said. 'I understand what their discomfort stems from. But where we part company is that our critics feel that any deviation from colorblindness is simply intolerable, even if it means that schools like ours do a much worse job teaching students to be leaders in an integrated society.'
A mathematics major at Cornell who spent his junior year in France, Mr. Lehman has a ready sense of humor and was an avid game player in college. As a freshman, he said, he spent many nights playing Monopoly with Jay Walker, a friend across the hall (who later founded Priceline.com). During winter break the next year, the two wrote a book, '1,000 Ways to Win Monopoly Games.'
Mr. Lehman graduated with distinction and went on to earn degrees in public policy and law at Michigan, where he was editor in chief of The Michigan Law Review. Besides working for Justice Stevens, he was a law clerk in Portland, Me., for Chief Judge Frank M. Coffin of the United States Court of Appeals. He also practiced law for four years at Caplin & Drysdale, a Washington law firm, before returning to academe.
In 1987, he joined Michigan's law faculty, where he focused on policy issues like higher education financing, corporate taxation and welfare reform, working closely with Sheldon Danziger, a Michigan economist. Mr. Lehman also helped create a clinical program for law students to assist community groups in economic development and developed a course in transnational law that is required for Michigan's J.D. degree.
During Mr. Lehman's tenure as dean, the law school received $82 million in cash gifts, and its endowment grew to $204 million from $79 million. Last year, the school won the American Bar Association's award as public interest school of the year. The son of two lawyers, Mr. Lehman is also president of the American Law Deans Association.
He said that it is too early to have a specific agenda for Cornell, but that he hopes to continue to focus on public service and transnational issues, which he believes already have an important place at the university.
Mr. Lehman said he had not been looking to leave Michigan, since there was more to accomplish. But he said that with a father who had also attended Cornell and a son, Jacob, who is a freshman there now, he felt a deep kinship with it. 'It so happens that Cornell is the other institution that I have this irrational emotional attachment to,' he said.
Mr. Lehman said he looked forward to the Cornell presidency because research universities 'have a tremendous impact on the human species.'
'The research that takes place,' he said, 'in the sciences, the social sciences, the humanities and the arts, and the professions, all makes a difference in how people live everywhere in the world.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"THE PARADIGM SHIFTS
1922-1996 -- Thomas S. Kuhn, a historian of science, turned his business upside down with a radical idea of what makes a scientific revolution -- and created one of the foremost cliches of our time.
Weightier than the critical mass, sharper than the cutting edge, bigger even than the quantum leap -- the great intellectual cliche of our age is (ital)paradigm shift(end). This was Thomas S. Kuhn's contribution to our culture, and he was not altogether happy about it.
Kuhn was a physicist turned historian of science, a philosopher of knowledge and, in his spare time (what can we read into this?), an avid rider of roller coasters. His 172-page masterpiece, 'The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,' published in 1962, arguably became the most influential work of philosophy in the latter half of the 20th century. It sold more than a million copies. It introduced paradigms, new paradigms, pre- and post-paradigms and, of course, paradigm shifts. He once said that he had not bothered with an index because its main entry would be 'paradigm, 1-172, passim.' 'Unfortunately,' he said, 'paradigms took on a life of their own.'
If you yourself have used the word without being exactly sure what it means, you are in good company. One of Kuhn's critics (he had many) claimed to have isolated 22 distinct meanings for paradigm in the book, and Kuhn confessed to a certain elasticity in his use of the term. Nonetheless, it is a genuine and powerful notion, its presence in our language well deserved.
Kuhn saw that science does not always make smooth and gradual progress, with researchers calmly adding their bricks to the edifice. Sometimes, science changes by means of revolutions. Its practitioners undergo a transformation of vision, like people who stare at that optical-illusion silhouette of a candlestick until they suddenly see it flip into a pair of human faces. The paradigm shift, in contrast to 'normal science,' means crisis. It means tearing down an established framework and reassembling the pieces into something quite new.
This is a romantic idea, and practitioners of just about every branch of science now claim paradigm shifts almost yearly. Real paradigm shifts are not as common as all that, but they do occur. When I met Kuhn, a decade ago, I was researching a book on chaos and complexity, the most sweeping transformation of scientific vision in our own time. His words applied perfectly: 'It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well.'
Kuhn's approach did not altogether flatter scientists. It implied that their enterprise was not a purely rational search for truth but rather an act of construction bound to social forces and constrained by habits and biases. Deconstructionists have seen Kuhn as an ally. But they have often gone too far, suggesting that Kuhn thought of science as a kind of 'mob psychology,' arbitrary and detached from what old-fashioned types used to call 'reality.' It is true that Kuhn tried to understand the mechanics of Aristotle, say, on its own terms rather than as a silly and inferior version of Newton. He sought to appreciate its logic as a world view. 'When reading the works of an important thinker,' he advised, 'look first for the apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person could have written them.'
But he did not mean to suggest that Aristotelian mechanics would come in handy for aerospace engineers. Newton does describe nature better than Aristotle, and Einstein better than Newton. Kuhn noted that the crises leading to paradigm shifts often begin with new discoveries, experimental discrepancies that cannot be squeezed into the established framework. New data force scientists to see the world differently -- and afterward the data themselves look different. He held a complicated picture of knowledge building in balance.
So, thanks to Kuhn, we've lived through paradigm shifts in child rearing, sports psychology and stock-market analysis. All too many academics have published essays titled 'Brother, Can You Paradigm?' When Kuhn died in June, it was inevitable that at least one waggish obituarist would say he had now undergone the ultimate paradigm shift -- himself.
THE LIVES THEY LIVED: Thomas S. Kuhn  James Gleick, who writes the Fast Forward column for the Magazine, is the author of 'Chaos: Making a New Science.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Doctoring the Report Card? Studying Is Easier
Squared-off B's that look suspiciously like F's and report cards that get 'lost in the mail' are becoming endangered species as schools go to new lengths to prevent forging of grades and transcripts.
Some schools have switched to high-tech, tamper-resistant paper, and others have set up Internet-based grade books that allow parents to monitor a child's progress.
Precise data about report card forgery is hard to come by, said Gregory J. Cizek, a researcher at the University of North Carolina who studies cheating. Nonetheless, only one or two cases -- or even unconfirmed anecdotes -- can be enough to make schools act to thwart cheating.
In interviews with principals across the country, many mentioned the ease of altering report cards and transcripts using desktop publishing software like Adobe Photoshop, which allows students to capture a school's seal off its Web site and paste it into a file to create an official-looking document.
One administrator told of a student who was caught forging his report card when the nearby Kinko's called the school to report that a student had left a copy of his grades on the copier. One principal said he had heard of students forging transcripts with generic-embossed seals to avoid paying for official transcripts.
Don Zeller, assistant principal at Munster High School in Munster, Ind., for example, said that although he could not quantify it, he knew forgery was a problem. He said he had decided to switch to tamperproof paper from Scrip-Safe, a document security company based in Ohio, after a local printing company could not provide enough safeguards.
Scrip-Safe sells its paper to about 350 high schools that use it for transcripts, report cards and even hall passes, said the company's chief executive officer, Joe Orndorff.
'Our high school business just walked in; it's not something we have salespeople for,' he said, adding that most clients had seen the benefits of secure paper at the college level or had been contacted by a college about a fraudulent transcript.
Eric Hicks, the registrar at Mercersburg Academy, a private high school in Pennsylvania, said the school decided to start using Scrip-Safe's specialized paper for transcripts after discovering that a transfer student's transcript had been forged -- by the parents.
'We didn't know until the final transcript came directly from the school,' he said, detailing the parents' effort to create an authentic-looking transcript, including buying a machine to create a raised seal.
Mr. Hicks said the added security was worth the cost. 'We thought then that people could forge our transcript and that tipped us over the edge,' he said. 'No one even flinched.'
Other schools have taken to the Internet. Sandie Platt, the principal at Lake Central High School in Indiana, said that this year parents have been able to see their child's grades online through Edline, a service out of Chicago that allows students and parents to monitor grades, attendance, assignments and calendars. The school still sends out printed report cards, even if they are somewhat superfluous.
It's more difficult -- and less rewarding -- for a student to dramatically alter a grade on a printed card, since parents can monitor progress and no longer rely on a once-a-semester update.
Kent Vermeer, an assistant principal at Largo High School in Florida, uses the online grade book service ParentConnect, a part of Pearson Education Technologies. Mr. Vermeer said he knew that report cards were being forged by students, especially when they were printed on plain white paper, because he would continually get calls from suspicious parents.
The funniest instance he remembered was when a report card that arrived from Mexico on an official letterhead was translated. It turned out to be made up, with fake course titles. With the online system, Mr. Vermeer said, parents can now let children know that they are keeping track of their progress.
'It's a quiet way to monitor,' he said, although he estimated that with only about 20 percent of all parents registered, use of the system is probably skewed toward better students.
The decision to go digital brings up new questions about hacking. Representatives of both ParentConnect and Edline said they had never heard of anyone hacking onto one of their servers, and since the Web sites are on secure servers maintained by either the companies or the schools, and the parent and student accounts are password protected and read-only, the susceptibility to hacking is minimal.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Suspect Is Still Being Sought In Trade Center Bomb Case
With the conviction on Wednesday of the former fugitive Ramzi Ahmed Yousef in the World Trade Center bombing, an Indiana native named Abdul Rahman Yasin now inherits the dubious distinction of The Man Who Got Away.
And for the F.B.I., it is a distinction that proves particularly embarrassing: agents had Mr. Yasin in custody the week after the bombing in 1993, but then questioned and released him -- with a plane ticket to Jordan in his rear pocket.
So Mr. Yasin, born in Bloomington of Iraqi parents, is instead the subject of a $2 million reward by the State Department and is believed to be living with relatives in Baghdad, beyond the reach of American law enforcement agents or diplomats.
According to Federal documents, Mr. Yasin was a roommate of Mohammed Salameh, a convicted co-conspirator who rented the van that transported the bomb to the twin towers. Mr. Yasin was picked up in New Jersey by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents after the blast but was eventually released.
'They freely let him go,' his lawyer, Stephen A. Somerstein, said yesterday. 'At the time he left the country, they had no evidence against him, and from what I understand, they still have no evidence against him.'
But by mid-1993, F.B.I. agents were told that Mr. Yasin, 36, had played a pivotal role in the plot, maintaining the Jersey City apartment where the terrorists received mail, making phone calls to contacts in Iran and Pakistan and obtaining chemicals used to build the 1,500-pound bomb. A Federal indictment released in August 1993 also accused Mr. Yasin of teaching Mr. Salameh how to drive the rental van that eventually carried the bomb to the underground parking garage of the Trade Center, where the explosion killed six people and injured more than 1,000. David Kelley, a prosecutor in Mr. Yousef's trial, said Mr. Yasin also helped mix the chemicals to fuel the bomb.
While investigators are frustrated that Mr. Yasin was allowed to leave the country, they say there was not enough evidence to detain him after his questioning in March 1993. 'It's a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't,' said Oliver (Buck) Revell, former chief of intelligence for the F.B.I.
'Why do you think so many of these people are coming here?' he said. 'Because the United States is the greatest place in the world for a terrorist to operate. A guy can have all kinds of suspicious looks and people can suspect him of all kinds of things but if you don't have probable cause, you can't even hold him for questioning.'
Despite the fact that he is the subject of a global manhunt, relatively little is known about Mr. Yasin's personal history. He was born in Bloomington in 1960, but his family moved back to Iraq in the mid-1960's, where Mr. Yasin was raised. Mr. Yasin's lawyer said his client returned to the United States to seek treatment for epilepsy. And Federal agents said Mr. Yasin stayed in New York because his brother, a professor of electrical engineering, lived in the area.
In the four years since Mr. Yasin has been a fugitive -- possibly using the aliases Aboud Yasin, Abdul S. Taher and Rahman S. Taha, according to the State Department -- Federal agents have received several reports that he was sighted in Baghdad. But State Department officials have little hope of persuading Iraqi officials to turn him over to the United States for prosecution.
'As long as Saddam Hussein is in power, he's about as secure as he can be,' said an investigator, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Mary Jo White, the United States Attorney in Manhattan, said the authorities were still pursuing every conceivable strand of evidence leading to Mr. Yasin.
'The case investigation will never be over, in a sense,' Ms. White said,  'until we track down every person who had a role in the bombing.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"With 25 States at Odds, Court Will Resolve Clean Air Issue
Twenty-five states have given up trying to negotiate a settlement in their dispute over pollution that blows into the Northeast from the Midwest and South, meaning that the issue will be resolved in court, state officials said today.
As 11 Northeast states from Maryland to Maine try to comply with the Clean Air Act, they have been trying to force 14 Middle Western and Southern states to sharply reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides. The United States Environmental Protection Agency took the side of the Northeast states, but after suffering some setbacks in court, it pressed the states to negotiate a deal.
But this week, states on both sides rejected out of hand the first proposed compromise. Today, officials acknowledged that the talks, barely begun, were over.
'We thought it would be a worthwhile process to see if there could be any common ground, but unfortunately, there's not,' said John P. Cahill, New York's Environmental Conservation Commissioner, who had been the lead negotiator for the Northeast states. 'It's now a continued vigorous pursuit of the litigation.'
In a series of conference calls yesterday, just 4 of the 14 states in the other camp were willing to accept the compromise, a fact that was relayed to Mr. Cahill this morning. It was not clear how many of the Northeast states might accept it, but Massachusetts had said it would not, and others expressed deep reservations. State and Federal officials had said that a negotiated deal could work only if all 25 states agreed to it.
Summertime levels of ozone, or smog, in several urban areas in the Northeast, including New York City and its suburbs, exceed Federal standards. To comply with the Clean Air Act, the Northeast states are trying to curtail their levels of nitrogen oxides, a chemical group that contributes to the formation of ozone and acid rain.
All of the Northeast states plan to adopt a new emissions standard of 0.15 pounds of nitrogen oxides per million British thermal units of power consumed, and they have asked the Environmental Protection Agency to impose the same standard on the Midwest and the South. They contend that much of the Northeast's pollution problem arrives on the prevailing winds from the other regions, a claim that Midwestern and Southern states contest.
But the states of the Midwest and South have said they cannot accept any requirement lower than 0.25 pounds, which would represent a significant emissions reduction. Last week's compromise proposal would have required an initial 0.25 standard, dropping later to 0.2.
The E.P.A. announced last year that it planned to impose the 0.15 standard sought by the Northeast, but some of the other states went to court to block it. In May, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia postponed implementation of that plan, pending a hearing that is set for November.
Environmental agency officials grew nervous about their chances in court and pushed the states to work out a deal on their own.
If the E.P.A. fails in court, the Northeast states still have the ability to pursue their own lawsuits under the Clean Air Act.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"On the Hudson's Banks, Empathy Looking West
TWICE a week Luis Manuel Rodriguez sets up his fishing poles against a railing in Riverside Park and drops his lines into the Hudson. Then he sits on a bench and watches the river roll past 83d Street, comforted by its rhythms and breezes.
""In the last month when I look from here I keep thinking of the Mississippi,"" the 47-year-old native of Santo Domingo said as he waited for blues and catfish to bite. ""I think of all the people out there working to get the water off the land.""
The Hudson is not the Mississippi. By the time its waters reach the city they flow at sea level and the river drains quickly into the bay. There is no flood plain and no one here can remember the last time the Hudson seriously overflowed its banks.
Still, it is a river, a big broad stream that first attracted the Dutch. And this summer, while New Yorkers drove, walked, or played on its banks, the sight of it provoked empathy.
""Sure, we all talk about it,"" said Ron Boudreau, the dockmaster of the 79th Street Marina. ""We've all seen the television reports, the sandbags, the broken levees, and when you live on a river you can't help but think about those things in personal terms.""
Doron Katzman, a ship's carpenter who lives aboard a houseboat in the marina, said, ""We keep remembering what happened here last Dec. 11."" That was when a fierce northeaster lashed the metropolitan area and churned the Hudson into fury.
""The tides were four and a half feet above normal and water was over the pathways,"" he recalled. ""Three boats were sunk here and some sections of the dock were ripped up. This river, now so beautiful, was dangerous.""
Mr. Boudreau added: ""Yes, but in two days it was over. I remember the calm that came right after the storm. The water was so clear. For the people in the Midwest, the problems have been going on for months. We had a battle. They're having a war.""
A few miles upstream, in the Inwood section, Sam Zaslavsky can turn away from television reports on the Mississippi flooding and look out on the Hudson and the steep cliffs of the Palisades. From this perspective, Mr. Zaslavsky, a retired engineer, has translated images of the floods into local terms.
""I read that at one point seven million gallons of water were flowing past St. Louis every second,"" he said. ""I figured out that this meant that in just four minutes out there an amount of water was roaring past that was equal to the average daily consumption of water in the metropolitan area during our hottest weather.""
Computing what such flows would mean on the Hudson, Mr. Zaslavsky calculated that just north of the George Washington Bridge, the water level would rise by 30 feet. ""That enormous volume of water would be moving at about 30 miles an hour, generating a force that would sweep away just about any structure,"" he said.
Presumably the Little Red Lighthouse, railroad tracks and the North River sewage treatment plant and new state park on top of it would be endangered. In midtown and downtown, where the riverbanks are not that high, water would cover streets and subways, rush into houses and possibly into entrances of the tunnels.
Such empathetic musings, generated by the sight of the Hudson, are clearly commendable. They serve to turn the strangers we have seen on television into neighbors and countrymen. Often the empathy slops over into admiration and even something like envy for the courage and the grace of the remarkable Midwesterners.
'It would happen here like that,"" said Mr. Rodriguez, the fisherman.  ""Troubles bring people together,"" he insisted. Mr. Boudreau, the dockmaster, recalled that after last winter's storm people he never saw before came to help clean up. ""I don't know where they all came from.""
But Mr. Zaslavsky is not so sure that New Yorkers would do as well in the face of prolonged adversity: ""Those are farmers out there and people from small towns who live closer to nature than we do. They are used to cooperating. Here there is something else."" He noted that there had been virtually no reports of profiteering or swindling in the flooded communities. ""I doubt that would be the case here.""
Who can tell? In the past the city has done well when hit by storms and blackouts, but none of these have lasted as long or proved as costly as the floods in the Midwest. Certainly it has pulled together better in the face of natural disasters than in manmade ones like the flood of handguns, drugs and crime and surges of divisive political campaign oratory.
No one should ever envy anybody else's bad luck, but one thing about the siege they are having in the Midwest stands out. Out there, where since June 12 at least 48 people have died in the floods, the bad luck has been shared pretty equally and the response has been admirable.
In New York, a check of news accounts shows that in the same period, at least 31 people have been shot or stabbed to death, and that represents just the killings reported in the newspapers. Our own bad luck has been doled out more unevenly. It's just a normal summer and the responses have not been inspiring at all.
ABOUT NEW YORK",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Any Means to an End Zone; Meadowlands Mortals Do What It Takes to See Giants
In the plain little towns that ring the Meadowlands, where Giants Stadium rises from the swampy flats like a forbidden city, Sunday's N.F.C. championship game will carry with it a familiar, slightly bittersweet taste of exclusion.
Of course the game is sold out. It's the playoffs. But Giants games are always sold out. And while hometown fans of most N.F.L. teams have a hard time getting into games these days, this is especially true in the case of the Giants, whose long, proud history -- much of it as the only pro team northeast of Philadelphia -- means that season tickets are passed down from generation to generation like jeweled watches. The waiting list is at least a decade long.
There are, to be sure, some football fans in southern Bergen County who have season tickets. But for the rest there are two options -- watch the game on TV like the rest of America, or be creative. For locals who choose creativity, a whole culture, almost an underground economy, has developed around ways to angle, wangle, bluff or schmooze a way into the stadium.
Hence the tale of Robert Soboleski and George Georgeou, friends who were drinking happy-hour beers here in Carlstadt, just up Route 503 from the Meadowlands, at the Grasshopper Also bar (not to be confused with the Grasshopper Too, a related establishment in Wayne).
Both are local guys who wore the caps of their employer, Matheson Tri-Gas, esteemed vendor of argon, arsine and other industrial substances, in East Rutherford. And since they were boys, both have rooted like hell for the Giants.
But Mr. Soboleski, 36, has a second job, plowing snow at the stadium for a big construction company. A big shot there has season tickets. And he's usually out of town on the weekends. So he gives -- gives! -- Mr. Soboleski his tickets.
So on Sunday, as the Giants try to hold off the Minnesota Vikings for 60 minutes and dee-fense their way to the Super Bowl, Mr. Soboleski, a big, beefy guy, will be at his usual spot in the stands, his big, beefy face painted Big Blue. And Mr. Georgeou, as usual, will watch from his couch in Little Ferry, three miles north of the end zone.
'You've got to love it,' said Mr. Soboleski, nearly dancing in his chair.
'I don't love it,' said Mr. Georgeou, 63, who can count on one hand the number of games he has attended since the Giants moved to his backyard 25 years ago. 'But I don't begrudge him, because he's a diehard Giants fan.'
Similar stories abound.
At Maggie O'Byrne's, a bar on a ridge on the west side of Carlstadt, overlooking the stadium, Tom Harnett, the grounds supervisor at Hackensack University Medical Center, said he relied on charity and luck to breach the stadium gates. The Giants give tickets to a fund for children with cancer, which then raffles them off. Mr. Harnett, 55, said he had won the raffle about 20 times.
A bartender at Maggie's, Patty Garrett, will be at the game Sunday, working, sort of. Ms. Garrett, who is 24 but looks younger, is paid to make the rounds of the concession stands, buying beer to make sure the vendors ask for ID. Ms. Garrett got her job through a neighbor in Wood-Ridge who worked for the Giants concessionaire, she said.
A few years ago, she said, someone offered her father field-level press passes. 'He said, 'All you have to do is wear a camera around your neck and pretend you're a reporter,' ' she recalled. Her father declined, she said, and she has not forgiven him.
On the steps of Carlstadt's boxy beige-brick municipal building, Domenick D. Giancaspro lifted his eyebrows conspiratorially when asked how he managed to get to games several times a year.
'I can't say,' he said. 'I'm the chief financial officer of the town. But let's say connections.'
Elsewhere, the gallery of longtime Giant rooters is filled with giants of many sorts.
Andy Rooney drives to Manhattan from Norwalk, Conn., boards a shuttle at the Port Authority Bus Terminal and rides to the games with his fellow fans. He has decent tickets now, but he had to work for them.
In the 1950's, Mr. Rooney explained, he was part of a group who shared a cluster of 10 season tickets, one of which was behind a pole at the Polo Grounds. 'If you were new,' he said, 'you had to sit behind the pole until someone left the group and you could move up, and I was there for one year behind the pole.'
A federal judge in the Southern District of New York, Richard C. Casey, has been going to the games for more than 40 years, the last 13 in the company of a guide dog.
'God was kind to me,' the judge said. 'I saw the Giants win the Super Bowl in 1987, and I was blind a month later.'
The novelist E. L. Doctorow still cherishes memories of attending Giants games back when cheap bleacher seats drew a much more diverse crowd. 'If you go out to the ballgame now, it's all white and middle class and up, and I think that's to be regretted.'
At Maggie O'Byrne's, Eddie Marthinson was holding forth, fondly remembering the days in the 1950's when the Giants played at Yankee Stadium and anyone could buy a ticket on game day for $1.75 and sit in the bleachers. The face value of some upper-tier tickets for Sunday's game was $82, but with the sellout, scalpers will be asking many times that price.
Years back, Mr. Marthinson, 58 and now the assistant track supervisor at Meadowlands Racetrack, got his hands on season tickets and has not let go.
'I put them in my daughter's name,' he said. 'That way if I drop dead I know damn well who's going to get the tickets.'
At the Grasshopper Also, a few of Mr. Georgeou's neighbors confessed to having season tickets. Mike Raleigh, 37, a sales executive, said he waited 10 years for his. Lee Johnson, 67, who works at a towel factory in Moonachie, got his season tickets in 1954.
Mr. Georgeou was glad to hear about his fellow fans' good fortune.
'If anybody's interested in giving away tickets, come and see me,' he said. 'They can reach me on my cell phone.'
He did not offer his number.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Bittersweet Taste of Change
Any reluctance to change on the part of Sergio Zyman would be understandable. Yet Mr. Zyman, who managed one of the most ill-fated marketing moves ever, the introduction of New Coke, remains a relentless proselytizer of repositioning the images of products and services.
'Companies have to constantly figure out who they are and where they are in relation to the competition,' said Mr. Zyman, 59, who retired from Coca-Cola for the second time in 1998. 'You may not need a whole new brand, just some tweaking.' He opened a consulting firm in Atlanta called the Zyman Group, which now has more than 100 employees and a client list including the Blockbuster video chain, ConAgra Foods and Callaway Golf.
Mr. Zyman, a native of Mexico, still lives in Atlanta, Coke's hometown, and has written his third marketing book: 'Renovate Before You Innovate: Why Doing the New Thing Might Not Be the Right Thing' (Portfolio, $24.95).
His message is essentially one of not necessarily throwing out the brand with the soda water. He ought to know. Looking back at the introduction of New Coke in April 1985, Mr. Zyman now suggests that something less radical might have been in order -- like changes in pricing, labeling and advertising. New Coke, with a sweeter taste than the original, was a colossal flop, and just 77 days after its introduction the company resurrected the old formula as 'Classic Coke.' The 'new' version vanished soon after.
Mr. Zyman left the company in 1986 but was recruited back in 1993 as chief marketing officer and is credited with revitalizing the brand during his second tenure. In what is surely an understatement, Mr. Zyman said, 'I have spent a lot of time thinking about New Coke.'
Restoring the original formula was as controversial within the company as the decision to start the new one, he said. 'Oh sure, now everyone who was at Coke then will say they wanted to switch back, but I remember that probably 95 percent of management was against that,' he said.
He now wishes that instead of jettisoning the old formula, Coca-Cola had moved more quickly to dump one of its most memorable advertising campaigns: 'We put a bunch of people on a hill to teach the world to sing,' Mr. Zyman said, 'and we should have been teaching them to drink Coke.'
Robert Johnson
REFRESH BUTTON",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Still Waiting
'I've never felt like anybody wanted me dead before,' says Kendall Morrison, a 35-year-old New Yorker with AIDS. But an unnamed Michigan investor who purchased Morrison's life-insurance policies in 1993 surely did. Earlier this year, the investor threatened to sue the broker who sold him the policies for fraud and breach of contract. He was upset that, five years later, Morrison was still alive.
Breach-of-contract lawsuits are the latest wrinkle in the viatical settlements industry, the controversial business in which terminal patients' life-insurance policies are sold as commodities. Since the financial return of the investor, who lays out cash and takes over the premium payments, is inversely related to the seller's longevity, the practice is fairly ghoulish. On the other hand, the deals get money to people who desperately need it.
Morrison, for instance, sold his two policies for around 50 percent of their $350,000 face value at a time when he'd lost his health insurance and was 'extremely sick -- wasting, unable to retain food, in diapers.' But after multiple hospitalizations, he went on a pricey regimen that included protease inhibitors and slowly returned to stable health. The investor grew impatient. 'They kept sending me these Fed Exes and calling,' Morrison says. 'It was like, 'Are you still alive?''
Morrison's broker settled in May, presumably not wanting to risk a court battle. Other cases are pending. Investors in Dignity Partners, a San Francisco-based company, charged the company's board with being remiss in not seeing how new therapies would affect their returns.
Not surprisingly, Morrison has no sympathy for speculators who lose out. 'I'm a survivor,' he says. 'Get-rich schemes are usually high-risk: maybe high returns, maybe no returns.'
SUNDAY: JULY 19, 1998: AIDS",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Four Named as Finalists To Head Hunter College
A search committee for the next president of Hunter College has narrowed its field of finalists to three longtime college administrators and the chairwoman of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, Jennifer J. Raab, according to people close to the committee.
Ms. Raab, a lawyer who has earned a reputation as a staunch defender of the city's historic structures and was issues director for Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's 1989 mayoral campaign, has been championed by people associated with the mayor, including two trustees of the City University of New York who were members of the search committee: Randy M. Mastro, the former deputy mayor, and Benno C. Schmidt Jr., who headed the mayor's task force on CUNY and the Hunter search committee.
Despite this support, the people close to the search committee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it was too early to say whether Ms. Raab would land the job.
Besides Ms. Raab, the candidates who are being invited for discussions with faculty, staff members and students at Hunter starting next week are Jo Ann M. Gora, the provost of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va.; John C. Stockwell, chancellor of the University of South Carolina at Spartanburg; and Gregory H. Williams, dean of Ohio State University's College of Law. Mr. Williams has also earned a reputation outside academia for a book he wrote, 'Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black,' (Dutton, 1995), an autobiographical account of his childhood.
The committee reviewed about 50 candidates and was said to be pleased with the pool of applicants.
'I think it speaks very well of the improving reputation of City University that so many high-quality candidates were attracted,' Mr. Mastro said. He would not comment on any specific candidate or on the selection process.
Matthew Goldstein, CUNY's chancellor, also would not comment on any of the candidates but said he and the trustees would have the opportunity to interview them and he would then make a recommendation to the board.
Despite criticism in recent years about CUNY's being a remedial factory for poorly prepared students, Hunter, the largest of CUNY's 11 senior colleges, has been a hot campus. Centrally located at East 68th Street and Park Avenue, it has attracted some of CUNY's strongest students. This year its enrollment topped 20,000.
Hunter's former president, David A. Caputo, left earlier this year to become president of Pace University. Evangelos J. Gizis has been serving as Hunter's acting president since July.
CUNY's compensation plan allows it to pay slightly more than $200,000 to Hunter's president, although the chancellor has the authority to recommend more.
Although Ms. Raab has not worked at a university, her supporters say she has been associated with schools  projects in New York, including the creation of Preservation High School in Brooklyn and the Riverdale-Kingsbridge Academy in the Bronx. She did not return a call to her office yesterday afternoon seeking comment.
She was a litigation associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison when Mayor Giuliani named her to the landmarks commission in 1994. She attended Hunter College High School and went on to earn degrees from Cornell University, Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Harvard Law School.
Dr. Gora, who has been at Old Dominion since 1992, graduated from Vassar College and earned a doctorate in sociology from Rutgers. She has written books on the impact of the women's movement on crime trends and on volunteerism in health care.
Dr. Stockwell has been chancellor at the University of South Carolina's Spartanburg campus -- like CUNY, an urban university, though a much smaller one -- for six years. He graduated from Cedarville College in Ohio and holds a doctorate in theater from Bowling Green State University. He has worked at public university systems in New York, California, Indiana and Wisconsin.
Dr. Williams, who attended Ball State University as an undergraduate, earned a Ph.D. in political science and a law degree from George Washington University. He served as a legislative aide in the United States Senate and as a deputy sheriff in Muncie, Ind., while in college. Last year, he was president of the Association of American Law Schools.
Dr. Gora, Dr. Stockwell and Dr. Williams all said last night that they would accept the invitation for further discussions.
The presidency of Hunter has proved to be a springboard for others who held the position, including Paul LeClerc, who left Hunter to became president of the New York Public Library, and Donna E. Shalala, the United States secretary of health and human services, who left Hunter to become chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Madison.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Z Factor in the Pool Hall
WHEN he talks about soil acidity and maple trees, Allan McCarty sounds more like a botanist than a pool-cue guru. 'Michigan has sandy soil, and when it rains it doesn't hold the moisture,' said Mr. McCarty, co-founder of Predator Cues of Jacksonville, Fla. As a result, he explained, Michigan hard maple never becomes too waterlogged, so the wood retains a whitish hue rather than turning a mushy gray.
His fascination with the nuances of wood discoloration is more than a hobby. Predator Cues uses only unblemished Michigan maple in its top-of-the-line Z Shaft. Lighter and more tapered than other shafts -- the skinnier halves of cues -- it is intended to minimize what modern players call cue ball deflection.
The Z -- priced at $245, more than twice the cost of most conventional shafts -- is so slender at the tip that the weight of the cue ball pushes it aside upon contact. Bigger conventional models, by contrast, slam through the shot, adding unwanted, unpredictable spin.
'By reducing the end mass, we allow the cue ball to push the shaft aside,' said Mr. McCarty, whose interest in reducing cue ball deflection traces to a big-money game he botched in 1992. 'That's instead of the shaft pushing the cue ball offline.'
The Z Shaft's predecessor was the 314, which takes its name from a decimal-free approximation of pi. Both shafts are composed of 10 wedges shaped like pie slices, fused into a cylinder. When Mr. McCarty and his business partner, Steven Titus, began researching shaft design in the early 1990's, they discovered that the direction of the grain in the shaft's wood correlated with the direction in which it sent a cue ball askew. Joining together 10 pieces with differing grains mitigated that effect.
When the 314 was introduced in 1995, Mr. McCarty and Mr. Titus already knew that a more conical taper would improve performance. But the pool world, Mr. McCarty said, simply wasn't ready for the odd-looking Z Shaft, which looks frail next to the thick cudgels that line pool-hall walls. Development began in earnest in 2000, once the Predator brand had earned enough trust among pool aficionados.
To test the Z Shaft's novel shape, Predator enlisted the aid of Iron Willie, the company's 70-pound robot. Equipped with an elbow that never tires, Iron Willie was charged with shooting a cue ball toward a piece of carbonless copy paper, moving five millimeters to the right or left and then shooting again -- and again and again -- until Predator determined exactly how much taper could virtually eliminate cue ball deflection without making the shaft susceptible to fracturing.
The shaft is so slender that it produces a fair amount of tactile feedback when it meets the cue ball. After a few hundred games, Z Shaft users can sense the pleasant vibration that indicates a perfectly struck cue ball, versus the rough twitter that accompanies an uneven stroke.
Great care is taken in selecting the wood for Z Shafts, 10,000 of which have been sold since the introduction in July 2003. The century-old Michigan hard maples must be quarter-sawn, which only a small percentage of the nation's mills can do. Mr. McCarty also noted that Predator uses only maples that have already been harvested for syrup. 'If there's sugar left in the trees, it leaves these brown lines in it,' he said.
As it did with the 314, Predator has marketed the Z Shaft by putting it in the hands of what Mr. McCarty calls 'influencers' -- touring professionals, of course, but also expert players who haven't quite cracked the big time or are simply content to be big fish in little ponds.
'We might go into a space like Columbus, Ohio, where there's a No.1 player who isn't quite good enough to make it on the pro tour, but to the average player he looks like a champion,' Mr. McCarty said.
Average players in Columbus, consider yourselves warned: if a pool-hall habitué ever challenges you to a money game, and you notice a 'Z' embossed on his cue, run away as fast as you can.
OPENERS: THE GOODS",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Excerpt From Address on Immigration
Following is an excerpt from Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's address to a conference on immigration at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis yesterday, as transcribed by The New York Times.
Immigrants are exactly what America needs. They're what we need economically, and I think they're what we need morally -- because we're a country that doubts itself right now.
There's nothing better than having a lot of people show up that understand why you should be here, better than we do. Really. The thing that revitalizes America and gets it back to its sense of confidence again -- I mean, to have somebody come here and explain to you why they came to America might be the very reason why large groups of people kind of wake up and realize how lucky they are to be here, and how much there is to offer, and how the opportunities are there. And sometimes, it's just the change in attitude that is necessary to see how to use that opportunity.
All of these immigrants that come here help us with the work they do, they challenge us with new ideas and new perspectives, and they give us perspective, which is what I'm talking about. This is still the nation that more people around the world want to come to than any place else in the world.
That has to tell us something about ourselves, very, very deep in our soul. If around the world this is the place people want to come to so much, maybe there's more here than many of us realize, and that many of us can take advantage of.
And I believe we need to be reminded of that. We need to be reminded of that so that we don't take what we have for granted.
The anti-immigration movement that's now sweeping the country in my view is no different than the movements that swept the country in the past. You look back at the Chinese Exclusionary Act, or the Know-Nothing movement -- these were movements that encouraged Americans to fear foreigners, to fear something that's different, and to stop immigration.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Staying True To the Tar Heels
Among the people celebrating North Carolina's national championship in men's college basketball last week was Vaughn D. Bryson, the former chief executive of Eli Lilly -- and a former first baseman for the university's baseball team.
Mr. Bryson, along with his wife, Nancy, and their two grown children -- all North Carolina alumni -- were courtside in St. Louis for the N.C.A.A. championship game, in which North Carolina's Tar Heels beat Illinois, 75-70. 'This was so exciting, being there for the national championship,' said Mr. Bryson, 66.
He knows what it feels like to get close to a national title, without winning. Before Mr. Bryson began his 32-year career at Lilly, culminating with a stint as president and C.E.O. from 1991 to 1993, his Tar Heels baseball team made it to the College World Series, an eight-team tournament, in 1960. They lost in the early rounds of the double-elimination tournament to Minnesota, the eventual winner, and to Oklahoma State, whose pitcher Jim Wixson threw a no-hitter.
Mr. Bryson received a bachelor's degree in pharmacy and started a career that led to managing Lilly, a Fortune 500 company. After leaving the company in 1993 during a dispute with Richard D. Wood, then the chairman, Mr. Bryson spent two years running Vector Securities International, an investment banking firm focused on health care companies.
These days he is busy on several fronts. As president of Clinical Products Inc. in St. Louis, Mr. Bryson talks about the benefits of the Extend Bar, a snack made with uncooked cornstarch. The snack can help people with hypoglycemia or diabetes, he said. 'Most of our sales are through Walgreens and the Internet right now,' he said. 'We're really just getting started.'
He is also on the boards of four public companies: Amylin Pharmaceuticals, AtheroGenics, ICOS and Chiron.
He and his wife divide their time between homes in Michigan and Vero Beach, Fla., and are benefactors of their alma mater. In March, they pledged $5 million to establish a clinical genetics research center at the campus, in Chapel Hill. They have also set up an endowment for the baseball program.
Robert Johnson
OPENERS: REFRESH BUTTON",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Of Ill Mothers, 36% Are Held Able to Work
After evaluating hundreds of disabled welfare mothers for a new city workfare program, officials at four nonprofit agencies said yesterday that most of the women could not work because they were too ill, had to care for disabled children or lacked enough interest in the program.
Of the 410 mothers screened on Saturday, only 36 percent will be considered for the work program, the officials said. The agencies will continue to interview disabled women over the coming months for the program, which is Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's newest welfare initiative. But while the officials stressed the importance of the project to the mothers who will participate, they now have doubts about how many will.
'I don't think there are going to be as many people participating as we had thought,' said Linda Turner, director of rehabilitation services at Goodwill Industries of Greater New York. 'There's a significant percentage of these folks that are quite seriously disabled.'
The preliminary reports from the agency officials came yesterday as city officials and advocates for the poor fiercely debated the value of the new program, which will require disabled welfare mothers to work in jobs tailored to their specific impairments.
The new policy began this weekend when city officials ordered about 800 women to report to welfare offices for screening into the new 20-hour a week workfare program. It was unclear last night why only half of that group actually showed up for interviews, but state officials, who helped finance the project, said as many as 12,000 mothers may ultimately participate.
Under the old system, disabled mothers were exempt from workfare requirements unless a city doctor certified that they could work. City officials contended that, as a result, those women were denied desperately needed job training, work experience and career counseling.
But advocates for the poor say the new system endangers welfare mothers who have already been classified by city doctors as permanently or temporarily unemployable.
Officials at the four nonprofit agencies conducting the screening said they found some women eager to work and some who appeared to be too severely disabled to participate. The agencies are Goodwill Industries, the Federation Employment and Guidance Service, the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service and the National Society for Disability Services.
The federation agency found 116 mothers who will likely participate in the new program. Most suffered from mental illness, asthma and chronic back pain. They were given an appointment for a more complete evaluation, which will be reviewed by the State Office of Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals With Disabilities.
Those women will ultimately work 20 hours a week for three months, and 35 hours a week after that, while receiving career counseling, job search training and other services.
'In our experience, a lot of them don't think they're up to working, but they welcome the opportunity,' said Al Miller, chief operating officer of the federation agency.
On the other hand, officials at the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service found only three employable mothers in a pool of 60.
'They're pretty seriously disabled, and work may not be appropriate for them,' said Norma Martin, assistant executive director of the Brooklyn bureau. 'We're not here to try to force people who are severely disabled to work if they can't work.'
Debra Sproles, a spokeswoman for the Human Resources Administration, which runs the city's welfare programs, said she could not comment on the private agencies' findings without reviewing them first. She could not say what would happen to those disabled mothers who did not enter the workfare program.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Helping Nonreaders to Read and Love It
Yesterday morning at the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service, five adults gathered for the weekly meeting of an unorthodox book-of-the-month club.
The readers are not linked by a love of murder mysteries, biographies or romance novels. They share a more profound bond: they have all suffered the ravages of severe mental illness, and are eager to improve their lives.
The reading comprehension workshop is part of Project Moving On, a program that provides psychiatric counseling, medication, vocational training and educational opportunities for 75 mentally ill New Yorkers. The workshop meets every Thursday morning at 285 Schermerhorn Street in downtown Brooklyn, at the offices of the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service, one of the seven local charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
The workshop was founded in 1995 by Sara Faison, a retired public relations officer who had raised a child with a mental illness. She volunteered to lead meetings and select appropriate books for the group. The books had to be engaging but not overly complex, because when the workshop began, most of the participants could barely read or remember what they read.
Although Ms. Faison knew they might spend years on improving their skills, she formed the group because, she said, 'I wanted to do something hands-on, where I knew I could make a difference.'
At first, the going was rough. The readers did not understand the irony in 'The Ransom of Red Chief.' They did not like books in which the bad guys won in the end.
But Ms. Faison persisted, and eventually found books they enjoyed. They have read about Odysseus's battle with the Cyclops, a biography of Malcolm X and a book about a woman battling schizophrenia.
The difference Ms. Faison hoped to make became clear yesterday as each student in the workshop offered a testimonial to its benefits. Monica Hutchinson, a woman from Brooklyn who is afflicted with schizophrenia, said that before she joined the group in 1995, she could barely read a restaurant menu or a subway sign. She frequently got lost and would spend hours riding the trains without getting where she needed to go.
Ms. Hutchinson said that over the years, her reading has improved immensely, and the effort she puts forth in the weekly meetings has helped strengthen her memory.
'I don't get lost anymore, I don't wander the subways anymore; I make it straight home,' she said.
At yesterday's meeting, the students took turns reading aloud from a biography of Bill Cosby. When they stumbled over words like 'popularity' or 'dialogue,' Ms. Faison gently offered them a chance to pronounce the word correctly. Frequently, the second time was the charm.
Ms. Faison also asked students questions about the text. One passage was about Mr. Cosby's refusing to make a road trip to Toledo with his Temple University football team because he had a conflicting appointment to do stand-up comedy.
'Does anybody know where Toledo is?' Ms. Faison asked. 'In Spain?' suggested Carmen Lopez, a formerly homeless woman from Bushwick. Ms. Faison explained that Ms. Lopez was half right.
Members said they gained more than just concrete knowledge from the reading group.
Cornell Chapman, a seventh-grade dropout, said he had come to feel much better about himself in the year since he joined the group. Mr. Chapman, 31, spent years trying to silence the voices in his head by smoking crack cocaine. Then he learned last year that he had the virus that causes AIDS.
Instead of despairing, he has decided to make the best of his situation. Mr. Chapman has stopped using drugs, and is now working to obtain his high school graduate equivalency degree. He said the workshop had helped him improve his reading skills and increase his vocabulary.
'It bothered me a lot not being able to read,' he said. 'I felt that I could never become an independent person. But now I've got a second chance to be somebody.'
HOW TO HELP
Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to P.O. Box 5193, General Post Office, New York, N.Y. 10087, or any of these  organizations:
BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE  285 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK  1011 First Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS  191 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201.
CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES  281 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10010.
UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK  Church Street Station, P.O. Box 4100, New York, N.Y. 10261-4100
No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
The Times pays the fund's expenses, so all contributions go directly to the charities, which use them to provide services and cash assistance to the poor.
Contributions to the fund are deductible on Federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law.
To delay may mean to forget.
Previously recorded $5,287,868.83  Recorded yesterday 15.398.00
Total $5,303,266.83
THE NEEDIEST CASES",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"QUOTATION OF THE DAY
'There is a real concern that we will lose the nation's attention the longer this takes.'
BOBBY JINDAL, a Louisiana representative, on the hurricane relief efforts in his home state. [A1]",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"CHRONICLE
Mental illness has become less and less a family secret. Today, MARY WALLACE, the wife of MIKE WALLACE, the correspondent on CBS's '60 Minutes,' will receive the first National Family Achievement Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, a nonprofit group in Arlington, Va., and Pfizer Inc., the pharmaceutical company.
Mrs. Wallace is being recognized for her support of her husband when he became clinically depressed in the 1980's and for her work with other families with the same problem. The ceremony is at the Rainbow Room in New York at noon.
When Mr. Wallace first became ill in 1985, he was able to function at work, she said, but he came home depressed. He was waiting to testify in the trial of the libel suit against CBS by Gen. William C. Westmoreland, which involved a documentary narrated by Mr. Wallace.
'Everything looked dark, black and futureless,' Mrs. Wallace said yesterday in a telephone interview. 'He reacted the way everybody with clinical depression acts. He sees the half-empty glass, except it's all empty. The person who's living with someone like that thinks they've done something wrong, starts feeling guilty, doesn't know what to do, gets into self-doubt, starts resenting it, and gets angry and wants to run away.'
CBS was vindicated when General Westmoreland agreed to drop the suit after former aides gave testimony that essentially confirmed the assertions made in the documentary.
CHRONICLE",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"CHRONICLE
Former Vice President DAN QUAYLE may be moving to Arizona, but he will always be a Hoosier at heart -- and maybe in the polling place.
Mr. Quayle is taking a teaching position at Thunderbird, an international management graduate school in Glendale, Ariz., starting in February. But though he is selling his home in Carmel, Ind., The Associated Press reported yesterday that he hopes to establish legal residency in Huntington, Ind., at an apartment above The Huntington Herald Press, the newspaper owned by his family.
'Dan Quayle wants to vote in Huntington because he is a Hoosier, and Huntington is his home,' said Anne Hathaway, Mr. Quayle's spokeswoman.
ANDY NEWMAN
CHRONICLE",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Slowness in Listing Passengers Deepens Air Security Doubts
In the hours after Trans World Airlines Flight 800 exploded in flames, the airline issued conflicting statements about how many passengers had been on board. It took 12 hours to verify the passengers' identities and determine that certain travelers, including three people bound for Rome, had not in fact been on the ill-fated plane.
Federal investigators now say T.W.A.'s early confusion about the number and identity of the passengers has set off alarm bells about a possible breach of aviation security. Law enforcement officials say they have suspicions about the airline's procedures for handling checked baggage and are closely examining whether it would have been possible for someone to put a bomb in a piece of luggage, check it through to Paris and not board the plane.
Security experts say the system of matching bags to passengers in United States airports is more vulnerable to deception and inaccuracy than the system at European airports, where security guards monitor the process at each critical step. In the United States, most airlines have bag-matching systems that are similar to T.W.A.'s, and investigators say that any flaws found in the bag-matching procedures for Flight 800 could raise questions about the quality of other airlines' procedures.
'There is no way any bag on its way to the U.S. can get onto a plane without going through security,' said Philip Baum, who until recently was a senior official with the T.W.A. subsidiary that handles security at overseas airports. 'But coming out of the U.S., it's a different story.'
A T.W.A. spokesman, Mark Abels, said the airline had made sure that every checked bag in the cargo hold belonged to someone on board.
'Every piece of luggage on the plane was matched to each passenger and accounted for,' Mr. Abels said. He acknowledged that it took T.W.A. hours after the crash to verify the number and identity of the passengers, but said the confusion bore no relationship to the airline's control of the luggage. He pointed out that Flight 800's departure was delayed for an hour, in part because some luggage was removed to await the passenger who had checked it.
Investigators have said that the forward sections of Flight 800 were separated from the rest of the plane by an explosion. Although they have not reached a definitive conclusion, a leading theory is that a bomb in the forward cargo hold, in a toilet cubicle or on a food cart blew off the front of the plane. The front cargo hold contained only checked luggage, according to investigators.
Compiling accurate passenger lists and matching each checked piece of luggage to a specific passenger are cornerstones of aviation security. Congress passed a law in 1990 requiring airlines to confirm that every checked bag belongs to a passenger on international flights. The legislation stemmed from the 1988 downing of Pan American Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, a disaster caused by a bomb planted in luggage that had been checked by a passenger who never boarded the plane.
'The passenger manifest and the luggage match is a critical part of security,' said Kurt Wurzberger, director of security operations at the Fairfax Group, a security consulting company in Falls Church, Va. 'If an airline is not using that system the way it is designed, it could create a serious vulnerability.'
The 1990 law also required airlines to compile a complete passenger list, including full names, passport numbers and emergency phone numbers, for international flights. Airlines must make this information available within three hours of any crash occurring outside the United States. A proposal currently in Congress would require airlines to make an accurate list available soon after the crash of a domestic flight.
But while the bag match requirements have been put into effect, the passenger list law has not, in part because of opposition by airlines.
At 9 P.M. on July 17, some 30 minutes after the crash of Flight 800, T.W.A. officials began trying to confirm the identity of those aboard, Mr. Abels said. At 11:30 P.M., they put the number at 229. Twelve hours later, they changed it to 228. Finally, late that afternoon, airline officials confirmed that 230 people had actually been aboard.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has said that he and his staff repeatedly beseeched the airline for an accurate passenger list so that anguished family members could know if relatives were on board. At various times during the night of the crash, the Mayor said, airline officials told him they could not produce an accurate list because the F.B.I. or other law enforcement agencies had taken crucial records -- or because the National Transportation Safety Board had told them not to release the information. Both Mayor Giuliani and a safety board spokesman later called the explanations untrue.
In their effort to make the identifications, airline employees were scrambling to compare differing lists of passengers with boarding passes and telephoning airports around the country for information on passengers who had started their trips in those cities.
Mr. Abels said discrepancies in the passenger list do not prevent the airline from correlating the names of those who checked bags with the names on tickets collected at the gate. Confusion about names of passengers, he said, sometimes arises because people traveling together book their tickets under one name. He added that there was not always a direct connection between the number of passengers who check bags and the number on board, because some take only carry-on bags.
Still, aviation security experts said that bag-matching systems used by airlines at American airports are not as tightly controlled as those used by the same companies in Europe. At major European airports, security guards are posted at points where luggage is collected or might get mishandled, said Mr. Baum, formerly manager of training and auditing for the T.W.A. subsidiary that handles security overseas.
Mr. Abels said that every piece of luggage checked by an international passenger is marked with an electronic bar code. It then travels to a cargo area where it is sorted according to flight, packed into a container and loaded onto a plane. As passengers board the flight, their names are typed into a computer and matched against the names of those who have checked bags until all the luggage is accounted for.
Although many carriers follow similar procedures, a spokesman for Delta Air Lines, Bill Berry, said the airline loads each international passenger's luggage after the passenger boards the plane.
A former director of security for Northwest Airlines, Douglas R. Laird, said bag-matching procedures used in the United States provide good safeguards against terrorism, but are not fail-safe, in part because they depend on properly trained and honest baggage handlers. Federal investigators say they have questioned baggage handlers who loaded luggage onto Flight 800.
Now, they are also scrutinizing the passenger manifest to make sure it accurately represents all those who boarded the plane.
At the request of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, United States airline representatives at European airports already collect detailed information on passengers bound for this country by using computers to read passports.
Soon, airlines will be required to provide more detailed information  more quickly about outbound international passengers than T.W.A. was able to do after the crash of Flight 800. Several other airlines, like Delta and United, said they already can provide a verified passenger list in as little as one or two hours.
Just six hours before the July 17 crash, Government officials, airline  representatives and victims' advocates held a conference call to hammer out a plan for implementing the 1990 law requiring airlines to improve their information-gathering on international passengers.
One of the victims' advocates, M. Victoria Cummock, who lost her husband in the Pan Am 103 explosion, said that during the conversation, she had expressed her frustration with the six-year lag in putting the law into effect.
'What's it going to take?' Ms. Cummock recalled saying. 'A plane getting blown out of the sky on American soil?'
THE FATE OF FLIGHT 800: THE AIRLINE",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Neediest Cases; Conquering Isolation of Deafness and Mental Illness
On the day in 1986 when the police in Flushing, Queens, received a call that a homeless man was sleeping in their neighborhood's sidewalks, they did not have to go far to find him. The man, Michael Smith, then 43, slept behind the police station. The police picked him up and had him taken to the Bellevue Hospital Center psychiatric ward.
'I wasn't sick,' Mr. Smith explained. 'I was drunk.'
He had trouble explaining himself to the police, though, because he is deaf, and was probably experiencing the same mental illness that has since been diagnosed as a psychotic disorder, according to a social worker who helps him, Roberta Ahouse.
When he is not taking his medications, Mr. Smith can easily become agitated, especially when he talks about his finances, and can be paranoid, at times thinking people are talking about him. And although he was born fully deaf, before he started taking his medications he sometimes heard voices that he thought were coming from people he saw on television.
But after spending two years at Bellevue, Mr. Smith moved to a supportive apartment building, the Terence Cardinal Cooke Residence in the Fordham neighborhood in the Bronx. The residence, which has space for 24 mentally ill deaf people, is run by the Beacon of Hope House, part of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, one of the seven local charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
Many of those who live in the Cooke residence have schizophrenia or, like Mr. Smith, have symptoms similar to those of schizophrenia. Alan Bernstein, the director, said that one of the main aims of the Cooke residence was to get those who live there to interact with their peers.
'It is an isolating disease, and it is very difficult,' he said. 'But it's even more difficult when you're deaf and your ability to communicate with people is extremely limited.'
After six years at the Cooke residence, Mr. Smith moved to an apartment in the Allerton neighborhood in the Bronx. He lives there now with a roommate. The apartment, like three others nearby that serve mentally ill deaf people, is run through the Beacon of Hope House's East Bronx Supported Housing Program.
Ms. Ahouse comes by every two weeks to check on Mr. Smith, to make sure he is taking his medications. 'He is a model client,' she said. 'He always takes his medication.'
Mr. Smith, who lived with his parents for most of his adult life, said his new apartment was a step up from the group residence. 'When I moved in my apartment here, it made me very happy,' he said in sign language as Bernadine Virani, a case worker at the Beacon of Hope House, translated. 'I can watch TV when I get ready to go out; I am more enthusiastic.'
Besides the freedom it allows him, one of the greatest benefits of the supported housing program is that it gives him a number of people nearby whom he can communicate with. 'There's deaf people here, and I can associate here,' he said. 'It's a freer atmosphere.'
Though Ms. Virani is sometimes able to translate for Mr. Smith, she cannot be there for him and for the other clients all the time. The Beacon of Hope House trains all its social workers, including Ms. Ahouse, in sign language. But there are still times, as at a recent talent show, that outside sign language translators must be hired so that the deaf do not feel left out.
Mr. Bernstein believes that New York State, which pays for the mental health services the Beacon of Hope House provides, should also pay for the interpreters' services, which can cost $100 an hour, and for other specialized services that are provided to deaf and hard-of-hearing people. He has helped form a coalition that is advocating that public money be used for services for the deaf. In the meantime, the costs are  paid for by Catholic Charities, which uses money it receives from the Neediest Cases Fund.
But for Mr. Smith and the other beneficiaries of the services, how they are paid for is of little importance. For Mr. Smith, the most important thing is that he can live on his own and support himself. As he put it, 'I am very happy here.'
HOW TO HELP
Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to P.O. Box 5193, General Post Office, New York, N.Y. 10087, or any of these  organizations:
BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE  285 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK  1011 First Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS  191 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201.
CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES  281 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10010.
UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK  Church Street Station, P.O. Box 4100, New York, N.Y. 10261-4100
No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
The Times pays the fund's expenses, so all contributions go directly to the charities, which use them to provide services and cash assistance to the poor.
Donations may be made with a credit card online, courtesy of the Qpass digital commerce service, at www.nytimes.com/neediest. Online donors receive a free trial subscription to the crossword puzzle of The New York Times on the Web.
Contributions to the fund are deductible on Federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law.
To delay may mean to forget.
Previously recorded: $7,682,925.53  Recorded Friday: 9,390.00  Total: 7,692,315.53  Last year to date: 5,616,543.62",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"After a Breakdown, a Place to Recover
Lucille Cohen, a leader among those in her residence in Coney Island, lighted the menorah on Wednesday, just as she used to do during Hanukkahs with the three daughters she raised by herself in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
But in between, there was a period of darkness that sent her life into turmoil and eventually led to a brief stay in a psychiatric ward.
'I always have a satisfied feeling when I watch the candle lighting,' she said. 'I'm very touched.'
Before mental illness was diagnosed in Ms. Cohen, 55, she worked as a secretary and a tabulator of financial statistics for two New York City accounting firms.
About 10 years ago, with her children grown up and out of the house, she decided to get a college degree and enrolled at Kingsborough Community College.
'I was walking down the hall crying,' she said of her first day at the college. 'I couldn't believe that my feet were on college property. It was like being on the moon.'
Success there led her to transfer to the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh. But Ms. Cohen said she felt out of place among the younger students. When she was close to getting her degree, she said, she had a nervous breakdown after two dormitory neighbors started taunting her.
She was taken to Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center for evaluation, and was found to have 'major depression with psychotic feature,' Ms. Cohen said.
She was released from the hospital after three weeks, but had no place to live because she had given up her apartment when she went to SUNY. She was referred to two support centers for mentally ill adults, both run by the Coney Island Community Support Services Project. She lives at one center and receives daytime therapy and counseling at the other.
The centers receive money from the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, a beneficiary of the UJA-Federation of New York, one of the seven local charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
Ms. Cohen participates in several therapeutic sessions, including a small discussion group on families and relationships, and others that use art and poetry. Above all, she is provided with a stress-free setting.
While finding a place to stay with other residents was important to Ms. Cohen's sense of well-being, said Cary S. Wagner, director of the support services project, the daytime programs are essential for treating her mental illness. 'If she were referred to her apartment, I think she would have remained more or less reclusive and paranoid,' he said.
'At this junction in her life, she really had several needs,' Mr. Wagner said. 'One was for treatment and proper medication, and the other was for her not to be isolated and alone. The adult home provided that structure and other people around her. It helped reduce her isolation.'
Most people who come to the centers are referred by psychiatric hospitals and are likely to be there 10 to 20 years, or sometimes for the rest of their lives.
The residents often lead normal lives before arriving at the centers, but some specific and stressful event causes them to become emotionally unstable, Mr. Wagner said. 'The idea is to provide a safe, nonstressful environment,' he said. 'If you move too quickly with this population, they are thrown back' into instability.
Ms. Cohen, who is president of the residents' council in the building where she lives, is one of the clinic's most able clients, Mr. Wagner said.
Ms. Cohen said she receives requests for help from other residents at least once a day. She said, 'Everybody knows me over at Seabay,' the name of her residence building. 'When they have any issues with the administration, they come to me and ask me to intercede for them.'
Ms. Cohen said she wanted to enroll again at Plattsburgh, even though she was worried about how she would react when the memories came flooding back. She says she wants to get her degree and start a career as a psychologist, but she still needs to raise tuition money.
HOW TO HELP
Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to P.O. Box 5193, General Post Office, New York, N.Y. 10087, or any of these  organizations:
BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE  285 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK  1011 First Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS  191 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201.
CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES  281 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10010.
UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK  Church Street Station, P.O. Box 4100, New York, N.Y. 10261-4100
No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
The Times pays the fund's expenses, so all contributions go directly to the charities, which use them to provide services and cash assistance to the poor.
Donations may be made with a credit card online, courtesy of the Qpass digital commerce service, at www.nytimes.com/neediest. Online donors receive a free trial subscription to the crossword puzzle of The New York Times on the Web.
Contributions to the fund are deductible on Federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law.
To delay may mean to forget.
Previously recorded $2,144,039.97  Recorded yesterday $42,276.00
Total $2,186,315.97
THE NEEDIEST CASES",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"PUBLIC LIVES
Party Prescriptions Elude Patients
The model and former MTV D.J. KAREN DUFFY says that several hundred invitations to the party for her book, 'Model Patient,' were not delivered, and she suspects the messenger made off with them.
The ones that she sent by mail made it, she says, but the rest are probably being sold on some street corner somewhere.
The problem is that the invitations looked like prescription bottles, with the phrase 'You are prescribed to have a good time' where the medication, dosage and doctor's name would normally appear. Each bottle was filled with pink and white licorice-flavored candies that looked like pills, the kind one would probably need a prescription to obtain if they contained something stronger than candy.
'Some people do their job too well,' said Ms. Duffy, who appeared in several Woody Allen films and is now a correspondent for MICHAEL MOORE'S television program 'The Awful Truth.'
'Maybe I worked a little too hard to make it look authentic. But I wonder: Are there a bunch of people at nightclubs ingesting my invitations? I mean, I worked three years on this book, and my mother-in-law and my sisters and friends who are all talking to each other didn't get invited, and I'm trying to get myself out of the doghouse.'
Her manager, PEG DONEGAN, said that Ms. Duffy's guest list had 500 names; Ms. Duffy said that 400 were to be delivered by a messenger service.
'We started calling the list,' Ms. Donegan said. 'More than half don't seem  to have gotten to their rightful people. She sent a bunch to her doctors at New York Hospital, and they didn't get through. HARVEY WEINSTEIN'S didn't get through. I didn't even get mine.'
Conroy and Citadel Lay Down Arms
PAT CONROY'S alma mater, The Citadel, banned his first book and refused to let cameras on campus for the film version of another. But now Mr. Conroy and The Citadel, in Charleston, S.C., have gone beyond the truce or cease-fire stage. Tomorrow, The Associated Press said, The Citadel will confer an honorary degree on Mr. Conroy.
'It comes as a shock, but a nice one,' he told A.P. Then Mr. Conroy, 55, who graduated in 1967, added: 'I never penciled this in on the lists of awards I'd get in my life. I didn't want to be 70 years old and fighting with my college.' His 1980 novel 'The Lords of Discipline' was about a cadet's first year at a renowned military institute in -- where else? -- Charleston, S.C.
Remembering A Prime Minister
The napkins were printed with sayings from the hostess's grandfather: 'All men are worms -- I am a glowworm!' and 'I have never promised anything but blood, tears, toil and sweat.'
The hostess was EDWINA SANDYS. Her grandfather was Winston S. Churchill. And the napkins were for a party at (appropriately enough, considering the hostess) the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, on East 58th Street near Park Avenue.
The party was for the Winston Churchill Memorial and Library in the United States, which is in Fulton, Mo.
The historian JAMES HUMES recalled meeting Churchill in 1953, when Mr. Humes was an 18-year-old schoolboy. 'He put his hand on mine and said, 'Study history. In history lie all the secrets of statecraft,' ' Mr. Humes said. 'So I went back to my room and tore down the picture of Ted Williams and put up one of Winston Churchill.'
Mr. Humes saw Churchill again in 1959, at Andrews Air Force Base.
'It was raining, and there was a crowd to see him off, people like Walter Lippmann, who wouldn't cross the street to see General Eisenhower,' Mr. Humes said.
He moved across the floor in an imitation of Churchill going across the tarmac and climbing the steps to the airplane. 'He turned and said, 'Farewell to the land of my . . . mother,' with that exquisite pause. I'm a coward, but I'd have charged the trenches on that one. Lippmann had tears in his eyes.'
JAMES BARRON",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"TRY 'EM ON A LONG BUN
Lampreys are ugly, toothy, eel-like, parasitic creatures that latch onto fish, and they reportedly taste like liver. Mmm, you say, let's order up a mess! You may get the chance. For the past year, researchers at the University of Minnesota have been testing lampreys from the Great Lakes on Portuguese diners, who have enjoyed Atlantic-dwelling lampreys for years. The idea is to see if the American lamreys, which are despised threats to commercial fishing, are tasty enough to be got rid of via export, abroad and at home. And? 'They're firm textured, but not chewy,' says Jeff Gunderson, the project's leader. 'My wife said they made her think of beef.' Wistfully, no doubt.
Sunday December 15, 1996",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Sarah Lawrence College To Name New President
Sarah Lawrence College is to officially announce today that its next president will be Michele Tolela Myers. Dr. Myers, 56, the president of Denison University in Ohio and chairwoman of the American Council of Education, will succeed Alice Stone Ilchman next August.
Dr. Myers, who was dean of the undergraduate college at Bryn Mawr before going to Denison, said that Sarah Lawrence is in good shape academically, with entering students averaging 1190 on their S.A.T.'s and with 70 percent going on to pursue graduate studies.
But she said the liberal arts college, in Yonkers, N.Y., badly needs financing. It has 1,111 undergraduates and 277 graduate students, but its endowment is only $30 million, and it has run deficits recently.
METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW YORK",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Neediest Cases; Illness Brings Family to U.S., Then Splits It
Natallia Biahliak's two sons, Igor, 7, and Nikita, 10, started school the first week of September, just like many children across the country.
But while Ms. Biahliak and her husband, Andrei, watched the children in their neighborhood in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, begin the school year, they could only hear about their own children's first day in school over the telephone from Minsk, Belarus, their hometown.
Their dream of finding better opportunities and medical care for Mr. Biahliak in America has evaporated as the separated family struggles emotionally and financially.
Because Mr. Biahliak has brain cancer and is unable to work, he and his wife cannot afford to care for their sons. One month after they all moved to the United States in April, the Biahliaks sent their boys back to Minsk to live with Ms. Biahliak's parents.
Ms. Biahliak communicates with her sons through e-mail. Speaking on the telephone is too difficult for them.
'When it happened with Andrei's sickness, it was too much,' Ms. Biahliak, speaking with the help of a translator, said of the painful decision to send her children back.
Mr. Biahliak, who was a tile worker in Belarus, found out in 2005 that he had brain cancer. Doctors there removed some of the tumor, but they said that parts of it were very close to a major artery.
After receiving green cards to move to the United States, they moved in with a friend in Stamford, Conn., in April. But because neither of the Biahliaks speaks English, and the couple has no car, they found that their opportunities were limited.
They decided that New York City -- with its public transportation system, wider employment opportunities and large population of Russian-speaking immigrants -- would give them a better chance of establishing a new home. Still, it proved too hard to keep their children with them.
To help them adjust, a friend recommended the Marks Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst, a charity affiliated with UJA-Federation of New York, one of the seven beneficiaries of The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. In addition to providing advice and help with job applications and Medicaid enrollment, their caseworker, Yana Bril, drew on the fund for $800 to help with the Biahliaks' rent, $825 a month, and other expenses.
The Biahliaks were Ms. Bril's first case as a social worker. On her first day of work, she read about the UJA-Federation's involvement with the fund. As soon as she met the Biahliaks, Ms. Bril thought they were good candidates for the fund.
'The family just got torn apart,' she said. 'It's very, very sad, and at the same time very inspiring. They're trying to hold it together.'
In Minsk, Ms. Biahliak, who has an economics degree, worked for the city statistics department. But her limited English prevents her from finding a similar position here. She has found work as a housekeeper and as a nanny to three sisters younger than 5. Her total take-home earnings from both jobs is $224 a week.
As for Mr. Biahliak, doctors at NYU Downtown Hospital removed most of the rest of the tumor, and he began chemotherapy treatments. In a recent interview, he was visibly drained, resting his head -- shaved and scarred -- on his hand.
The absence of their sons is clearly a source of sadness for the Biahliaks. They wish they could afford a bigger apartment and airfare for the boys. But meanwhile, they are adjusting.
'We couldn't dream that here there was such a nice organization,' Ms. Biahliak said in Russian. 'I would be completely lost in my problems without the help.'
HOW TO HELP
Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to 4 Chase Metrotech Center, 7th Floor East, Lockbox 5193, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11245, or any of these organizations:
BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE  285 Schermerhorn Street  Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217
CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS  191 Joralemon Street  Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK  1011 First Avenue  New York, N.Y. 10022
CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY  105 East 22nd Street  New York, N.Y. 10010
COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK  105 East 22nd Street  New York, N.Y. 10010
FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES  281 Park Avenue South  New York, N.Y. 10010
UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK  Church Street Station  P.O. Box 4100  New York, N.Y. 10261-4100
No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
Donations may be made with a credit card by phone at (800) 381-0075 or online, courtesy of NYCharities.org, an Internet donations service, at www.nytimes.com/neediest or www.nycharities.org/neediest. For instructions on how to donate stock to the fund, call (212) 556-1137 or fax (212) 556-4450.
The Times pays the fund's expenses, so all contributions go directly to the charities, which use them to provide services and cash assistance to the poor.
Contributions to the fund are deductible on federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law.
To delay may mean to forget.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Some Medical Help for a Disturbed Teen-ager and Stability for His Family
Maria A. remembers the day she discovered that her son Jonathan was mentally ill. It was a Saturday in June two years ago.
Jonathan, then 14, had been in a fight, and Maria told him he was grounded. She figured he was going through a rebellious phase and needed to be reined in. But Jonathan threatened to kill himself.
Later that day, he was admitted to the psychiatric ward of Kings County Hospital Center. He was there for a month, suffering with what psychiatrists call schizo-affective disorder, an illness that can resemble schizophrenia.
'They tied him down whenever he tried to leave the hospital,' Maria said through a translator. 'I felt horrible because we had very little, and now my biggest fears were coming true. I was afraid my son had gone crazy.'
The time that Jonathan spent in the hospital was emotionally torturous, Maria said. But there was no great flood of relief when he was discharged: he had to remain under a doctor's care and take expensive medication. And Jonathan was not eligible for Medicaid.
At the time, Maria and her three children were illegal immigrants, living on the fringes of society. Her husband was in Florida, searching for steady work; Maria, now 41, had no job and was barely scraping by.
Worrying about her family when everyone was healthy was one thing; knowing that Jonathan's mental health depended on care and medicine that she could not afford was another.
Then Maria turned to the Jewish Child Care Association, affiliated with the UJA-Federation of New York, one of the seven charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The agency provided money for Jonathan's medical expenses and helped with the family's daily needs.
Maria and her husband, Vicente, had left Venezuela and slipped into New York City in 1985 with their two children, Jonathan, then 3, and Johnny, 7. During their first year in New York, Maria gave birth to David.
Vicente worked intermittently as a carpenter, always off the books and usually for less than the minimum wage. The family was having a hard time getting by. In April 1996, Vicente headed south to Florida in search of steady work. That month, Maria hesitantly registered David, who had been born in the United States and was a citizen, for public assistance. She feared that officials would discover that she was in the country illegally. They did not, and while the $350 that David received every month helped, it did not even cover the rent.
The next month, Jonathan's behavior began to change. Since his hospitalization in 1996, Jonathan's illness has stabilized. Medication and treatment by a child psychiatrist ended his manic and suicidal episodes.
And in April 1998, the family's circumstances began to change. Maria and her children became legal residents, her husband returned to stay and she started working in a sweater factory.
But there are still difficulties. Although Maria, Vicente and Johnny, now 20, all work, but for a total of about $800 a month, and none of them have benefits or job security.
The family attributes their survival to the Jewish Child Care Association. 'The family's stabilized for now,' said Richard Vargas, a caseworker there.
HOW TO HELP
Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to P.O. Box 5193, General Post Office, New York, N.Y. 10087, or any of these  organizations:
BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE  285 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK  1011 First Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS  191 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201.
CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES  281 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10010.
UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK  Church Street Station, P.O. Box 4100, New York, N.Y. 10261-4100
No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
The Times pays the fund's expenses, so all contributions go directly to the charities, which use them to provide services and cash assistance to the poor.
Contributions to the fund are deductible on Federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law.
To delay may mean to forget.
Previously recorded $2,657,785.28  Recorded Thursday $98,570.36
Total $2,756,355.64
THE NEEDIEST CASES",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Forget Diversity
'Diversity' must be a very, very good thing; President Bush used the word, or a variant of it, 10 times in his speech last month announcing that the administration would seek to have the Supreme Court declare the undergraduate admissions policies at the University of Michigan unconstitutional. 'I strongly support diversity of all kinds,' said the president, with his flair for hijacking the key words of his opponents, 'including racial diversity in higher education.' As the president knows very well, 'diversity' is precisely what the University of Michigan says its admissions program is designed to ensure. The two sides disagree only about the acceptable means of attaining this supreme good.
What, exactly, is so great about diversity? After all, when the process formerly known as affirmative action was first established, in the 60's, the goal was to help black people overcome the historic legacy of discrimination. As President Johnson famously put it in 1965, it is not enough to 'take a person who for years has been hobbled by chains, and liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race and then say, 'You are free to compete with others.'' The goal of affirmative action in employment, which Johnson mandated by an executive order to his Labor Department (and President Nixon continued), was not to create a 'diverse' workplace but to overcome hiring practices that had traditionally excluded or disadvantaged blacks. That remains the rationale for the highly circumscribed workplace affirmative action programs of today.
But 'affirmative action' carries an explicitly zero-sum connotation; if one group of individuals is being advantaged, another group is, of course, being disadvantaged. From the outset, affirmative action, unlike older policies designed to spur integration, was attacked for establishing invidious racial categories. Universities eager to boost black enrollment fell under suspicion for the same reason. And then came diversity. In 1978, Justice Lewis Powell declared in the Bakke case that universities could offer a 'plus factor' to minority students -- not to overcome the legacy of discrimination but to ensure a diversity of viewpoints.
Diversity has proved a much hardier rationale for the plus factor than the leg-up metaphor of President Johnson's speech, and for a simple reason: its central message is 'Everyone benefits equally.' Encountering new people and new ideas is a core aspect of the college experience. In 'The Shape of the River,' a scholarly brief for affirmative action, William G. Bowen and Derek Bok cite survey data showing that both white and black graduates of elite universities attach great importance to the ability to get along and work effectively with people of different racial and cultural backgrounds and also attribute 'a great deal' of their ability to do so to experiences in diverse settings in college. The University of Michigan has tried to take this claim one step further by conducting a study that purports to show that both white and minority students learn better in racially diverse classroom.
Well, really. Does that mean that George W. Bush would have improved on that famous C average if the Yale undergraduate population of the mid-60's had been, say, 12 percent minority rather than maybe 2 or 3 percent? Does that mean that grade inflation is really a dependent variable of diversity? The idea seems absurd on its face. What's more, while I wish I had attended a more diverse institution (I graduated from college in 1976, when affirmative action was young), it's pretty low on my wish list. And my impression from talking to students at two campuses of the University of California, and at the University of Texas Law School, is that for most white students diversity is a pleasant side benefit, like a nice library. It was, on the other hand, a tremendous boon to minority students, who otherwise would have attended less elite institutions.
The difference in the nature of the benefits is so obvious and overwhelming that I have trouble believing that people really mean what they say about diversity; the whole thing feels like an elaborate charade to keep us from knowing what we're doing. What's more, diversity has a kind of self-perpetuating genius. The old remedial idea of affirmative action implied a time limit, when all contestants would be ready to line up together at the starting line. But since diversity, by contrast, is a good for all, there's no earthly reason to ever stop awarding a plus factor to minority students.
But diversity, or rather, affirmative-action-as-diversity, is not good for all. In addition to the longstanding problem of disadvantaging some in order to advantage others, the diversity rationale also insultingly assumes that black students bring a black 'point of view,' Asians an Asian one and so on, thus reifying the very barriers of race and ethnicity that affirmative action is meant to erase. And why should racial and ethnic 'points of view' outweigh those forged by class or culture? Why, as a professor recently suggested to me, shouldn't the presence of the R.O.T.C. on campus be seen as a means to ensure representation of a 'military' point of view otherwise absent from elite universities?
Diversity distracts us from a simple but painful truth, which is that persistent black educational failure (and Hispanic failure, to a lesser extent) has made it impossible for the most selective schools to become substantially integrated using their own traditional criteria of merit. The problem is minority access to elite institutions, not white access to minority students. And perhaps we should say that if an elaborate charade is the only way to guarantee such access, then we shouldn't make a fetish of transparency, or even honesty. Perhaps. But I wonder if eliminating that mechanism wouldn't force universities -- and the rest of us -- to do something about the educational failure that has made affirmative action necessary in the first place.
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 2-2-03 James Traub is a contributing writer for the magazine.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Mr. Big
Q: I understand you just came from Mayor Bloomberg's office -- the royal treatment already and you haven't even seen your first fastball in a New York uniform. How did that go?
Nice. He works in the middle of the room with everybody around him, right there with his team. I thought, If I was mayor, that's how I'd have it.
Is he going to help you find an apartment?
No, I've got that squared away. I've got a place lined up in TriBeCa, a part of the city I never knew about. I was surprised to see how calm it is there. You know, you step outside on your sidewalk and you're not like in front of all the cabs and the business.
It's quiet, like Connecticut.
Will you have a posse in TriBeCa? A lot of pro athletes never go anywhere without an entourage.
My squad never gets bigger than three. I got Brian with me all the time, because he handles all my management. I got my friends Terrance in Boston and Mark on the West Coast -- they come in and out when I need them. It's like a blanket for me. We just keep it that tight and that consistent.
Is it a culture shock coming from Anaheim?
Not a shock, no. You know, I'm different from most folks. I like the rat race. I missed it when I was out there. Getting up every morning and competing with everybody who comes across your path -- I like that.
I like the intensity.
Do you worry about New Yorkers being too intense? A couple of bad games and people take it personally.
Am I worried? No. Remember, I came up in Boston, with the Sox. There is no place on earth where baseball is taken more seriously. The fact that they have had no championships there for so long, even though they've come close so many times, it makes people a little crazy.
They're less crazy in New York?
New Yorkers have other things going on. At least there's another team. But what I like most is that here I don't stick out like a sore thumb. If I turn my hat sideways, they've seen it before. They've seen a bald head before. They've seen guys my size. The best thing here is that you don't have to worry about what's going on and whether you're going to miss it. Places like Anaheim, if you miss something, it might not be happening tomorrow night or ever again. In New York, it's always happening, whatever it is. You can always find what you want. And that's been real calming for me as a person, as a man.
This season is a comeback for you, after the most serious injury of your career last year.
Yeah, a ruptured biceps. It started with a bad ankle, and I fooled with my swing to compensate, and then the muscle in my arm got torn. Had to have the whole thing patched up with an Achilles' tendon from the bank.
From the bank?
I don't know what it means, but they said from the bank. It's somebody else's damn Achilles' tendon.
How did you cope with all the downtime after the surgery?
It opened my eyes to a lot of stuff. It made me realize I wasn't Superman and that I had to change the way I train and the way I eat. But the biggest thing was just in my head. I always used to worry about retirement, about what it would feel like to be such a big fish out of water. But I learned to do normal things, and I learned to enjoy them.
Like what?
Like breakfast. That meal does not exist for baseball players. We don't go to bed until 1 or 2. We're just wired. Then we sleep till 11. So I got used to having a normal breakfast at 9 o'clock, and I found I didn't mind doing it. There were other things too, like rush-hour traffic, that I knew about but weren't really part of my day before. Being a normal person wasn't all that bad.
I could survive and have a certain identity even if it wasn't always holding a bat.
Speaking of bats, you're coming to New York at the same moment as another big one, the slugging first baseman Jason Giambi.
Will you and he be competing for attention?
I don't care anything about that. I know Jason. I like him. I've hung out with him. And I am rooting for him and all them Yankees because I want them there in October, in the World Series. That's when we'll go head to head.
Hugo Lindgren
THE WAY WE LIVE NOW: 3-03-02: QUESTIONS FOR MO VAUGHN",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Way We Live Now: 4-4-99; What They Were Thinking
Inmates,  Jackson Correctional Institution,  Black River Falls, Wisc.
'I'm here for my crime, I've got my time, I'm doing it. It's kind of tight and crampy, but it's how we live. You've got to make the best of it. This is where I spend my quality time. I'm a paralegal and I do a lot of studies, play my keyboard in my room and things like that. I don't have anything to hide. It's the same with my home on the street.' -- Roosevelt Conery, serving time for armed robbery and attempted homicide
'You've got freedoms in here to a point, if you put your mind to it. When I get off work, I sit out there on the picnic tables and just think. Just think about what I used to do, on the farm, take a walk out in the woods, cut wood, think about Ma's cooking. I can handle the time, but I do not like hearing people saying, 'I'm going home.' You can never say you won't be back in. You will be back in. No matter what.' -- Edward Wolf, serving a life term for first-degree murder",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Developer to Buy Atlantic City Track
A Michigan real estate developer has agreed to buy the financially troubled Atlantic City Race Course, which was scheduled to close within a month, officials of the track announced yesterday.
The developer, Samuel Sobel, signed a contract to buy the 53-year-old, 280-acre site that grants him about two months to consider options for developing the track, said James Murphy, the president of the Atlantic City Racing Association, which owns the track. The contract includes a provision that allows track officials to charge patrons to watch live horse-racing broadcasts from around the country, Mr. Murphy said.
Because of casino gambling's growing popularity, the track has suffered reductions in ticket sales and betting receipts in recent years. Mr. Sobel's lawyer, Jack Plackter, would not discuss specific plans for the track, but he said that Mr. Sobel was interested in developing a sports and entertainment complex. Neither he nor Mr. Murphy would disclose the track's sales price.
METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Youths Escape Ohio Dorm Fire
A fire in a dormitory at a small Ohio college forced the evacuation of several dozen students early yesterday, but the 93-year-old building's new alarm and sprinkler systems helped awaken the residents and prevent student injuries, fire officials said.
The fire in the dormitory at Heidelberg College in Tiffen, Ohio, broke out around 4 a.m. and went to five alarms, with firefighters from 14 small departments in Seneca County joining to fight the blaze, said William S. Ennis, the Chief of the Tiffen Fire/Rescue Division.
The 63 students who lived in the three-story Gothic dormitory, Williard Hall, were evacuated by the time the first fire units arrived, said Jamie A. Abel, a spokesman at the college of 1,700 students, which is 40 miles southeast of Toledo.
Chief Ennis said the alarm system, along with frequent fire drills, helped prevent injuries. Four firefighters suffered minor injuries, he said. He said the department ran one drill at the school each year and the college conducted drills monthly.
The fire came three days after a blaze in a freshman dorm at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J., killed three students and injured 58. There were no sprinklers in the Seton Hall dorm, and the deaths prompted New Jersey legislators to say Friday that they would introduce bills requiring automatic sprinkler systems in all college dorms.
The dormitory at Heidelberg College was built in 1907. It had renovations in 1993 that included the installation of alarms and a sprinkler system, Mr. Abel said.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Radin Team Wins Bridge Competition
At the Summer North American Bridge Championships, the final of the Wagar Women's Teams on Friday resulted in a decisive victory for Judi Radin, Sylvia Moss, Mildred Breed, Pamela Granovetter, Shawn Quinn and Migry Zur Campanile.
They defeated the team of Betty Ann Kennedy, Val Covalciuc, Linda Lewis, Rebecca Rogers, Peggy Sutherlin and Pam Wittes.
With the Radin team leading by a tally of 135 international match points to 53 at the three-quarter stage, the Kennedy team conceded.
In the Spingold Knockout Teams, the semifinals, being played on Saturday, were to finish early Sunday.
One match was between the team of Nick Nickell, Dick Freeman, Bob Hamman, Jeff Meckstroth, Eric Rodwell and Paul Soloway, and the team of George Jacobs, Ralph Katz, Bobby Levin, Zia Mahmood, Michael Rosenberg and Steve Weinstein.
The second semifinal pitted a team with Charlie Weed as the nonplaying captain, James Cayne, Michael Seamon, Fulvio Fantoni, Lorenzo Lauria, Claudio Nunes and Alfredo Versace, against Robert Hollman, Curtis Cheek, Billy Cohen, Bruce Ferguson, Joe Grue and Ron Smith.
The Mixed Board-a-Match Teams competition was won by Beth Palmer, Lynn Deas, Rozanne and Billy Pollack, and William Pettis.
Finishing second was the team of Margie Gwozdzinsky, Daniela von Arnim, Teri and Drew Casen, Richard Schwartz and Walid El Ahmady.
The Fast Pairswas won by two Canadians, Nicolas L'Ecuyer and Robert Lebi, who edged Douglas Doub and Adam Wildavsky. In that event, the players have only 11 minutes for two boards, instead of the normal 15.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Granted: Cellphones Make Life Easier. But Better? Well
This may seem a bizarre concept to younger readers, but there was a time when, say, arranging a street-corner meeting was a complex task. You would set the time and place, making contingency plans for unforeseen delays, and if you got a detail wrong, the rendezvous would misfire. (Whole movie plots revolve around such missed connections.)
Now, of course, you can whip out your cellphone and say: 'What's up? 43rd and Madison in five? Got it.' And, six minutes later: 'Where are you?' 'I'm across the street. Turn around.' It's all so easy.
So when a new University of Michigan survey showed that 83 percent of cellphone users thought the phones had made their lives easier, the only surprise was that it wasn't 100 percent. But does 'easier' mean 'better'?
Now that's something else, especially when you ponder the irritation of others' phones and, more vital, the loss of peaceful moments when you're blissfully unreachable.
Hubert B. Herring
OPENERS: THE COUNT",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Senator Assails F.B.I. Over Letter Signed by New York Agents
A United States Senator who has sharply criticized the F.B.I.'s investigation into the crash of Trans World Airlines Flight 800 has written to the agency's Director, Louis J. Freeh, condemning the leadership of the New York office of the bureau, which he said was 'out of control.'
The Senator, Charles E. Grassley, a Republican of Iowa, said he was writing in response to a letter that he received this week from about 450 New York-based agents and other employees that attacked a Senate subcommittee hearing he held last month to examine the bureau's investigation into the 1996 crash off Long Island.
In his three-and-a-half-page letter,  which was sent to Mr. Freeh on Thursday, Senator Grassley charged that the agents' letter had been orchestrated by Federal Bureau of Investigation management in New York, which he said was 'clearly trying to wrap its arms around the rank and file as a screen against legitimate criticism of its failures.'
Senator Grassley added: 'This orchestration smacks of F.B.I. managers resisting legitimate, constitutional oversight by the United States Congress. The F.B.I. is not above the Constitution.'
At the subcommittee hearing on May 10, the Senator said the bureau's handling of the 16-month investigation had been 'a disaster.' Some witnesses also testified that bureau officials in New York had ignored or suppressed reports that had found mechanical failure, and instead obsessively pursued a theory that a bomb had caused the crash, which killed 230 people on July 17, 1996. Ultimately, the investigation concluded that the explosion was not the result of terrorism or any criminal act.
Senior F.B.I. officials strongly rejected the criticism at the hearing. The agents, meanwhile, in their letter to Senator Grassley, called his remarks biased and inaccurate, and the hearing one-sided.
Senator Grassley, in his letter to the Director, avoided direct criticism of the agents, but said the bureau's management in New York had 'felt the embarrassment of its failures.' He asked Mr. Freeh to look into his concerns and report back to him.
Lewis D. Schiliro, assistant director in charge of the F.B.I. office in New York, declined to comment on the Senator's criticism in the letter to Mr. Freeh, but added: 'I stand behind that investigation. It was obviously a phenomenal effort on the part of the personnel of the New York office. I was aware of their letter and in fact, in my individual capacity, was proud to sign it.'
Bill Carter, a spokesman for the F.B.I. in Washington, declined comment except to say that Mr. Freeh 'will respond directly to Senator Grassley.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Bridge
All bridge players must from time to time explain to their partners the rationale for an action that turned out disastrously. One of the most difficult, requiring a maximum level of groveling, concerns the penalty double of a contract that was due to fail but causes an opponent to retreat to a contract that succeeds. It is even worse when information given away by the double was crucial.
East had to grovel after the diagramed deal at the Franklin Club in Franklin Square, N.Y., but he was unlucky. The declarer had to play superbly to survive.
South was Mel Colchamiro of Merrick, N.Y., who had a successful spring campaign. He and his wife, Janet, won four tournament titles in  eight weeks; in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., Allendale, N.J., and two in Stamford, Conn.
North-South had eight-card fits in both major suits. When they landed in four hearts, East doubled, relying on the defense promised by his partner's bidding. Four hearts would have failed, but South retreated to four spades and East doubled with diminished confidence.
The lead of the diamond king was allowed to win, and West shifted to his trump in the hope of cutting down ruffs. Dummy's ten won the trick and the club queen was led. West took the ace and led the diamond queen, won by dummy's ace.
West's bidding marked him with the heart ace, and East's double of four hearts marked him with four cards in the suit. So South made the remarkable play of leading a low heart from the dummy and playing low from his hand. As he hoped, the ace appeared, and the diamond ten was returned. East discarded a club, and South ruffed and cashed the spade ace. He then cashed club and heart kings and reached this ending:
$(diagram$)
A club was ruffed and the heart queen cashed. East's spade jack was trapped at the finish in a coup.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Neediest Cases; Back on a Career Path After Finding a Home Base
Eight years ago, when Larry Kinbar appeared in an article about The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, he had just moved into a housing facility for mentally ill men and women.
Mr. Kinbar, who had been a stockbroker, had become severely depressed and had lost the will to work. Then, a doctor helped him even out his mood swings with medication, and Mr. Kinbar found an apartment in Metro House, where he could steady himself and look for a long-term job.
The residence on the Upper West Side is run by the Metropolitan New York Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty. The council is a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York, one of the seven local charities supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
For the first time in years, Mr. Kinbar was optimistic about the future.
Now, three years after leaving  Metro House, Mr. Kinbar, 51, lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Titusville, Fla., that has a view of the space shuttle launching pad at the Kennedy Space Center. He is pursuing a master's degree in economics at the University of Central Florida in Orlando and is hoping to become a stockbroker again.
He credits Metro House with getting him back on his feet. 'It was a platform from which I could put things back together,' he said recently. 'After seven years of floating from one place to another, it gave me a place to stabilize.'
Mr. Kinbar had been a stockbroker in Georgia and Florida until his depression set in.
'It hit me one day out of the clear blue sky -- I basically had not had depression before that,' he said. 'From that point forward, I just found it difficult to stay doing what I had been doing.'
For seven years, he wandered the country, working short-term jobs as a gas station attendant, convenience store clerk and supermarket cashier, among others. 'I took whatever jobs I could,' he said. 'I was always one day away from ending up in the street.'
By the end of those seven years, all his belongings fit into a duffel bag. 'I was fairly successful as a stockbroker,' Mr. Kinbar said, 'and to go from that to nothing made for an exceptionally difficult time.'
Mr. Kinbar then moved in with a cousin in Rego Park, Queens.
In New York, he sought a doctor's care and began taking lithium to control his manic-depressive mood swings. 'In one 24-hour period, it's like everything lifted off my shoulders,' he said. 'The difficulties which you incur with manic depression just disappeared.'
He moved to the George Washington Hotel on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan and took meals at a nearby synagogue. But he was having trouble paying the rent. 'I was close to having nowhere to go,' he recalled.
Then, a social worker running the lunch program at the synagogue told him about Metro House.
Mr. Kinbar was one of the first people to move into the newly built center for people with mental illness in 1992 and lived there until 1998. He was provided with a room and meals, met once a week with a psychiatrist who made sure he was taking his anti-depressants and with social workers who made sure he received the proper government benefits.
Mr. Kinbar, who had graduated in 1974 from the University of Georgia with a bachelor's degree in accounting, got in touch with an old friend from college who helped him move into an apartment of his own.
He said he wanted to work as a broker again. 'With my degrees,' he said, 'I hope to get back into constructive employment.'
HOW TO HELP
Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to P.O. Box 5193, General Post Office, New York, N.Y. 10087, or any of these  organizations:
BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE  285 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK  1011 First Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS  191 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201.
CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES  281 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10010.
UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK  Church Street Station, P.O. Box 4100, New York, N.Y. 10261-4100
No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
The Times pays the fund's expenses, so all contributions go directly to the charities, which use them to provide services and cash assistance to the poor.
Donations may be made with a credit card online, courtesy of the Qpass digital commerce service, at www.nytimes.com/neediest. Online donors receive a free trial subscription to the crossword puzzle of The New York Times on the Web.
Contributions to the fund are deductible on Federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law.
To delay may mean to forget.
Previously recorded: $7,556,326.54  Recorded Thursday: 44,479.00  Total: 7,600,805.54  Last year to date: 5,565,027.62",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"CHRONICLE
Seven years after he first held a baton in his hand, DANIEL HARDING, 21, found himself conducting one of the world's best-known orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic, on Wednesday .
He made his unexpected debut with the Philharmonic when FRANZ WELSER-MOST announced on Monday that he had a throat infection and could not go on, The Daily Telegraph in London reported yesterday.
Mr. Harding, who is English, has been in Berlin for a year as an assistant to Claudio Abbado, the orchestra's chief conductor. Mr. Abbado insisted that Mr. Harding take over the rehearsal and the concert, and he led the orchestra before an audience of more than 2,000 people.
Mr. Harding, who grew up in Oxford and studied the trumpet at the Chetham School of Music in Manchester, was said by his London agent, Harold Holt, to be 'too overwhelmed and busy with rehearsals' to grant interviews.
But his manager, Rachel Bowron, said, 'He loves conducting, and he's the sort who would grab the opportunity with both hands.'
In a previous interview quoted in The Telegraph, he said his conducting ambitions were discouraged at school: 'They told me not to be so stupid.'
CHRONICLE",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Last Right
Last fall, a friend asked if she could jump out my 11th-floor window. She had esophageal cancer and was planning ahead. If the chemotherapy didn't shrink her tumor, and if surgery didn't offer her continued life, she wanted something 'swift and certain.' Pills wouldn't be an option if she couldn't swallow anymore. She didn't have a doctor to assist her dying, so injectible morphine would be harder to get. Five years ago, she was hit by a vehicle in Mexico. 'The impact didn't hurt,' she told me, and she figured that hitting the ground wouldn't either.
We had been very close for decades and shared the major events of adult life: children's births, divorce, career crises. Nursing her husband through his protracted death from colon cancer had galvanized her. She did not want to hang on to life after the prognosis was hopeless and her pain became unrelenting. We had just sat down to a lunch I had made for us when she asked. She wanted to jump out my window because she lived in a brownstone. Her chemo-necessitated wig, picked up that morning at a shop in my neighborhood, sobered me. This was not one of our hypothetical suicide conversations -- this one was real. It took my breath away. I put down my fork and said, 'Let's take a look.'
My bedrooms and living room look out on West 72nd Street. In the master bedroom, I threw up the sash. A sidewalk covering in place during some building restoration had just been removed. She was glad it was gone, she said. Nothing to break her fall. But nothing to protect pedestrians either.
'You couldn't be in the apartment,' she ordered. 'The doorman would see you leave. I would have to be here alone.' She didn't want me suspected of criminal behavior.
'We'll see what the chemo does,' I said. 'And then we'll talk more.' I was devastated that a woman I loved was threatened with imminent death. I wanted to be a good friend, but asking me to help her commit suicide changed everything.
After she left, I had second thoughts about my swift acquiescence. This was hardly a casual request. Could I sleep in my room after my friend plunged to her death from my window? Could I enter and leave passing the place where her crumpled body had lain? Which of my neighbors, which of the toddlers in strollers and kids on scooters, would see her fall?
On the phone a few days later, when I told her that I was waffling, she said just the offer was comforting. She felt calmer. We talked about other tall buildings with windows that open, as well as other options. Neither of us had experience with pills, injectible drugs or morphine suppositories. Nor did we know how much help she might need with any of them.
A few months passed and her life shrank. She moved south to live with her daughter's family. She slept much of the time, was racked with coughing and in more and more pain. My friend felt that as long as her pleasure in life was greater than her pain, she would choose to live. But she didn't want to wait until she didn't have the strength to take her own life. In February, I traveled to see her for what I knew would be the last time. 'I've found a hotel with balconies,' she told me during my visit. 'Will you drive me there?' And I agreed. Since her family would inherit her estate, she didn't want them accused of hastening her death.
On the day we chose, her bag was packed and she was ready to go. As I drove onto the block, her daughter and family were saying goodbye. After they pulled away, we walked to the car. I opened the door for her. We put our seatbelts on. When we pulled up at the hotel, with the car in park, we hugged. Exchanged 'I love you''s. 'If you change your mind, just call,' I reminded her. We wept, and she waved goodbye as I turned and left. The ordinary act of dropping off a friend at a hotel was made extraordinary by her intention. I was the last person who loved her to see her alive.
When her friends heard how she had taken her own life, reaction was mixed. Shock at her method. Admiration of her courage. How could she do that? they asked angrily. What a legacy for her family. Thoughtless. Why didn't she cut her wrists in a warm bath? Why didn't somebody duct-tape her to her bed and find a better way? I kept quiet.
For my own part, I have asked myself why I did what I did. I didn't want to let her down. Although I gave her permission to take her own life, I feel guilty that I did not find an easier way for her to die. At the same time, I'm angry that she didn't use a gentler method, one with a more peaceful end. Something easier for her. Something much easier for me.
So far, no punishments. No rewards. But I am haunted. I'm not at peace. Will I ever be? I know my friend is where she wanted to be, on her own terms. She had the right to take her own life, and her loved ones were right to help her, but there should have been a better way. I am left with the legacy of my friend's desperation and the prospect of my own.
LIVES Carrie Carmichael is a writer and performer living in New York.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"A Mental Patient Skips Care And West Siders Worry Again
Larry Hogue, a symbol of New York State's inability to treat mentally ill drug addicts effectively, has failed to report to a psychiatric outpatient program, alarming some Upper West Side residents who are fearful that he will return to terrorize them.
Mr. Hogue, once prone to wild and threatening outbursts, has not contacted case managers at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens for about a month, officials said yesterday.
The State Office of Mental Health, which provides services for people with serious and persistent psychiatric disabilities, said that given Mr. Hogue's history, case managers had been looking for him through his family and friends to determine what services he may need.
Deputy Inspector Michael E. Collins, a spokesman for the Police Department, said yesterday that detectives were in touch with state officials and that beat officers would give special attention to areas Mr. Hogue was known to frequent, including the Upper West Side. His disappearance was first reported yesterday in Newsday.
'We're ready to assist the state authorities in locating Mr. Hogue,' Inspector Collins said. 'I'm not saying we're going to arrest him. There are no warrants out for his arrest.'
But all of the effort is of little solace to residents along West 96th Street, Mr. Hogue's favorite haunt.
For more than a decade, residents of the Upper West Side say, Mr. Hogue terrorized their streets, vandalizing cars and threatening elderly people and children as they passed by, saying he would set them on fire and roast their dogs. They say he was known to hover in the shadows wielding ice picks and knives.
'If he's alive, he's going to make a reappearance,' said Aaron Biller, co-chairman of the West 90's/West 100's Neighborhood Coalition, which spearheaded the effort to have Mr. Hogue committed to Creedmoor in 1992. 'We are alerting everybody on the community level to look out for him. We want him taken off the streets.'
Mr. Hogue started the outpatient program in 1995, after being released from Creedmoor, where he underwent court-ordered drug and psychiatric treatment. He spent several months in a residential program that treats alcohol and drug abuse, which offered structure, but less security than a psychiatric hospital.
Since his release, Mr. Hogue has been enrolled in an intensive case-management program, which involves maintaining frequent contact with a social worker and a weekly face-to-face visit, an official said. Citing confidentiality rules, officials would not release information about his medical condition and the specific terms of his release.
Mr. Hogue, who walked away from Creedmoor in 1994 to get money for his pregnant fiancee in Bridgeport, Conn., while the state was on the verge of releasing him, prompted sharp debate about how to handle mental patients with histories of drug abuse and erratic behavior: Should they be institutionalized indefinitely or allowed to live in supervised homes with more freedom once their behavior is stabilized?
The debate continues. 'He has the same rights as any other citizen,' said Roger Klingman, spokesman for the State Office of Mental Health. 'Legally, all we can do is outreach, which is what we're doing now. It's not like parole.'
Lisa Lehr, a West Side community activist who was instrumental in getting Mr. Hogue institutionalized, said yesterday that the system has to somehow be revamped in order to protect residents from people who do not necessarily need to be incarcerated, but need to be forced to receive help.
'It's the system,' Mrs. Lehr said. 'We shouldn't have to revisit this tragedy every three years. He's a victim, too. He hallucinates and sleeps in traffic like he's on the beach or a rooftop. This is a very sensitive community. This is the Upper West Side, but we're not suicidal.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Pataki, in a Sharp Rebuke, Criticizes 'Secret' Lilco Bonuses
Gov. George E. Pataki accused the Long Island Lighting Company's directors today of 'robbing their shareholders' of $67 million by paying 'secret' bonuses to executives, including $42 million to the chairman, Dr. William J. Catacosinos.
Using very harsh language, the Governor castigated the payments as 'disgraceful' and 'outrageous.' He demanded that the money be returned and that Lilco's directors and executives resign from their successor company, Marketspan. He also called for investigations by the State Attorney General and the Public Service Commission, and both agencies said they were starting to comply.
But a Marketspan spokesman denied any wrongdoing. 'I think there's a misunderstanding regarding these funds,' said the company's senior vice president for public affairs, Joseph McDonnell, who was one of the recipients of a payment. 'Various figures have been lumped together, and then it gets inflammatory.'
Mr. McDonnell said that three-quarters of the benefits paid to Lilco executives were retirement benefits paid out early and that the remainder had been approved by Lilco's board of directors in 1994 to help insure that employees would stay on if the agency were to have a change of ownership. He noted that the payments had been reported in Lilco's annual statements. In the most recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing for Lilco for the year ending March 31, the existence of the benefits policies are cited, but not with total dollar amounts to be paid after Lilco's merger.
Mr. Pataki's charges were made in a news release issued in Albany as the New York State Republican Convention was winding down.
The disclosure about the payments comes at an awkward moment for the Governor, who had just succeeded in reducing Long Island's electricity bills, which under Lilco were the highest in the continental United States. Just a week ago, the state's Long Island Power Authority carried out his $7 billion plan to buy most of Lilco's electricity service and use tax-free bonds to enable a 20 percent cut in customer rates.
The Governor stressed that the dispute over the payments would not affect the power authority's takeover, its bonds or the lowered billing rates, which took effect May 29.
But the dispute makes for a bumpy beginning in the power authority's relationship with Marketspan, which holds long-term contracts to provide the electricity and operate the old Lilco system for the authority. Marketspan was formed by the merger of Lilco's other divisions -- including its management, power plants and gas system -- with the Brooklyn Union Gas holding company.
And the disputed payments are causing internal friction in the new Lilco-Brooklyn partnership because Brooklyn Union executives did not get any special payments like the ones for Lilco's executives and did not even know about them until recently.
Mr. Pataki showed real flashes of anger in his accusations. 'Not content with ripping off its own ratepayers for decades,' he said, 'now Lilco's board and management are robbing their shareholders in one last extraordinary secret act of greed. These disgraceful secret payments confirm yet again why I was absolutely committed to getting rid of Lilco for all time. It is a sorry finish for a company with a history of disturbing and ill-advised decisions that benefited a select few at the expense of its consumers.'
Mr. Pataki continued, 'I encourage the shareholders to demand that Mr. Catacosinos resign immediately as chairman of the new company, along with those members of Lilco's board and management who are now at the new merged company.'
Joining the attack was the Governor's appointee as chairman of the power authority, Richard M. Kessel. 'The decision to trigger payments,' Mr. Kessel said, 'was omitted from disclosure documents provided to Lipa prior to the closing, and Lipa believes Lilco took purposeful steps to keep Lipa from discovering this information prior to the closing.'
The power authority's initial review showed that the payments came from stockholder funds, not from rates paid by electricity customers, Mr. Kessel said. In addition to the $42 million for Dr. Catacosinos, who was paid $673,333 a year in salary, a total of $25 million was paid to 25 other Lilco executives, he said.
The payments resulted from programs 'designed to protect these executives from loss of employment as a result of a merger transaction,' Mr. Kessel said, but were paid 'despite the fact that there was no loss of employment.'
No bonuses were paid to Lilco's 5,000 other employees or to Brooklyn Union Gas's executives and 3,000 employees.
Mr. McDonnell declined to comment on whether Brooklyn Union executives knew in advance about the benefits paid to their new partners or whether they were upset by it. He also said that Dr. Catacosinos, now chairman of Marketspan, would not be available to comment.
Robert B. Catell, the former Brooklyn Union chairman and now president of Marketspan, said in a brief interview tonight, 'This now really becomes a board matter and has to be addressed by the new board, so it's not appropriate for me to make any comments.'
Opponents of the takeover, who have long criticized the entire deal as a giveaway to Lilco, said the latest disclosures simply reinforce their view.
'The Albany politicians gave Catacosinos a blank check, and he filled it out,' said Wayne Prospect, a coordinator for the opposition. While the bonuses are 'beneath contempt,' he said, they pale next to the billions of dollars the deal gave to Lilco, including relieving it of the $4.5 billion of remaining debt for the abandoned nuclear power plant at Shoreham.
But Mr. McDonnell defended the payments. Three-fourths of the money was for the current value of the Lilco executives' retirement entitlements, and they were simply paid now because of Lilco's demise, he said. He acknowledged that other Lilco employees did not receive such bonuses, however, and their benefit programs are being assumed by Marketspan.
Dr. Catacosinos has often been a lightning rod for public resentment of Lilco. Questioned at a legislative hearing last year, he spoke only narrowly about his base pay and did not volunteer information about the benefits.
Last week, at a ceremonial signing of takeover and merger documents, a reporter asked Dr. Catacosinos how much his pay would be going up as a result. 'It's the same,' he said.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"With Run Against the Odds, Knicks Turn Fans Into Believers
The hardest word on 7-year-old Drew Beck's spelling test on Friday was 'believe.'
As in, I believe that the Knicks can go all the way. Or, I believe in Coach Jeff Van Gundy even when management seems not to. And, as it says on the orange and blue handout towels, on the Jumbotron at Madison Square Garden and in the minds of fans, I still believe, even with Patrick Ewing's Achilles' tendon and Larry Johnson's sprained knee, I believe, I believe, I believe.
Drew's dad did not tell him until after school on Friday that they would be going to the Garden that night. He wanted the second grader to concentrate on spelling. And young Drew, beaming before the game in his No. 2 L. J. jersey and baggy Knicks shorts, got it right: b-e-l-i-e-v-e.
During the regular season, 'a few times he shut off the TV and went to bed,' said Drew's father, Tom Beck, a landscaper from Lewisboro, N.Y., who got the last-minute seats through a client. But, the boy pointed out, he turned the television off only because it was a school night.
'Drew,' Mr. Beck said, 'never gave up.'
It is, in a word, unbelievable. What are we doing here?
Nobody really knows. And nobody really cares.
Sure, they miss Charles Oakley and John Starks, but try to find someone who will say out loud now that trading them was a bad idea. Had they really been anti-Sprewell? Now it's all about second chances.
And Jeff Van Gundy? It sounded as if  every person in New York was chanting his name, making a singsong of each syllable as the seconds ticked down early yesterday on the basketball game deciding the Eastern Conference winner. The T-shirts emblazoned 'Champions' began to appear, and they went to the Knicks, not the Indiana Pacers.
'This is a season of destiny,' said Mickey Rosenzweig of Old Westbury, N.Y., a season-ticket holder who was sitting with his wife, their daughter and her boyfriend, who is from Detroit but all of a sudden loves the Knicks.
'The Knicks this season are the epitome of New York City,' Mr. Rosenzweig said. 'New York is a place of people who are always fighting to survive and excel. This team did the greatest American dream.'
There is no joy as sweet as the unexpected.
Presents at Christmastime pale next to a surprise gift in February. Flowers on Mother's Day cannot compare to a bouquet given just because. And the excitement of following a predicted champion from preseason practice to playoff lacks the wild wonderment of watching an underdog beat the odds.
Marc Reiner, a 29-year-old lawyer in his first year as a season-ticket holder (right behind the basket, but hoping to move), explained it to his sports buddies in one of dozens of Knicks-related E-mail exchanges in recent weeks.
Citing Allan Houston's shot bouncing twice before going in to beat the Miami Heat and Larry Johnson's four-point play to beat Indiana earlier in their series, Mr. Reiner wrote, 'When things somehow go right, my reaction is not elation (and certainly not any I-told-you-so satisfaction) but that I'm stunned.'
Early yesterday morning, as he headed home to the Upper West Side on the No. 1 subway crowded with his crowing comrades, his smile seemed as much from shock as success.
'I remember I laughed so hard when they billed me for three rounds of playoff tickets,' Mr. Reiner said. 'I can't be happy. I'm so stunned.'
There is something remarkably  New York about this whole story, a make-it-anywhere quality to the young, scrappy team whose fans include Spike Lee and Donald Trump.
At the legendary hoops playground on West Fourth Street in Greenwich Village, players and coaches were wearing their hair in cornrows the way Latrell Sprewell does long before he came East in the John Starks trade. Marcus Camby is like all those kids from somewhere else who try to make it on Broadway, only in sneakers. The nebbishy Van Gundy, who toiled so long as an assistant coach behind the flamboyant Pat Riley and is now looking for the National Basketball Association championship his boss never got with the Knicks, is the basketball version of the computer geeks-turned-millionaires sprouting on every corner of Silicon Alley.
Basketball is New York's game. The Yankees are the city's legend, the Knicks its heart.
Look at Butter, a Knicks fan 'since the crib' who does not want the other players at West Fourth to know his real name. Butter loads trucks for Federal Express on the overnight shift and spends his days bouncing ball on pavement. His arm has a blue and orange basketball tattoo, his Bulova watch a Knicks logo. Butter's pet Akita is named Starks. His firstborn, he vows, will be named Knick.
'I'm always a fan, but I expected to be rooting for someone else in the playoffs,' admitted Butter, who turned 29 in May. 'For my birthday, I just wished they'd win the championship. That would be the best present. So I can walk down Broadway in the ticker tape parade.'
It has been only five years since the Knicks last made the finals, but fans are saying that it feels different this time, somehow even better than the championships in '70 and '73. The lockout, the death of Red Holzman, the shortened season, the management scuffles, the 21-21 record in March, the injuries, the bottom ranking heading into the playoffs. (The second-hardest word on Drew Beck's spelling test, he said, was 'except,' as in: No eighth seed has ever made the N.B.A. finals, except the 1999 New York Knicks.)
It's a Cinderella story, the latest phase of the New York renaissance. Crime down, tourism up, Knicks sizzling.
'They found a new way to win, and that's the New York story,' said Mitchell Moss, who directs the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University. 'They couldn't win with their starters, so they win with their bench. It's the New York resiliency.'
People are still pinching themselves.
Diana Parker, 55, and the other lawyers at her firm were having a tough time giving their season tickets away early this spring. They joked that if people went to the game, the firm would buy them dinner.
So when her 11-year-old cousin, Dylan Watson, asked in April whether she would take him to a playoff game, Ms. Parker believed that she had no choice but to let him down easy. 'I said, 'Honey, I would take you, but the Knicks aren't going to get into the playoffs,' ' Ms. Parker, who lives on the Upper East Side, recalled telling the boy. 'He said, 'Yes they are, of course they are.' And now they are.'
'I have faith,' Dylan said with a shrug. 'I just kinda knew.'
He was born in New York, now lives in Louisiana, and flew up for Friday night's game in time to watch warm-ups. Now he can tell the boys back in Baton Rouge all about how Latrell Sprewell touched him on the way down to the court.
Dylan was wearing Ewing's No. 33 tank top over a playoff T-shirt as he spoke, his eyes sparkling between three orange and blue 'NYK' face decals.
And he was carrying one of those orange towels everyone was waving around, the ones that say, 'I believe.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"More Diet Drug Lawsuits Ahead Despite Proposed Class Action Accord
The advertisements began popping up on television and radio two months ago: Weitz & Luxenberg, a Manhattan law firm, was telling people who said they had been made ill by the diet pill combination fen-phen that their chances of being fairly compensated might be in jeopardy.
A $3.75 billion settlement in a class action lawsuit could be approved by a federal court soon, and the advertisements warned that most people harmed by the once-popular prescription would be barred from bringing individual suits unless they 'opt out' of the class action suit by Thursday. And, of course, the announcer urged those affected to call Weitz & Luxenberg to 'investigate your legal options.'
The firm says it has received more than 200 responses to its advertisements and has taken on 25 of the cases. Along with another firm's Web site, which is critical of the proposed class action settlement and  has offered to provide forms for those wanting to withdraw from the  suit, the Weitz & Luxenberg advertisements make clear that the litigation over fen-phen will continue even if the settlement is approved.
Both the advertisements and the Web site, maintained by the New York firm of Napoli, Kaiser & Bern, highlight a paradox of the legal profession: class action agreements can  fuel the litigation fires they are intended to douse.
'It tells you about the culture of the legal profession and about the money at stake,' said Stephen Gillers, the vice dean of New York University School of Law and a specialist in legal ethics. He said the Weitz & Luxenberg advertisements did not breach legal ethics.
'When we see plaintiff lawyers versus defense lawyers, that's only Act 1,' he said of widespread personal injury litigation over a product or material. 'Act 2 becomes plaintiff lawyers versus plaintiff lawyers.'
Lester Brickman, a specialist in legal ethics at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, said that with class action suits in general, plaintiff lawyers skirmishing to either maximize or reduce the class size will say 'they're acting in the public interest.' They will 'not get up and say, 'Folks, we're doing this because we see a chance to make some money,' ' Mr. Brickman said. The proposed fen-phen settlement includes up to $429 million in fees for the lawyers.
But Roy D. Simon, a law professor at Hofstra University, said, 'If it's accurate, I think this type of advertisement is actually helpful to people.' He said that usually in class litigation, 'if people have large individual claims, they may be better off in an individual action than a class action.' An advertisement like this, he said, affords 'another perspective.'
The proposed settlement, intended to cover thousands of people across the country who have suffered heart valve damage after taking two of the diet pills in the fen-phen combination, was reached in October with the American Home Products Corporation of Madison, N.J., and is subject to approval by the presiding judge, Louis C. Bechtle, of Federal District Court in Philadelphia. The accord does not cover several hundred people who say the drugs gave them primary pulmonary hypertension, an often fatal lung disorder.
The company's pharmaceutical division, Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories, made Pondimin -- its brand name for fenfluramine, an appetite depressant that is the 'fen' in the case -- and distributed a similar drug, Redux. Some six million people took one or the other, often in combination with phentermine -- the 'phen' in the formula -- which increases the rate at which calories are burned.
Robert Gordon, a partner in Weitz & Luxenberg, which is not involved in the class litigation, termed his firm's advertisements 'a public service to alert people to deadlines they might not know about and to let them know they may do better' with an individual suit.
Stanley M. Chesley, a lawyer from Cincinnati who helped negotiate the settlement, gave a different view. 'It's just another law firm trying to get business at this late date,' he said, calling the proposed accord 'an excellent settlement.'
American Home Products pulled Pondimin and Redux off the market in late 1997 after studies linked them to heart valve damage.
About 7,000 individual lawsuits have been filed by former users claiming such valve damage. The class settlement would give those with serious damage -- and who did not opt out of the class action -- payments of $7,400 to nearly $1.5 million, depending on factors like age and the degree of damage. There are provisions for withdrawing from the class suit after Thursday under certain circumstances.
If too many withdraw to pursue individual suits, American Home Products can scrap the accord, and with it the pot of legal fees. A spokesman for the company, Doug Petkus, said it had not determined how many 'opt outs' would be too many.
Mr. Gordon said Weitz & Luxenberg had 'turned down far more than we accepted' of those who responded to its advertisements, which stopped running two weeks ago, and had told many callers to stick with the class settlement plan 'if they don't have a significant claim.' He added, 'I'm not saying the plan is bad, only that it's not right for every case.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"DAMAGE ESTIMATES OF MIDWEST FLOOD CLIMBING SHARPLY
As the rain keeps falling and the water keeps rising, it is becoming clear that the terrible flooding of 1993 will have a considerably bigger effect on the nation's economy than seemed likely just a short time ago.
""Seems like we get bombarded with heavy rain and heavy rain; in between, we get light rain,"" said Roy R. Arends, a farmer in Alexander, Iowa. ""It's been hard to get the crops in, it's hard on equipment, it's hard on nerves. The financial impact is yet to be seen, but right now it really looks bleak.""
As they survey bankers, farmers, businesses and state officials, analysts at four Federal Reserve banks in the Midwest have been raising their damage estimates, in some cases doubling and tripling recent numbers. 'Hurricane Andrew Range'
""Two weeks ago I said you weren't going to see discernible impacts"" on the gross domestic product, said Edward Lotterman, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.  ""That was before Iowa, Missouri and Illinois. Now I think we're getting into the Hurricane Andrew range in terms of losses.""
The dollar figure that economists are putting on crop losses, property damage and lost production and sales -- for now at least -- is $10 billion to $12 billion, roughly two-thirds of the losses from Hurricane Andrew last year. As the figures climb, they include losses not only from areas under water, but also from adjacent areas where people and businesses are suffering.
Heavy rain fell yesterday along the Missouri River in Nebraska, expanding the flooded area north and west and raising the specter of more trouble ahead.  [ Article, page 16. ] A Parched Southeast
And while the Midwest is reeling from the flood, parts of the southeastern United States -- without a major rainfall since June 1 -- are feeling the bite of a drought. In South Carolina, the worst-hit state, the state Agriculture Commissioner said 95 percent of the corn crop had been lost, 70 percent of soybeans, 50 percent of wheat and 25 percent of tobacco. Parts of North Carolina and Georgia are also suffering.
""There's going to be crop loss and poultry suffocation,"" said Donald Ratajczak, director of the economic forecasting center at Georgia State University. The damage is likely to be measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.
Eventually, consumers around the nation are likely to see higher prices for some foods as a result of the current damage, but the changes are likely to be moderate, far less than the sharp increases produced by the devastating drought of 1988.
Laura d'Andrea Tyson, head of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, said Friday that she thought the flooding and drought would add no more than three-tenths of 1 percent to the inflation rate this year. She said she expected ""a serious effect on spending"" this summer and suggested that a lack of resources for rebuilding could limit the economic stimulus after the flood waters recede.
For all the tremendous losses to property and people's well-being, most natural disasters eventually provide a shot in the arm for the national economy, because the tremendous sums of money invested in repairs show up in gross domestic product.
""A guy whose home was wiped away and a community whose major road was destroyed doesn't show up as G.D.P. loss,"" said one Administration economist who would speak only on anonymity. ""In fact, that diminution of assets shows up as a G.D.P. gain, because we'll send a road crew out to repair the road. But that gain is a measure of what was lost."" Stalled Midwest Growth
Economists expect the negative impact of the Midwest floods to be measured in tenths of 1 percent of the nation's $6 trillion gross domestic output -- the amount of goods and services Americans turn out a year. But the blow is still enough, said Sara Johnson, an economist at DRI/McGraw-Hill, to temporarily stall the economic expansion of the Midwest, a region that has been doing better than the rest of the nation for several years.
And statistics about the nation's economy are scant comfort to people watching their homes being swept away, or to those on dry land who have also suffered.
Dwayne Crook is the sales manager at Buford Ward Chevrolet in Quincy, Ill., a dealership that sits on a bluff hundreds of feet above the swollen Mississippi River. ""A lot of our business comes from Missouri,"" he said. ""They just can't get here. The bridges are down. There's water over the roads."" The dealership's sales, which were very strong earlier in the year, have been down 30 percent since the flooding started.
Such disruption of everyday economic life is continuing throughout the flood area, where water now covers millions of acres in eight states.
""This thing has been going on and on and on,"" said Wesley Ooms, an assistant vice president at State Farm Insurance, in Bloomington, Ill. ""You really can't do anything until water's receded.""
Crop losses from the flood could reach $5 billion. Iowa's farmers, for example, may end up losing a third of their corn crop, taking a $1.1 billion loss, said Evan Stadlman, executive director of the Iowa Corn Growers Association.
""There's the crop that should have been harvested in the fall that never got planted,"" he said. ""There's the crop that was lost due to flooding. We're also talking about the crop continuing to be reduced if don't get more favorable weather. Plus we may see the crop that can get harvested can't get to market.""  Impact on Business
The rains and flooding have kept buyers out of stores, and some factories have been shut. The loss of business in Des Moines, where flooding of the waterworks disrupted the city's water supply, has been estimated at $200 million by the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce and at $500 million by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.
The flooding has halted home building in some areas, and the rain has delayed it in others. Housing starts in the Midwest, which had already dipped in June, are likely to remain at below-normal levels all summer.
""The water has to go down,"" said Betty Hardle, chief executive of Good Value Homes in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. ""The ground has to dry somewhat. The approach to the property has to be suitable for heavy trucks. The constant rains added time, cost and aggravation.""
While rebuilding after the flood will provide some economic stimulus later this year, it is likely to fall short of what occurred after Hurricane Andrew in South Florida and Louisiana. While the hurricane demolished homes and businesses which were often rebuilt, the biggest damages from the flooding have been to crops. And lost crops are simply never made up.
There is another major difference: even with aid from Washington, the proportion of losses that will be compensated from the flood and drought will be much lower than from Hurricane Andrew.  A Lack of Insurance
After the hurricane, insurers paid more than $16.5 billion in claims within a few months. Among the many homes flooded in the Midwest, relatively few are insured against flood damage. State Farm, for example, said it had received fewer than 400 claims for flooded homes and fewer than 400 for autos damaged by the water.
Few private homeowner policies provide flood protection, and Donald Collins, assistant administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said only about 15 percent of the 30,000 to 40,000 homes damaged by flooding have Federal flood insurance. ""Not enough people bought the insurance,"" he said. ""That's just tragic.""
And many farmers do not buy Federal crop insurance which, as a rule, does not pay for the first third of the loss. ""People with damaged homes or crops aren't going to have an Allstate man drive up to door and write a check,"" said Mr. Lotterman of the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis. ""So you don't get an immediate infusion of cash that you got after Andrew.""
For now, all the numbers attached to flood damage are rough estimates at best. The numbers cannot be confirmed or contradicted until people can inspect all the damage and the fall harvest is completed.
THE MIDWEST FLOODING",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Law Graduate Is Charged With Drug Smuggling
A recent graduate of Columbia University Law School was charged yesterday with smuggling cocaine into the United States last year in a scheme that failed despite what drug agents said was his legal research in an effort to avoid detection.
The enterprise failed, the agents said, when an associate who carried the cocaine into the country from Jamaica in about 100 swallowed condoms became ill after some of the contents leaked into the associate's stomach.
The man arrested yesterday, Zolton Williams, 28, of Brooklyn, who received his law degree from Columbia two months ago, was accused in Federal District Court in Brooklyn of importing more than two pounds of cocaine into the United States in June 1997, between law school terms.
Mr. Williams and the second person, who was not identified, flew from Jamaica to New York, where the associate was to get $10,000 once the cocaine was sold, according to an agent of the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration. But the confederate became ill and started hallucinating, apparently from the leaking cocaine, the agent, J. Michael Smith, said in a court affidavit.
He said the associate was taken to a hospital and, after the condoms were surgically removed, was arrested, later pleading guilty to Federal narcotics charges in a deal that involved cooperating with the Government.
Mr. Smith said that before going to Jamaica, the associate had asked Mr. Williams how likely it was that they would be caught upon returning to Kennedy International Airport, and that Mr. Williams, then in the midst of his law school studies, 'suggested that they go to a law library and do research about 'profiles' used by Customs to stop and search airline passengers.'
Mr. Williams, who was an intern for several months in the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, was not required to enter a plea when he was arraigned yesterday on drug importing and conspiracy charges by Magistrate Judge Steven M. Gold, who  ordered him jailed pending further court action. His lawyer, Douglas Morris of the Legal Aid Society, later declined to comment on the charges. If convicted, Mr. Williams would face up to eight years in prison, said Timothy A. Macht, an assistant United States attorney in Brooklyn.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Plaintiff Takes Stand, to Claim a Share of 'Rent'
A year and a half after a fledgling musical called 'Rent' opened off Broadway, a woman who was paid more than $10,000 for collaborating on it took the stand in Federal court yesterday to claim a share of the millions of dollars in profits of what is now a runaway Broadway hit.
The copyright action, being closely watched in the theater world, was brought by Lynn M. Thomson, who was hired in the ill-defined role of dramaturge but who, by her account, wound up collaborating closely with Jonathan Larson on the play's book and lyrics. Mr. Larson died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm at age 35 on Jan. 25, 1996, just days before the show, based loosely on Puccini's 'Boheme,' opened off-Broadway.
Beyond shedding light on the dramaturge's role of compiling material for a production, the case has raised thorny questions about collaboration and copyright, particularly since Mr. Larson and Ms. Thomson -- hardly expecting to create a blockbuster -- signed contracts with the New York Theater Workshop that did not spell out many of the issues that Ms. Thomson has raised. Both received $2,000, but he was identified as the author and she as the dramaturge.
Ms. Thomson has received other payments totaling more than $10,000 but far less than she wants.
If it continues playing to sell-out houses, the New York production alone would take in $26 million a year, not counting road companies, album sales and potential film royalties. Ms. Thomson filed suit in November against Mr. Larson's father and executor, Allan S. Larson, seeking 16 percent of the author's revenues, based on a claim of having written nearly half of the final version with Mr. Larson as well as up to 9 percent of the lyrics.
A victory in the suit could be worth as much as a quarter of a million dollars a year, by some estimates.
Under questioning from one of the Larsons' lawyers, Peter Parcher, Ms. Thomson acknowledged she had no documentation from Jonathan Larson quantifying her contribution. 'In exact words, he never said, 'You are co-author,' and I never asked him, 'Am I the co-author?' but we knew what we were doing,' she testified.
Mr. Parcher asked Ms. Thomson, 'You never had a discussion with Jonathan Larson that discussed compensation, isn't that true?'
'Money is so not a part of what this is about,' she replied, citing the nonprofit theater workshop that gave rise to the production. 'In terms of storytelling, character development, Jon needed my help.'
A key issue, said Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who at times took over the questioning to speed the case along, was whether -- even if Ms. Thomson suggested an idea -- Mr. Larson used his own skill to incorporate it into the show, or whether her exact words were used. Only exact forms of expression can be copyrighted.
Much of the testimony has been given by witness statements from both sides, and Ms. Thomson's lawyers have submitted statements from people involved with 'Rent' claiming, in one instance, that Mr. Larson had given her credit for changing a song, 'Right Brain,' into 'One Song Glory,' one of the most spirited of the show. Others, however, testified that despite many opportunities, Mr. Larson did not credit her as a co-author.
A witness who testified yesterday for Ms. Thomson, the playwright Tony Kushner, said he had voluntarily paid two collaborators on 'Angels in America' a total of 15 percent of his author's royalties in recognition of their crucial contributions. Outside the courtroom, he said Ms. Thomson deserved no less. 'There's no question if Jonathan had been alive there would be no problem,' he said.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"BOLDFACE NAMES
Accounting: Now It Can Be Told
Before the Enron bankrupcty, would any publishing houses have given serious thought to a proposal for a tell-all book about an accounting firm? Would anyone have offered an advance in the mid-six figures?
But now CHARLES CONRAD, vice president and executive editor of Broadway Books, has signed for a book about Arthur Andersen, Enron's longtime auditor. The book, 'Our People: How Arthur Andersen Won Big Business and Lost Its Way,' is being written by BARBARA LEY TOFFLER, a former partner-in-charge of Arthur Andersen's ethics and responsible business practices consulting service.
'She eventually didn't see eye to eye with her employers there' and resigned in 1999, a Broadway spokesman said. JENNIFER REINGOLD, a former staff writer at Business Week magazine, is working with her.
Taking the Fast A Train
The actress BO DEREK is hardly a regular of the Bosnywash corridor -- she has lived in Santa Ynez, Calif., for 22 years. But yesterday, Amtrak gave her a ticket on its Acela Express high-speed train so she could promote her autobiography (and Amtrak could promote the train).
So, improbable as it sounds, she pulled a suitcase-on-wheels as she boarded the train to Washington at Pennsylvania Station yesterday. She said that as a new board member of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, 'I'll probably be taking advantage of this.' Her first board meeting was last month. Did she say anything?  'Heavens, no,' she said. 'I think that would be a bit presumptuous. It's a six-year appointment. I've got plenty of time.'
Soon she was retelling a story from her book, about how JANE FONDA called to see if she was interested in dating TED TURNER. This was while he and Ms. Fonda were separated but still married. Ms. Derek said he never called. And if he had? 'I would have had a good laugh,' Ms. Derek said. 'I don't know how it would have played out.'
And then, all aboard. Amtrak says the train arrived six minutes late.
Next-Best Thing to Austin
BETTY BUCKLEY, above, wanted to go home again, sort of -- 'I needed to get back to my origins as a singer,' she said -- so she called a high-school friend from Texas, STEPHEN BRUTON. A guitarist who has played with BONNIE RAITT and KRIS KRISTOFFERSON, he suggested meeting in Austin, Tex. Not on my schedule, she said -- and this was before her rehearsals for A. R. GURNEY'S new play 'Buffalo Gals.' Mr. Bruton came to New York. They worked on jazz harmonies in preparation for a two-night appearance at the Bottom Line, tonight and Saturday.
'It's a mixture of southwestern country rock because we're both from Texas,' she said. 'It's more precisely who I am than the musical theater thing.'
Party Till You Lose
Next week, he reports for spring training. But this is Fashion Week, and MO VAUGHN has been taking a seat in the front row with the ANNA WINTOURS and the ELSA KLENSCHES -- a benefit of playing for a New York team that he said he had been looking forward to since he was traded to the Mets in December. But at the opening of the W Hotel in Times Square on Tuesday, TIKI BARBER of the Giants, a regular on the party circuit, had some advice: 'Select your parties. Don't do too much.' Mr. Barber also said that results mattered. 'You won't be treated quite as well' if the team is losing, he said.
It was 10 p.m. Mr. Barber said goodnight. Mr. Vaughn was just settling into a booth.
Tales of Hoffman
A couple of college kids decided to take their father out on Tuesday. This is how BECKY and JAKE HOFFMAN ended up in the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel on West 44th Street with DUSTIN HOFFMAN.
Ms. Hoffman, a freshman at Barnard, and her brother, an undergraduate at New York University, liked the performance by the cabaret wunderkind PETER CINCOTTI. And Dustin Hoffman? 'I sat there the whole time, envious,' he said. 'That's all I wanted to be, a jazz singer, when I was growing up. I started piano when I was 5 with this teacher, Eli Miller. He was German and I always remember him saying, 'Mit the foot! Keep better rhythm mit the foot!' I took lessons for 22 years before I decided to try acting instead.'
Boldface Names",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Phone Executive Admits Conspiracy in Mob Fraud
A Missouri telephone executive charged with helping members of the Gambino crime family organize one of the largest fraud schemes in United States history has agreed to a plea deal, federal prosecutors said yesterday.
The executive, Kenneth Matzdorff, 47, of Belton, Mo., pleaded guilty Friday in federal court in Brooklyn to one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to launder the proceeds, said a prosecutor in the case, Assistant United States Attorney Eric Komitee. Each count carries a maximum sentence of five years, Mr. Komitee said.
Mr. Matzdorff's plea is likely to bolster the case against several men scheduled to go on trial next month in Brooklyn on racketeering and money laundering charges, because under such deals, prosecutors offer defendants reduced charges in exchange for their cooperation.
Mr. Komitee declined to say whether Mr. Matzdorff would testify at the trial.
Prosecutors say several Gambino crime family members and associates -- including Salvatore Locascio, 44, whose father, Frank Locascio, was a counselor to the late Gambino family boss John J. Gotti -- orchestrated a scheme to defraud millions of consumers by placing unauthorized charges on their telephone bills and credit cards.
The case has attracted attention because it highlights how mobsters long associated with bookmaking, loan-sharking and other traditional underworld operations have begun embracing technological advances and pursuing far more sophisticated schemes in the Internet age.
The authorities say one defendant in the case, Richard Martino, whom prosecutors call a Gambino soldier, designed a sophisticated form of billing fraud now known as cramming, in which bogus charges that are difficult to detect are piggybacked onto normal telephone charges billed to customers.
He turned to Mr. Matzdorff, a telephone executive, and got him to serve as president of a company called USP&C, a so-called telephone billing aggregator based in a Kansas City, Mo., suburb. The company, actually controlled by New York mobsters, bilked millions of unsuspecting consumers out of more than $500 million over five years, prosecutors say.
Neither Mr. Matzdorff, who has repeatedly denied he knew his associates were organized crime figures, nor his lawyer, R. Stan Mortenson, of Washington, D.C., returned telephone messages left yesterday.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"PUTT AND SELL
Everybody knows business gets done on the golf course, but at Northern Illinois University in De Kalb, the art of fairway deals is part of the curriculum. Dan Weilbaker, director of the office of selling effectiveness, offers instruction (the next class starts this week) for businesspeople-golfers who want to swing and sell simultaneously. Among the tips: Chat about personal and company background on the first six holes. Shift to biz practices by the 8th. Go in for the kill on the last six, and close the deal on the 19th (the bar) and the 20th (the dinner date). One major question: Should the seller intentionally lose all the side bets? No. 'If the game is thrown, it sets up negative trust in the relationship,' says the prof.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1998",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Polls Say Kerry. Futures Say Bush.
IN the presidential campaign season, which is now unmercifully upon us, the worlds of politics, economics and the markets merge. Traders watch opinion polls for guidance on whether to buy or sell, pollsters track the markets for indications of the popular mood, and campaign managers await each new macroeconomic gleaning with the jangled impatience of 3-year-olds at a Wiggles concert.
While most public opinion polls show the Democratic nominee, John Kerry, with a slim lead, some market and economic indicators are telling a different story. On two exchanges where investors trade contracts on political outcomes -- the Iowa Electronic Markets and Intrade, based in Dublin -- President Bush has a slight lead. And a venerable economic model that uses historical voting results and current economic data to predict presidential votes suggests that Mr. Bush will win by a large margin.
Intrade's 34,000 members can trade futures contracts on events, like which city will be the host of the 2012 Summer Olympics. Bush futures -- which pay $1 if President Bush wins the election and nothing if he loses -- were trading at 52.4 cents on Friday. That means traders believe Mr. Bush has a 52.4 percent chance of winning re-election.
Should anyone give credence to such exchanges? 'Our contracts have a much higher predictive value than any public opinion poll because people have to put their money where their mouth is,' said Michael Knesevitch, director of communications and business strategy at Intrade, which was founded in 2001. 'We predicted all the primaries. We also had Edwards as being the vice presidential nominee back in May.'
The Iowa market, housed at the University of Iowa, has been around since 1988 and makes somewhat less exuberant claims. A comparison of 596 opinion polls with Iowa's presidential futures prices at the time the polls were conducted shows that the futures prices were closer to the actual result 76 percent of the time, according to Thomas A. Rietz, an associate professor of finance at the University of Iowa and a director of the market. As of Friday, Iowa traders thought that Mr. Bush had a 52 percent probability of winning.
There are reasons to be skeptical about these exchanges, though. The people who trade securities online look a lot more like the crowd at the '21' Club -- most of them affluent white men -- than the voter registration lists. Then there's the margin of error. On the day before the election, the Iowa market typically misgauges the vote share by about 1.37 percentage points, Mr. Rietz said. When the popular vote isn't that close -- in 1996 or 1992, for example -- that is no big deal.
But in 2000, when the Iowa market projected that Mr. Bush would win a majority of the votes cast for Democrats and Republicans, that seemingly small margin meant the difference between a successful projection and a failed one. Besides, the two exchanges cannot even agree with each other on who will win the popular vote. Intrade's contract on that vote gives Mr. Bush a 46 percent chance of winning; Iowa Electronic Markets traders believe that he will win 51 percent of the two-party vote.
Throw another economic model into the mix, and the picture becomes more confusing. For more than two decades, a Yale economist, Ray C. Fair, has been testing and refining a model that uses economic data and past results to project the winner of the two-party popular vote. 'The theory is that the economy causes people to vote the way they do,' he said.
Looking at results dating to 1916, Professor Fair has found that incumbents running for re-election have a head start, that Republican incumbents tend to do better than Democratic incumbents and that an incumbent fares better when his party has not controlled the White House for two terms or more. Thus, he said, 'Bush has the best possible incumbency situation that you could have.' Plug in the variables on growth and inflation, and Professor Fair projects that President Bush will receive 57.48 percent of the two-party vote.
PROFESSOR FAIR'S model has been remarkably accurate over the years, with an average error of only 2.4 percent. And in each of the last two elections, he has come within 1.3 percentage points of predicting the accurate vote total.
Great news for President Bush, right? Not necessarily. Professor Fair says the model can misfire when the equation doesn't include significant economic factors that may influence the electorate. It lacks a variable for job creation, for example, which may be a sore spot among voters this year.
And the model turned in its worst performance when an incumbent named Bush was seeking re-election. In 1992, the model projected that President George H.W. Bush would win 51.7 percent of the two-party vote and retain the presidency. Instead, he received merely 46.5 percent of the two-party vote and lost.
ECONOMIC VIEW Daniel Gross writes the 'Moneybox' column for Slate.com.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Royalty Deal for AIDS Drug
In what could become one of the academic world's richest licensing agreements, Glaxo Wellcome Inc. has agreed to pay the University of Minnesota and one of its professors royalties on the sales of Ziagen, an antiviral drug used to treat AIDS. Based on sales projections, the total royalties could exceed $300 million, the university said in a statement.
The agreement, reached last week, settles a patent infringement lawsuit the university filed last October against Glaxo, the American subsidiary of the British pharmaceutical maker. The university contended that Ziagen was based on antiviral compounds developed by Robert Vince, a professor in its College of Pharmacy. Glaxo was licensed last December to market Ziagen, whose generic name is abacavir sulfate.
The university is to get two-thirds of the royalty payments. One-third will go to Professor Vince and his research colleague, Mei Hua.
MICHAEL POLLAK
NOTEBOOK",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Way We Live Now: 5-2-99: The Ethicist; Departure Delays
Just as I was about to leave my girlfriend, she learned that her father had a severe illness. Figuring it would be unnecessarily cruel to saddle her with a breakup, I kept my feelings to myself. The problem is, her dad remains ill, and I can't figure out when it would be right for me to leave. I have enough affection for her that I want to be honest -- but what is my ethical obligation here? - T. C., Los Angeles
In dozens of movies starring the Academy Award winner Bette Davis, her married lover is just about to leave his virago wife when she has a horrible riding accident and is confined to a wheelchair. She's faking, but it's a clever fake, because no man worthy of Bette's love would desert an ailing wife.
You have a similar obligation not to abandon an intimate friend in a crisis. Of course, breaking up need not mean breaking off all contact. If she will accept your support despite this change in your relationship, you can act more quickly, but if a breakup means she'll spurn your help and suffer in isolation, you should wait. You'll have to judge when she is back on her feet, but as for being honest with her, if your romance has foundered, believe me, she knows.
Those in a hurry to split up often seek justification from another Academy Award winner, William Shakespeare: 'If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly.' But the line was spoken by Macbeth; Shakespeare did not intend it as a dating tip. As you know, Macbeth's breakup with Duncan did not go well.
I'm about to buy a cool S.U.V., but my friends act as if I'm some kind of criminal. Am I?
It depends where you drive. If it's on the unforgiving lunar surface, no harm done. If you do a lot of off-road driving here on earth, the harm might be justified by need. But if you do most of your driving on paved American roads, then your friends are right.
S.U.V.'s are inherently dangerous, not for their own passengers but for everyone else. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports that the height and weight of S.U.V.'s make them responsible for roughly 2,000 additional deaths a year, and 20 times more likely than a conventional vehicle to kill other motorists in side collisions. If you have no compelling need for the S.U.V.'s off-road features -- i.e., if your sport utility vehicle has no utility -- there's no way to justify endangering others so you can play cowboy. Why should your fellow motorists support your life style with their life span?
Indeed, in a city like New York, where the population is dense and the public transportation excellent, it's abhorrent to drive any kind of car at all. Last year, 193 pedestrians and bicyclists were killed by cars, and approximately 15,800 were injured. And that's not the half of it. 'When you talk about damage caused by cars,' says John Kaehny, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, 'you also have to talk about emissions, noise pollution, damage to buildings, delays to motorists, ambulances and deliveries, damage from fuel extraction and shipping and the cost of national security to secure oil lines.' And that toll ($19 billion a year by one credible estimate) is shouldered by all citizens, though far fewer than half actually have a car. Even beautiful preserves like Central Park and Prospect Park allow motorists to speed through, disrupting family picnics in the name of a quicker route to the store. Surely a benign urban vision requires a distinction between a park and a parking lot.
So if you're planning to drive that S.U.V. in New York, pack a suitcase into your roomy cargo area, because you're driving straight to hell.
Do you have ethical queries that you need answered? Send them to ethicist@nytimes.com or The Ethicist, The New York Times Magazine, 229 West 43d Street, New York, N.Y. 10036.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Justices to Hear Case on Wages Of Home Aides
Evelyn Coke sat in her wood-frame home in Corona, Queens, a hobbled figure, not realizing that this is supposed to be her moment in the spotlight.
For 20 years, she had cared for clients in their homes, bathing them, cooking for them, helping them dress and take their medications. But now, suffering from kidney failure, she is too ill to work.
Her mind and memory are not what they once were, she acknowledges, and as a result she is hazy about the important events that will take place on April 16. On that day, the Supreme Court of the United States is scheduled to hear oral arguments in a case in which Ms. Coke, a 73-year-old immigrant from Jamaica, is the sole plaintiff.
She is challenging Labor Department regulations that say home care attendants, who number 1.4 million, are not covered by federal minimum-wage and overtime laws.
'I loved my work, but the money was not good at all,' Ms. Coke said in a whispering voice, noting that she often worked three or four 24-hour days a week, sleeping at a client's home, while hardly ever receiving time-and-a-half pay for overtime.
The stakes in her case are considerable, not least because home care attendant is one of the nation's fastest growing occupations. There are expected to be nearly two million aides by 2014, as the elderly population grows and government pushes for the elderly to be cared for at home rather than in nursing homes, where costs are high.
Ms. Coke's lawsuit has attracted powerful supporters and opponents.
The nation's largest health care union, the Service Employees International Union, is backing Ms. Coke's effort because a victory for her could mean larger paychecks for hundreds of thousands of home care aides, many of whom live in poverty.
AARP plans to file a brief backing Ms. Coke, arguing that the increased pay that would result from requiring overtime coverage would reduce turnover among home care aides and help prevent a shortage.
The federal government and the Bloomberg administration have lined up against her, arguing that a victory for Ms. Coke could greatly increase Medicare and Medicaid costs, perhaps causing a budget shortfall that could leave many of the elderly without home-care aides.
In a friend-of-the-court brief, the Bloomberg administration, joined by the New York State Association of Counties, argued, 'In the worst cases, some clients, especially those with high hour needs, might no longer be able to be serviced in their homes and might have to be institutionalized.'
The Bloomberg administration said a victory for Ms. Coke could force the city, state and federal governments, which all finance home care through Medicaid, to pay $250 million more a year to the 60,000 home attendants who work in the city.
Some advocacy groups have criticized the city's position, saying it conflicts with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's push to reduce poverty because keeping these aides exempt from overtime coverage would hold down their pay.
The defendant in Ms. Coke's case is Long Island Care at Home, which is based in Westbury and employs 50 aides.
MaryAnn Osborne, Long Island Care's vice president, said that a defeat in court could put her agency out of business because, with many aides working 60 or 70 hours a week, it might face huge overtime costs. Her agency pays aides $8 to $11 an hour, but a defeat in the Supreme Court would require the agency to pay time and a half, meaning $12 to $16.50 an hour, for overtime.
'This would be horrendous for the entire industry because the reimbursement rate we get won't cover that type of money,' she said.
But supporters of Ms. Coke's lawsuit say that if she wins, the government would most likely increase reimbursement rates to compensate for the overtime costs.
Ms. Coke said that Long Island Care made a lot of money off her, saying she earned just $7 an hour when she last worked there in 2001.
Moreover, she said, she did not get paid overtime for her 24-hour stints at homes in Great Neck, Roslyn, Manhasset and other communities.
She said she stopped working because she was hit by a car, injuring her shoulder, and she later had colon and kidney problems. 'The job didn't even give us health insurance,' said Ms. Coke, who goes to a dialysis clinic three times a week.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear her case after the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit overturned Labor Department regulations that exempted home care aides from federal minimum-wage and overtime coverage, saying the exemption conflicted with Congress's intent.
Before 1974, home care aides were generally covered by minimum-wage and overtime laws if they were employed by agencies. (Aides hired directly by families were not covered and will remain exempt from overtime regardless of the outcome of Ms. Coke's case.)
In amending the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1974, Congress extended minimum-wage and overtime coverage to household workers like maids and cooks but said that baby sitters and 'companions' for the elderly and infirm would be exempt.
When the Labor Department first proposed regulations to enforce the changes in the law, it said that home care workers employed by agencies should continue to get overtime. But the department reversed itself in 1975, saying Congress had not intended to allow those workers overtime when it created the exemptions the year before.
But the Court of Appeals, sitting in Manhattan, wrote, 'It is implausible, to say the least, that Congress, in wishing to expand F.L.S.A. coverage, would have wanted the Department of Labor to eliminate coverage for employees of third-party employers who had previously been covered.'
Those urging the Supreme Court to overturn that ruling say the Court of Appeals failed to show proper deference to the Labor Department's decision-making authority.
Even with the exemption, few home care workers receive less than the federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. But many do not receive any overtime premium even when they work more than 40 hours a week. (Under federal rules, workers who sleep in are generally paid for all extra hours on the job, less eight hours' sleep time.)
Natasha Maye, a home care aide in Philadelphia who is part of a separate suit concerning the minimum wage, is rooting for Ms. Coke. She said that she earned, in effect, less than $5.15 an hour at her former agency because she was not paid for the two hours spent each day traveling between her three clients' homes. Including travel time, she said, she often put in 60 hours a week and earned $300.
'I don't think that's fair,' she said. 'We should be entitled to overtime and travel time.'
The Clinton administration, in its next-to-last day in office in 2001, proposed regulations that would restore minimum-wage and overtime protections to home care aides employed by agencies, arguing that the 1975 exemption clashed with Congressional intent. But in 2002, the Bush administration scrapped that proposal, concluding the revised rules would have a severe economic impact on clients, government budgets and home care agencies.
In its brief, Long Island Care at Home argued that exempting aides who worked for agencies was consistent with Congressional intent because some lawmakers back in 1974 voiced concerns about holding costs down. 'The need to restrain costs in the case of third-party employees has only become more acute as agencies provide an increasing amount of needed care,' Long Island Care said.
But Craig Becker, the chief lawyer for Ms. Coke, argued that legislative history showed that the exemption to minimum wage and overtime laws was to apply only to baby sitters and companions whowere employed directly by families and were not regular breadwinners.
'In its exemption for baby sitters and companions Congress had in mind the quintessential neighbor-to-neighbor relations,' Mr. Becker said. 'Increasingly this is not a casual form of work akin to baby-sitting but a full-time regular type of employment.'
Ms. Coke became a plaintiff through unusual circumstances. After she was hit by the car six years ago, she hired a lawyer, Leon Greenberg. When seeking to determine her economic losses, Mr. Greenberg learned that she sometimes worked 70 or more hours a week without receiving any overtime premium.
He invited her to bring a test case challenging the federal exemption. Ms. Coke agreed. Mr. Greenberg is no longer involved in the case; her current legal costs are being paid by the service employees union.
And because of her condition, Ms. Coke now has her own, unpaid, home care aide: her son Michael, a computer technician.
She said she brought the lawsuit to help hundreds of thousands of home care workers like her for years to come. But she also said there was another reason. 'I just hope I get some money from this,' she said.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Remedial Limits for CUNY Are Attacked
As the trustees of the City University of New York prepared to vote on a proposal to overhaul the way the university handles remedial education, educators and elected officials angrily contended yesterday that the board was moving too fast to pass what many of them described as an ill-conceived reversal of nearly 30 years of open admissions.
'You have no moral, ethical or political reason to end a policy which has been a proven success since 1970,' said Blanche Wiesen Cook, a distinguished professor of history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the CUNY Graduate School in Manhattan. 'Your proposal is unwise and mocks our best impulses as a democratic nation.'
Professor Cook was one of nearly 50 faculty members who turned out to address CUNY trustees and administrators at the only public hearing on the proposals before they are placed before CUNY's trustees for a vote on Monday.
The current draft of the plan calls for removing all remedial courses from the curriculums of the senior colleges over the next several years and placing a one-year limit on remedial work at the community colleges. It would move much of that work into special summer immersion programs and institutes on the college campuses outside the regular college framework.
The proposal is partly a response to criticisms by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and others that CUNY uses too many of its resources to teach students basic reading, writing and mathematics that they should have learned in high school.
The three CUNY trustees who are pressing hardest for the remedial cutbacks, Anne A. Paolucci, the board's chairwoman; Herman Badillo, its vice chairman, and John J. Calandra, were at the hearing.
Used to speaking their minds at length in classrooms and faculty seminars, the speakers had to boil their frustrations down to three-minute sound bites, as CUNY's top administrators and six trustees listened, mostly in silence. But one by one, the speakers rose to chastise CUNY's top officials.
The critics accused officials of trying to limit the opportunities of thousands of students who enter CUNY not ready for college-level work and pleaded with them to reconsider.
Peter Ranis, a professor at York College in Queens and the CUNY Graduate Center, said that the CUNY proposals were 'a cruel deception that will only serve to compound the neglect of the public schools.'
Lorraine Beaky, a professor of English literature and composition at La Guardia Community College in Queens, attacked the trustees for the process they were using to consider changes in remediation. She said she was appalled at their 'dismal intellectual performance, the bumbling, the confusion, the lack of basic clarity of statements and procedures.'
In more than three hours of testimony, not one person spoke in favor of the remediation proposals. Earlier in the day, several City Council members attacked the CUNY proposals, saying the changes would hurt students and New York City.
'This plan punishes the victims,' said Helen M. Marshall, a Democratic City Council member from Queens who is chairwoman of the Council's committee on higher education. She will conduct hearings on the university's proposals on Thursday. 'Students who did not get a proper education are being penalized,' she said.
State Assemblyman Edward C. Sullivan, Democrat of Manhattan, who is chairman of the Assembly's committee on higher education, said he and his colleagues were troubled by the proposals, and that some of them had formed an ad hoc committee on open admissions to support an open enrollment policy at CUNY.
'The notion that there is a limited time period within which a student must get a degree or must complete his or her college preparatory work is ridiculous,' he said in a statement.
Although critics of CUNY sometimes characterize the faculty as burned-out professors interested only in defending their own jobs, yesterday's speakers were an impassioned lot, who referred repeatedly to the students they treasured.
Gary Benenson, a professor of mechanical engineering at City College in Manhattan, said the remedial plan would close the doors to students like Derek Williams, the son of a sanitation worker who entered the college six years ago and is on the brink of graduation. Mr. Williams had to take three remedial math courses and a remedial English course, but he now has a 3.4 average and a job offer from General Electric's diesel locomotive division in Erie, Pa.
Professor Benenson said that Mr. Williams would be 'one small addition to the mere 7 percent of engineers nationally who are African-American.' He said this would not have been possible had the remedial limits been in place.
Correction:  March 19, 1998, Thursday  An article on Tuesday about a hearing on remedial education at the City University of New York referred incorrectly in some editions to the three trustees who are pressing hardest for cutbacks in remedial programs. The three, Anne A. Paolucci, Herman Badillo and John J. Calandra, were not present at the hearing. The article also misstated the given name of a professor who attended. She is Lenore Beaky, not Lorraine.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"CUNY Chief Makes Pitch For Position In Alabama
W. Ann Reynolds, the Chancellor of the City University of New York who has been harshly attacked in recent months by leaders of the university's governing board, appeared today before the trustees of the University of Alabama and made an eager pitch to become president of their Birmingham campus.
'If the job is offered, I would be pleased to do everything I can to make this system very successful,' Dr. Reynolds said in a 90-minute public interview with the trustees. 'If you need me in Tuscaloosa before a critical game, to tutor a student, I'll be there.'
Dr. Reynolds is one of two finalists for the post of president of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. The other is J. Bernard Machen, the provost at the University of Michigan. He will be interviewed Thursday morning, and the trustees plan to announce their decision after they talk with him.
By the time Dr. Reynolds's session was finished, faculty members, students and trustees appeared to be impressed.
'I think she's a very impressive person,' said Jack Edwards, an Alabama lawyer  who served in Congress for 20 years and is chairman of the university's board of trustees. 'She has been through the crucible. That certainly is an advantage in a university setting to have been there and done that.'
Fred Trawick, a professor of marketing who is chairman of the faculty senate, said, 'I was pleasantly surprised. She is very polished, very charming.' He, too, liked the fact that Dr. Reynolds is an experienced administrator, 'who has been there and done that in big systems.'
Dr. Reynolds stopped short of making an outright commitment that she would take the job if it was offered. And before the meeting with the trustees, she was very careful with her words. 'I don't know,' she said. 'This is a very professional search. The university is looking at me and I'm getting acquainted with them. This is a very, very impressive place.'
But Professor Trawick said he believed that she was truly interested in moving to Birmingham. 'I think she was genuine about wanting to go back to campus life and to have faculty and student contact. We talked to her about that this morning. I believe she is a good candidate.'
Mr. Edwards said that the trustees had not asked her directly whether she would take the job, but, he added, 'I have to assume that those who have come for the interviews would take it if offered.'
The job would be far less powerful than Dr. Reynolds's current and previous jobs. She would move from head of the nation's largest urban university system, with 21 campuses and 208,000 students to a branch of the University of Alabama system, the 16,000-student campus here, which has a noted medical school and a 960-bed hospital. They both have budgets of more than $1 billion.
The system's flagship campus is in Tuscaloosa. Before coming to CUNY, Dr. Reynolds led the California State University system of 337,000 students and 22 campuses, but she left under duress after inquiries into the Chancellor's office spending.
Underlying the tensions there, as in New York, was a consistent criticism among faculty and some administrators that her leadership style tended toward the autocratic and that she did not work hard enough to build consensus for changes in curriculum, long the protected domain of the faculty.
In addition, she has come under fire from Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and several CUNY board members who say she has not done enough to improve academic standards. Relations with the board were further strained this spring after an embarrassing series of disclosures that City University community college campuses were awarding degrees to students who could not pass basic English writing tests.
Anne A. Paolucci, who took over as chairwoman of the CUNY trustees in February, has been particularly critical of Dr. Reynolds and has made it clear that her job is on the line.
Reached last night, Herman Badillo, the vice-chairman of the CUNY board, wished her well. 'If she's trying for it, I hope she gets it,' he said. In the interview with the trustees, Dr. Reynolds sent a conciliatory message to her current employers.  'If I were not to come here,' she said, 'I pledge to do the utmost to carry out the will of the board members at CUNY.'
The tenor of today's meeting stood in marked contrast to the tension Dr. Reynolds has faced recently in New York. The session was a genial affair marked by frequent laughter.
When asked by one trustee to talk about her family, Dr. Reynolds responded, 'I find families fascinating and I'd love to know about all of yours,' to much laughter.
The chancellor of the University of Alabama, Thomas C. Meredith, who has been in office since June, talked of the need for a president who can run a complex organization right away and suggested that Dr. Reynolds was just such a person.
Some see Dr. Reynolds as the underdog in the competition, although she has broader administrative experience than Dr. Machen. Birmingham's past presidents have all been doctors or dentists. Dr. Reynolds has a Ph.D. Another possible drawback, as a female trustee pointed out, is that the university system has not had a female president or chancellor and the state has relatively few professional women.
Asked later about how much time she spends as a director of four corporations, a contentious matter at CUNY, she talked of how she used her directorships 'shamelessly for the benefit of the university.'
The Alabama trustees were clearly aware of the disputes Dr. Reynolds has had with CUNY's trustees and faculty, and asked her gentle but pointed questions about them. One trustee asked her to describe her 'very tough management style that seems to bring criticism.'
Dr. Reynolds replied that she had 'always been polite and very thoughtful' to the needs and personal concerns of university employees, but she acknowledged that 'I tended to insist that people who reported to me worked very hard for the university.'
She added: 'I believe I have done so in a professional manner, and I was probably most demanding of myself.'
On her relations with her board of trustees, she said that in both New York and in California before that,  she had worked very closely with the trustees who had hired her, but ran into problems when there was 'massive turnover' of the boards. She complimented the Alabama system, where turnover is more gradual.
The trustees and many of the faculty members and students in the audience, about 40 people, seemed to accept her explanations. One trustee told her that he had talked recently with a member of the CUNY board appointed by Gov. George E. Pataki. 'He wanted to assure me that your squabbles had nothing whatever to do with your competency,' the trustee said. 'I told him that we were very familiar with political squabbles.'",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"The Neediest Cases; Chronically Ill Mother Gets Some Help
Esther Clay walks slowly and uses a cane. Her vision is clouded by glaucoma and her halting steps, like her quiet, slurred speech, are lacking in confidence.
Though she is just 32, Ms. Clay, who lives in southern Brooklyn, appears in many ways more like a woman twice her age, because she has multiple sclerosis, a chronic disease believed to be caused by the body's immune system attacking the central nervous system.
'I walk like I'm drunk, but I'm not,' Ms. Clay said. 'I get weak. I get dizzy. I just don't feel good.'
People with multiple sclerosis have symptoms that vary from mild, like numbness in the toes, to severe, like memory problems, blindness or paralysis. Ms. Clay falls somewhere in the middle, said her doctor, Marshall Keilson, associate director of the multiple sclerosis care center at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn.
'The future with M.S. is always uncertain and unpredictable. That's the worst part of the illness,' Dr. Keilson said. 'But based on statistics, it's likely that she will gradually decline over time.'
Dr. Keilson said he had put Ms. Clay on recently developed medications designed to treat the causes of the disease, as opposed to earlier medications that had only treated symptoms. 'We're hopeful that this will slow the course of the illness, if not stabilize it altogether,' he said.
Ms. Clay, too, is optimistic, because after nine years with the disease, she can still walk, still feel her toes, still see. But she cannot remain standing or even sitting upright for long periods, and she is too easily fatigued to have a job, she said.
'Some days I have a good day and sometimes I have bad days,' Ms. Clay said. 'On bad days, I feel blah, I don't want to be bothered by nobody.'
Ms. Clay, who has a 12-year-old daughter, Christina, receives $68.50 every two weeks in public assistance, $29 a month in food stamps, and $554 a month in Supplemental Security Income. She also receives $40 a week in child support payments from Christina's father, who lives in the Bronx.
The money allows them to pay for food and other necessities. But it only goes so far. Ms. Clay sleeps on a foam egg-crate mattress and does not have a comforter or even a sheet to cover herself. And until recently, Christina slept on the couch in the living room of their apartment in the Linden Houses, in New Lots, the only piece of furniture in that room other than a wooden chair and a blue plastic storage bin that holds the family's television.
But in October, Christina got a bed that was paid for using $254 from The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. The Clays frequently get help from the Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service, one of the seven local charities supported by the fund. The bureau gives them access to a food pantry when they need it, and in the summer used $177 from the fund to prevent the family's electricity from being turned off when Ms. Clay could not pay the Con Edison bill.
'Our program works with parents who are experiencing problems in the home,' said Carrie Sogg, a social worker at the bureau who helps Ms. Clay. 'I work as a therapist and do some advocacy on their behalf.'
Ms. Sogg put Ms. Clay in touch with the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and gives her advice on how to manage her budget and take care of her daughter.
Now that Christina has a bed, she also has a place to do her homework.
Without a desk or even a kitchen table, Christina, a seventh grader at a nearby public school, spends hours each day on her bed, writing essays, improving her vocabulary, and solving math problems.
She said she wants to attend an Ivy League college, and hopes to become a pediatrician. 'I want to help kids,' she said. 'I like kids a lot.' She added, 'Ever since I was 5, I have liked to play around with doctors' stuff.'
When asked about her Thanksgiving, Christina said she was thankful for her health and for the food she ate that day. She said that for Christmas, she wants to get the third book in the Harry Potter series and a Nintendo GameCube.
Her mother remains upbeat about her own health. 'I'm a very optimistic person. I feel that they're going to find a cure for M.S.,' Ms. Clay said. 'It's not going to beat me. I'm going to beat it.'
HOW TO HELP
Checks payable to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund should be sent to P.O. Box 5193, General Post Office, New York, N.Y. 10087, or any of these organizations:
BROOKLYN BUREAU OF COMMUNITY SERVICE  285 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11217.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF NEW YORK  1011 First Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES, DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN AND QUEENS  191 Joralemon Street, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201.
CHILDREN'S AID SOCIETY  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
COMMUNITY SERVICE SOCIETY OF NEW YORK  105 East 22d Street, New York, N.Y. 10010.
FEDERATION OF PROTESTANT WELFARE AGENCIES  281 Park Avenue South, New York, N.Y. 10010.
UJA-FEDERATION OF NEW YORK*  FDR Station  P.O. Box 5314  New York, N.Y. 10150
No agents or solicitors are authorized to seek contributions for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.
Donations may be made with a credit card by phone at (212) 556-5851 (ext. 7) or online, courtesy of CharityWave.com, an internet donations service, at www.nytimesneediest.charitywave.com. For instructions on how to donate stock to the fund, call (212) 556-1137 or fax (212) 556-4450.
The Times pays the fund's expenses, so all contributions go directly to the charities, which use them to provide services and cash assistance to the poor.
Contributions to the fund are deductible on Federal, state and city income taxes to the extent permitted by law.
To delay may mean to forget.
Previously recorded: $3,921,673.88  Recorded Tuesday: $42,790.00  Total: $3,964,463.88  At similar period last year: $4,519,153.62",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"E.T., Give Up
If box-office receipts are any indication, the almond-eyed alien is becoming the smiley face of the 90's. But there may be fewer believers after last night's banquet at the 34th National U.F.O. Conference, held in Springfield, Ohio. The after-dinner speaker was James Moseley, a veteran U.F.O. researcher and skeptic whose tart lectures on the phenomenon have prompted some among the U.F.O. faithful to conclude that he's a Government agent.
A slight, bespectacled man, Moseley is a subculture legend who has served as the Walter Winchell of U.F.O.'s since 1954. His newsletter, Saucer Smear, remains required reading for buffs, even when it's puncturing dearly held beliefs. (One competing ufologist called him 'a boil on the $(expletive$) of ufology.') After four decades of monitoring the scene and seeing no proof of alien craft, Moseley says he's given up on believing in outer-space visitors, a conclusion that may be catching on. After a summer of hoopla inspired by the 50th anniversary of the Roswell Incident, the case -- the granddaddy of them all -- stands on E.T.-spindly legs. Four books are either just out or in the works that debunk it, a backlash that Moseley finds surprising. 'There isn't much money in being against something like that,' he says.
So why bother keeping up? 'The craziness of it all,' Moseley says. 'If you take the proper point of view, you can enjoy this, see human nature in its peculiarities. Whatever the reality is behind it, if any, is a secondary thing.'  SUNDAY: SEPTEMBER 7, 1997: U.F.O.'S",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Tribute to Illinois Jacquet
A memorial service for the jazz saxophonist Illinois Jacquet will be held at 11 a.m. today at Riverside Church, Riverside Drive at 122nd Street in Morningside Heights. Mr. Jacquet died last Thursday at 81.
The service is open to the public and is to include performances by Jimmy Heath, Clark Terry and others. A viewing will precede the service at 9 a.m.",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"In This Contest, Competitors Flex Their Lexicons and Victory Is All in the Definition
Billy Dorminy was perspicuous, talking about poecilonyms on television, and there was nothing pusillanimous about the way he did it.
Words, words, words. They were flying inside the main New York Public Library yesterday, where Billy, 16, of McDonough, Ga., was one of 50 finalists in the National Vocabulary Championship, which promised to reward high school students whose strength is verbal acuity with money for college tuition.
This is a group that knows what is pulchritudinous and what is pulverulent. This is a group that knows who is ridiculous, who is nidicoulous and who is nidifugous. This is a group that knows what is Brobdingnagian and what is merely colossal.
And this is a group that knows what to do when the television cameras are on. GSN, a cable network that carries game shows, turned the library's Celeste Bartos Forum into a television studio, the better to videotape the competition.
The host, Dylan Lane, questioned the contestants the way game-show hosts do, making friendly chatter with jittery people who have buzzers in their hands. When Billy's turn came, he told Mr. Lane that he knew a synonym for synonym: poecilonym.
He said he had discovered it on a list of words on a Web site. What he did not tell Mr. Lane was that he posted an entry on a different site that begins: 'Hello, my name is Billy Dorminy, and my favorite word is 'poecilonym.' 'Poecilonym' is just a synonym of 'synonym'!'
Something else he did not tell Mr. Lane was that he came in fourth in the National Word Power Challenge ('out of the three million participants nationwide') a couple of years ago.
But yesterday, he was outbuzzed by faster competitors and was eliminated in the first round.
The GSN crew led him upstairs at the library, where he watched a brief snow flurry through a big window while other contestants parsed and parried downstairs. He said he had a word for what he hoped would fall: graupel. 'A snow pellet that breaks apart when it hits the ground,' he explained. Which was pretty much the dictionary definition. (It also refers to 'soft hail.')
Leah Libresco, 16, of Mineola, N.Y., advanced to the second round on a question that called for her to choose the word that did not belong among these three: catapult, disrupt and impede. 'I was like, I'm not missing catapult,' she said. 'PBS did a special on trebuchets. It's a special kind of catapult.' A stone-hurling medieval engine of war, also spelled 'trebucket.'
There were grownups who showed off their vocabularies, or tried to. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, appearing before the taping began, used words not often heard at City Hall: 'coruscating' (referring to the 'dazzling' contestants), 'paresthesia' (to say there was a 'tingling' in the room), and 'sexagenarian' (referring to himself).
Rich Cronin, the president and chief executive of GSN, said he was not just thrilled to watch the competition, he was also euphoric. 'One person will be the 'American Idol' of vocabulary,' he said. (In the end, after an afternoon with its share of technical difficulties and dashed hopes, the winner was Robert Marsland, 18, of Madison, Wis. He will receive $40,000 toward college tuition. The winners in the finals and in the earlier citywide competitions held nationwide divided more than $80,000 in tuition money. The Princeton Review, a tutoring and test preparation service, came up with the questions.)
Off camera, it took Joel Chiodi, GSN's vice president for marketing, a moment to remember a word he had learned from listening to contestants around the country.
'I'll get back to you,' he said.
A moment later, he did.
'Penultimate,' he said. 'It means second to the top, or second best.'
But the judges would not have bought that definition. The dictionary says penultimate means next to last.
The contestant who finished third was Daniel James Theobald Verdon Thorn of Teaneck, N.J., who said his parents had given him so many names because names were one of the few things they could give him that were free.
After advancing to the second round, he said he was impressed by the competition. 'Other people seemed so much better than me,' he said. 'I had been on a couple of other TV shows with buzzers, so I figured my buzzing skills were up to par.'
Micah Jordan, from the Pablo Neruda Academy in the Bronx, had won a citywide competition that earned him his place at the finals. Last week, the school held a pep rally for him. But he was eliminated in the first round.
Later, he looked disappointed but said he felt sagacious.
'Sagacious comes from sage, which is a wise person,' he said. 'I've been through it now. I know what to expect the next time.'
Mr. Cronin of GSN said he had given Micah some advice. 'Remember Jennifer Hudson didn't win on 'American Idol,' ' he said. 'She did win an Academy Award.'
Correction:  March 8, 2007, Thursday  An article on Tuesday about the National Vocabulary Championship for high school students misspelled a word described as one of several that the students would likely know. It is nidicolous, not nidicoulous. (For those of us not in the know, it means: remaining in the nest for some time after hatching, as some birds; or living in the nest of another species.)",1
Top/News/U.S./Midwest,"Ted's Kids
Autumn's here. Time for children to ponder nature's eternal questions. Why do leaves fall? Why do geese fly south? And: After you drive an arrow into the side of an eight-point buck, what do you do next?
The last one came up at Kamp for Kids, a bowhunting program founded by Ted Nugent, a rocker best known for 'Cat Scratch Fever.' Held in the woods near Caseville, Mich., Kamp offers a potent blend of hunting, clean living and preaching about the future of America. Eagerly, several of the 80 kampers chimed in with an answer: 'You gut him!'
'You can't gut him out, kids,' explained Chuck Buzzy, a counselor. 'You don't know he's dead!' Nope, first you watch carefully, poking an eye if need be. Then you gut him.
Granted, Ted's Way is a bit raw, but get used to it -- the man has a following, and he's powering up like some sort of backwoods Limbaugh. Nugent now claims 30,000 members of Ted Nugent United Sportsmen of America, a lobbying organization, and his spokesman says he has received 'serious offers' to run for Congress and Senate. (Declined so far, but nothing has been ruled out.) Nugent's message combines National Rifle Association feistiness, a humanitarian streak (his Hunters for the Hungry program donates wild venison to the needy) and a Just Say No edict against drugs, alcohol and tobacco. 'I'm an old man, but I have so much fun it's unnatural,' Nugent told his charges on the Kamp's last day. But he has it cleanly, rejecting 'the insanity of other rockers, who got high on drugs until they choked on their own vomit.'
After his spiel, Nugent handed out prizes. A 14-year-old girl received a $200 dollar taxidermy certificate. Her eyes welled up. So did Ted's. Then he sang original hunting songs, unplugged.
SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 22, 1996: THE GREAT OUTDOORS",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Throngs Mourn for Milosevic
Correction:  March 21, 2006, Tuesday  A front-page picture caption in some copies on Sunday about the funeral procession for Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia's former president, misstated the location. It was Pozarevac, Serbia, Mr. Milosevic's hometown, not Belgrade.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"What Sort of Doubt Can Ever Be Reasonable?
MANY New Yorkers, worrying about long trials and the possibility of being sequestered, will do almost anything to avoid jury duty or at least postpone it to a more convenient time. But when the characters in 'The Jury,' a six-hour mini-series that begins tonight on 'Masterpiece Theater,' receive their notices to serve, they react with enthusiasm, regarding it as something of a prize.
Such a uniform acceptance of a civic duty is a case of 'wish fulfillment on my part,' said Peter Morgan, who wrote the screenplay. Before starting 'The Jury,' he asked himself, 'What would happen if I were summoned for a murder trial? What impact would it have on my life?'
Mr. Morgan expressed his regrets that he had never been a juror, which he attributed to his 'reckless past,' adding that rarely is anyone rejected from an English jury, and then only when there is a clear-cut conflict of interest. And yet, he said, many in England have never served (and that includes Pete Travis, the director of the mini-series, and Helen McCrory, who plays one of the jurors).
Apparently it is easier both to get on and off a jury in England than it is in the United States. (In New York, exclusions have been eliminated, so that lawyers, movie stars and President Bill Clinton all receive their notices -- although many years ago I witnessed the rejection of Christopher Reeve from a Manhattan jury pool because it was felt that Superman would automatically sway all other jurors.)
Even American viewers who pride themselves on their knowledge of English courts collected from dramas like 'Witness for the Prosecution' and 'Rumpole of the Bailey' may learn something new from 'The Jury.' For example, a British judge sensing prolonged deliberation with no end in sight can apparently ask for an 11 to 1 or a 10 to 2 decision. This rule, among other things, prevents 'The Jury' from becoming 'Twelve Angry Men,' an American courtroom classic familiar to the characters in the mini-series, one of whom suggests that the juror played by Michael Maloney be elected foreman because he looks the most like Henry Fonda. (Actually, he doesn't.)
There is no Superman, or even a heroic lone dissenter in 'The Jury.' The shy man chosen as foreman (Mr. Maloney) is continually browbeaten by his father-in-law, who takes an increasingly intrusive role in trying to solve the case. Ms. McCrory plays a beautician married to a jealous insurance investigator portrayed by Mark Strong. (Coincidentally, the two played opposite each other in the recent Donmar Warehouse productions of 'Uncle Vanya' and 'Twelfth Night' at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.) Every morning before she enters the court, Ms. McCrory's character changes her clothes and glamorizes herself in the ladies' room. During the trial, she begins a romance with a recovering alcoholic (Gerard Butler) who sees his jury duty as part of a 12-step program toward stability. Similarly a bond develops between an elderly widow (Sylvia Syms) and a former Roman Catholic seminarian (Stuart Bunce).
'We weren't making a whodunit,' Mr. Travis said. Instead, he was trying to show the pressures endured by those who sit in judgment. 'All these people have no emotional center in life, yet they are asked to be certain about murder,' he said.
Juries, he continued, 'never know if they've got it right.'
The case presented in 'The Jury' is no exception. The trial concerns the killing of a white teenager slashed to death with a ceremonial sword. The accused is a Sikh schoolmate (played by Sonnell Dadral) who has been severely persecuted by his fellow students. Mr. Morgan said he was inspired by the O.J. Simpson trial and the Stephen Lawrence trial, in which five young white men in London were accused of murdering a black teenager.
The Lawrence trial was the subject of a film shown on 'Masterpiece Theater' last year, a prelude to what seems to represent a socially conscious turn in 'Masterpiece Theater.' The series shown last month, George Eliot's 'Daniel Deronda,' dealt with anti-Semitism in 19th-century England, and the one scheduled for May is an adaptation of 'White Teeth,' Zadie Smith's novel about Jamaicans and Bengalis in contemporary London.
Rebecca Eaton, the executive producer of 'Masterpiece Theater,' said it was accidental that all three series were concerned with multiculturalism, adding that each derived from very different sources: a classic, a television play and a recent novel. But it was, she said, probably a comment on the idea 'that racism and diversity are alive and well in literature through the ages, certainly throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.' She added that 'White Teeth' was 'arguably the only series that deals with a sympathetic look at a Muslim family living in London.'
In 'The Jury,' the actions of the Sikh defendant, before and after the murder, are repeatedly re-enacted as everyone tries to assess guilt or innocence and as opposing counsels -- Derek Jacobi as the Queen's Counsel (for the defense), Antony Sher as the prosecuting attorney -- battle with words.
To research their roles, the actors observed cases at the Old Bailey, where parts of 'The Jury' were filmed. Ms. McCrory said that many of the trials she watched were for petty crimes, posing questions like 'Did my wife walk into the wall or did I hit her?' But watching trials and also speaking to jurors made her realize that taking such a responsibility affected and, in some cases, changed their lives. All this worked to her advantage when she played her character. (Broadening her view, the actress went on to become a barrister on a British television series.)
To give an immediacy to the performance, the actors were not told the verdict until the day before the final scene was filmed. When it was suggested that perhaps they should have been asked to reach their own conclusion, the director laughed at that possibility. He said that were the verdict left up to the cast, 'we would still be shooting.'
COVER STORY",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Thatcher, at Cambodian Refugee Camp, Backs Sihanouk
LEAD: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain being greeted with a welcoming song by refugee children as she visited the Site B refugee camp on the Thai border. Mrs. Thatcher said Prince Norodom Sihanouk, leader of one of three major Cambodian guerrilla groups, 'has a crucial part to play' in achieving peace in Cambodia.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of Britain being greeted with a welcoming song by refugee children as she visited the Site B refugee camp on the Thai border. Mrs. Thatcher said Prince Norodom Sihanouk, leader of one of three major Cambodian guerrilla groups, 'has a crucial part to play' in achieving peace in Cambodia. Prince Sihanouk is seeking direct talks with the Vietnamese-backed Government. (Agence France-Presse)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Barbie Trial Begins
LEAD: Klaus Barbie, the Nazi Gestapo chief of Lyons, France, in court before start of trial for crimes against humanity. Page A3. (AP)
Klaus Barbie, the Nazi Gestapo chief of Lyons, France, in court before start of trial for crimes against humanity. Page A3. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"The Balkans Rapes: a Legal Test for the Outraged
Horrified by accounts of mass rapes in the ethnic fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina, women's advocacy groups and human rights groups are seeking legal avenues to stop the assaults and to prosecute those responsible as war criminals.
The groups have formed the Ad Hoc Women's Coalition Against War Crimes in the former Yugoslavia, a group that now meets regularly to discuss how to put pressure on the international law system to bring people responsible for rape to justice. At the same time, the coalition is discussing how the violation of Balkan women is an exaggerated reflection of sexual violence against women worldwide, and how that pattern of behavior and attitudes about it can be changed.
While rape by soldiers is as old as war itself, lawyers say, it has rarely been treated as a war crime or a human rights offense. But they say this conflict, in which Bosnian Serb soldiers are reportedly being ordered to rape Muslim women as part of a pattern of abuse aimed at driving them from their homes, may signal a change in attitudes toward wartime rape.
""In the past, rape as a tactical form of warfare has really been overlooked,"" said Dorothy Thomas, director of the Women's Rights Project of Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group that works with the coalition. ""We know it's happened almost everywhere, but only now is the message getting out that it is not acceptable -- that it's not booty. It's abuse."" Estimate of 20,000 Rapes
Last week a fact-finding team of the European Community estimated that 20,000 Muslim women had been raped since the fighting began last April. The team, which visited Muslim refugees in Croatia, concluded that mass rapes there were a strategy of war and not just crimes of opportunity by individual soldiers.
But even considering the enormity of the wrongdoing, as a legal matter, prosecution for war crimes is a difficult task. There is no international criminal court, and setting up a tribunal for war crimes, as the Allies did at Nuremberg after World War II, depends as much on favorable political winds as on legal precepts.
So in addition to pressing the United Nations to create a tribunal to try such crimes in the former Yugoslavia and other Balkan nations, lawyers working with the women's coalition are exploring the idea of helping individual women file complaints under the Convention Against Torture, a treaty signed by Yugoslavia before its breakup in 1991. They said they were also considering the possibility of filing civil or criminal charges against wrongdoers when they come to the United States, using the concept of universal jurisdiction, which holds that certain crimes against humanity may be tried anywhere.
Many women researching the law are frustrated by the knowledge that most traditional routes of international law lead at best to a formal declaration, long after the fact, that a wrong has occurred. It is usually impossible to intervene to stop the rapes or to win restitution for women who have been forced into prostitution or imprisoned until they bore children for the men who raped them. Women are said to be enduring both kinds of ordeals in the Balkans.
""We need this stopped while the war is going on, and that's what international law is worst at,"" said Catharine MacKinnon, a University of Michigan law professor working with Kareta, a Croatian women's group. Sending a Message
Still, many human-rights advocates involved in the effort assert that it is important to seek international justice, even years after the fact, as a means of changing attitudes toward wartime rapes.
""It may seem frustratingly abstract in terms of what's happening to women, but it's crucial,"" said Rhonda Copelon, a law professor at the City University of New York who is working with the coalition. ""It sends a message that this can no longer be done with impunity, and it's important for the women in coming to terms with their experience.""
The Geneva conventions, which provide for the humane treatment of civilians and the military in wartime, prohibits rape and enforced prostitution. And the conventions' list of ""grave breaches,"" that is, infractions serious enough to be tried as war crimes, includes torture or inhuman treatment and the willful ""causing of great suffering or serious injury to body or health.""
Legal experts involved in the coalition's work said they believed that the language gives them the necessary tools to argue for a war crimes tribunal on rape.
In the last international tribunal on war crimes, at Nuremberg, rape was not charged, according to Telford Taylor, the chief American counsel. Some legal experts suggest that this was not because of an absence of such atrocities but because of official inattention to them.  A Violation of Rights
Ms. MacKinnon and others contend that rape in the international context of war has been ignored in the same way that rape in the United States used to be all but ignored by prosecutors. Before the 1960's rape charges were seldom brought, mainly because prosecutors were disinclined to bring charges for a crime in which, in most cases, the offender is an acquaintance of the victim, and because strict legal requirements were in place concerning corroboration by a third party and the degree of resistance by the victim.
""The Geneva Convention covers rape, but it's one thing for there to be a statement that rape is a crime, and another for that to have any impact on the reality of women's lives when it's winked at, defined away and ignored,"" Ms. MacKinnon said.
She contends that just as rape in the context of war is a violation of human rights, rape in a peacetime context should be seen as a civil rights violation. And she and others say they believe that rethinking wartime rape, so that it relates to peacetime rape, can benefit women long after the fighting in the Balkans ends.
Indeed, the organizers of the women's coalition say the mass rapes in the Balkans have galvanized a wide assortment of groups who are concerned with women's rights and convinced that the violence against Bosnian women is not so far removed from rape in the United States.
""We're getting a lot of calls from women who work with rape crisis centers,"" said Marie Wilson of the Ms. Foundation for Women. ""They're horrified by the stories of mass rape, and they also see it as an opening to focus attention on how rape and violence work against women systematically, in this country, too, where the median age at which girls are sexually assaulted is 11 1/2, when they are just beginning to find their own voice.""
Among the many other groups in the coalition are Equality Now, Amnesty International, the Fund for a Feminist Majority, Women's Action Coalition, the Center for Women's Global Leadership and the Center for Reproductive Policy and Law.
On a separate track, at the United Nations, the accounts of atrocities in the Balkans have been so troubling that last October the Security Council created a five-member Commission of Experts to investigate reports of war crimes in the Balkans.
Depending on its report, the Secretary General could ask the Security Council to establish a special tribunal on war crimes. Alternatively, the General Assembly could take action on longstanding proposals to create a permanent criminal international court to consider charges against Serbian soldiers.
""I think the momentum is there now for an ad hoc war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia,"" said Cherif Bassiouni, a law professor at De Paul University who is the investigator for the Commission of Experts.
Ms. Copelon and others say that even if the United Nations does not create a war crimes tribunal, charges can probably be brought against those responsible for the rapes through other routes.
The most promising is probably the Convention against Torture, which provides for complaints by individuals. In theory, the Convention on Genocide can also be used if the rapes and forced pregnancies are shown to be a part of a plan to eliminate a group of people and if any nation brings such a complaint to the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
But while the women's coalition can try to push international bodies to take action, the only legal weapon in their own hands is the filing of civil suits in this country. In those suits, the injured women can seek monetary damages from those who have wronged them and the sanctions can be taken whenever the wrongdoer sets foot in the United States.
""There is a notion of universal jurisdiction over those who violate the norms of international law, and we have used it successfully in the past,"" Ms. Copelon said. ""It's what we have used against some torturers, when they came to this country. It's what was used against Marcos.""",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Former Defense Secretaries Appraise U.S. Military Policy
LEAD: Seven former Defense Secretaries in Atlanta to attend a panel discussion. They all expressed support for the emerging treaty to eliminate medium- and shorter-range nuclear arms, but were sharply divided on their appraisal of U.S. military policy in the Persian Gulf. They are: Robert S. McNamara, who served during Kennedy and Johnson Administrations; Donald H.
Seven former Defense Secretaries in Atlanta to attend a panel discussion. They all expressed support for the emerging treaty to eliminate medium- and shorter-range nuclear arms, but were sharply divided on their appraisal of U.S. military policy in the Persian Gulf. They are: Robert S. McNamara, who served during Kennedy and Johnson Administrations; Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary under President Ford; Melvin R. Laird, who served in the Nixon Administration; Clark M. Clifford, who served in the Johnson Administration; James R. Schlesinger, Secretary under Presidents Nixon and Ford; Harold Brown, who served in the Carter Administration, and Elliot L. Richardson, who served in the Nixon Administration. The discussion is to be broadcast Oct. 23 by the Public Broadcasting Service. (The New York Times/Alan S. Weiner)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Judge Bars British Libel Judgment
Calling British libel law antithetical to the protections afforded the press by the United States Constitution, a New York judge declined Wednesday to enforce a $70,000 libel judgment issued recently by a London jury against a Manhattan-based publication.
The decision, written by Justice Shirley Fingerhood of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, is the first time a New York court has refused to enforce a foreign libel decision, lawyers familiar with the case said.
While Britain shares many legal principles with the United States, Justice Fingerhood wrote, it lacks a First Amendment, the protections of which ""would be seriously jeopardized by the entry of foreign libel judgments granted pursuant to standards deemed appropriate in England but considered antithetical to the protections afforded the press by the U.S. Constitution.""
The ruling was issued against India Abroad Publications Inc., a New York-based news service, in a suit brought by Ajitabh Bachran, an Indian businessman who the news service incorrectly reported had been implicated in an arms scandal.
News organizations including The New York Times, Time Warner, Newsweek, CBS, and Random House, joined in a brief opposing the judgment.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Stamps
Unraveling Yugoslavia
The political tangle in Eastern Europe has yielded another group of new stamps, this time from three republics of what used to be Yugoslavia: Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia.
The first stamps from Croatia, which came into the United States philatelic market last fall and almost immediately disappeared, were simple designs featuring the red-and-white checkerboard of Croatia's coat of arms.
There have since been a Christmas stamp and a stamp memorializing the Croats who died defending Vukovar from Serb-led troops.
The first stamps from Slovenia include a set of four with the coat of arms of Slovenia: three mountain peaks with a river below and three stars above.
Macedonia has also reportedly issued two stamps.
It is very difficult to track these new stamps or those of the former Soviet Union. Few have made it into standard catalogues, and the provenance of some is murky.
For example, some stamps from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that were printed in Western Europe turned up on different types of paper and some did not have perforations.
This leads to the suspicion that unscrupulous printers were taking advantage of the rush of interest in these stamps last summer to create a market for these varieties, a suspicion that will linger until the republics list officially authorized stamps.
Partly to allay this suspicion, the three Baltic republics have designated an official distributor for the United States and Canada: Kent Research Stamp Company, P.O. Box 86, Hewlett, N.Y. 11557.
The assignment of distributors has settled the market considerably. For example, a set of three sheets of stamps from Moldova, formerly the Moldavian Republic within the Soviet Union, sold for $50 last November; last month the set was going for $30 at Interpex, the big stamp show in New York.
Many dealers and collectors had assumed that a corollary of the flow of new stamps would be renewed interest in material from earlier days when the republics were independent, generally between World Wars I and II.
This seems not to have happened. According to price trends reported in February by Linn's Stamp News, the leading philatelic weekly, prices of older stamps had declined by 10 percent to 20 percent since the previous survey, in August 1990.
Two major dealers in the United States advertise supplies of stamps from all the new republics: Herrick Stamp Company, P.O. Box 219, Lawrence, N.Y. 11559, and Gerson's International Inc., 520 SW Yamhill Street, Suite 402, Portland, Ore. 97204.  U.S. Postal Past
A book for the historian, a book for the expert: Linn's Stamp News and the Scott Publishing Company have added two items in their rapidly expanding lines.
The one for the historian is ""United States Postal History Sampler,"" a collection of columns by Richard B. Graham that have appeared in Linn's. Many have been updated and expanded, and there are more and larger illustrations than appeared originally.
Even readers with no interest in stamps will find something to enjoy in this book. Mr. Graham has organized 60 columns in chapters that include ""Delivering the Mails,"" ""Ship Letters and Ocean Mail,"" ""Armed Forces Mail"" and ""Illustrated Covers.""
The book has an extensive index and (a nice touch) a list of the hundreds of Mr. Graham's columns and the dates they appeared in Linn's. Thus, readers can can track down more information.
The book is available from Linn's Stamp News, P.O. Box 29, Sidney, Ohio 45365, for $14.95 (soft cover) or $30 (hard cover), including postage.
The book for the expert is ""The Micarelli Identification Guide to U.S. Stamps."" This is very serious stuff, dealing with paper varieties, impressed grills (which absorbed canceling ink and prevented the re-use of stamps), perforations and design changes.
The graphics are attractive and accessible. Thus, with the wealth of data and the readable presentation, the guide should appeal both to the collector who cares passionately about classic United States stamps and to the interested neophyte who may be persuaded that in stamps as in architecture, ""God lives in the details.""
For noncollectors who think details are not important: A common 2-cent stamp showing Washington was issued in 1912. The basic stamp sells for 15 cents retail. But small details changed in later printings. A 1915 version retails for $110, a later 1915 type goes for $225 and a 1916 version for $450. Happy hunting.
A small nagging doubt: the errata page, much of it concerning typographical errors, is bound into the book. If there was time to bind the errata page, it seems there should have been time to make the corrections directly on the pages concerned. This leads a reader to wonder about other errors that were indeed caught at the last minute but are not included on the errata list.
The hard-cover book is $34.95 postpaid from Scott Publishing, P.O. Box 828, Sidney, Ohio 45365.  Streamling Stamp Sales
To streamline the processing of first-day covers, the United States Postal Service plans to make large quantities of new stamps available through the 900 members of the American Stamp Dealers Association. The program begins in May.
Local post offices do not stock all new stamps. Thus, collectors who wanted a cancellation marking the first day of issue would send an envelope to the Postal Service with a check or money order for the few stamps wanted, and the Postal Service would affix the stamps and return the canceled cover.
To eliminate the extensive bookkeeping, dealers can now supply the stamps locally. For the name of nearby A.S.D.A. members, write to the association at 3 School Street, Glen Cove, N.Y. 11542, or call (800) 645-3826.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Coins
Sometimes a king's got to do what a king's got to do. So thought Martin Coles Harman, ""king"" of Lundy Island and lord of its domain, all one and a half square miles of it.
Lundy is mostly rock, 3 miles long and 12 miles off the northern coast of Devonshire, England. Nominally, it lies within Britain.
For years, Lundy supported a tiny population that did some farming, collected puffin feathers and relied mainly on salvaging the hundreds of ships that foundered in its shoals. Modern navigational systems reduced that livelihood.
The first owner of Lundy was the Rev. William Hudson Heaven, who bought it in 1835.
Under his family's ownership, a church was built, a telegraph cable to the mainland was added, and two lighthouses were erected.
Naturally, Lundy became known as the kingdom of Heaven, although it was not quite large enough for even one Elysian field.
Mr. Heaven's family sold it in 1916 to Augustus Christie, who in turn sold it to Martin Harman in 1925.
Mr. Harman had dropped out of school at age 16 and apprenticed himself to the Lazard Freres banking house in London.
He rose quickly, and after he saw Lundy Island at the age of 18, he vowed to buy it one day.
Mr. Harman seems to have been a benevolent ruler of his few subjects. He landscaped the island, bringing in shrubs, trees, birds and animals, and he apparently loved walking though his realm, which became more a nature preserve than a kingdom.
All was well in the former kingdom of Heaven.
In 1929, Mr. Harman decided that Lundy needed its own coins, so he ordered 100,000 coins from a private mint in Birmingham. The coins were in two denominations, the puffin and the half-puffin. Mr. Harman's bust was on the obverse, and on the reverse was the puffin, the sea bird whose rookeries dotted the island.
Issuing coinage has always been the right of the sovereign. Mr. Harman felt that he was, in fact, sovereign of Lundy. But King George VI believed that if the sun never set on the British Empire, surely Lundy must fall within Britain's domain. The King's officers took Mr. Harman to court.
Mr. Harman replied that while Lundy was surely ""a little kingdom within the British Empire,"" it was not a part of England itself. Mr. Harman believed Lundy should be treated like any other regal state that allied itself with Britain, like, for instance, India.
He noted that Lundy enjoyed no services, no free education, no pensions, unemployment insurance or anything else from England. It paid no income taxes, tithes or land taxes to England, ""which we call the adjacent island,"" he said. He also noted that everyone on the island worked for him, except for two lighthouse keepers, but that the lights were on offshore rocks and the keepers' passage on the island was at his whim.
Mr. Harman may have prejudiced his case by insisting that he was the legal sovereign of Lundy and had all sovereign rights, not just that of coinage. He lost. He paid the court costs and a $:5 fine. He appealed and lost again. The puffin was demonetized.
Mr. Harman was later convicted of fraud and served a prison term for misappropriating funds from a holding company that owned several Japanese companies. He died in 1954 and forgave all his debtors. He left an estate of $:4,719. In 1969 the island was bought by a British millionaire and donated to the public.
Today, the Lundy puffins are numismatic curiosities that appear at auction from time to time, reminding all that in the kingdom of Heaven -- no matter how small -- any man could be king.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"FORMER BRITISH PRIME MINISTER IS BURIED
LEAD: The coffin of Harold Macmillan, Earl of Stockton, being carried in Horsted Keynes, England. Mr. Macmillan, who helped Britain adapt to its changing role in the world, served as Conservative Party Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963. He died last week at the age of 92. (Agence France-Presse)
The coffin of Harold Macmillan, Earl of Stockton, being carried in Horsted Keynes, England. Mr. Macmillan, who helped Britain adapt to its changing role in the world, served as Conservative Party Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963. He died last week at the age of 92. (Agence France-Presse)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Protest in Spain Against U.S. Bases
LEAD: About 50,000 people took part in a march to a United States air base near Madrid to protest U.S. bases and to demand that Spain pull out of NATO. The protest coincided with the arrival of Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, who is on a two-day official visit to Spain. (AP)
About 50,000 people took part in a march to a United States air base near Madrid to protest U.S. bases and to demand that Spain pull out of NATO. The protest coincided with the arrival of Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, who is on a two-day official visit to Spain. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"The House of Lords Seats Its First Rabbi
LEAD: Immanuel Jakobovits, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation and of the Commonwealth, in the robing room of the House of Lords with Lord Young. He swore an oath of loyalty under his new title, Lord Jakobovits, Baron of Regent's Park, to become the first rabbi to sit in the House of Lords.
Immanuel Jakobovits, the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation and of the Commonwealth, in the robing room of the House of Lords with Lord Young. He swore an oath of loyalty under his new title, Lord Jakobovits, Baron of Regent's Park, to become the first rabbi to sit in the House of Lords. Page A7. (Reuters)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"The Job Outlook Across the Nation; NEW ENGLAND
LEAD: THE GOOD NEWS for workers in New England is that salaries and wages are rising rapidly; the bad news, for their employers, is that there are generally not enough able bodies to fill job openings.
THE GOOD NEWS for workers in New England is that salaries and wages are rising rapidly; the bad news, for their employers, is that there are generally not enough able bodies to fill job openings.
With unemployment rates in the region's six states dipping below 4 percent in recent months, the scramble for workers has increased the average paycheck by well over 5 percent in the last year, faster than any other region in the country. The minimum wage, $3.35 an hour, is a meaningless figure in New England, where even high school students can pick and choose among jobs paying $4 an hour and up.
The job prospects of recent college graduates in the region are more favorable than they have been in a decade, according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Students with technical backgrounds, such as engineering, computer science and accounting, continue to be in demand with the region's financial and high-technology industries. More recently, these industries have vigorously recruited liberal arts majors as well. Because these high-paying jobs are available, the supply of elementary school teachers, secretaries and particularly nurses has dwindled considerably, causing employers in those fields to increase salaries and benefits as job incentives.
Because New England's population tends to be static, with few people aside from college students relocating to the area, economists do not foresee a reversal in the tight labor market. 'There's almost no occupation that is not in demand,' said Anthony J. Ferrara, regional commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. 'Every one of the New England states is as well off as it has ever been, and I don't see any change unless there were something to come along to create a recession.'
Those with the poorest job prospects tend to be unskilled laborers, squeezed out of work by the narrowing of the region's manufacturing sector. For these people, jobs in the rapidly growing service sector are available, though wages tend to be lower.
The biggest state for job growth continues to be Massachusetts, which holds half the region's six million jobs. In Boston alone, 33,500 new jobs were added last year, and the rate of inflation, at 2.6 percent, was the lowest since 1967. Southern New Hampshire and southern Maine also have seen explosive job growth as their economies are increasingly linked to Boston's. In June, a Federal Labor Department survey of unemployment in 269 areas in the country showed that 8 of the 10 lowest rates were in New England.
The trend toward near-full employment has also touched Rhode Island, where manufacturing jobs have traditionally been more of a staple than elsewhere in the region, and Vermont, which in July posted its lowest unemployment rate ever. Connecticut, which has the fifth-highest pay level in the country, also led the region with its average pay of $22,516 last year. The area partaking least fully in the economic boom continues to be northern Maine, where the faltering paper industry has impeded job growth.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Life in a Soviet Prison Camp: a Former Inmate's View
LEAD: Prisoners from the Ararat labor camp in Siberia at a logging site about 60 miles from the camp. The pole they hold is one of several used to form a ramp to move logs onto a truck. The picture was taken by a former political prisoner who spent eight months at the camp in 1982-83. Page A10. (Georgi N.
Prisoners from the Ararat labor camp in Siberia at a logging site about 60 miles from the camp. The pole they hold is one of several used to form a ramp to move logs onto a truck. The picture was taken by a former political prisoner who spent eight months at the camp in 1982-83. Page A10. (Georgi N. MIkhailov)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"8 Mafia Members Convicted of Racketeering
Eight New England organized crime figures were convicted today of racketeering in a case Federal prosecutors boasted would break the back of the Patriarca crime family, which the authorities say has controlled the loan-sharking and gambling in New England since the 1940's.
The verdict came on the 15th day of jury deliberations.
The eight defendants were among 21 alleged members and associates of the Patriarca crime family indicted in March 1990. A sweeping Federal indictment charged various defendants with gambling, loan-sharking and murder to support the crime family, which is based in Providence, R.I.
Seven other defendants will be tried in Boston this fall, including Raymond J. Patriarca, who prosecutors maintain was the family's boss until he was deposed after the indictment last year. The other six defendants pleaded guilty in return for reduced sentences.
Three of the defendants convicted today were found guilty in the 1989 slaying of William Grasso, the family's boss in Connecticut, and a fourth was found guilty of conspiracy in Mr. Grasso's death.
The authorities say they believe Mr. Grasso was killed because leaders of the family's Boston faction suspected he and Mr. Patriarca were maneuvering to grab more control over the Boston rackets.
The three-month trial provided a glimpse into the workings of the Mafia, including what was described as the first recording of a Mafia induction ceremony.
All of the defendants were charged with violating Federal racketeering statutes by committing various crimes to support the family's illegal gambling and loan-sharking businesses. Convicted in Mr. Grasso's killing were Gaetano Milano, who fired the fatal shot, Frank Colantoni Jr. and Louis Pugliano. Frank Pugliano, was found guilty of conspiracy.
Convicted on other charges were Nicholas Bianco of Providence; Salvatore D'Aquila of Middletown; Louis Failla, a reputed mob soldier from East Hartford, and Americo Petrillo, a reputed soldier from Old Saybrook. Murder Jarred Hierarchy
The prosecution's case got a boost last summer when two other defendants, John F. Castagna and his son, Jack Johns, decided to testify in return for reduced sentences.
Mr. Castagna and Mr. Johns testified that they participated in three failed attempts to kill Mr. Grasso, before he was killed on June 13, 1989.
Federal authorities said the Grasso murder appeared to shake the crime family's hierarchy, weakening the status of Mr. Patriarca, who they said took over control of the crime family when his father, Raymond L. S. Patriarca Sr., died of a heart attack in 1984.
The defense took only one week to present its case, and concentrated on rebutting the testimony of Mr. Castagna and Mr. Johns.
In another organized-crime case a purported chief of the Mafia in western Massachusetts linked to at least one of the Hartford defendants was charged today in Springfield, Mass., in what prosecutors described as a failed assassination attempt.
Adolfo Bruno, 45, of Agawam, Mass., was arraigned late this morning in Hampden County Superior Court before Judge William Simons on charges of conspiracy to murder. A not guilty plea was entered, and bail was set at $20,000.
The action came after a county grand jury returned a secret indictment against Mr. Bruno on Wednesday. It says Mr. Bruno conspired with Mr. Castagna, John Nettis, Francesco Scibelli and others in the attempt to murder Joseph N. Maruca.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Defying Gravity
LEAD: Members of a gymnastic team from Tannusstein, near Wiesbaden, West Germany, performing on Rhonrads, or gyro wheels, near the Wollman rink in Central Park. The team, on a U.S. visit, marched last Saturday in the Steuben Day Parade. (NYT/Don Hogan Charles)
Members of a gymnastic team from Tannusstein, near Wiesbaden, West Germany, performing on Rhonrads, or gyro wheels, near the Wollman rink in Central Park. The team, on a U.S. visit, marched last Saturday in the Steuben Day Parade. (NYT/Don Hogan Charles)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Greek Priests Protest Government Plan to Acquire Church Land
LEAD: Bishop Christodoulos of Dimitrias addressing a crowd of priests and lay supporters yesterday outside Parliament in Athens. The crowd, estimated at 40,000, had gathered to protest a bill being debated in Parliament that would transfer 325,000 acres of church lands to the State. 'The church is a giant who has suddenly woken up and is demanding his rights,' the Bishop told the crowd.
Bishop Christodoulos of Dimitrias addressing a crowd of priests and lay supporters yesterday outside Parliament in Athens. The crowd, estimated at 40,000, had gathered to protest a bill being debated in Parliament that would transfer 325,000 acres of church lands to the State. 'The church is a giant who has suddenly woken up and is demanding his rights,' the Bishop told the crowd. Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou said he would distribute the confiscated lands to poor farmers. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Stamps
An early cover bearing the world's first postage stamp, the British Penny Black, has been sold at auction for $2.4 million, almost double the highest previous price for a philatelic item.
The Penny Black, sold March 23 in Lugano, Switzerland, by Harmers Auctions S.A., was canceled in London on May 2, 1851, the day after it went on sale, but four days before it became valid for postage.
The envelope was itself an oddity: a letter-sheet known as a Mulready that was turned inside out. The Mulready also went on sale May 1, 1851, and was to become valid May 6.
But the recipient, a resident of Morpeth, turned the Penny Black envelope right side in so the Mulready design showed properly and mailed it to another addressee in Morpeth on May 4. Thus the envelope bears two early postmarks.
In addition, when the letter was mailed the second time, there apparently was an enclosure, because there is a penny postage due notation on the Mulready face of the envelope.
Mulready letter-sheets, little known in the United States, are much collected in Britain. Early types bear an elaborate drawing of Brittania triumphant, and were lampooned when they were first produced by William Mulready, the designer.
But, as James MacKay notes in his very useful book, ""Philatelic Terms Illustrated"" (Stanley Gibbons, London), Mulready ""inadvertently triggered off the mid-Victorian fashion for pictorial stationery.""
The cover's seller was unidentified, and the buyer was described by his Swiss agent only as a Japanese executive.
The last time the cover was sold, in November 1988, it went for about $125,000; its value has thus risen nineteenfold in two and a half years.
The previous record price for a philatelic item, about $1.3 million, was paid in May 1990 for an 1855 Swedish stamp, a used 3-skilling-banco value that was printed in yellow rather than blue. The amount remains the highest ever paid for a single stamp, although some experts, including at least a few at the Swedish Postal Museum, have suggested the stamp is a forgery.
Before the sale of the 3-skilling- banco, a stamp unknown to the general public, the highest price for a single stamp was $935,000, paid in 1980 for the one-cent Guiana magenta-black, a better-known item. The plate block of four ""Inverted Jennies,"" upside-down airmails that are the best known United States rarity, sold for $1.1 million in October 1989.
Correction:  April 14, 1991, Sunday
The Stamps column last Sunday misstated the year of issue of the first postage stamp, the Penny Black, and the one-penny Mulready lettersheet. It was 1840, not 1851.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Economy Poses Risks and Rewards
New England's economy has a way of making its mark on the nation's politics.  In 1988, the region's high-tech boom and the confidence it spawned gave rise to  the Presidential candidacy of Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, who promised to carry the ""Massachusetts miracle"" to the nation.
Four years later, a much-shaken region coping with a harrowing recession began -- by way of the New Hampshire primary -- the long electoral slide of President George Bush and helped shape the change-oriented candidacy of Bill Clinton.
Now, on the brink of Tuesday's Yankee Primary, when voters in five New England states will weigh in on the Republican Party's muddled race for the nomination, the picture in New England is far more mixed: better than the early  1990's, to be sure, but hardly the boom years of the 1980's, analysts say.
Senator Bob Dole's supporters, a virtual ""Who's Who"" of the Republican establishment here, are counting on New England to steady the Dole campaign and  send it into the New York primary on Thursday with a string of victories. A not-inconsiderable prize of 107 Republican delegates will be at stake in Tuesday's primaries in Maine, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
But there is enough economic uncertainty swirling through this region to create openings for Mr. Dole's main challengers; Steve Forbes clearly sees one in Connecticut; Patrick J. Buchanan in Maine. Anxiety about unemployment is high, even though the regional jobless rate in the last year averaged 5.5 percent, about the same as the national rate, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
A recent survey by a Cambridge pollster, John Gorman, found that 41 percent of the employed respondents in Massachusetts thought that there was ""some chance"" of losing their jobs this year.
On a frigid afternoon in downtown Lowell this week, Paul Burton had little doubt about the most important issue in this election. ""Jobs, unemployment -- we need to get that straightened out,"" said Mr. Burton, a 54-year-old former janitor who now draws Social Security disability benefits, and who was wearing two Buchanan buttons as he stopped for coffee at a doughnut shop. ""He cares for  people,"" Mr. Burton said.
Still, there is a strong moderate tradition in New England's Republican Party -- embodied by Senator John H. Chafee of Rhode Island, Senator Olympia J. Snowe  of Maine and Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts -- and most of its leading lights are supporting Mr. Dole..
""We keep hearing about the conservative bent of the Republican Party and that's wonderful,"" said John Holmes, chairman of the Rhode Island Republican Party and a Dole supporter. ""But we're up here, we're alive and well, we're just as Republican as the ultraconservatives in the party and we have beliefs and principles just like they do.""
Governor Weld, who originally supported Gov. Pete Wilson of California for the nomination and is now backing Mr. Dole, is a sort of poster boy for Republican centrists around the country. At a news conference this week, announcing the expansion of a program to help people save for college tuitions,  Governor Weld offered a counterpoint to Mr. Buchanan's brand of tariff-oriented  economic nationalism.
""A lot of people have good ideas what to do about economic anxiety,"" said the Governor, who has been bitingly critical of Mr. Buchanan in recent days. ""I think education and training should be the number one response.""
The six-state New England region, including New Hampshire, accounted for 13.2 million people in the last census. For all the postcard imagery, three-fourths of New Englanders live in urban areas. The regional unemployment rate in January was 5.2 percent, compared with 5.8 percent nationally.
But those figures belie a sharp change in the nature of jobs: Manufacturing employment has continued to fall in the region despite the economic recovery, Lynn Brown of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said in a recent article for the New England Council, a business group. Cuts by military manufacturers and change in the computer industry have ""taken a severe toll,"" she said. This makes for an unusual recovery and a jittery people; as Mr. Gorman, the pollster, put it, ""Normal here just isn't as good as it used to be.""
At a rally in Waltham on Friday night, Mr. Dole tried to address those fears. ""Certainly we're concerned about people who can't find jobs,"" he declared. Surrounded by people like Senator Chafee and Governor Weld, Mr. Dole offered a message that seemed tailor-made for the region, presenting himself a man ready ""to get things done"" for people, ""regardless of party,"" eager to insure a stable economic future by balancing the budget and cutting taxes.
Massachusetts is the biggest prize in the region, with 37 delegates at stake. Polls for The Boston Globe and The Boston Herald both showed Mr. Dole with a comfortable lead at week's end; The Globe's, with a margin of error of five percentage points, showed Mr. Dole with 33 percent, Mr. Forbes with 15 percent,  Mr. Buchanan with 14 percent and former Gov. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee with 11 percent.
But there is ""a huge wild card"" in Massachusetts, said Joe Malone, state treasurer and state chairman for the Dole campaign: 47 percent of registered voters are independent, and can vote in the Republican primary, compared with 13 percent registered as Republican.
Connecticut is the second biggest prize, with 27 delegates. There, as throughout the region, Mr. Dole has formidable political support from Gov. John  G. Rowland on down, but the Forbes camp clearly hopes to compete in this state.
""Taxes matter, which is to the Steve Forbes advantage,"" said State Senator Kevin Rennie, the only one of the 19 Republican State Senators who did not endorse Mr. Dole.
The Buchanan forces, meanwhile, are hoping to be felt throughout the region,  drawing on such voters as social conservatives, opponents of abortion, former supporters of Ross Perot. Some analysts see Maine as a particular target of opportunity for Mr. Buchanan, since residents there gave 30 percent of the vote  to Mr. Perot in 1992.
But many say Mr. Buchanan peaked in the region after New Hampshire, and this  assessment was supported in a regional survey by the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
Mr. Alexander has made several forays into the region in recent days, standing in the shadow of Faneuil Hall in Boston the other day to urge another Tea Party against Mr. Buchanan's proposal for tariffs. Mr. Alexander has also been advertising across the region; the other candidates are largely relying on  the memory of the regional advertising in the New Hampshire primary to carry them through.
Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana has also been encamped in the region in recent days, spending most of his time in Vermont and Maine.
In the end, though, the level of activity in the region by the candidates has been something of a letdown to some of the Yankee Primary's architects. Garrison Nelson, a political scientist at the University of Vermont, offered what has become a universal lament in this frenetic stage of the campaign: ""There's so much else out there, we've been crowded off the screen.""
POLITICS: NEW ENGLAND",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Coins
For nearly 3,000 years, mine owners have seen coins as a wonderful way to sell bullion. The Lydians under Croesus did it. The Comstock Lode owners in Nevada did it. And so did William Wood.
The Lydians struck their electrum alloy -- silver and gold -- into staters that became the very first coins. Comstock silver went into millions of United States ""cartwheel"" silver dollars. William Wood turned to lesser metals.
Wood owned copper and tin mines in England. The colonies in America were short of any type of coinage, and Wood was long on copper and tin. Supplying coins to the colonies would solve both problems.
In 1722 he approached King George I, seeking a patent to mint some 100 tons -- $:56,000 worth -- of twopence, pence and halfpence. The king agreed and Wood would have begun, except for one Ehrengarde Melusina, Duchess of Munster and Kendal. The Duchess's intimate relationship with King George allowed her to get her hands on the patent as soon as it was signed. Wood was then forced to pay her $:10,000 to get it back and begin minting coins.
Wood's problems were only beginning. He used a new alloy of 75 percent copper, 24.7 percent zinc and 0.3 percent silver, called Bath metal, to mint his coins. Unfortunately, the coins looked like pure brass when they were first minted and, with use, took on the distinct appearance of cheap counterfeits.
The coins were also struck using the cheapest of techniques. Normally, coins are imprinted and cut from a rolled strip of alloy. Wood used cast-metal blanks that had to be heated to make them soft enough to accept the dies. The heat discolored the coins and created bubbles and rough areas that were filed away by hand.
The design itself was an exercise in flattery bordering on the obsequious. King George's bust appeared on the obverse and the Tudor rose on the reverse. The rose, neither white nor red, symbolically portrayed him as the successor in spirit to both the Plantagenets and the Tudors. But King George, who was born in Germany, could not stand England, thinking it a backwater to his Continental holdings. He could not speak English and would not learn. Wood's thinking that George would care about any roses was politically naive.
Nevertheless, the coins went off to the colonies.
And then new problems cropped up. Most of the Northeast was first angered and then confused by Wood's coins. No one in England had bothered to consult with colonial authorities about the new currency, thus alienating the colonies' leaders. But more importantly, the coins bore no relationship in size to other English coins. Wood's twopence did not look like anything else, and his penny was similar to a halfpenny.
New Yorkers refused to accept them in any transaction and Massachusetts went so far as to print substitute parchment scrip.
The coins, in short, were a flop.
In 1724, William Wood gave up. He traded the patent for a royal pension. It was a good decision: Wood received more money and less aggravation from the pension than he had ever had with the patent. He died six years later.
Today the coins are known as the Rosa Americana coins and bring a hefty price at most auctions. One will be sold at the Stack's Coin Company auction on Oct. 15 and 16 at the Omni Park Central Hotel, Seventh Avenue and West 56th in Manhattan at 7 P.M. The coin, and others, can be viewed Monday through Friday, 10:30 A.M. to 4:30 P.M., at Stack's, 123 West 57th Street.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Rumsfeld, in a Lighter Vein, Meets Troops in Qatar
Correction:  December 14, 2002, Saturday  A picture yesterday with a caption about a meeting of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Tommy Franks with American and British troops in Qatar was published in error. It showed Iraqi police cadets checking into a hotel in Baghdad for a weekend break.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"A Call for Free Trade Unions in Poland
LEAD: Lech Walesa, the Solidarity leader, giving a victory sign after a mass yesterday in Czestochowa that climaxed a workers' pilgrimage. During mass, Bishop Damian Zimon of Katowice, made an impassioned plea for the establishment of free and independent trade unions. Page A13. (AP)
Lech Walesa, the Solidarity leader, giving a victory sign after a mass yesterday in Czestochowa that climaxed a workers' pilgrimage. During mass, Bishop Damian Zimon of Katowice, made an impassioned plea for the establishment of free and independent trade unions. Page A13. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Start-Ups Are Catching Fire in Poland
WHEN Communism collapsed in Poland, there were high expectations for a boom in small business. The Poles were known as canny traders, and anyone who visited dreary Warsaw in 1990 could see a thousand opportunities in a consumer- and service-starved populace. But few imagined the explosion in small-business start-ups: if England was known in the 19th century as a country of small shopkeepers, then Poland might well go down as a mecca for small businesses at the end of the 20th.
Official statistics show that about two million small businesses have been registered in the last eight years, by far the largest number for any nation that was once behind the Iron Curtain. They range from laundromats to retail stores, from car-part manufacturers to language schools, from headhunters to public-relation firms.
It seems that virtually anything that the elephantine state-run companies could not and would not provide under the Communists, Polish business people -- and foreign friends -- have provided since.
Take maps. The Communists were supersecretive, so easy-to-read maps of big cities were nonexistent. With the advent of a free-market economy, maps became important: delivery trucks needed them, developers had to know urban layouts and ordinary citizens were driving their new cars into parts of the country they had never ventured before.
Rafal Dylak, 33, a graduate in history with little business experience, saw the gap. With three partners, he set up Demart, the first company in Poland to use computers to produce cartographic materials. Mr. Dylak loves to point out that he currently produces 15 maps and atlases, all of them profitable. His competition, the privatized version of the state monopoly that is now listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, produces 200 maps, but only 80 of those turn a profit, Mr. Dylak said.
Being successful in a small business, many experts say, is often a state of mind as much as a matter of economic climate, Governmental support and financial acumen. The rapid expansion of small businesses in Poland -- even compared with other Central European nations like the Czech Republic and Hungary, where the climate for entrepreneurs is not as warm, but there is activity  -- has much to do with Polish character, argued Rosalind Copisarow, the chief executive officer of Fundusz Mikro, an American Government-sponsored program that established a loan facility for small businesses in Poland.
'Entrepreneurship means that you have a desire not to work for someone else,' said Ms. Copisarow, who established J. P. Morgan's business in Poland before managing the more unconventional Fundusz Mikro. 'The fact that the Poles were dominated by one ideology or another for more than a century and tried to fight back means the Poles are very high on not wanting to work for someone else.'
Ms. Copisarow, who is British, argues that the Solidarity movement in the 80's, when the Poles used trade unions to fight oppression, signaled the existence of spirited entrepreneurs ready to take risks once the Communist system imploded.
Of course, Poland's new economic climate has been an indispensable ingredient for small-business success, starting with the bold reforms of 1990, when state industries were allowed to go bankrupt and price controls were removed. In the last several years, Poland's 5 to 7 percent annual growth rate has been far healthier than that of Western Europe's. And rapid growth, combined with fairly low wages, Ms. Copisarow said, has been a winning combination missing for many years in Western Europe.
There is one other boost for small businesses that, Ms. Copisarow noted, sets Poland apart from Western Europe. The Polish Government cannot afford to pay the generous welfare benefits that prevail in Britain and Germany and that often end up dampening entrepreneurial spirit.
Banks in Poland have not been particularly receptive to start-ups, and many new entrepreneurs have been forced to borrow from relatives or to use their own savings. Fundusz Mikro's average starting loan is about $1,500, with 29 percent annual interest if the venture has four to seven partners. The top interest is an annual 37 percent if the borrower is an individual. But even with these steep rates, few of the businesses that the fund has lent money to have defaulted. In a sign of small-business success, the fund could become profitable in the spring.
Not all small-business ventures in Poland are start-ups. A few are revamped models from the Communist era. In these cases, owners have  adapted to more efficient methods.
The Blikle cafe on Nowy Swiat, Warsaw's most elegant street, for example, has existed since before World War II. The scion of the family, Andrzej Blikle, has refurbished it with halogen lighting and wood paneling and now sells superior cakes, coffee and juices. He has worked at motivating staff and grafting Western management techniques onto Polish ways. Mr. Blikle wanted to improve the baking plant that supplies his cafe. But how could he introduce the Western concept of quality control to workers who were unaccustomed to sharing information?
Gingerly, he started weekly meetings at the plant where bakers and salesclerks were encouraged to thrash out suggestions for improving products. Soon a major problem was solved: preventing the popular poppy-seed cakes from crumbling. Bakers found that one shift of workers was overgrinding the poppy seeds. Standardized grinding was set up, the cakes stopped falling apart and the 70 production workers are now all members of 'quality circles,' where everything from the flavor of a cake to the shape of the oven-ready frozen rolls is discussed.
Another reason for Poland's entrepreneurial boom has been an influx of Polish expatriates who saw opportunity from afar.
Tamar Adler, 30, is a second-generation Israeli whose grandparents fled Poland. After graduating with an M.B.A. from Tel Aviv University, Ms. Adler sensed a need in Poland for archival services, which were unknown as a business under Communism. Polish laws are very strict about how long companies must keep employment, sales and tax records. (Personnel records must be stored for 50 years, and invoices kept on paper, not disks.)
With a mixture of American, Israeli and Polish financial backing, she opened Business Archive two years ago, a company that stores and files documents for accounting firms, legal practices and Government agencies in a rented space near the Warsaw airport. Business Archive now has 30 employees and an  expanding market.
'In the United States or Israel you have to find a very, very innovative idea for a new business to succeed,' Ms. Adler said. 'Here, you don't have to invent the wheel again. You can come with an idea that has been used before, and you're coming into a huge market with 40 million people.'",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Pope, in Poland, Backs Human Rights
LEAD: Pope John Paul II with Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish leader, on arrival in Warsaw. The Pope called on the leadership of his native land to follow a policy that insures respect for human rights and human dignity and allows wide citizen participation in public life. Page A3. (AP)
Pope John Paul II with Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish leader, on arrival in Warsaw. The Pope called on the leadership of his native land to follow a policy that insures respect for human rights and human dignity and allows wide citizen participation in public life. Page A3. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"European Union's Tough but Relentless Drive to Expand
Europe enters the new year and the new millennium on a mission of staggering scale: an expansion of the European Union by 13 countries and some 170 million people.
In the decade since Communism collapsed, the European Union has made huge progress toward becoming a truly single market. Almost all trade barriers among its 15 member nations have been abolished. Citizens of any member country can live and work in any other. At the start of this  year, 11 of the 15 countries adopted the euro as a common currency.
But integration has not been easy. France and Germany feuded endlessly during negotiations over the euro, which still has not been adopted by Britain, Sweden, Denmark and Greece. The new currency slumped relentlessly vis-a-vis the United States dollar, declining from $1.18 after its introduction on Jan. 4 to just above parity with the dollar by mid-December.
As a result of the transparency of the euro, as well as the elimination of the trade barriers, price competition within Europe has become brutal. And hostile corporate takeovers, until recently almost unthinkable outside Britain, have become common in France, Italy and Germany.
The path ahead could be even more grueling now as the union juggles issues of expanding membership.
Six countries -- Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Slovenia and Estonia -- are already in membership negotiations with the European Union, and some could be admitted as early as 2003.
Six other wildly diverse countries are about to start negotiations, a process likely to last at least a decade. These countries are: the central European nations of Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania; the tiny Baltic nations of Latvia and Lithuania, and the island nation of Malta.
But the biggest breakthrough was Turkey, which the European Union invited earlier this month to become a candidate for membership. Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, while acknowledging that difficulties lay ahead, said, 'The acceptance of our candidacy on equal terms is a great success for Turkey.'
The country has been a part of the NATO military alliance for years but was repeatedly shunned by the European Union because of its territorial feud with Greece and its human rights record.
Turkey, with 63 million people, still faces a long path. Membership negotiations will not begin until it resolves its disputes with Greece, and to become a member, it must also abandon the death penalty, even as a Turkish court is seeking to impose it on the Kurdish rebel leader, Abdullah Ocalan.
It is hard to overstate the magnitude of the project that would expand the union beyond its current members; besides Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece and Sweden, they are Austria, Belgium, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. If all 13 countries under discussion become members, the European Union would constitute the world's biggest and most diversified free trade zone.
Europe's common market would encompass nearly 500 million people and extend to the borders of Russia. It would unite Europe's wealthiest nations with some of its poorest. It would bring jolting new competition to farmers in both Western and Central Europe.
And even if some nations do not make the cut -- and it would be years before any adopted the euro -- the idea of 'Europe' is likely to be stretched in strange ways.
Poland, with 40 million people and a long history with the West, is likely to be one of the first countries to become a new member.
Other front-runners include Estonia, a tiny Baltic nation that was part of the Soviet Union, and Slovenia, a prosperous Adriatic enclave that managed to break away from Yugoslavia.
In principle, the deciding issues are whether a country has adopted the institutions and laws to support both democracy and an open market economy.
In practice, the aspiring members will have to adopt a panoply of detailed laws governing trade, social issues and democratic institutions. That is often easier for smaller countries, which explains why a comparatively obscure nation like Slovenia, with two million people, may well be among the first new members.
The European Union's requirements, broken down into 32 'chapters,' include laws protecting investors and creditors; environmental regulations; timetables for closing Soviet-era nuclear plants, and the reduction of agricultural subsidies. To be eligible many countries must still establish the courts and regulatory agencies needed to enforce the rule of law in a credible fashion.
There is a clear financial impact from all this. Countries on the fast track generally pay lower interest rates when they sell bonds on the international market because foreign investors perceive those countries as safer. Indeed, bond investors are already speculating on which countries will be allowed to adopt the euro as their currency.
The lure of Europe's single market has also sped the transition of more statist and Stalinist regimes toward market economics. Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria have all elected Western-style politicians in the last several years, and all have pushed heavily to impose the changes required for admission to the union.
A report by the European Commission in October concluded that Bulgaria had made big strides toward opening its markets, including those in telecommunications and media, as well as in setting up an effective civil service and court system. Romania and Slovakia, pariahs just three years ago, are now winning praise as well.
To be sure, the acceleration of market-oriented changes has increased political tension. Poland has been one of Central Europe's major success stories. By sticking firmly to a course of privatization and expanded trade with Western Europe, Poland was barely grazed by last year's economic collapse in Russia.
Yet anxiety about the European Union is rising sharply, mainly among Poland's farmers, coal miners and shipyard workers who stand to lose from reduced government subsidies and heightened competition. Recent surveys indicate that support for membership in the European Union has slipped to about 55 percent of the Polish population today from 80 percent in 1990.
Many Poles also fear that Germans will buy their land as soon as they get the chance. In negotiations with the European Union earlier this year, the Polish Government demanded that foreign land purchases be restricted for 18 years after the nation joined the union.
The anxiety flows in both directions. Germany, which borders Poland and the Czech Republic and has high unemployment, is pushing for long 'transition periods' before Central European workers receive full rights to work in the West.
In a departure from its past approach, the European Union is now pursuing 'flexible' targets for admitting nations, allowing countries to join when they are ready, rather than in big waves.
Most experts believe that expansion is all but inevitable. More than two-thirds of exports from Poland and Hungary already go to the European Union, as do more than half the exports from most other formerly Communist 'candidate' countries.
And although the embrace of market economics is generally weaker the farther east one travels, all the candidate countries seem to be shifting toward such policies.
'Both sides profit from enlargement,' said Andreas Polkowski, an economic analyst at the Hamburg Institute for Economic Research. 'Under the pressure of globalization, these countries have to change regardless of whether they enter the European Union. Those that want to become members have merely accelerated the process.'
INTERNATIONAL",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"PROTESTERS CLASH WITH POLICE IN MADRID
LEAD: Spanish riot policemen driving back demonstrators yesterday. At least 24 people, including 7 police officers, were injured in clashes between the police and right-wing protesters. Clashes came at end of four-day boycott of classes and followed march by thousands of students calling for cuts in tuition, more spending on education and an end to stringent university entrance exams.
Spanish riot policemen driving back demonstrators yesterday. At least 24 people, including 7 police officers, were injured in clashes between the police and right-wing protesters. Clashes came at end of four-day boycott of classes and followed march by thousands of students calling for cuts in tuition, more spending on education and an end to stringent university entrance exams. (Reuters)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Poland to Spread Out Price Rises
LEAD: Prime Minister Zbigniew Messner addressing the Polish parliament yesterday. He announced that the steep price rises for basic foodstuffs planned for next year will instead be implemented over three years. At rear, in dark glasses, was President Wojciech Jaruzelski. Page 19. (AP)
Prime Minister Zbigniew Messner addressing the Polish parliament yesterday. He announced that the steep price rises for basic foodstuffs planned for next year will instead be implemented over three years. At rear, in dark glasses, was President Wojciech Jaruzelski. Page 19. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"From Russia, a Bid to Increase Arms in Caucasus
Western diplomats said today that Russia asked last month for an increase in the number of tanks and heavy weapons Moscow is allowed to station in the Caucasus, where civil wars are raging in three newly independent countries, under a conventional arms reduction treaty signed three years ago.
Germany and other signers of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, signed in Paris at the end of 1990, rejected the Russian request at a meeting in Vienna last month, saying that any change that would require a renegotiation of the treaty was unacceptable, according to the diplomats.
""It's not a smart move, because it gives the impression that the Russian military is taking over,"" a NATO diplomat said. ""But the Russians have not threatened to pull out of the treaty if they didn't get the limit raised.""
Several diplomats emphasized that the request for a change preceded the bloody battles in Moscow earlier this week, when Russian military called in by President Boris N. Yeltsin crushed his opponents in the Parliament.
""The treaty does not come into full effect until two years from now, so no one is even saying the Russians can't move forces closer to the Caucasus now if they want,"" one official said.
President Yeltsin made the request in a letter sent to the United States, France, Britain and Germany last month, according to diplomats.
In a separate letter sent at the same time, Mr. Yeltsin also retreated from an earlier public statement that Russia would not oppose the membership of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic in NATO.
The treaty on conventional forces sets an overall limit on tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, and combat aircraft on the NATO allies and the former Warsaw Pact countries. Both sides have to destroy enough equipment to come down to those levels, which limit either side to 20,000 tanks, by 1995.
Most of the equipment has been withdrawn from central Europe. Separate treaty sub-limits apply to areas in the Caucasus region and the area around St. Petersburg, near the Baltic states, to make sure the withdrawn equipment is not simply re-deployed there.
Russian withdrawal from the treaty would imperil the diplomatic underpinning of the huge arms and troop reductions that continue to be made in Europe by Russia, the United States, and other countries. ""The mere threat to withdraw would be a serious move that could have unforeseeable consequences,"" one German expert said.
Some Western experts believe that the Russian request for higher limits in the Caucasus region is one more indication that the Russians are more involved in the fighting there than has been admitted.
For weeks, the Russian Foreign Minister, Andrei Kozyrev, had made clear that the Russian leaders , like the Soviet leaders and the Czars before them, regarded the area as part of Russia's strategic sphere of interest.
Russian forces have supplied up-to-date tanks, other military equipment and ""volunteers"" to Abkhazian rebels who drove Georgian Government forces loyal to President Eduard A. Shevardnadze from the Black Sea port of Sukhumi last week, according to Western military experts and diplomats. Russian military backing has also given Armenia an edge in its fight with Azerbaijan over the ethnic enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, the diplomats said.
But the arms treaty imposes an overall limit of 220 tanks on the whole Caucasus region. Russian forces still stationed in Georgia have 211 modern T-72 tanks, one expert said, while the Georgians have no more than 20 of the older T-55 models that are operable.
""The sub-limits are crucial, because with 20 state-of-the-art tanks you could reoccupy all of Georgia,"" one German military authority said. ""The Russians are clearly maneuvering to press their interests in the Caucasus region.""
German diplomats said Mr. Yeltsin's requests had been referred to the treaty's permanent joint consultative group in Vienna.
""We've been telling them it's two years away, and we can't change the treaty,"" another Western diplomat said. ""But it makes you wonder what's going on in Moscow.""",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Sarajevo to Greet Pope, at Last
Workmen in the Bosnian capital assembled an altar yesterday at a war-damaged soccer stadium for Pope John Paul II to use when he says Mass next Sunday during an overnight visit. The Pope first planned to visit Sarajevo in September 1994, but was forced to cancel the trip because the city was under siege. (Agence France-Presse)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"A Legacy of Ashes: The Uranium Mines Of Eastern Germany
BARREN and black, the ashen hills of nuclear waste stand like treeless offspring of the wooded mountains that cradle the towns and villages of this German frontier region.
They were once shrouded with the secrecy of the Wismut uranium mines, begun in the first fever of Stalin's drive for atomic weaponry and for years the largest supplier of uranium for Moscow's nuclear effort.
Five months into German unification, this vast troubled landscape affords a sobering dose of the realities united Germany is up against in cleaning up eastern Germany's environment.
The uranium mines that produced these grim hillocks and lakes of polluted sludge are being shut down. The last operating mines, near the hamlet of Schlema, were closed last month.
The veil of secrecy is lifting, as reports appear about the history of the mines and the diseases of those who toiled there, subjects that were untouchable not long ago.
Wismut, the company that ran the mines, is designing a $3.6 billion cleanup program, which the Bonn Government will finance, to fill mine shafts and clean up the mountains and lakes of radioactive waste.  Cosmetic Aspect Cited
The Federal Government has sent teams of physicians and other experts to study disease rates and map the polluted areas. That is because the region has another problem that predates Wismut. Since the 15th century, miners extracted rich lodes of silver from the region's uranium-rich soils. Now, unused silver mines and heaps of uranium-laced waste are emitting varying amounts of radon, a gas that can damage human health at certain levels.
Echoing Government medical experts, some local officials contend the problem of the waste piles is mainly cosmetic, not toxic. Mayor Konrad Barth of Schlema cites Government studies that found few points in towns like Aue where radon emissions exceeded acceptable levels. They acknowledge, however, that potentially greater dangers loom from the presence in the waste piles of other toxic materials, like arsenic.
In Schneeberg, a former silver- mining town, roughly 5 percent of the houses were found to have extraordinarily high radon levels. But Government medical experts who examined a father and four children in a house where radon emissions measured 120 times the maximum acceptable level said they found no abnormalities.
Still, the experts concede that little is known of the long-term effects of low-level radiation like that spread by the heaps and lakes of waste material, and they urge that the health of local people be carefully monitored.
Thus far, the citizens of towns like Aue, population 30,000, say all the publicity about their environmental woes has done only damage, frightening away potential investors.
Worst of all, the mines themselves, like most of the musclebound East German industrial economy, are an albatross. The local ore is virtually depleted, the technology outmoded and costly and Soviet orders for uranium gone. Where 40,000 people toiled as recently as last year, more than half are now unemployed or working shorter hours. Building It Big
Wismut, was flung up by the Soviets after 1945, a crash project to break America's nuclear monopoly. Until 1954, Soviet officials ran it alone under a shroud of military secrecy, hauling the uranium to the Soviet Union without paying the Germans, as part of reparations payments imposed on East Germany for World War II.
The site, where the northern slope of the Erzgebirge climbs toward Czechoslovakia, was chosen for its history as a source of radioactive ores. The Czech side of the range produced the uranium salts that led the French physicist, Henri Becquerel, to the discovery of radioactivity in 1896.
They built the project big, in the prevailing spirit of Soviet gigantism. With little technical finesse, tens of thousands of workers were assembled, often digging with picks and shovels. From 1946 to the present, officials say, the mines delivered more than 200,000 metric tons of yellow cake, or uranium oxide, to Soviet military and civilian nuclear programs, extracted at great cost from pitchblende, a brownish-black ore that is the principal mineral source of uranium.
Now Bonn is seeking agreement to acquire the 50 percent Soviet stake in Wismut. In exchange, Moscow will be released from the liability of cleaning up the environmental mess.
Michael Beleites, a church-affiliated researcher, recalled the primitive conditions of Wismut's birth in a samizdat study he published in 1988, before the fall of Communism here, titled, ""Pitchblende: East German Uranium Mining and its Consequences.""
""The number of uranium miners rose faster than quarters could be built,"" Mr. Beleites said. ""Thus in Johanngeorgenstadt, cots were set up in apartment hallways to afford at least sufficient places to sleep. In such a situation, labor hygienic conditions played as good as no role. They drilled dry, so that the miners constantly breathed in radioactive dust."" State Within a State
But among the region's people, the consoling memory of a time when things were much worse is increasingly less vivid.
Wismut, transformed into a Soviet-East German joint venture in 1954, and quickly developed into a state within a state, with its own police, communications and transport systems, is struggling for survival. The last of about 400 to 500 Soviet engineers and managers departed in December, and under a scheme drawn up with the help of Western consultants, the huge concern now hopes to market its skills in mining, environmental cleanup and construction, to create jobs for some of its remaining 29,000 employees.
But the harshest legacy is the environmental mess.
One problem is the mine shafts, a vast warren of tunnels and cavities that stretch for thousands of miles under the mountainous landscape, some piercing depths of 6,000 feet. ""We must remove grease and oils and some toxic materials, and take out steel supports, rail tracks and old air-conditioning equipment,"" said Christoph Rudolph, who runs the mining operations in Aue. The empty cavities, like giant rotten teeth, will then be pumped full of cement fillings, he said.
More troubling are huge mountains of waste and lakes of slush that were waste products of arduous mining and extraction processes.  Not a Place for Cows
Ores from the Erzgebirge were never rich, Mr. Rudolph explained, yielding about nine pounds of uranium for every ton of ore mined, or about four-tenths of 1 percent, compared with 12 percent for some rich Canadian and Australian ores.
The waste was dumped in huge heaps that now dot the landscape, and now day by day dilapidated Soviet-built dump trucks haul the material to new sites to flatten the hills, which will then be covered with topsoil and reforested. But the wastes, which contain residues of uranium and radium, emit radon gas. ""Not a place for grazing cows or building homes,"" Mr. Rudolph said.
Other pollutants are equally alarming. Separating the uranium from the waste involved scrubbings with sulfuric acid and caustic solutions that were discarded and collected in vast lake-like basins, where the waters were gradually fed into local rivers and streams. Wismut officials acknowledge that such waters are heavily laced with toxic substances like arsenic, uranium and radium, and environmental activists regard local rivers like the Zwickauer Mulde and Weisse Elster as radioactively polluted. Officials say they focus on protecting the water table and gradually ridding the landscape of these grim ponds.
In his study, Mr. Beleites chronicled reports by miners and their families of frequent cases of lung and testicular cancer, leukemia and such conditions as hair loss, temporary impotency among men and fatigue. Local miners called Oberrothenbach, on the shore of a waste basin, ""the tired village.""
Horst Richter, a geologist who became Wismut's chief executive officer last year, conceded that in the early years medical care was deficient. Later, however, the company organized health care services exclusively for its workers that were far above the level enjoyed by most East Germans.
Mr. Richter said that about 5,400 cases of lung cancer were recorded in secret medical data the company kept over the years on some 450,000 employees, roughly the same as the national average. Evaluating Evaluations
More widespread, he acknowledged, were such conditions as silicosis, a lung ailment marked by shortness of breath common among miners, and rheumatic ailments of the joints and back that resulted from measures taken to reduce the threat of contamination by radioactive dust. For one, mining surfaces were constantly wet. Moreover, air-conditioning of the mines meant workers stood continuously in cold air streams. Only now, however, are company medical data being opened for research.
""We still don't have independent evaluation,"" said the Rev. Andreas Krusche, the pastor of St. Wolfgang's Church in Schneeberg. ""Wismut was autarkic. They themselves evaluated the results of their own evaluations.""
Now passivity, bewilderment and pessimism abound. But some say the greatest potential for the region's redevelopment may lie in its very radioactivity.
Before World War II, Schlema was Europe's most important radon spa, with a radiological institute and more than 300 boarding houses catering to thousands of guests who came each year for radioactive treatment.
In 1946, after the Russians took over, the spa buildings were torn down and the radiology institute's valuable library hauled to the Soviet Union. Now Mr. Barth has revival plans. A scholarly conference is planned for September to begin the project.
""We have to perform a giant somersault,"" Mr. Barth said, ""out of a valley of death into a valley of hope.""",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Talks on Nuclear Testing Begin in Geneva
LEAD: Robert Barker, left, head of the American delegation in Geneva for negotiations on nuclear testing, greeting Igor Palenykh, his Soviet counterpart, during meeting at the U.S. Mission. The session yesterday marked the first meeting of both full delegations.
Robert Barker, left, head of the American delegation in Geneva for negotiations on nuclear testing, greeting Igor Palenykh, his Soviet counterpart, during meeting at the U.S. Mission. The session yesterday marked the first meeting of both full delegations.
Both sides stressed the need to improve monitoring techniques for two unratified treaties of the 1970's that limit the power of nuclear tests. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Liberty's Flame - or a Reasonable Facsimile - Is Bound for France
LEAD: The West Point Glee Club performing during the unveiling last night of a copy of the Statue of Liberty's flame at Port Liberte in Jersey City. The flame is to be a gift to France. Page B10. (The New York Times/Dith Pran)
The West Point Glee Club performing during the unveiling last night of a copy of the Statue of Liberty's flame at Port Liberte in Jersey City. The flame is to be a gift to France. Page B10. (The New York Times/Dith Pran)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Barbie Quits Nazi Trial
LEAD: Klaus Barbie being escorted from court back to his cell yesterday in Lyons, France. The former Nazi Gestapo officer, asserting that he was a 'hostage, not a prisoner,' said he would no longer take part in his trial for crimes against humanity. The move would prevent his accusers from confronting him face to face.
Klaus Barbie being escorted from court back to his cell yesterday in Lyons, France. The former Nazi Gestapo officer, asserting that he was a 'hostage, not a prisoner,' said he would no longer take part in his trial for crimes against humanity. The move would prevent his accusers from confronting him face to face. Page A8. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"West Germany Calls for Adherence to ABM Treaty
LEAD: Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, center, with Paul H. Nitze, left, arms adviser to Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard N. Perle before their talks yesterday in Bonn. Mr. Genscher told the Americans that West Germany believed the United States and the Soviet Union should adhere to a strict interpretation of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty.
Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, center, with Paul H. Nitze, left, arms adviser to Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard N. Perle before their talks yesterday in Bonn. Mr. Genscher told the Americans that West Germany believed the United States and the Soviet Union should adhere to a strict interpretation of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty.  Mr. Nitze and Mr. Perle are on a swing through Western Europe to explain the Administration's preference for a broad interpretation that would permit extensive testing of the ""Star Wars"" antimissile systems.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"In Leading Nations, A Population Bust?
LADIES and gentlemen, welcome to Shanghai,' said China's president, greeting leaders of the world's powers as they gathered on Jan. 1, 2100. 'A century ago, our predecessors worried that the world was headed for a Malthusian meltdown -- that we could not feed, clothe or find enough energy for an overpopulated earth. This city was a symbol of their fears.
'Now we know the truth: there is a population crisis, but not the kind they had in mind. We are simply running out of educated, capable workers. In fact, in the places around the world that matter most to our prosperity and political stability, there are just too few babies.'
Far-fetched? Maybe so. After all, demographers and environmentalists spent much of the 20th century worrying that unrelenting growth in the world population would ignite social and political upheaval.
But in crunching the numbers, it seems possible that the ticking population bomb of 2100 could indeed be a people shortage in the most advanced countries, even as the nations that now rank among the poorest continue to grow. And that prospect is driving a rethinking of the economic destiny of nations and speculation about who will best be able to exercise global power in a century.
It is a humbling exercise. 'Just about everybody got it wrong in 1900,' said Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer who has spent his professional life trying to figure out what population projections portend for the world. A century ago, when there were roughly 1.65 billion souls, almost no one predicted the near quadrupling of the world population, he noted.
The projections for 2100 are equally susceptible to the unpredictability of plagues, wars and enthusiasm for procreation. 'Yet it seems pretty safe to say now that the population surge is almost over,' Mr. Eberstadt said. 'A lot of countries are going to start shrinking soon -- Japan, Europe, China in 30 years or so. And that means that sooner than we think, we could be headed into the end of surplus manpower.'
Such conclusions fly in the face of all our experience. The story of the last half-century has been a terrifying acceleration in population growth. In 1850, there were slightly more than one billion people on earth, and by 1950 the figure had barely passed 2.5 billion. But then came the post-World War II explosion, in which another billion people were added to the world's population roughly every dozen years. These trends have a momentum of their own, and the United Nations estimates that in 50 years, the world population will surge another 50 percent, to roughly nine billion.
But dig a little deeper into the estimates, and you find some surprises. Like stock markets, populations tend to peak and then decline. And the birth boom over the next 50 years will probably be a bit like a sonic boom -- loud and scary, but localized.
The poorest nations will continue to grow the fastest. Africa's population is expected to double in the first half of the 21st century, assuming that the AIDS epidemic does not take an even more devastating toll there on life expectancy. By 2050, India seems likely to edge out China as the world's most populous nation. Pakistan -- now broke, unstable but nuclear-ready -- is predicted to challenge the United States for third place, up from sixth place. By midcentury, each is projected to have about 350 million people. The World Bank and others warn of continuing hunger and health crises among the half of the world's population that still lives on less than $2 a day -- crises that can fuel both internal and territorial conflict.
But the big economic and political news for the next century is that many nations worldwide, including almost all of today's most powerful, will lose population. Europe as a whole will shrink by 100 million people and become a mere 5 percent of the world's population, down from 13 percent. Japan's population will sink like a stone. Among the big industrial powers of 2000, only the United States is expected to keep growing.
The picture drawn by these projections is far more complex than the doomsday scenarios of the 1960's, when 'The Population Bomb' by Paul R. Ehrlich became the handbook of imminent disaster. But it also raises issues that so far have been largely missing from the population debate.
Consider China. Until now, its big issues have concerned scarcity: Will the country run out of fuel as ever-richer Chinese hop behind the wheels of new sport utility vehicles? Will it depend on the rest of Asia for rice, and on the United States and other countries for grain? But the figures suggest different questions: What happens if China runs out of the people it needs to keep growing? Will it have enough well-trained workers and credit-card-armed consumers to sustain an economy that befits its size?
Clearly such concerns are on the minds of China's leaders. 'When you talk to Zhu Rongji,' China's prime minister, said one of President Clinton's top advisers, 'he's talking about fuel substitution and safety nets for an aging population.'
The lesson of the 20th century, of course, is that it takes a lot more than people power to create national power. If rising population translated into rising influence, Africa would have been on a roll over the last 20 years, and Japan would have never made a mark. Skill at exploiting natural resources proved crucial in the first half of the century, while skill at exploiting nuclear weapons, free markets and information technology mattered most in the second half.
But population and power are hardly divorced, either. It still takes a national head count of 100 million or more before the world stops, listens and heeds. So the big question is: Can countries gain strength even while their populations shrink?
The Europeans clearly worry about this; it's one reason the European Union came together after a century of division. The Chinese know that their future depends on technology and efficiency, but nonetheless are hedging their bets, spending billions of dollars to maintain one of the world's biggest armies. In Russia, already shrinking, it will take far more than a reversal of population trends to end the sapping of power.
All this portends well for the United States, the only industrialized power that is still demographically young. Its rivals in the developing world may have the numbers to challenge American hegemony, but they seem unlikely to have the military hardware or the economic software. And the industrialized world -- Japan and Europe -- will have the hardware and the software, but likely will find themselves desperate for the dynamism that is fueled by population growth.
That's the theory, at least -- unless the demographers get it wrong again.
VISIONS: BIOLOGY",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"FRIGID TEMPERATURES LESSEN IN EUROPE:
LEAD: Fishermen clearing ice from around their cutter at mouth of the Elbe River in Friedrichskoog, near Ham-burg, West Germany. The cold wave has claimed more than 300 lives in Europe, but temperatures have moderated in Britain and some parts of the Continent. (AP)
Fishermen clearing ice from around their cutter at mouth of the Elbe River in Friedrichskoog, near Ham-burg, West Germany. The cold wave has claimed more than 300 lives in Europe, but temperatures have moderated in Britain and some parts of the Continent. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"West German Chancellor Begins Talks in Washington
LEAD: Chancellor Helmut Kohl, center, meeting yesterday with Jesse Helms, left, and Claiborne Pell of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Kohl also met with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who asured the Chancellor of American support for his efforts to obtain a comprehensive NATO decision on the development of a new overall arms strategy.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl, center, meeting yesterday with Jesse Helms, left, and Claiborne Pell of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Kohl also met with Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who asured the Chancellor of American support for his efforts to obtain a comprehensive NATO decision on the development of a new overall arms strategy. Mr. Kohl is to meet with President Reagan today. (Reuters)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Jail Term for Piggott
LEAD: Lester Piggott, one of England's best-known jockeys, received a three-year jail sentence and fines for income-tax evasion. Page 59. (Reuters)
Lester Piggott, one of England's best-known jockeys, received a three-year jail sentence and fines for income-tax evasion. Page 59. (Reuters)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"A Thatcher Milestone
LEAD: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who, on Sunday, became the longest serving British Prime Minister in the 20th century. Details, page A6. (Agence France-Presse)
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who, on Sunday, became the longest serving British Prime Minister in the 20th century. Details, page A6. (Agence France-Presse)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"A Pledge to Aid the Balkans
Correction:  August 1, 1999, Sunday  A front-page picture caption yesterday about a meeting of world leaders in Sarajevo to inaugurate a rebuilding effort for southeastern Europe and its economy misstated the given name of the German Chancellor. He is Gerhard Schroder, not Helmut.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Stamps
The first United States stamps of the new year go on sale nationwide tomorrow: a set of five 29-cent stamps to commemorate the Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France.
And with the first 1992 issue, the United States Postal Service seems to have committed its first gaffe of the new year: the dates given for the Winter Olympics in the margin of the sheet of stamps are Feb. 8-25; in fact, the games are to end Feb. 23.
The Postal Service has confirmed that the error was made but has said there are no plans to reprint the stamps to correct it.
The marginal markings were begun in earnest early last year to make stamps more educational, but this is the second error that has cropped up. The 52-cent stamp issued on June 3 to honor Hubert H. Humphrey had the wrong dates for his Vice Presidency: 1964-68 rather than 1965-69.
A second set of five 29-cent stamps is to be issued in May or June to celebrate the Summer Olympics, and a single 29-cent stamp is due on April 3 to mark the entry of baseball as an official Olympic sport this year.
For the first time, the Postal Service has announced nearly all the issues planned for the coming year; it had been the practice to announce each stamp a few weeks before its release to the public.
The timing was changed in order to generate more interest in collecting stamps, Postmaster General Anthony M. Frank said at a presentation in Washington last month. ""We want to call attention to a wider audience the historical and esthetic value of the variety of American stamps,"" he said.
If the current plans are fulfilled, there will be a record number of different stamps issued this year: 129 have been announced, up from 103 last year.
By far the largest single issue will be a sheet of 50 different wildflowers, which is to be released in Columbus, Ohio, in June or July.
Another large issue will be a set of six souvenir sheets that show a total of 16 stamps, copies of the 1893 set that celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus's first voyage to the Americas (albeit a year late). Five of the sheets will have three stamps each, together with an enlargement of one of the three designs; the sixth, showing the $5 Columbian of 1893, includes a portrait of Columbus.
The Columbian sheets are to be issued on May 22 in Chicago, to coincide with a national stamp show there.
The second souvenir sheet in a series marking World War II anniversaries is to be issued on Aug. 14 in Indianapolis. Like the 1991 sheet, this issue will include a large map, with five different stamps across the top and five across the bottom.
The tentative calendar of other stamps looks like this:
Jan. 24. World Columbian Stamp Expo, a 29-cent commemorative, to be issued in Rosemont, Ill.
Jan. 31. W. E. B. Du Bois, the writer and educator, a 29-cent commemorative in the Black Heritage series, in Atlanta.
Feb. 6. A 29-cent stamp in an ongoing series released just before Valentine's Day, in Loveland, Colo.
Feb. 16. Wendell L. Willkie, the politician, a 75-cent Great Americans definitive, in Bloomington, Ind.
March. A 29-cent Flag Over the White House coil stamp and a 29-cent Great Americans definitive to honor Earl Warren, the Chief Justice, both to be issued in Washington.
April 24. First Voyage of Columbus, a set of four 29-cent stamps, part of a joint issue with Italy and Spain, to be issued in Christiansted, V.I.
May 17. New York Stock Exchange, a 29-cent commemorative, in New York.
May 29. Space Exploration, a set of four 29-cent stamps, planned as part of a joint issue with the Soviet Union and now likely to be issued jointly with Russia, in Chicago.
May 30. Alaska Highway, a 29-cent stamp in honor of the route's 50th anniversary, in Fairbanks, Alaska.
June 1. Kentucky Statehood, a 29-cent commemorative to mark the 200th anniversary, in Danville, Ky.
June 15. Hummingbirds, a booklet of five different 29-cent designs, in Washington.
Aug. 22. Dorothy Parker, the writer, a 29-cent commemorative in the Literary Arts series, in West End, N.J.
Aug. 31. Theodor von Karman, the rocket scientist, a 29-cent commemorative, in Washington.
Sept. 17. Minerals, four 29-cent designs, in Washington.
Sept. 28. Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, the Spanish explorer who discovered San Diego Bay 450 years ago, a 29-cent commemorative, in San Diego.
Oct. 1. Wild Animals, a booklet of five different 29-cent designs, to celebrate Stamp Collecting Month, in New Orleans.
Oct. 22. Christmas, with one design showing a Madonna and Child and four showing traditional toys, all valued at 29 cents, in Washington.
The Postal Service also plans a new definitive in the Wildlife series, showing a pumpkinseed sunfish, and a Special Occasions booklet with two different designs, but further details were not released.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Mr. Reagan's Treaty
LEAD: All Democratic Presidential candidates, in varying degree, are supporting the arms control treaty Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev are about to sign. All Republican candidates except Vice President Bush are opposing the treaty, or reserving judgment.
All Democratic Presidential candidates, in varying degree, are supporting the arms control treaty Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev are about to sign. All Republican candidates except Vice President Bush are opposing the treaty, or reserving judgment.
This not only confounds partisanship; it suggests a Republican death wish on arms control perhaps as deep-seated as the Democrats' seemingly incurable urge to raise taxes. That's because the proposed elimination of medium- and short-range nuclear missiles from Europe is not only a useful if limited step away from the dangerous age of superpower nuclear confrontation. It's also likely to appear that way to American voters.
What, after all, will they perceive as being on the verge of accomplishment, if the treaty is signed as scheduled and sent to the Senate for ratification?
First, and for the first time in the history of arms control negotiations, an entire category of missiles will have been removed from the superpowers' armed forces. By far the larger number of weapons removed, moreover, will be Soviet; and though what matters is the equality of the end result -no short- or medium-range missiles in Europe for Moscow or Washington - the greater Soviet numerical sacrifice is likely to be appealing to Americans. Only suppose it were the other way around.
Second, the primary American weapon to be eliminated - the Pershing 2 - is particularly 'destabilizing' because it can reach far into the Soviet Union from launchers in West Germany. Thus, it threatens the Russians with a devastating strike against their command system and important military outposts - which means, in turn, that these U.S. missiles offer a tempting target for a pre-emptive Soviet strike. Elimination of this weapon from the European scene would ease the level of military tension in any East-West political crisis.
Third, and perhaps most important for the long term, the treaty, if signed and ratified, would establish an intricate system of on-site inspection by both sides. This satisfies even Senator Bob Dole, Mr. Bush's principal challenger - though Mr. Dole has yet to support the treaty - and goes further than any arrangement yet in meeting other hawkish Americans' demands for 'foolproof' verification; it will accomplish a long-sought U.S. objective - at least a partial opening of the Soviet Union to foreign inspection; and it establishes a precedent for verification procedures in future, perhaps more extensive, arms agreements.
Fourth, the acceptance of this treaty would be an indispensable step toward such future agreements - in particular, the progressive reduction by both sides of intercontinental ballistic missiles and long-range bombers, the weapons that would make a 'first strike' possible for either side.
The treaty might also be an important political achievement for Mr. Gorbachev, who seems to have been determined to reach an agreement; and though his reform efforts have as yet been limited, his survival in power seems, on balance, to be in the U.S. interest.
As for Mr. Reagan, there's no doubt that the treaty offers at least partial redemption for his weak second term. How can Republican Presidential candidates oppose this major Reagan achievement and plausibly claim his political mantle? How can they praise him - deservedly - for a tough negotiating stance that helped 'bring the Soviets to the table,' then condemn the results obtained at that table?
What, in any case, are the arguments against the treaty? Medium-range missiles are not important? Then they aren't worth fighting to retain. Verification won't be 110 percent foolproof? Americans are likely to see on-site inspection in the Soviet Union as good enough, and a long step forward.
The only argument of any weight is that the treaty leaves Europe vulnerable to Soviet conventional strength. But with more than 4,000 U.S. tactical warheads remaining in Europe, together with British and French nuclear forces, Western nuclear deterrence to a conventional attack will remain significant. And when the U.S. first had no medium-range missiles in Europe, from 1963 to 1983, deterrence nevertheless must have been adequate.
Besides, a Soviet 'conventional' assault on Western Europe makes no more sense now than it ever did, and still - as both sides know - is as likely as it ever was to set off, one way or another, the nuclear holocaust.
IN THE NATION",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Quality Time With a Pope
Correction:  June 22, 1999, Tuesday  A picture caption on June 10 about Pope John Paul II and a Polish family misspelled the family's surname and the name of the town where the meeting occurred. The family is Milewski, not Milweska; the town is Leszczewo, not Lesczewo. The caption also misidentified the region where the Pope grew up. It was southern Poland, not northeast.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Remembering Those Who Labored for Peace
Correction:  August 25, 1995, Friday
A front-page picture caption yesterday about a service honoring United States diplomats killed in Bosnia misidentified the daughter of one of them in some editions. The young woman, who was being consoled by President Clinton, was Sarah Frasure, not Virginia Frasure.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Historic Tree Heads Home, Sort Of
LEAD: Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern, left, and Joana Battaglia, president of the Parks Council, with cuttings of a 141-year-old weeping beech tree, above, that they presented to Consul General Ferdinand De Wilde of Belgium.
Parks Commissioner Henry J. Stern, left, and Joana Battaglia, president of the Parks Council, with cuttings of a 141-year-old weeping beech tree, above, that they presented to Consul General Ferdinand De Wilde of Belgium.
The tree, which is said to be the ancestor of all weeping beeches in America, was brought to Queens as a cutting in 1847 and still adorns Weeping Beech Park. (NYT/Barton Silverman)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Stamps
Statehood and Stamps
Estonia and Armenia announced the issue of new stamps last month, the first since they declared their intent to leave the Soviet Union.
With the possibility that 15 nations may be carved out of what was once was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, stamp collectors can look forward to building new collections. But that might not be any time soon: the establishment of postal administrations is proving complex and disorderly.
The Baltic nations, especially Lithuania, have been the most aggressive in promoting what has always been one of the first signs of nationhood: the issuance of stamps. How many stamps have been issued, in what format, and with what international validity under the regulations of the Universal Postal Union are questions that have not been fully answered.
Until October, Lithuania and Latvia apparently were the only former Soviet republics to issue stamps. Some mint stamps have appeared on the United States market, far fewer on international mail, sometimes alone, sometimes with Soviet stamps.
Now the third Baltic nation, Estonia, has issued a series of nine definitive stamps, with two additional high values due this week, the president of the Estonian Philatelic Society, Rudolph Hamar, said in an interview.  The issues from the three Baltic nations are the first since they lost their sovereignty early in World War II.
Estonia's low values show the coat of arms of Estonia with three lions; two high values show the Estonian flag and a map of Estonia set into a map of Europe. The denominations show numerals only, without specifying a currency, and it is unclear whether Estonia intends to continue to use Soviet kopecks. For more information, contact the Estonian Philatelic Society, 243 East 34th Street, New York, N.Y. 10016.
Armenia has announced a 50-kopeck stamp to celebrate its first direct telecommunications links with the West, according to the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which opened the link on Oct. 24. A digital switching system in the capital, Yerevan, was built and installed by A.T.&T. The stamp is being printed in the Netherlands and should be released within a month, A.T.&T. said.
Armenia, like Azerbaijan, Georgia, the Russian Soviet Republic and the Ukraine, issued stamps during a brief period after World War I when several of the nations enjoyed a few years of independence before being subsumed into the Soviet Union. Another republic, Moldavia, issued stamps from 1858 until 1964, when it was formally divided beween the Soviet Union and Romania.
Scott's, the standard stamp catalogue in the United States, does not list any issues from the six other republics -- Byelorussia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizistan, Tadzhikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan -- but some are in European catalogues.
There are hobby groups specializing in the stamps of Eastern Europe. Names and addresses are available from the American Philatelic Society, P.O. Box 8000, State College, Pa. 16803; writers are asked to enclose a stamped, addressed business envelope.
New Postal Guide
The Postal Service has published the 1991 edition of what is certainly its best product: The Postal Guide to U.S. Stamps.
The catalogue, which can fit into a coat pocket, is handsomely illustrated in color and is printed on high-quality glossy paper. It lists all the postage stamps, with numbers and prices from the standard Scott catalogue, as well as selected types of revenue stamps and postal stationery. The price is $5.95, an excellent value for any collector whose focus is postal stamps.
Scott's Specialized Catalogue of United States Stamps, whose latest edition is due out this month, is of course vastly more detailed. But it costs (and weighs) three times more, and the black-and-white illustrations are sometimes so muddy that it is difficult to find even recent issues.
A third popular price list, also pocket size, is Brookman Stamp Prices (Brookman Stamp Company, Bedford, N.H., $7.95). It has more United States material than the Postal Service guide, plus stamps from the United Nations and Canada. Brookman is also a stamp retailer, and will supply stamps at the prices listed, which run a bit higher than Scott's.
Brookman's ring-bound format is easy to handle, but not all stamps are shown and, like Scott's, the illustrations are not always clear.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Serbs May Sever Some NATO Contacts
NATO officials said today that the Bosnian Serbs had indicated that they might sever some ties with the peacekeeping force after the indictment of one of their generals by the war crimes tribunal at The Hague.
A letter from Bosnian Serb military officials in northeastern Bosnia referred ""to the possibility that they may not attend military committees in future,"" said Brig. Gen. Andrew Cumming of the NATO force in Sarajevo.
A NATO spokesman, Capt. Mark van Dyke, said several Bosnian Serb military units in area, which is controlled by United States troops, had also said they would not attend the meetings.
Captain van Dyke said he ""could not rule out the possibility"" that the new Bosnian Serb intransigence was in response to the indictment on Friday by the tribunal at The Hague of a Bosnian Serb general, Djordje Djukic, for crimes against humanity in connection with the long Serbian bombardment of Sarajevo.
The Bosnian Serbs severed all contacts with the NATO force last month after the Muslim-led Bosnian Government extradited the general and another Bosnian Serb officer to The Hague.
Ties were restored after Balkan leaders were called to an emergency meeting in Rome.
The Serbs have appealed to the peacekeeping force in Sarajevo to increase their presence in the towns around the capital being handed over to the Muslim-led Government.
Only about 1,000 Serbs of a population of 37,000 have stayed in two suburbs,  Vogosca and Ilijas, that have been handed over to the police from the Muslim-Croat federation so far. Today in the Serb-held suburb of Ilidza, which is to be transferred to Government control on March 12, at least a dozen graves  were being dug up as more Serbs prepared to leave.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Bosnian War Survivors Seeking Their Dead
Two Bosnian Serb women surveyed the bodies of soldiers yesterday in search of loved ones after an exchange of the remains of war victims in Banja Luka. Nine of the 17 bodies of the Bosnian Serbs, who were killed during an offensive last  autumn in western Bosnia, were identified. (Reuters)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Soviet Fighter Grazes Norwegian Plane
LEAD: A Soviet Su-27 fighter in a photo taken yesterday from a Norwegian P-3B Orion patrol aircraft flying in international airspace over the Barents Sea. The fighter brushed the wing of the Norwegian plane and damaged one of its engines. No one was injured.
A Soviet Su-27 fighter in a photo taken yesterday from a Norwegian P-3B Orion patrol aircraft flying in international airspace over the Barents Sea. The fighter brushed the wing of the Norwegian plane and damaged one of its engines. No one was injured.
Norway announced it had protested the incident. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Victim of Irish Mob Buried in Britain
LEAD: Family and friends of Cpl. Derek Wood mourning as he was buried in Carshalton, near London. Corporal Wood and Cpl. David Howes were dragged from their car, stripped, beaten and shot by members of a Roman Catholic funeral procession Saturday in Belfast, Northern Ireland. (Reuters)
Family and friends of Cpl. Derek Wood mourning as he was buried in Carshalton, near London. Corporal Wood and Cpl. David Howes were dragged from their car, stripped, beaten and shot by members of a Roman Catholic funeral procession Saturday in Belfast, Northern Ireland. (Reuters)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"East German Leader Begins Historic Visit to Bonn
LEAD: Erich Honecker, the East German leader, saluting as he and Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany reviewed an honor guard in Bonn on the first visit by an East German leader to West Germany. Page A8. (AP)
Erich Honecker, the East German leader, saluting as he and Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany reviewed an honor guard in Bonn on the first visit by an East German leader to West Germany. Page A8. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Europe to Give Further Aid To Five Yugoslav Republics
The 12 foreign ministers of the European Community, ending a two-day meeting here, said today that they would offer further economic help to five of the six Yugoslav republics, excluding only Serbia. The community regards Serbia as the aggressor in the civil war.
The ministers postponed consideration of recognition for Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia.
Lord Carrington, chairman of the community's Yugoslav peace conference, will visit Yugoslavia next week.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"A COMMISSION FROM THE NEW WORLD RETURNS TO THE OLD
LEAD: Matilda Cuomo, wife of the Governor, shaking hands with President Francesco Cossigna of Italy yesterday in Rome. At left was John Guode, president of the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission. Theyt were attending a reception for members of the commission, which is in Rome to plan for the celebrations marking the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the New World.
Matilda Cuomo, wife of the Governor, shaking hands with President Francesco Cossigna of Italy yesterday in Rome. At left was John Guode, president of the Christopher Columbus Quincentenary Jubilee Commission. Theyt were attending a reception for members of the commission, which is in Rome to plan for the celebrations marking the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the New World.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Norway Lays King Olav to Rest
Photo: The coffin of King Olav V of Norway being carried by military officers during the King's funeral procession yesterday in Oslo. Olav died on Jan. 17 and was succeeded by King Harald V. (Reuters)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Polish Leaders, Facing Domestic Challenges, Unite to Honor War Dead
LEAD: Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, left, joined President Wojciech Jaruzelski, center, and Lech Walesa of Solidarity to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of World War II. The occasion, overshadowed by domestic conflicts, fell short of the celebration of unity that some had hoped for. Page 5. (Associated
Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, left, joined President Wojciech Jaruzelski, center, and Lech Walesa of Solidarity to mark the 50th anniversary of the start of World War II. The occasion, overshadowed by domestic conflicts, fell short of the celebration of unity that some had hoped for. Page 5. (Associated Press)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"In Swiss Court, Russian Avoids Extradition to the U.S.
Russia's former nuclear energy minister, accused of stealing millions of dollars from American programs intended to improve Russia's nuclear security, has won a legal victory in Switzerland and will not be extradited to the United States, lawyers in the case said Thursday.
Instead, the former minister, Yevgeny O. Adamov, 66, will be sent home to Russia, where he is also under investigation.
The Swiss supreme court decision, made public Thursday, ended for the moment an intense legal and diplomatic battle.
Mr. Adamov was the minister in charge of nuclear power from 1998 to 2001, when President Vladimir V. Putin dismissed him amid allegations of corruption.
Prosecutors in the United States claim that from 1993 to 2003, he diverted more than $9 million in American aid to other uses, in part through fraudulent corporations and money laundering with an associate in Pennsylvania. He was indicted earlier this year in Pittsburgh on federal charges including fraud, money laundering and tax evasion.
Although Russia had previously made similar, less detailed allegations, it reacted to the indictment viscerally, insisting that Mr. Adamov was chosen for prosecution by the United States in hopes of prying nuclear secrets from him.
The two countries have been presenting legal arguments in Switzerland, where he was detained in May at the United States' request.
Russia had argued that it was investigating the American allegations against Mr. Adamov as well. And it said its case took priority because Mr. Adamov is a Russian citizen, it was in his capacity as a Russian official that he is accused of committing many of the crimes, and Russia, for whom the aid was intended, was a victim.
The new decision overturned a Swiss ruling in October that he be sent to the United States for trial. It was a clear victory for Mr. Adamov and a political victory for Russia, which has been loudly complaining about the case.
The head of Mr. Adamov's American legal team, Lanny A. Breuer, said his client hoped to clear his name, not just in Russia but in the United States. 'We are determined to find a way, if it is at all possible, to refute these charges so they don't go unanswered,' he said by telephone.
He also noted that uncertainties remained. It was not immediately clear when Mr. Adamov would return to Russia. It was also unclear whether he would be free or in custody as the Russian investigation proceeded, or even whether the Russian investigation was genuine or merely a diplomatic tool to outmaneuver the United States in Swiss court.
NTV, the Russian television station, said on its nightly news broadcast that Mr. Adamov would be returning home in handcuffs. It did not cite its sources.
The status of his case in Pittsburgh is also unresolved. Mary Beth Buchanan, United States attorney in the Western District of Pennsylvania, said in a telephone interview that because Russia and the United States did not have an extradition treaty, 'it is unlikely we can have him extradited back to the United States.'
She added, 'We are certainly hopeful that the Russians will proceed with the charges.'",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Evolution in Europe;   Judge in Trial of Ceausescu Loyalists Is Replaced
LEAD: Photo: A lawyer for 24 former Romanian Communist leaders arguing yesterday that the judge in the case could not be objective because he had presided at the trials of the ousted dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. The trial adjourned after the military court agreed to replace the judge. (Agence France-Presse)
Photo: A lawyer for 24 former Romanian Communist leaders arguing yesterday that the judge in the case could not be objective because he had presided at the trials of the ousted dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. The trial adjourned after the military court agreed to replace the judge. (Agence France-Presse)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"East German Leader Visits France
LEAD: Erich Honecker, left, with President Francois Mitterrand yesterday after arriving at Orly Airport. Mr. Honecker is the first East German leader to visit any of the three Western powers that have occupied West Berlin since World War II. French officials say there are no plans for signing agreements, but the talks are seen as a step toward overcoming what Mr.
Erich Honecker, left, with President Francois Mitterrand yesterday after arriving at Orly Airport. Mr. Honecker is the first East German leader to visit any of the three Western powers that have occupied West Berlin since World War II. French officials say there are no plans for signing agreements, but the talks are seen as a step toward overcoming what Mr. Mitterrand has called a 'fundamentally artificial' split between East and West. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Feb. 25-March 2;Irish Peace Talks On Again
More than two weeks after the I.R.A. ended its 17-month cease-fire with a scattering of bombs in London, the leaders of Britain and Ireland last week tried to put the battered Northern Ireland peace process back on track. On Wednesday, Prime Ministers John Major of Britain and John Bruton of Ireland said talks between all the warring sides -- once an elusive prospect -- would take place without fail on June 10.
But before there is a solution to Northern Ireland's troubles, a number of hurdles must be cleared. The two Prime Ministers said that Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, would be welcome at the bargaining table only if I.R.A. first agreed to resume its cease-fire.
The I.R.A. made it clear it wasn't rushing in to anything. Irked by the Prime Ministers' having set out a schedule for quick elections in the North to decide who will speak for the parties there, the I.R.A. said it had no immediate plans to return to its 17-month cease-fire.
Mr. Major called the group's response ""a sick joke,"" adding a warning to the  I.R.A.: ""Either decide to behave properly and get into democracy, or democracy will go on without you.""
President Clinton's response was considerably gentler. On Friday he decided to renew a visa for Gerry Adams, the head of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political arm, as an early St. Patrick's Day present.
SARAH LYALL",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Budd Is Suspended
LEAD: Zola Budd was suspended from competition pending a review of charges that she competed in South Africa. Page B13. (AP)
Zola Budd was suspended from competition pending a review of charges that she competed in South Africa. Page B13. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Rights Lawyer Defends Both Croats and Serbs
In the turmoil that has engulfed much of the former Yugoslavia over the last two years, the practice of law has also become precarious, particularly for those engaged in civil rights cases.
Nikola J. Barovic, a Belgrade lawyer, says that in the course of defending clients accused of ""anti-state activities"" he has been threatened twice at gunpoint by militiamen, once in Croatia and once in Serbia.
""I was luckier than most,"" he said in an interview last week in Washington, where he briefed Administration and Congressional officials on his activities. ""Some of my colleagues have been tortured and their law offices blown up.""
For Mr. Barovic, 43, civil rights law is a family matter. His father, Jovan, who died in 1979, won international renown as the defender of political dissidents during the Communist regime of Marshal Tito. Took Over Father's Cases
The younger Mr. Barovic, a graduate of Belgrade University's law school, started work in the offices of Veljko Kovacevic, another civil rights lawyer and opposition politician, and took over some of his father's cases, including that of Mihajlo Mihajlov, a dissident writer persecuted by the Tito regime who now lives in Washington.
Among the others he has defended are Ivan Zvonimir Cicak, a Croatian dissident in the Tito era who is now an opponent of President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia; Vojislav Seselj, a nationalist who now heads an extremist party in Serbia and has been accused by the United States of war crimes, and Vuk Draskovic, another Serbian nationalist who heads an opposition party in Belgrade.
Mr. Barovic said his specialization in Yugoslav civil rights cases had prepared him for practicing law in today's war conditions. Not only did it sensitize him to the ways authoritarian states sometimes deal with citizens they deem hostile, he said; it also gave him a network of former clients who hold positions of power in the new republics. As a result, he said, he can practice in places denied to other Yugoslav lawyers.
There are only ""two of us who can go back and forth between Croatia and Serbia"" to practice law, Mr. Barovic said. He said that since the summer of 1991 he had devoted about two-thirds of his time to free legal work on behalf of some 100 clients detained by the authorities in Serbia and Croatia. 'Part of the Solution'
Before the ethnic conflicts, he said, his income ranged from $50,000 to $80,000 a year, but now he and his colleagues make about 15 percent of what they used to.
Mr. Barovic was brought to this country by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, which honored him last month in New York as ""part of the solution"" to Yugoslav human rights abuses.
His clients come from both sides of the battle lines. Among recent ones have been Serb prisoners in the Croatian city of Karlovac and Croatian soldiers who were caught trying to blow up a Serbian bridge.
Another is an 18-year-old Serbian, who was a war prisoner in Croatia. He was traded back to the Serbs, but they then accused him of being a deserter. ""He doesn't even know if his family is alive,"" Mr. Barovic said. ""What can I do but act toward him as an older brother?""
Mr. Barovic said he was often forced to use unorthodox methods and arguments because ordinary rules of law do not apply. ""I never saw a correct trial in Yugoslavia when the state interest was involved,"" he said, ""before the war, or now."" 'Guerrilla Without a Gun'
Once, when a couple in Croatia had been in jail for 12 months on charges of anti-state activities, Mr. Barovic told the prosecutor that he was prepared to take the case to the International Court of Justice at The Hague. A week later the prosecutor dropped the charges.
""You have to be a kind of guerrilla,"" Mr. Barovic said, ""but without a gun.""
He said he was glad that the United Nations Security Council had established an international tribunal to investigate war crimes committed in the Yugoslav conflict. The tribunal will find many cases, he told an audience at the Georgetown University Law Center, because ""this is a war that by definition must be conducted by war crimes and crimes against civilians.""
Would he consider defending people accused of such crimes? ""You always have to be prepared,"" he said. ""I am now defending victims of the war. If we want democracy in the future I will have to defend criminals who are now committing murders.""",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Stamps
The political centrifuge in which the Soviet Union is spinning has thrown off increasingly strident nationalist movements in many of the lands that make up the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
One republic that seems to have landed very far from the center is Lithuania, which has been the most active in proclaiming its freedom philatelically.
Since Lithuania declared its independence on March 11, 1990, it has issued a postal envelope with a printed 5-kopeck stamp and four stamps. It has also issued a label to raise funds to combat the effects of a Soviet blockade.
The Lithuanian post office has also dropped from its canceling machines the letters C.C.C.P., the Cyrillic equivalent of U.S.S.R.
The four stamps and the envelope, which has been printed with five different cachets, are for use only within Lithuania and the other Baltic republics, Latvia and Estonia. All three have agreed to recognize one another's stamps.
Latvia has also issued a stamped envelope. This news arrived this week from an unlikely source, the Embassy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in Washington. The design does not carry a denomination; there is only a banner in red and white, the Latvian colors, and the word Latvija.
These items are not recognized by the Universal Postal Union, and so for the moment may be considered locals; each is a kind of Cinderella collected for its historical interest rather than as a real stamp.
The design of the Lithuanian stamps and the printed envelope are identical: An angel holding a lamp is silhouetted against a map of Lithuania. The map seems to include parts of the country that have long been under Polish control, a sort of Greater Lithuania, but this seems to have been inadvertent and not a claim on that territory.
Stamps as a symbol of nationhood have a long and honorable history; there are active collectors of the stamps of Croatia, for example, a republic now within the federation of Yugoslavia whose backers have produced ""stamps in exile,"" if you will, for many years. (Information: The Croatian Philatelic Society, c/o James T. Lee, Box 770913, Cleveland, Ohio 44107.)
There is no question of the intent of the Lithuanian postal authorities in issuing stamps: The first cachet on the stamped envelope, which was issued May 17, 1990, shows an oak tree, the symbol of Lithuania, and the inscription ""Restoration of the Independent Republic of Lithuania,"" with the date given as 1990 III.11.
Rigastamps (Box 326, Eaton, Ohio 45320-0326) has a small supply of Lithuanian material and the Herrick Stamp Company (Box 219, Lawrence, N.Y. 11559) is offering new Baltic issues on a subscription basis.
Lithuania, like Latvia and Estonia, issued hundreds of universally recognized stamps from the end of World War I until the Baltics became an arena of war between Germany and the Soviet Union in 1940. If Lithuania's political distance from Moscow gains wider recognition, especially by the Universal Postal Union, today's Cinderellas could become philatelic princesses. Black Heritage Month
February is Black Heritage Month, and the United States Postal Service usually issues a stamp to commemorate achievements by black inventors, artists, labor leaders and others. This year's stamp, featuring Jan Matzeliger, the inventor, is to be issued in Lynn, Mass., but the date was made uncertain by the change in postal rates on Feb. 3.
For collectors interested in this topic, Brookman, Barrett & Worthen offers a album of 40 pages, each with space for a stamp, a plate-number block and a first-day cover. There is also a short biography.
The album, available for $22.95 from Brookman (10 Chestnut Drive, Bedford, N.H. 03102), is similar to an earlier work by Ernest A. Austin, ""Black American Stamp Album."" Mr. Austin's album incudes spaces for some foreign stamps that honor American blacks and is published by Austin Enterprises, Box 3717, Cherry Hill, N.J. 08034-0571, for $29.95, plus $6.50 for a 1990 supplement.
For collectors wishing to specialize, last summer's issue of Biblical Philately includes a list of 42 countries that have issued stamps honoring the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Such a collection could be put together at relatively low cost and lead young collectors, especially, to learn more about the civil rights leader.
Biblical Philately is published by the Biblical topic study unit of the American Topical Association. Information: Bob Leeka, 5337 Buena Vista, Roeland Park, Kan. 66205.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Reagan Calls on Gorbachev to Tear Down the Berlin Wall
LEAD: President Reagan gesturing after his speech yesterday in West Berlin. With him were Chancellor Helmut Kohl, right, and Philip Jenninger, buttoning his jacket, president of the West German Parliament. Page 3. (NYT/Paul Hosefros)
President Reagan gesturing after his speech yesterday in West Berlin. With him were Chancellor Helmut Kohl, right, and Philip Jenninger, buttoning his jacket, president of the West German Parliament. Page 3. (NYT/Paul Hosefros)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"At the Bar; A top Russian judge, in limbo, testifies to the perils and promise of law back home.
Sitting in a New York hotel room recently, Judge Ernest Ametistov of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation took a break from what he called ""an absolutely crazy day,"" filled with speeches, reunions and conversations with the curious.
But the craziness Judge Ametistov found in Manhattan hardly compares to what he has seen in Moscow over the last two years. Russia, he said, finds itself in a ""battle between Communism and democracy, slavery and freedom, the past and the future,"" and his court, the nation's highest, has been caught in the crossfire. After the jurisprudential Chernobyl that was the Soviet Union, the first buds of law sprouted through the ashes, only to wither as Russia's President, Boris N. Yeltsin, wrestled with its Parliament.
Whenever the battle between Mr. Yeltsin and his enemies -- notably Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi and Ruslan Khasbulatov, the chairman of the Congress of People's Deputies -- reached his court, Judge Ametistov invariably voted with Mr. Yeltsin. That made him a dissenter, one of four on the 13-member panel.
Ultimately, Mr. Yeltsin became fed up with the majority, headed by the court's chairman, Valery Zorkin. Proclaiming that the court had degenerated into a ""tool of political struggle of great danger for the state,"" he suspended it on Oct. 7 until the adoption of a new constitution, to be voted on in a referendum next week. Judge Ametistov (pronounced ah-met-TEE-stov) thus sits on a court in limbo. That left him with enough time on his hands to visit New York, New Haven, Detroit and Chicago in mid-November.
In speeches to the New York City bar association and to the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, in visits to the law schools of Columbia and Yale, and in a conversation with a reporter, the 59-year-old judge offered a mixed verdict on Russian-style justice.
On the one hand, he described a nation that has yet to learn even the rudiments of law -- where, he conceded, the creation of a court like his was ""probably premature."" Amazingly enough, he and his brethren were selected (by the Russian Parliament) after five-minute interviews.
Traveling in Austria at the time, Judge Ametistov missed the perfunctory process altogether; he learned of his appointment only when his mother congratulated him upon his return. ""It was a kind of parody,"" he said, puffing on a Marlboro Light and speaking in English, having learned it in the Soviet era by reading novels like ""Goodbye, Columbus"" and ""The Godfather"" as well as bootlegged translations of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Joseph Brodsky and Andrei Sakharov.
Once in place, the new court had to parse a dated and internally contradictory Brezhnev-era ""constitution of developed socialism."" Judge Ametistov maintained that his colleagues, far from mediating disputes between the executive and legislature, used that constitution to thwart Mr. Yeltsin, often without holding a hearing. By creating a purportedly legal basis for the occupation of the Russian Parliament, he said, they bear responsibility for the bloodshed that followed.
At the same time, he noted, the very existence of the court, along with its work in nonpolitical cases, represents a giant leap forward in a nation where constitutional rule, judicial review and individuals' rights are largely alien.
""The court and law in Russia were not tools for protecting people but for suppressing them,"" Judge Ametistov said. ""But in the last years, the situation has changed. More and more people now come to the court to protect themselves.""
Even as the tanks rolled in Moscow last October, he noted, both sides claimed constitutional support for their positions. ""It's the first time in the history of my country when the sides in civil conflict referred to a legal document,"" he said.
Judge Ametistov, an authority on international law and human rights, first came to the United States in 1990; his mission was to study the American legal system and the lessons it offered Russian reformers. (His book on the subject was published recently in Moscow by the Lawyers Committee.) He subsequently helped draft the proposed new constitution of the Russian Federation.
He made many friends in American human rights organizations.  They praise him as a bona fide democrat, referring to him by the familiar ""Ernest Mikhailovich."" He in turn has kind words for America's beleaguered lawyers. He singled out the Lawyers Committee and the American Bar Association, whose role in screening candidates for the Federal judiciary, he said, is something the Russian bar groups should emulate.
In a move reminiscent of Franklin D. Roosevelt's star-crossed Court-packing plan, the reconstituted constitutional court will increase by six slots -- just enough, should his selections be ratified, for Mr. Yeltsin to fashion a bare majority. Judge Ametistov could well become the court's chairman, though he does not savor the prospect. ""My character is dissident,"" he said.
One way or another, Judge Ametistov will have to sit once more with Judge Zorkin and others whose hands, he believes, are stained with Russian blood. ""For me personally and my colleagues, it will be very difficult to work with them,"" he lamented.
But Judge Ametistov said he was convinced that more than a few incumbent judges, and a few years, stand between Russia and the rule of law. ""Unfortunately, everything depends not on the law or the legal system but on individuals,"" he said. ""It will be possible, but only after one or two generations of lawyers, when the Old Guard and their pupils leave.""",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Italy Gives $17.5 Million for Academy at Columbia
In a rare partnership between a university and a foreign government, Columbia University and the Government of Italy yesterday announced the creation of a $17.5 million Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America.
The academy, which will be financed entirely by the Italian Government, continues a trend in recent years in which more than 100 American universities have formed affiliations with foreign governments, companies or individuals, said several spokesmen for associations representing colleges and universities.
The announcement was made at Columbia's Low Memorial Library by Francesco Cossiga, the President of Italy; Giulio Andreotti, the Prime Minister; Michael I. Sovern, president of Columbia, and Jonathan D. Cole, the university's provost.
""What is unusual about the Italian arrangement is that it is an ongoing program on one campus,"" said Gilbert W. Merkx, who is the director of the Latin American Institute at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and who tracks foreign partnerships on American campuses. ""As far as I know, that is unique."" Plans for Spending
Such largesse is likely to be remain rare, said Mr. Merkx. Only countries with large trade surpluses, including Japan and Germany, are in a financial position to establish similar academies.
The academy would go far beyond the handful of existing partnerships, between foreign governments and American universities, in terms of both scope and intent. In addition to culture and history, scholars invited to study at the academy would delve into medicine, ecology, journalism and law.
Of the amount committed by the Italian Government, $10 million will be used to endow the academy's operations and create endowed chairs, including the first one announced yesterday: a chair in international journalism.
The $7.5 million balance will be used to refurbish the university's Casa Italiana, a 64-year-old seven-story Renaissance-style palazzo on Amsterdam Avenue near 118th Street.. Long Ties to Country
Columbia was the only university under consideration by the Italian Government, officials said yesterday, largely because of the institution's longstanding ties to Italy. It was the first American university to establish an Italian studies program a century ago. In 1927, when Casa Italiana was erected, it was the first Italian cultural center at an American university.
Maristella Lorch, an Italian-born professor who has taught Italian, Renaissance literature and other subjects at Columbia University and Barnard College for 40 years, was instrumental in persuading the Italian Government to establish the academy at Columbia, said Mr. Cole, the university's provost.
She was named the director of the new academy, which is already co-sponsoring its first function, the four-day Cicero Congress, held annually to study the great Roman orator and philosopher.
The Cicero Congress is sponsored by the Center for Ciceronian Studies in Rome, whose current president is Mr. Andreotti, the Italian Prime Minister. Both he and the Italian president are attending the congress, which has brought 450 scholars to New York. It continues through tomorrow at the Plaza Hotel.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Lithuanian President Speaks of a New Period in Baltic History
SOVIET TURMOIL  Correction:  September 4, 1991, Wednesday
Because of an editing error, an article on Monday about the history of the Baltic republics referred incorrectly to the Estonian who led his country intermittently from 1918 to 1940. He was Konstantin Pats.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Are Gene-Altered Plants an Ecological Threat? Test Is Devised
GENETICALLY engineered crops may eventually bring about an agricultural revolution, but they continue to provoke spirited argument about their potential effects on natural ecosystems.
Environmentalists fear the transgenic plants could run rampant, crowding out wild plant species at a time when many are already threatened with extinction. Some agricultural experts disagree, pointing out that crops have long been altered through classic breeding techniques with no such consequences. But proving either case has been difficult.
Now British ecologists have found that a genetically engineered crop called oilseed rape, whose potential to colonize natural habitats has caused particular concern, is no more invasive than the natural, unmodified version.
The scientists sowed both genetically altered and unaltered seeds of oilseed rape, from which canola oil is derived, in 12 natural habitats under a variety of ecological conditions in three widely separated areas of England and Scotland, then compared their behavior for three growing seasons.
The study, reported in the current issue of the British journal Nature, is said to be the first in which transgenic plants have been intentionally grown in natural habitats and the largest field study of a plant population ever reported.
Some biotechnology experts say the experiment could be the prototype of a general method for testing the ecological impact of transgenic plants, thereby transforming an argument that has often rested more on assertion than evidence. Test Seen as Milestone
By providing a rigorous way to assess the ecological risk posed by transgenic plants, the pioneering British study will bring the debate ""into the realm of rational discourse,"" Dr. Peter Kareiva, an ecologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, wrote in a commentary in Nature.
The experiment itself was reported by Dr. Michael J. Crawley, an ecologist at Imperial College on the outskirts of London, and four colleagues. Dr. Kareiva called the report a ""landmark paper.""
""You go to conferences and people just argue and argue"" about the impact of transgenic plants on natural ecosystems, Dr. Kareiva said in an interview. ""This shows you can answer the question with a good experiment.""
The report comes at a fortunate time for the United States, he said, since the Department of Agriculture recently published a new set of guidelines requiring that before a transgenic crop can be approved for the market, firm evidence must be produced that it poses no greater risk than the unmodified plant from which it is derived.
Although more than 370 permits for field trials of transgenic plants have been issued, no such crop is yet on the market. One, the ""Flavr Savr"" tomato created by Calgene Inc., a biotechnology company in California, has been approved for the market by the Agriculture Department. The tomato has been genetically altered to slow the ripening process and retard spoilage, Calgene hopes to market the tomato this year, but is waiting for the Food and Drug Administration to approve it as safe for consumers.
Dr. Crawley and his colleagues set out to test the invasive properties of transgenic plants directly. They sowed some 2,000 seeds each in the spring of 1990, 1991 and 1992. The sowings took place in Cornwall in southwest England, where winters are mild and the growing season starts early; in Berkshire in southeast England, where winters are cold and summers dry, and in Sutherland in northeast Scotland, where the growing season starts late and summer days are long.
In each locality, four habitats typical of the region were selected for the experiment -- Cornish heath, for instance, and Scottish moors and Berkshire grassland. The habitats were selected further to provide contrasts of sun and shade, wetness and dryness.
In each habitat the same procedures were followed. Both unmodified seeds and seeds that had been genetically modified to resist an antibiotic and a herbicide were sown. Neither antibiotics nor herbicides were actually applied to the plots, since the purpose of the experiment was simply to test whether the process of genetic modification itself would give the plant an unexpected advantage. As Dr. Crawley put it in an interview, the fear has been that genetic engineering might ""create monsters that would do wholly unexpected things.""
Each habitat was divided into plots in which different ecological conditions were manipulated. Some, for example, were fenced against plant-eaters like rabbits and deer while others were not. Some were plowed and cultivated, some not. Still others were treated against pests and fungi, and some were not. Sixteen different biological manipulations of this sort were carried out in each habitat. The object, said Dr. Crawley, was to create growing conditions ranging from ""extremely benign"" to ""extremely hostile"" for both transgenic and unmodified plants.
""It was an incredible setup,"" said Dr. Kareiva.
The hypothesis was that the modified and unmodified plants would behave the same. By measuring the germination rate of the seeds and the growth rate of the plants, the scientists found their hypothesis borne out: under no set of conditions did the transgenic plants exhibit different rates of population growth from the modified ones.
The bottom line, Dr. Crawley said, is that there are ""no convincing data at all that genetic engineering increased the invasive tendency of the oilseed rape in any of the ecological characteristics we measured."" Warning on Misinterpretation
But Dr. Crawley warned that it would be prudent to reserve judgment on the risks posed by other crop species or different genetic manipulations. For instance, plants modified to enhance their resistance to drought or insect pests might have a competitive advantage if they escaped from a farm field into a natural ecosystem.
Moreover, Dr. Kareiva said, risks other than invasiveness must be considered, including the possibility that genes could escape through pollen dispersal and enhance the vigor of existing, fast-spreading weeds. He wrote that ""by no means"" do the results of the Crawley experiment ""provide definitive answers for genetically engineered crops in general.""
But, he said, the experiment shows the way toward the development of testing procedures that for the first time can assess the ecological risks of any given transgenic plant. Much work nevertheless remains before operational testing protocols, as they are called, can be derived from the British work.
""The Crawley study is an excellent prototype, but further methods development is warranted,"" said Dr. Julie Lindemann, a plant pathologist for the Calgene company who specializes in regulatory matters. ""We don't think it means every company should have to go out and do a three-year study to duplicate Crawley,"" she went on, explaining that the testing procedure should be pared down to focus on critical elements. ""That doesn't mean the Crawley study wasn't good,"" she said. ""It was fabulous. But in terms of regulatory requirements we think there can be some streamlining.""
Dr. Val Giddings, a biotechnology expert at the Agriculture Department, called the Crawley paper ""significant"" but said that in his opinion it contained no major new breakthrough. He said it confirmed conclusions that departmental scientists had already reached based on other data, ""and does so in a way that I think is irrefutable.""
He said the canola crop had widely been expected ""to be the most problematic"" among major global crops with respect to its ability to colonize natural habitats. But the Crawley study, he said, showed that ""this is in fact unlikely, and indeed much less likely than many had supposed.""
Both Dr. Kareiva and Dr. Crawley believe the British experiment is indicative of the role population ecologists can play in addressing important environmental problems. It shows, Dr. Crawley said, that ""ecologists aren't people interested in recycling aluminum cans; that they're scientists with a body of theory that enables them to make predictions.""
Academic ecologists, Dr. Kareiva wrote, are renowned for arguing among themselves about all the things they do not know. ""But when it comes to designing an experiment to measure invasiveness or community impacts, or quantifying the likelihood of gene escape, population biologists and ecologists know what to do,"" he said.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Some East German Refugees, Told They Can Emigrate, Return Home    Later, between 50 and 60 East Germans boarded a bus that reportedly took them to a Prague railroad station for the trip back to East Germany. The others, however, remained at the embassy. (Agence France-Presse)
",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"4 Killed in London Crash Involving American Tourists
LEAD: Rescue workers pulling victims from a crumpled bus after accident on the outskirts of London. Four people were killed and 75 injured in the crash of two buses, a truck and three cars. One bus was carrying 47 tourists from the United States. It was not immediately known if any were injured. (Reuters)
Rescue workers pulling victims from a crumpled bus after accident on the outskirts of London. Four people were killed and 75 injured in the crash of two buses, a truck and three cars. One bus was carrying 47 tourists from the United States. It was not immediately known if any were injured. (Reuters)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Honoring America's Fighters in Britain
Correction:  June 10, 1994, Friday
A front-page caption on Sunday with a Reuters picture of President Clinton at the World War II memorial in the American Cemetery in Cambridge, England, misstated the first name of an Arkansas veteran at the scene. He was Woodrow Crockett, not Woodward.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Pope Draws Criticism on Tour of Austria
LEAD: President Kurt Waldheim of Austria receiving communion from Pope John Paul II yesterday in Eisenstadt. The Pope's visit to a death camp without mentioning Jewish victims brought Jewish criticism. Page 3. (AP)
President Kurt Waldheim of Austria receiving communion from Pope John Paul II yesterday in Eisenstadt. The Pope's visit to a death camp without mentioning Jewish victims brought Jewish criticism. Page 3. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Ulster Funeral: A Grim Sorrow, a Glint of Hope
Correction:  July 22, 1998, Wednesday  An article and a picture caption last Wednesday about the funeral of three Roman Catholic boys killed in a firebombing in Northern Ireland referred incorrectly to John Dillon, a pallbearer. He lived with the boys' mother, Chrissie Quinn, for five years and helped rear the children, but he was not the biological father of any of them, according to family members.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Turkish Prime Minister Attacked in Ankara
LEAD: Security agents, guns drawn, moving to protect Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, center, yesterday as an escaped convict fired two shots, hitting Mr. Ozal in the hand. The gunman was wounded and captured. Page 3. (AP)
Security agents, guns drawn, moving to protect Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, center, yesterday as an escaped convict fired two shots, hitting Mr. Ozal in the hand. The gunman was wounded and captured. Page 3. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Thatcher, on Moscow Trip, Links Arms Control to Human Rights
LEAD: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher flanked by Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, yesterday in Moscow. Mrs. Thatcher said progress on East-West arms control depended on Soviet observance of human rights, but praised the Soviet leader for releasing jailed dissidents. Page 14. (AP)
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher flanked by Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, yesterday in Moscow. Mrs. Thatcher said progress on East-West arms control depended on Soviet observance of human rights, but praised the Soviet leader for releasing jailed dissidents. Page 14. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Haughey Elected Irish Prime Minister
LEAD: Charles Haughey waving to supporters as he left Parliament yesterday in Dublin. Mr. Haughey, whose Fianna Fail party won 81 seats last month, won a third term as the Speaker of Parliament cast tie-breaking vote in an 82-82 deadlock when Mr. Haughey presented his Government for approval. (AP)
Charles Haughey waving to supporters as he left Parliament yesterday in Dublin. Mr. Haughey, whose Fianna Fail party won 81 seats last month, won a third term as the Speaker of Parliament cast tie-breaking vote in an 82-82 deadlock when Mr. Haughey presented his Government for approval. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Britain Reduces Ties to Iran to a Minimum
LEAD: British diplomats arriving at Heathrow Airport yesterday after being recalled from Teheran. From left are Patrick McRee, Malcolm Russel, Martin Roger and Len Broadhurst. Britain's interest section in Teheran has now been reduced to a single representative, but the Government stopped short of an outright break in diplomatic relations.
British diplomats arriving at Heathrow Airport yesterday after being recalled from Teheran. From left are Patrick McRee, Malcolm Russel, Martin Roger and Len Broadhurst. Britain's interest section in Teheran has now been reduced to a single representative, but the Government stopped short of an outright break in diplomatic relations. London also ordered the expulsion of 15 of the 16 Iranian diplomats in Britain. The actions came after a series of meetings failed to resolve a diplomatic feud that began when an Iranian diplomat was arrested for shoplifting. (Agence France-Presse)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Sunken Ferry Righted Off Belgium
LEAD: The Herald of Free Enterprise being rolled upright by cranes yesterday near Zeebrugge, a month after she capsized as she left on a run to Dover, England. The estimated death toll is 134, but police believe there may have been more passengers aboard than originally reported.
The Herald of Free Enterprise being rolled upright by cranes yesterday near Zeebrugge, a month after she capsized as she left on a run to Dover, England. The estimated death toll is 134, but police believe there may have been more passengers aboard than originally reported.
Divers renewed their search for trapped bodies yesterday. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Locations of Sites Named in Arms Agreement
LEAD: A memorandum of understanding to the Soviet-American agreement on medium- and shorter-range weapons pinpointing basing, production and support sites for the arms was released yesterday. Missile production installations in Magna, Utah, and Votkinsk, U.S.S.R., are open to 13-year inspections. All other sites listed here are open to one type of inspection or another, with the exception of all remaining missile production installations and all research and development launch sites.
A memorandum of understanding to the Soviet-American agreement on medium- and shorter-range weapons pinpointing basing, production and support sites for the arms was released yesterday. Missile production installations in Magna, Utah, and Votkinsk, U.S.S.R., are open to 13-year inspections. All other sites listed here are open to one type of inspection or another, with the exception of all remaining missile production installations and all research and development launch sites. According to reports before the memorandum was released, about 130 installations in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and about 30 in the United States and Western Europe were to be open to inspection. But the actual memorandum shows that some of these sites were listed several times and used for various purposes. For example, there are five missile operating bases at Novosibirsk as well as missile-launcher storage sites. Not shown on this map are the American research and development sites at Wake Island and Roi Namur, Kwajalein, in the Western Pacific.  UNITED STATES  Missile support and production installations.  1. Complex 16, Cape Canaveral, Fla., test range  2. Cape Cod, Massachusetts, research and development launch site  3. Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah, test range  4. Eastern Test Range, Florida, research and development launch site  5. Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, research and development launch site  6. Fort Huachuca, Ariz., training installation  7. Fort Sill, Okla., launcher repair, training  8. Green River, Utah, research and development launch site  9. Redstone Arsenal, Huntsville, Ala., missile and launcher storage, launcher repair  10. Barking Sands, Kauai, Hawaii, research and development launch site  11. General Dynamics, Kearney Mesa, Calif., missile production  12. Hercules Plant No. 1, Magna, Utah, missile production  13. Longhorn Army Ammunition Plant, Marshall, Texas, missile production  14. Martin Marietta, Middle River, Md., launcher production  15. Poker Flats Research Range, Alaska, research and development launch site  16. Pueblo Depot Activity, Pueblo, Colo., missile storage and repair, launcher repair  17. Air Force Plant 19, San Diego, Calif., launcher production  18. McDonnell-Douglas, Titusville, Fla., missile production  19. Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson, Ariz, training installation  20. Wallops Island, Virginia, research and development launch site  21. Western Test Range, California, research and development launch site  22. White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, research and development launch site  SOVIET UNION  1. Akhtyrka, missile operating base (two)  2. Aluksne, missile operating base  3. Aralsk, elimination site  4. Balkhash, missile storage  5. Barnaul, missile operating base (four), missile-launcher storage  6. Bataysk, missile-launcher repair, missile repair  7. Bayram-Ali, missile operating base  8. Belokorovichi, missile operating base, missile-launcher storage  9. Berezovka, launcher storage  10. Brody, missile operating base  11. Bronnaya Gora, missile storage  12. Chervonograd, missile operating base  13. Chita, elimination site  14. Drovnyaya, missile operating base (five), missile-launcher storage  15. Gezgaly, missile operating base, missile-launcher storage  16. Glukhov, missile operating base (two)  17. Gorny, missile operating base  18. Gusev, missile operating base  19. Jelgava, missile-launcher storage and elimination site  20. Kamenka, training  21. Kansk, missile operating base (four), missile-launcher storage, elimination site  22. Kapustin Yar, test range and training center, research and development launch site  23. Karmelava, missile operating base  24. Kattakurgan, missile operating base  25. Kazan, training  26. Kolomyya, missile operating base  27. Kolosovo, missile-launcher storage, missile storage  28. Korosten, missile operating base  29. Krasnodar, training  30. Ladushkin, missile storage  31. Lapichi, missile operating base  32. Lebedin, missile operating base, missile-launcher storage  33. Lesnaya, elimination site  34. Lida, missile operating base  35. Lipniki, missile operating base  36. Lozovaya, missile storage  37. Lutsk, missile operating base (two), missile-launcher storage  38. Malorita, missile operating base  39. Mozyr, missile operating base, missile-launcher storage  40. Novosibirsk, missile operating base (five), missile-launcher storage  41. Novosysoyevka, missile operating base  42. Ostrov, missile operating base  43. Pashino, missile operating base  44. Petrikov, missile operating base  45. V. I. Lenin Petropavlovsk Heavy Machine Building Plant, Petropavlovsk, launcher production  46. Pinsk, missile operating base  47. Plesetskaya, research and development launch site  48. Polotsk, missile operating base  49. Postavy, missile operating base, missile-launcher storage  50. Rechitsa, missile operating base  51. Ruzhany, missile operating base  52. Saratov, training  53. Sarny, elimination site  54. Sary-Ozek, missile operating base and elimination site  55. Semipalatinsk, missile operating base  56. Serpukhov, training  57. Skala-Podolskaya, missile operating base  58. Slavuta, missile operating base  59. Slobudka, missile operating base  60. Slonim, missile operating base  61. Slutsk, missile operating base  62. Smorgon, missile operating base (two)  63. Sovetsk, missile operating base  64. Stankovo, missile operating base and elimination site  65. Stryi, missile operating base  66. M. I. Kalinin Machine Building Plant, Sverdlovsk, launcher production  67. Taurage, missile operating base  68. Tsel, missile operating base  69. Ukmerge, missile operating base  70. Vetrino, missile operating base  71. Barrikady Plant, Volgograd, launcher production  72. Votkinsk Machine Building Plant, Votkinsk, missile production  73. Vyru, missile operating base  74. Vysokaya Pech, missile operating base (two)  75. Zherebkovo, missile-launcher storage  76. Zhitkovichi, missile operating base  77. Zasimovichi, missile operating base  WESTERN EUROPE  1. Comiso, Italy, missile operating base  2. Florennes, Belgium, missile operating base  3. E.M.C. Hausen, Frankfurt, West Germany, launcher repair  4. SABCA, Gosselies, Belgium, missile repair  5. Greenham Common, England, missile operating base  6. Molesworth, England, missile operating base (in preparation for operational status)  7. Neu-Ulm, West Germany, missile operating base  8. Schwabisch Gmund, West Germany, missile operating base  9. Waldheide-Neckarsulm, West Germany, missile operating base  10. Weilerbach, West Germany, missile storage  11. Woensdrecht, the Netherlands, missile operating base  12. Wueschheim, West Germany, missile operating base  EASTERN EUROPE  1. Bischofswerda, East Germany, missile operating base  2. Hranice, Czechoslovakia, missile operating base  3. Jena-Forst, East Germany, missile operating base  4. Konigsbruck, East Germany, missile operating base  5. Waren, East Germany, missile operating base  6. Weissenfels, East Germany, missile operating base  7. Wokuhl, East Germany, missile operating base  THE SUMMIT",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Ethnic Unrest Continues in Romania The Government has retracted accusations that Hungary fueled tensions that led to the rioting. (Reuters)
UPHEAVAL IN THE EAST",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"A-Bomb Spy Dies at 76
LEAD: Klaus Fuchs was jailed in Britain in the 1950's after being convicted of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Page B5. (Agence France-Presse)
Klaus Fuchs was jailed in Britain in the 1950's after being convicted of passing nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. Page B5. (Agence France-Presse)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Reagan in Brussels for NATO Meeting
LEAD: President Reagan being escorted by Geoffrey Schwaebe, the American Ambassador to Belgium, after arriving in Brussels. Mr. Reagan declared that the United States would never sacrifice Allied interests to achieve an arms accord with the Soviet Union. Page A10. (Agence France-Presse)
President Reagan being escorted by Geoffrey Schwaebe, the American Ambassador to Belgium, after arriving in Brussels. Mr. Reagan declared that the United States would never sacrifice Allied interests to achieve an arms accord with the Soviet Union. Page A10. (Agence France-Presse)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Horseback Outing for a Prince
LEAD: Prince William, the 5-year-old son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, leading his pony during an outing yesterday on the Highgrove Estate in Gloucestershire, England. (AP)
Prince William, the 5-year-old son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, leading his pony during an outing yesterday on the Highgrove Estate in Gloucestershire, England. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"World War II Massacre of Polish Officers Is Remembered
Correction:  August 4, 2000, Friday  A picture caption on Saturday about the dedication of a cemetery by Russians and Poles in memory of Polish military officers massacred during World War II misidentified the country that controlled the site, Katyn, at the time of the killings. In 1940, the area was part of the Soviet republic of Ukraine, not in Poland.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Pope Expresses Wish to Visit Lithuania
LEAD: John Paul II anointing a woman in traditional costume during a beatification ceremony yesterday for a Lithuanian Archbishop, Jurgis Matulaitis, at the Vatican. The Pope said he hoped to visit the Soviet Baltic republic this year during the celebration of the 600th anniversary of Roman Catholicism there.
John Paul II anointing a woman in traditional costume during a beatification ceremony yesterday for a Lithuanian Archbishop, Jurgis Matulaitis, at the Vatican. The Pope said he hoped to visit the Soviet Baltic republic this year during the celebration of the 600th anniversary of Roman Catholicism there. Archbishop Matulaitis was bishop of Vilnius from 1918 to 1925. Beatification is the last step before sainthood. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Russia Reportedly Orders Expulsion of Honecker
Russia's Justice Ministry said yesterday that it had ordered the expulsion of the former East German leader, Erich Honecker, Russian press reports said. The ministry gave no date for Mr. Honecker's departure, however, and officials acknowledged that under international law they cannot force him to leave his refuge in the Chilean Embassy in Moscow. Mr. Honecker appeared yesterday at an embassy window. (Agence France-Presse)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Marking Another Death From Violence in Ulster
LEAD: Funeral procession for Robert McLean in Portrush, Northern Ireland. Mr. McLean and another reserve officer with the Royal Ulster Constabulary were slain Sunday while on patrol in Portrush, about 50 miles north of Belfast. The Irish Republican Army has claimed responsibility for the slayings. (Reuters)
Funeral procession for Robert McLean in Portrush, Northern Ireland. Mr. McLean and another reserve officer with the Royal Ulster Constabulary were slain Sunday while on patrol in Portrush, about 50 miles north of Belfast. The Irish Republican Army has claimed responsibility for the slayings. (Reuters)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Breezy Reception for the Pope
LEAD: Pope John Paul II as his skull cap was blown off by the wind as he spoke in Manfredonia on the second day of a three-day tour of Italy's southeastern Apulia region. Earlier, in nearby Monte Sant'Angelo, the Pope said that Satan still exists and is at the root of many of the world's problems. (AP)
Pope John Paul II as his skull cap was blown off by the wind as he spoke in Manfredonia on the second day of a three-day tour of Italy's southeastern Apulia region. Earlier, in nearby Monte Sant'Angelo, the Pope said that Satan still exists and is at the root of many of the world's problems. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Former French President Backs Chirac
LEAD: Valery Giscard d'Estaing announcing his support for Prime Minister Jacques Chirac's presidential bid yesterday in Paris. 'I support the man who is now the sole candidate of the majority, Jacques Chirac, and I ask you to vote for him,' Mr. Giscard d'Estaing said. (Agence France-Presse)
Valery Giscard d'Estaing announcing his support for Prime Minister Jacques Chirac's presidential bid yesterday in Paris. 'I support the man who is now the sole candidate of the majority, Jacques Chirac, and I ask you to vote for him,' Mr. Giscard d'Estaing said. (Agence France-Presse)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Coins
The Christmas season has a strange mishmash of customs. The fir tree can be traced to Gaulic oak dieties and the lights are a reminder of the Norse Festival of Fire and its pyramid of candles.
Santa Claus is a corruption of the Dutch Santa Klaus and Saint Nick was a child-loving bishop whose feast day should be celebrated Dec. 5.
In some parts of England, Christmas puddings are still baked with a silver coin inside, a treat for whomever is lucky enough to bite into that particular piece. The practice is thought to date from the Roman feast of Saturnalia when magic charms were hidden in foods served during the feast.
The pudding custom first started with the placing of silver amulets in a plum porridge as a protection from evil spirits. Each amulet had a special meaning. A silver thimble meant a woman could look forward to 12 months of spinsterhood, while a silver ring foretold wedding bells. A silver coin was a strong symbol of impending good fortune. Soon the barely edible porridge was replaced with a tastier pudding.
The silver English three-penny issued in 1551 was the standard coin to be cooked inside the pudding, but other coins were later used. These coins were often kept in a family from year to year and used just as pudding coins. Some families may still find their pudding coins are ones that date back many generations.
In Victorian times wealthy English parents might give their children a silver crown as a Christmas gift. The present was about two days wages for an average working man and was quite an extravagant gift.
By the beginning of the 20th century crowns were no longer being struck for general circulation. A group of British coin lovers lobbied for their renewal and in 1927, Britain again began producing the large silver coins with the royal crown on the reverse.
The mintage began in 1928 and ended in 1936. But after an initial flurry of interest, sales of the coins began declining. The 1934 issue sold only 932 coins and remains one of the rarest of British coins.
Perhaps the place where coins make their greatest Christmas impact is Scrooge's resentment for the holiday expressed by his ""humbug."" The word is thought to be an English corruption of the Irish phrase, Uim Bag, (pronounced OOM-bug).
The phrase means soft copper and refers to coins issued by the Catholic monarch James II from the Dublin mint during his unsuccessful attempt at regaining the English throne from his Protestant son-in-law, William III.
James II desperately minted coins with any metal at hand -- lead, brass or pewter. The coins were nearly worthless. So much so, that after the Battle of Boyne in July 1690, William III ordered a devaluation. James's crowns were suddenly only worth a penny. The Irish who were saddled with the coins called them ""Uim Bag,"" shiny but worthless. The phrase, later changed to a more English humbug, was still circulating in Dickens's time.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Ships Wait for Swollen Rhine River to Recede in West Germany
LEAD: About 250 ships remained anchored in Duisburg-Ruhr port yesterday as runoff continued to swell the Rhine River near Weisbaden. American servicemen joined local firefighters and volunteers in piling sandbags along the river to shore up dikes and prevent further flooding. Six people were reported to have died in accidents in what officials described as the worst flooding in 70 years.
About 250 ships remained anchored in Duisburg-Ruhr port yesterday as runoff continued to swell the Rhine River near Weisbaden. American servicemen joined local firefighters and volunteers in piling sandbags along the river to shore up dikes and prevent further flooding. Six people were reported to have died in accidents in what officials described as the worst flooding in 70 years. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Pieces of Berlin Wall Rise Anew, as Art, in Midtown Manhattan
Michael and Kim Pimley of Roosevelt Island viewing the five 12-foot-high, 5,000-pound sections of the Berlin Wall that have been installed in Paley Park on 53d Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues. (John Sotomayor/The New York Times)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"At Least 19 Killed in Alps Flood
LEAD: A woman being lifted to a helicopter from a campsite in Le Grand-Bornand, France. Officials said at least 19 people died and 28 were missing after a flash flood swept through the crowded campground. Page A3. (AP)
A woman being lifted to a helicopter from a campsite in Le Grand-Bornand, France. Officials said at least 19 people died and 28 were missing after a flash flood swept through the crowded campground. Page A3. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"The Pope Speaks About Unemployment in West Germany
LEAD: Pope John Paul II speaking yesterday in Bottrop, West Germany, as he addressed an audience of some 12,000, many of them coal miners and steel workers. The Pope called for 'the just distribution of jobs and wealth' and urged better treatment of foreign workers. He said, 'Unemployment that is not the fault of the unemployed becomes a social scandal when available work is not distributed fairly and the profit of the work is not used to create new work for as many possible.
Pope John Paul II speaking yesterday in Bottrop, West Germany, as he addressed an audience of some 12,000, many of them coal miners and steel workers. The Pope called for 'the just distribution of jobs and wealth' and urged better treatment of foreign workers. He said, 'Unemployment that is not the fault of the unemployed becomes a social scandal when available work is not distributed fairly and the profit of the work is not used to create new work for as many possible.' (Agence France-Presse)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Soviet Missiles Withdrawn From East Germany
LEAD: Soviet soldiers preparing an SS-12 nuclear missile for transport yesterday in Bischofswerda. Thirty-two canvas wrapped containers, said by Communist officials to hold parts of the dismantled missiles, were loaded aboard a train for shipment to the Soviet Union. In Czechoslovakia, the state-run press said 19 SS-12 missile launchers left Hranice for the Soviet Union.
Soviet soldiers preparing an SS-12 nuclear missile for transport yesterday in Bischofswerda. Thirty-two canvas wrapped containers, said by Communist officials to hold parts of the dismantled missiles, were loaded aboard a train for shipment to the Soviet Union. In Czechoslovakia, the state-run press said 19 SS-12 missile launchers left Hranice for the Soviet Union. The missiles, which have a range of 300-600 miles, would be the first nuclear weapons removed under the terms of the arms treaty signed in Washington in December. (AP)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"NATO Ships Make Port in London
LEAD: Five ships from NATO's multinational mine-hunting squadron passing under Tower Bridge on the Thames yesterday. The ships, from West Germany, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands and Britain, were scheduled to be berthed in London over the weekend. (Reuter)
Five ships from NATO's multinational mine-hunting squadron passing under Tower Bridge on the Thames yesterday. The ships, from West Germany, Belgium, Norway, the Netherlands and Britain, were scheduled to be berthed in London over the weekend. (Reuter)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"From the Bosnia Peace Plan, Handshakes, Anxiety and Leave-Taking
BALKAN ACCORD  Correction:  December 20, 1995, Wednesday
Because of a production error, two picture captions on Friday about scenes relating to Bosnia were reversed in some copies. A woman shown pouring coffee was in Ilidza, Bosnia and Herzegovina; two couples embracing were United States  Army soldiers saying goodbye to loved ones in Mannheim, Germany, before shipping out to Bosnia.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Bush Meets With Polish Leaders
LEAD: Vice President Bush and Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, second from right, in Warsaw. Mr. Bush said improved relations with the U.S. would depend on a reconciliation of the Government and its opponents. Page 3. (NYT/Witold Jaroslaw Szulecki)
Vice President Bush and Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, second from right, in Warsaw. Mr. Bush said improved relations with the U.S. would depend on a reconciliation of the Government and its opponents. Page 3. (NYT/Witold Jaroslaw Szulecki)",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Coins
Columbus Takes Chicago
The Spanish Mint has issued a commemorative coin celebrating Columbus's first voyage to the New World. The 5,000-peseta piece won an award for the best coin design for silver crowns at the American Numismatic Association's convention last month in Chicago.
The Spanish coat of arms is on the obverse with the words ""Juan Carlos I, Rey de Espana."" The design, flanked by two pillars, is highly reminiscent of the original Spanish real de ocho, or piece of eight. That was the pre-eminent coin in the New World in the 17th and 18th centuries, so ubiquitous that a trader could find it anywhere from Shanghai to Boston to Lima to Honolulu. The current 5,000-peseta piece uses a coat of arms that is different from the 17th-century one, but there are striking similarities.
The reverse shows one of Columbus's ships, the Santa Maria. The design is reportedly one used by Columbus in his first letter reporting his landing in the West Indies. Surrounding the ship are the words Quinto Centenario, or fifth centennial, and the denomination.
The United States distributors are Panda America, (800) 472-6327), and Lealco Enterprises, (800) 947-2727, extension 41). The coin costs $95 and is one of a set of 12 commemorating Spain's 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery. A Hobby, History and Hype
Coin collecting can provide hours of enjoyment, a lifetime hobby and a means of learning volumes about history. Sometimes it can even be very profitable. The hobbyist who carefully collects and constantly upgrades a collection can expect to sell the coins for a profit in time. In theory, the larger the investment, the larger will be the profit.
Stories of quick riches are sometimes true, but rare. Unfortunately, they prompt some people to take advantage of naive investors with tales of guaranteed returns. As the science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein used to caution, T.A.N.S.T.A.A.F.L. -- there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.
A recent letter prompts just such a warning. A reader wrote that he had invested $8,675 in four United States silver dollars purchased from R.C.V. Inc.. The company selling the coins assured him in writing that it would repurchase them within one year for the original price plus a 15-percent profit for the purchaser.
The letterhead is impressive; the address is a suite in the Empire State Building. But the telephone has been disconnected and the company's name is no longer listed with the telephone company.
The purchaser bought what the invoice vaguely describes as an 1881 silver dollar minted in New Orleans. It is listed as Gem Uncirculated, a condition that is not normally used in coin dealings, and no numerical grade was given by the seller to identify the coin's condition.
And the purchaser paid $3,500, but the best available 1881 New Orleans silver dollar could be puchased from any reputable dealer for less than half that. The other three were sold for $1,725 apiece, and their actual worth was about $1,500 for the three together. Any coin-guide book available at coin shops and most libraries could point out the same information.
Wise collectors would have checked the prices in a guide book and then checked with other coin dealers to compare prices. They would have called the local Better Business Bureau and the American Numismatic Association at (719) 632-2646. The numismatic association can tell if the dealer is a listed member, or has been suspended, or expelled from the group.
Over a period of years, any investment in coins may be expected to return a profit. At least, that has been true in the last 50 years. But the coin market, like any other, is volatile. There's no free lunch.",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Soviets Welcome Bush Arms Plan He called the proposal on conventional-arms reduction in Europe that Mr. Bush made on Monday at the NATO summit meeting 'a serious and important step in the right direction.' (Agence France-Presse)
",1
Top/Features/Travel/Guides/Destinations/Europe,"Opposes Arms Pact
LEAD: Gen. Bernard W. Rogers said NATO could resist a Soviet attack only for 'days, not weeks' without nuclear arms. Page A3.
Gen. Bernard W. Rogers said NATO could resist a Soviet attack only for 'days, not weeks' without nuclear arms. Page A3.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Tiki Gods Emerge And Join The Luau
IT rises like a giant war canoe, a pair of tiki gods flanking its front door, flames lapping the dusk from a red pot atop each stone head. Inside, a cloud of dry ice billows from the rum-and-fruit-juice drinks known as Smoking Eruptions. A gong sounds, a maiden appears, a macaw shifts on its perch, then lightning flashes. So much excitement, and the Samoan Flaming Chicken hasn't even been served yet.
Welcome to the Kahiki. Port of call: Columbus, Ohio.
The grandest and best preserved of a nearly extinct form of culinary recreation -- the Polynesian-style supper club of the 1950's and 60's -- this tropical restaurant is a vintage postcard from the South Seas, across from a Kmart. It is a painstaking hybrid of Disneyland's 'Enchanted Tiki Room,' 'Gilligan's Island' and the Chinese restaurants that thrived when 'exotic' meant water chestnuts and sweet-and-sour sauce.
Opened in 1962 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997, Kahiki has been a real survivor -- until now. Occupying a choice retail site, it will close on Aug. 26, to make way for a Walgreens.
While preservationists labor to save Kahiki, the luau goes on elsewhere. After a decade of bubbling under pop culture's crust like a subterranean lava pool, tiki is back. It's all happening now: surfing, the revival of Hawaiian shirts, lounge music and tropical merchandise that Trader Vic's would have adored.
There are tiki coasters, tiki-patterned boxer shorts, a magazine called Tiki News, even a 'Tiki Type' font kit from House Industries that allows 21st century party-givers to print 50's-style luau invitations on their iMacs. Several new books include the most comprehensive look at the trend, 'In Search of Tiki: A Guide for the Urban Archeologist,' by Sven A. Kirsten (Taschen).
In the 1980's, when he began collecting mugs shaped like primitive gods, 'tiki was considered ugly,' Mr. Kirsten said. 'You could get a tiki mug for a buck, not like now on eBay,' he said. (One from a 1961 screening of Elvis Presley's 'Blue Hawaii' sold for nearly $1,000 on the Internet late last year.)
Josh Agle, an artist who paints tiki style, began collecting tikis about 12 years ago when he first began frequenting tiki bars. 'It started with taking home souvenir mugs,' he said. 'It was so cool, because it was like stepping back in time when you went to these bars.'
He has recreated the ambience of those bars at home in Orange, Calif. 'It's kind of high maintenance, because tikis are dust collectors,' he said. 'But people like the U.P.S. guy are pretty impressed, even though he doesn't know what it is.'
Anticipating a spate of Polynesian-style parties among 30- to 40-year-olds this spring, Macy's East division opened a 'Patio Luau' department with plastic plates patterned with hibiscus flowers. The shops themselves were festooned with Easter Island tiki heads and palm trees.
'This year, we really felt that everything in the fashion market was gearing toward the return of pattern,' said Joe Denofrio, a senior vice president for fashion at Macy's East. 'We felt that if people are interested in florals for apparel, they'd be feeling the same about their summer entertaining. You can picture yourself out on your patio in floral board shorts, with a lantern and some great floral serving trays. A tiki is really a natural component there.'
Sur La Table, the Seattle-based kitchenware retailer better known for Moroccan tea glasses than mai tai mugs, put ceramic tiki tumblers on the cover of its summer catalog. Likewise, at the trend-savvy Old Navy, tiki masks are embroidered on camp shirts.
'For us, it's part of that whole vintage fun retro feel,' said Joe Enos, a spokesman for Old Navy. 'Everything has a wink to it.' Mr. Enos got his first taste of tiki in the 60's at a restaurant called the Coral Reef in Sacramento, Calif.
Although Quiksilver, Tommy Bahama and other surf-inspired fashion lines have long mined tiki iconography, many mainstream designers have caught the wave this season, from Bloomingdale's and J. Crew to Ralph Lauren, who is serving up T-shirts printed with the image of a wooden tiki idol on whose base had been carved the word 'Polo.'
Stranger still is the cross-pollination of hip-hop and tiki from a line called Mecca. The company's hot-colored T-shirts are silk-screened with Easter Island tiki heads.
Partygoers, Mr. Denofrio said of Macy's, are doing it their own way. 'It's multicultural, and it goes every way from the South Seas to Southeast Asia,' he said. 'It's all things exotic.'
The glut of new tiki merchandise, said Otto von Stroheim, the founder of Tiki News, 'has created the ability for more people to have fun in the tiki scene.'
Tiki was not originally an underground movement, he pointed out. 'Before, it wasn't that hip anyway,' he said. 'It was always very mainstream.'
Michael Stern, whose numerous books on pop culture, written with his wife, Jane, include the seminal Encyclopedia of Bad Taste, is, of course, a fan of tiki. 'What's so wonderful about tiki is that it allows us to wallow in a vernacular that's so ersatz,' he said. 'It's sort of a twice-removed fascination. There was a time when Trader Vic's was considered by sophisticated people to be true exotica. The fascination is that it still exists in that totally bogus form.' His own favorite Polynesian restaurant was the Hukilau, near Hartford, which is now defunct.
'We Americans crave play, but there's so much seriousness in food and entertainment. But you can't do that with Polynesian stuff.'
Mr. Kirsten understands completely. The German-born, Los Angeles-based cinematographer is an authority on the 'Polynesian Pop' movement in art and design. His lavishly illustrated book, the fruit of two decades of collecting, is due from Taschen later this year. It celebrates tiki's golden years.
Polynesia's moment in mainland America spanned from just after World War II, when soldiers first brought home aloha shirts and Hawaiian tourism took off, through the early 60's era of Annette Funicello's 'Pineapple Princess' and the series 'Hawaiian Eye.' By the time 'Hawaii Five-O' rounded up the last villain in 1980, tiki was dead, a trend that had become stiffer than Jack Lord's hair.
Although Mr. Kirsten concedes that tiki aficionados are rare compared with, say, Fiestaware collectors, he says restaurants like Kahiki need to take their place in pop culture history. 'The typical thing at such restaurants was to invite people from the audience to go onstage and dance the hula and make fools of themselves. There's always a need for that.'
Unfortunately only a handful of tiki-toriums remain: the Mai-Kai, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., luau restaurant where hula shows are still performed; the Tonga Room, a watering hole with indoor thunderstorms in San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel, and the Hala Kahiki bar in River Grove, Ill., where everything that isn't tiki is leopard print.
At Lee's Hawaiian Islander in Lyndhurst, N.J., on a recent Saturday night, not much had changed from the nostalgic scene Mr. Kirsten describes. At the restaurant, Michael Doneff, the owner of Nice House, a Greenwich Village design store, was the host of a friend's 40th birthday party.
'They have booths that look like thatched-roof huts,' he said. 'They have a whole wall of fake lava rock with plastic bouquets stuck in it. We had pu pu platters and flaming drinks. It was just kind of goofy.'
While bamboo is considered chic among the tastemakers who frequent his shop, Mr. Doneff says, its tiki-tacky counterparts are hip again, too.
'Younger kids are finding it cool,' he said. 'You see things like paper lanterns at Urban Outfitters and Restoration Hardware and you just get in the mood to hang lights and sip something out of a plastic pineapple.'
But it is the places that celebrated tiki on a grand scale that tiki lovers most revere. 'There's no place like the Kahiki,' Mr. Kirsten said. 'It has a certain irreverence that still applies today. It's so unconcerned with political correctness and the fact that it's stepping on toes in terms of taste and ancestral customs.'
Janu Cassidy, co-founder of the New York-based Hawaii Cultural Foundation and owner of Radio Hula, a Hawaiian shop in SoHo, said: 'Being from Hawaii, I should probably be offended, but I have an appreciation for it. What I really appreciate is the nostalgic feeling and the romance behind it all.'
It's even having an effect in her home state. 'For the first time in a long time, I'm seeing locals not feeling shy about wearing Hawaiian prints,' she said, speaking from Honolulu. The trend is expected only to get bigger when the big budget romantic epic 'Pearl Harbor,' starring Ben Affleck, opens next year.
Now, though, Mr. Kirsten predicts that tiki 'will have a glorious comeback and then fade away again.' He says he hopes the remaining Polynesian restaurants don't go the way of Trader Vic's and Hawaii Kai, both late of Manhattan. 'I'm not a revivalist,' he said. 'I don't think tiki should be resurrected the way it was. It can't, because there's not the same sense of naivete that there was in the 50's about Polynesian culture. But what's here should be preserved and enjoyed for what it was.'
When Kahiki closes its doors in August, it is expected that its contents will be saved and the building razed. Where an aloha-shirted bartender is dispensing Pina Passion potions today, a white-coated Walgreens pharmacist may be filling Viagra prescriptions next year. Tiki News is planning a farewell party to bid Kahiki aloha. 'It's going to be a historic tiki event,' Mr. von Stroheim said. 'Unfortunately, closing restaurants are the only historic tiki events I've been to in my lifetime.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Instant Aeries For TV's Eyes
Phil Alongi was eager to share a view of the Democratic convention from his favorite perspective. 'Over here,' he said excitedly, motioning to a temporarily uncrowded corner on the convention floor near the Tennessee delegation. 'I want you to get the whole effect.'
Mr. Alongi, senior producer of special events for NBC News, directed his gaze out across the floor and up at the object of his aesthetic affection: the NBC sky booth. Indeed, the two-tiered structure, painted 'NBC red' -- a custom blend of 87 percent red, 12 percent yellow and 1 percent blue -- and outfitted with decorative flaps and balcony, was a thing of grand theatrical charms. The Graceland, if you will, of convention anchor booths.
'It's supposed to make you feel: 'Here we are, America. We're bringing this into your homes. We've swung open and we're here,' ' Mr. Alongi said. 'The flaps, they're to create a feeling of openness, so that the front of the booth flares out.'
And what of that attached balcony, with the railing that could have been pried off a beach house in Malibu? 'Remember,' Mr. Alongi advised. 'It's L.A.'
If the role of the contemporary political convention has undergone a radical transformation, from procedural forum to multimedia spectacle, so has the role of the modern network skybox. Once little more than a spartan cave from which the likes of Chet Huntley or Walter Cronkite could look out over the convention floor and point out the party chairmen from Cook County and Brooklyn, the booth has become a statement unto itself.
Even the most cursory look up from the floor of the Staples Center, where the Democrats conclude their proceedings tomorrow night, provides a sense of how many different statements a sky booth can make.
Clustered together at one end of the arena, the network booths make for an eclectic, disposable village, one that is built at great expense, inhabited for a week, and torn down.
'It's the only time I've designed and built something that nine days later is gone,' said David Rasche, the Chicago architect who designed the booth to house the arena studios for NBC and its sister operations, MSNBC and MSNBC.com. 'It's there and it's gone.'
The broadcast networks may be scaling back their coverage, conceding to cable the task of gavel-to-gavel attention, but the conventions remain such crucial showcases for exhibiting reportorial and technological know-how that the competition over booth design has actually grown more intense.
NBC, in fact, points out that it won an American Institute of Architects award for its booth at the 1996 Democratic convention in Chicago, designed by Mr. Rasche's firm, Valerio Dewalt Train Associates.
The $500,000 booth apparently caused a stir; The Chicago Tribune's architecture critic observed at the time that 'the booth's size, color and sculptural form make it look as if it's about to take off from its lower-skybox-level mooring' and added that it 'set off a serious case of booth envy among the other networks.'
The networks declined to say how much they spent on the booths this year, but one news executive said the overall cost to a network of covering a convention runs as high as $5 million.
'I think our anchor booth is very futuristic, and I guarantee you when you look up there, the brightest sign is 'ABC News,' ' said Roger Goodman, vice president of special projects for, yes, ABC News. The ABC sign is, in fact, a departure from convention wisdom: unlike the 'light boxes' that other networks use to flash their logos, ABC has affixed an electronic 'video wall' to the booth and installed behind it a smaller one beaming the company's signature revolving globe.
The ABC design is a concession to fiscal reality. (Unlike other networks, ABC's control room is not on-site but remains in New York City.) And just as unusual, ABC uses the booth more as window dressing than as the centerpiece of its programming. Peter Jennings is doing the news from the convention floor and from a suite just off the floor, and the convention background is added by computer.
'We wanted Peter to have access to the floor for more accurate and better-quality reporting,' said Marc Burstein, executive producer of special events for ABC News.
The network booths do indeed seem to shout 'Look at me!' whether the sentiment is reflected in the neutral-toned, scallop-windowed sleekness of the CNN sky booth, or the modular spareness of the double-decker CBS shelter, painted a traditional CBS lapis blue. (Only the PBS skybox has more modest ambitions, advertising itself with a simple sign that seems to whisper, 'NewsHour With Jim Lehrer.')
'We wanted a clean, high-tech contemporary look,' said Gary L. Bastien, the Irvine, Calif., architect who designed the CBS booth. 'The approach was that CBS is such a cutting-edge media-type company, and that's what we wanted to symbolize.' (If you call 'Survivor' cutting edge, and they probably do.) To make the facade as dynamic as possible, Mr. Bastien said, 'we used angular forms and up-lighting.'
What the scenic and production designers have to do is rapidly turn basic sports-arena skyboxes into customized television studios.
NBC, for instance, will convert the booths back into skyboxes in nine days. Some networks combine two and even three adjacent boxes to accommodate their sets and anchor desks; others make use of skyboxes on top of each other for a vertical effect.
The quarters are tight: from floor to ceiling measures only seven and a half feet, and the network specifications for camera-readiness are precise down to the glare-free angle of the booth windows overlooking the convention floor.
'We had to be concerned with how you put in a piece of glass without a seam in it that is 24 feet long and 7 feet high and is angled precisely at 14 degrees, so you don't have a reflection,' Mr. Bastien said. 'It can't be 13 degrees and it can't be 15. It's something over the years that they know that works.'
The designs so mimic the demands and constraints of outdoor architecture that the networks even seek variances from the convention planners to add to the dimensions of the boxes, as if they were summer bungalows getting new decks. Both NBC and CNN, for instance, extended the booths three feet into the hall to give the anchors more elbow room.
'This is really a case of form following function,' said Craig McMahon, CNN's director of production design.
That does not mean, however, that there is no room for imagination. The bay windows in CNN's gleaming horizontal booth, designed by Rene Lagler, a veteran set designer for television who created the podium for the Democratic convention, are intended as a visual echo of the rounded style of the twin anchor desks occupied by Larry King, and Bernard Shaw and Judy Woodruff.
There is, of course, only so far a designer can really experiment at an event so richly evocative of all things traditionally American. Stars and stripes tend to get a heavy workout in the patterns chosen for the sets and backdrops in the booths.
Victor Paganuzzi, the production designer for CBS and a veteran of 13 conventions, said the color scheme is pretty much a foregone conclusion.
'I've always felt,' he said, 'that red, white and blue is perfect for the occasion.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"For Graphic Artists, Back to the Barricades
'MAKE nice,' urge the banners flying near Madison Square Garden, where some 5,000 Republican delegates will meet next week. But those who venture farther may encounter a different message, in the form of graphically brazen, un-nice-making posters protesting Republican administration policies.
Indeed, this is a big year for protest graphics, one of the oldest art forms in the United States and one that is booming thanks in part to the Internet, which makes distributing the images easy and cheap. Artists of many political hues are using the medium, drawing imagery from history and pop culture alike.
One poster shows President Bush with a Pinocchio nose, the work of Melina Rodrigo, a 25-year-old freelance graphic artist. Another shows an elephant taking cash in through one end and emitting bombs from the other. Some messages play off familiar images like Milton Glaser's 'I Love New York' design, the MetroCard and the 'Star Wars' logo (modified by one artist, Eric Brown, to read 'Stop Wars'). Then there is a poster with George Bush in the role of King Kong atop the Empire State Building.
When printed on newsprint and slapped on buildings with wheat paste in guerrilla postings on city streets, the posters evoke conventions past, notably the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968.
But there is a difference. 'Web distribution makes these images national and not just a New York thing,' Ms. Rodrigo said.
Carol Wells, the director of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles,with 50,000 images the country's largest political art collection, also credits the Internet for the spread of such art. 'You can move images around the globe without being able to draw,' she said. 'People can print them, and that cuts costs.'
Some 50,000 posters, in 19 designs, are distributed by a collective of young designers and students called the No RNC Poster Project (www.visualresistance.org). The images, also used on stickers, were chosen from submissions by 150 artists.
Among them are some by Ms. Rodrigo, who grew up near Woodstock, N.Y., and says her interest in protest art was awakened in high school when an English teacher encouraged her to compare social conditions in 'The Grapes of Wrath' with those in New York, using pictures instead of text.
Printed in tabloid newspaper format, the posters are handed out at two bookstores, MayDay (155 First Avenue, at Ninth Street) and Bluestockings (172 Allen Street, between Stanton and Rivington Streets).
The artists say they have no deep-pocket sponsors. Several donated their originals for an Aug. 14 fund-raiser in an office in Manhattan, where they were sold for $5 to $30. Many of the artists met for the first time at the event. Ms. Rodrigo sat on a sofa beside Noah Mayers, the creator of a poster called 'The Greatest Scam on Earth,' looking through a book of circus posters, an enthusiasm they share.
Ms. Rodrigo does all her work by hand, then scans it. 'People are bombarded with so many images,' she said. 'The handmade quality of the posters contrasts with slick corporate advertising. It's fresh.'
Opposition to the president (and before that to the Iraq war and globalism) have not only helped revive the traditions of political graphics but have also led to a new appreciation of past campaigns.
From Phaidon Press comes 'Graphic Agitation 2: Social and Political Graphics in the Digital Age' by Liz McQuiston. 'Peace Signs,' a book of antiwar graphics edited by James Mann, is published by Edition Olms in Zurich. The MIT Museum offers 'Telling It Like It Is: Student Activism at MIT During the Vietnam War: 16 Posters,' and at the Stay Gold Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is an exhibition of recent antiwar images, 'Yo! What Happened to Peace?' (through Sept. 5).
A Pittsburgh group, the Partisan Project (www.partisanproject.org), offers more polished examples of the art, with images by Michael Bierut of Pentagram, Art Chantry and others. 'The right's visual communication tends to be 'God bless America' or 'It's a child, not a choice,' ' Mr. Bierut said. 'Oddly, George W. seems to work much better as a punching bag than as a poster boy.'
For a nonpartisan message, the American Institute of Graphic Arts is offering its own get-out-the-vote posters (www.aiga.org/content.cfm/getoutthevote).
Whether protest art can persuade is another question.
'Political graphics have many audiences,' Ms. Wells said. 'One is the converted, to rally them to the cause. Another is the undecided. You may not convert, but you can make someone look at things differently.' She cites four street posters that mocked an Apple I-Pod ad to draw attention to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, by Forkscrew graphics (www.forkscrew.com).
Richard Grefé, the executive director of the American Institute of Graphic Arts, said: 'In the 60's, the opposition was willing to be outrageous to attract a constituency. Now, we have an electorate that is evenly split. So the question is: for whom are these posters? If they are to be anything but an expression of the group that creates them, they must influence the undecideds. And the question is whether you can do that effectively when you show this level of passion.'
Putting up posters without permission violates city ordinances. Posting them has long been a minor form of civil disobedience. The No RNC Poster Project issues ritual reminders that it does not support illegal posting, though artists have been known to slip posters into the frame reserved for advertising in subway stations and cars.
Scott Sala, a Republican with a blog called Slant Point, urges citizens to report illegally posted protest graphics to city officials and offers on his Web site a downloadable version of the official city complaint form (www.slantpoint.com/mt-arx/001589.html).
Not that other points of view are unrepresented. At the Republican convention, the Republican National Committee's Web page notes, will be some 35,000 signs celebrating the president, handpainted by volunteers at parties across the country (seen at www.gopconvention.com/contents/newsroom/events/signpainting/). A group of four friends came up with W ketchup, 'an alternative to Heinz,' said one, Bill Zachary, advertising their brand in the National Review and selling online (www.wketchup.com).
Which images will endure? At their best, the protest posters of the 1960's, notably those by the famous Atelier Populaire in Paris, possessed the paradoxical timelessness and immediacy of early Bob Dylan. In 1968, Mark Kurlansky writes in '1968: The Year That Rocked the World' (Ballantine 2004), collectors tore posters from the walls.
Two museums promptly mounted exhibitions of them -- as art.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"If These Walls Could Speak (and They Will)
FEW outsiders were ever allowed into the private world of Renzo Mongiardino. Friends and family perhaps, or an associate or two, would join the legendary interior designer quietly, for long evening talks or small dinners at his richly moody apartment in Milan. Otherwise, Mr. Mongiardino, who died last year at 81, lived a life of scholarly solitude, surrounded by books, busts and brocades, attended only by an elderly and singularly uncommunicative Sicilian housekeeper, who sat in the kitchen, a stern figure in penitential black, silently darning the maestro's socks.
The mystery ends tomorrow for admirers who have seen Mr. Mongiardino's work only in photographs in glossy shelter magazines or books like 'Roomscapes' (Rizzoli, 1993), the professional memoir he wrote in collaboration with an associate, Fiorenzo Cattaneo. The reason for all the excitement in Milan next week will be the annual furniture fair, but many of the visitors to that ground-zero event will be making a pilgrimage to the dour Palazzo Crivelli, 12 Via Pontaccio, in the center of the city, where Mr. Mongiardino's old-fashioned genius is being feted.
A Milanese auction house, Il Ponte Casa d'Aste, has transformed five rooms of the 18th-century palace
into an evocation of Mr. Mongiardino's apartment, from the gas-blue Genoese wallpaper in his bedroom to the massive bookcases in his study. The sixth room in the show is a re-creation of a neoclassical room he designed for an Italian client.
The exhibition opens to the public tomorrow and runs through Monday, and will be followed on Wednesday and next Thursday by an auction of Mr. Mongiardino's possessions on display. The 697 lots range from a half-dozen 19th-century earthenware busts (estimate: $445 to $665) to an Empire-style stool with crossed-sword legs ($4,450 to $5,540), designed by Mr. Mongiardino in the 1940's after one in the Louvre. Information about the sale and show can be had by calling (011) 39-02-72003749.
'This is a celebration,' said Roberto Peregalli, a former Mongiardino associate, who conceived the pre-sale show with his partner, Laura Rimini, a young architect, as a testament to their mentor's powers.
Even the more eyebrow-raising ones.
In an age when the high-octane decoration of the past seems to have taken a back seat to do-it-yourself home improvements, it is surprising to learn of a master decorator whose palatial romanticism was partly born out of felt-tip pens, burlap and cardboard. The art of magic, visual and material, was Mr. Mongiardino's forte, the foundation of his reputation as the world's greatest decorator.
Painted effects were especially associated with the designer, who had a fondness for the Mannerist movement of early Renaissance Italy, an era of exaggeration and artifice, when a monumental surreality reigned supreme. His artisans used paint to create rooms seemingly made entirely of ceramic tiles, of fragments of Turkish carpets, of terry-cloth draperies swagged a la ancient Rome.
For Peter Jay Sharp, a New York real estate mogul, Mr. Mongiardino, Mr. Cattaneo and an army of Milanese artisans reinterpreted a 15th-century room paved in the wood mosaic known as intarsia. But the thousands of pieces in Mr. Sharp's wall-to-wall panorama of Manhattan skyline are actually paint on cheap pine boards.
'Any story can be reality if you feel that it is,' Mr. Peregalli said. 'For Renzo, it was the same for a house.'
And that soulful sense of fantasy is the reason that design sophisticates flocked to his studio, a group of jet setters once described as 'a kidnapper's wish list': Baron Guy de Rothschild, the banker; Rudolf Nureyev, the ballet idol; Lee Radziwill, the American socialite; Gianni Versace, fashion's bad boy, and Randolph Hearst, the publisher.
Mr. Mongiardino's singular esthetic -- intensely romantic, vaguely exotic and as atmospheric as the rooms described by his favorite novelist, Honore de Balzac -- can also be seen in New York at the Carlyle Hotel, once owned by Mr. Sharp. In 1989, under Mr. Mongiardino's direction, the late Gaser Tabakoglu redecorated the lower and upper galleries with kilim-carpet banquettes and walls covered in hand-painted paper inspired by the decorations of the 17th-century seraglio at the Topkapi Palace.
Not every tycoon, however, fell under the spell of Mr. Mongiardino's spectacular tomfoolery. A decade or so ago, the new owner of an English country house that Mr. Mongiardino had decorated was appalled to discover that his study was not lined with dozens of panels of ancient flaking Cordova leather but with artfully painted, gilded and aged cardboard. Horrified by the subterfuge, the chatelain ordered his new decorator to remove it immediately.
'Mongiardino was a magician, a maitre de scene,' said Mr. Peregalli, who calls the designer 'my Socrates.' 'He didn't adhere to the alphabet of the past. Instead, he brought the past into the future. He thought it was possible to continue the artisanship of earlier centuries by using new techniques and materials to evoke a moment in time but without reproducing it exactly.'
Though he was able to recall the details of obscure ceilings in even more obscure Italian villas at a moment's notice, Mr. Mongiardino was neither an academic nor a curator. A designer of theater and movie sets by profession -- his work for the 1967 Franco Zeffirelli movie, 'The Taming of the Shrew,' which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, was nominated for an Academy Award -- Mr. Mongiardino was an intellectual trawling history for flotsam and jetsam that were the raw ingredients of his cocoonlike rooms.
Minimalism was not part of his vocabulary. 'It is easier to create the full room than the empty one,' he wrote. Like his friend and fellow esthete Mario Praz, Mr. Mongiardino had a weakness for the past, the dustier and more cluttered, the better.
' 'Make it more like Proust, more like Balzac, more like d'Annunzio,' ' Mr. Peregalli said, recalling his late boss's literary-minded directives to his staff. Mr. Mongiardino grew up in the splendor of a Genoese palace owned by his father, a theatrical impresario who introduced color television to Italy, and it was this house, with its shadowy spaces, glinting gilt frames and mysterious scents -- dying lilies, faint feminine perfumes, a bit of wet dog -- that infused his work.
Strangely, for all the glamour associated with Mr. Mongiardino, there is a sadness and isolation -- or self-reflection -- that permeated his creations, a quietude that evoked 'the corrosive breath of melancholy,' Umberto Pasti, a friend of designer, wrote in the auction catalogue. His rooms were grand, certainly, with all the chandeliers and damasks that the word implies. But as the exhibition at the Palazzo Crivelli will doubtless prove, there was also a darker side to the designer's vision, a sense of something left unfinished, unanswered.
Mr. Mongiardino's spaces -- his own and those created for others -- are expectant, waiting for something momentous to happen: a knock at the door, a love letter read with a shaking hand. To stand in one is to be a protagonist in an unfolding drama, in a theater without a stage or audience.
Few details of Mr. Mongiardino's personal life are known, outside of a youthful liaison with his mother's maid that resulted in the birth of his only child. In his catalogue essay, Mr. Pasti refers pointedly to an unpublished short story that Mr. Mongiardino  wrote in the 1940's and apparently continued to revise until his death. It is the tale of a manservant driven to suicide by his homosexual desires in a palazzo identical to the one of the designer's Genoese childhood, a place, Mr. Mongiardino wrote, 'where the crystal chandelier sparkled, reflecting the sun's last rays, which the terrazzo floor gathered into small pools as the rest of the room sank into darkness.'
While it might be simplistic to sift the meaning of his decorative vision through the prism of sexuality, he was nonetheless conscious of the importance of the sad gentility of that house on his work, especially its entrance hall, its heart, where his mother took tea, his father exercised, and Mr. Mongiardino and his elder sister played games.
'My love for architecture probably was born in that room, and without realizing it, I understood that everything in our lives takes place within a space that surrounds us, therefore within architecture,' he once wrote. 'Even when we are in the woods, the woods are our architecture; the light that passes among the trees is the same light that illuminates the chandelier of my childhood.'
For a few days this week and next, in Milan, the chandelier of the designer's childhood will scatter the sunlight again, before being finally extinguished, one bust and chair at a time, until, in the end, nothing will be left, and the salesrooms of the Palazzo Crivelli will be empty. Paradoxically, it is the sort of poignant moment that Mr. Mongiardino might have used as a creative springboard. 'Make it more like me,' he might have said. 'Make it more like me.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Diversifying the Suburbs: More Than a Box
THERE are places architects fear to tread, and suburbs that are chockablock with colonials, ranch houses, McMansions and good-taste design committees often give them pause. 'I didn't think there was anything you could really do in the suburbs,' said Doug Garofalo, a Chicago architect. 'All those cliches about how everybody is wealthy, white and conservative, with two and a half kids and a dog, weren't encouraging.'
Mr. Garofalo, 41, helped design one of the most radical structures recently built in New York, the computer-generated, amorphously shaped Korean Presbyterian Church in Sunnyside, Queens. In the leafy suburbs of Chicago, he might have expected a sort of autoimmune reaction to his designs. But the suburbanites who have come calling on his firm haven't played into the Ozzie and Harriet stereotype befitting an Eisenhower era, marshmallow-salad neighborhood. 'They are first-generation, self-made immigrants -- Polish, Thai, Chinese, Ukrainian entrepreneurs used to taking risks -- and they're not here to fit in and disappear,' he said. 'They had no interest in Cape Cod or any other vernacular style. That isn't their culture; they all had progressive attitudes. They didn't want to just melt into the pot.'
His clients, Andrew and Aleksandra Markow, for whom he designed a new version of their home in Prospect Heights, defied the suburban stereotype. 'I don't mind having Georgian and colonial houses around me, but that's not my style,' said Mr. Markow, a contractor who was born in Poland. 'America is more conservative and less contemporary than Europe, especially in the Midwest. We're a little behind here.'
A street-side view of their remodeled 2,000-square-foot, three-bedroom split-level house reveals a large, angular, two-story prism, plain and abstract, rising out of its own sloping shadow. The split-level roof is dog-eared up at one corner, to accommodate a high window. With another (yellow) Dryvit wing hovering over the garage to the left, and a glass entryway in between, the facade owes much to Hans Hoffmann. Something has happened here.
Mr. Markow began cultivating an interest in contemporary design as a teenager in Poland. 'Except for Frank Lloyd Wright, I didn't really find a modern style here,' he said. 'And American colonial doesn't speak to me.'
Twelve years ago, he gave up his position as a biochemical researcher at Northwestern University to start his contracting company. 'Somewhere deep inside was a love for design, and becoming a contractor was a way of getting closer to the field,' he said. His wife, also a chemist, left the lab to raise their two young children.
They had extended the original house into the rear yard in the early 1980's, but the spaces inside remained small, closed and surprisingly dark. 'Coming home every day was kind of boring,' Mr. Markow said. Several years ago, with the birth of their second child, the couple decided they needed larger, brighter bedrooms for the children, along with a playroom, another bedroom and a music room that would double as a home office. They were ready to trade in their tidy but conventional version of domesticity for something bolder. Mr. Markow would act as his own contractor, but he needed the right design.
The Markows decided to think outside the box. They wanted to open up the dark middle of the house to get more light and to create a central gathering space. But that gathering space would displace the bathrooms, pantries and laundry often parked in the middle of a house.
Remembering Mr. Garofalo from a project he had worked on a decade ago, Mr. Markow approached the architect with his ideas. 'I noticed that the diagonal views down the street across the fronts of houses were really pretty nice,' Mr. Garofalo said. So he oriented his two-story addition to the side yard, which guaranteed a sunny south exposure. To do so, however, meant they would have to tear down the upper bedroom portion of the split-level house.
Adding to suburban houses has been a national pastime since America's first suburbs were built. Usually, the houses are left picture-perfect in front, while sprouting casual additions in back. The Markows had already added in the rear, and Mr. Garofalo liked that their intervention wasn't seamless: the horizontal ranch-style dormers in the back didn't match the lines of the original split level. Aiming for gothic eccentricity rather than classical unity, Mr. Garofalo built on the irregularity. Taking the mismatched roofs as a point of departure, he developed the existing set of discordant dormers into a choppy topography of cresting gables. He folded and hinged the sloping planes into a set of butterfly roofs.
'We liked that hybrid quality of the house facing the backyard and wanted to keep it, but we had to think of a way to glue it all together,' Mr. Garofalo said. 'The roof was the opportunity. If you squint, you can still see the shapes relate to the surrounding roofs, with their valleys and gables, though ours evolved into a system closer to a landscape than a traditional roof.'
The architect structured the turbulent roofscape with a thin steel truss system inside; the trusses support a ceiling whose complex faceting follows the roof topography. Midway through completion of the production drawings of the house, Mr. Garofalo started using computers with animation software, which confirmed the idea of connectivity and fluidity in the roofscape. The structure looks like a Cubist's interpretation of a house of seven gables.
'With their interest in bringing in light, Andy and Aleksandra were adamant about opening up or removing sections of the existing house,' Mr. Garofalo said. 'So we started thinking of perforating the house at all levels right away.' The architect likens the porous quality of the house's interior to ancient Indian houses, with their subtle, continuous gradient between public and private spaces. He was socializing the interior of the typical suburban house by blurring its boundaries. He also choreographed a steel-and-plexiglass ramp and bridge that wind their way  over the central space to the music room at the peak. This large central living 'tube' gives the house a large-scale open room at its core. Thinking big paid off with a heart space, an indoor piazza, onto which all other rooms flow.
The Markows were able to bring this unconventional renovation in for $100 a square foot, for a total of $275,000. 'We really searched for the best products and prices, and made big savings,' Mr. Markow said. 'I didn't ask Doug to do this, because it takes a lot of time.' The couple called dozens of companies for competitive prices on the glass entry doors. They originally planned to put Kalwal translucent windows on the ceiling, but found a Wisconsin company making a similar window for 25 percent less. 'That saved us $3,000 or $4,000,' Mr. Markow said.
Mr. Garofalo had specified a Swedish prefinished floor called Karss, 'but we were able to find a really great prefinished floor out of Finland for $4.50, rather than $8 or $9,' Mr. Markow said. 'And we really didn't sacrifice quality.' The couple also went through hundreds of catalogs for lighting and furniture, consulting the architect on final choices.
'As a contractor, I know where to hunt,' said Mr. Markow, who used Sweet's Catalogue, the Building and Construction Blue Book and the annual Architects' First Source for Products. 'We searched through a lot of magazines, also a great source, and we did some research on the Internet,' he added.
And the neighbors? 'The guy on the other side of the street, who just remodeled his split-level into a Georgian, said that he loved it,' Mr. Markow said. 'Our new design is something different on the street that really strikes people. And inside, there's always something interesting going on with the sunlight. I never feel bored.'
The unusual structure now recalls an earlier era when Chicago suburbs welcomed architectural experiments. Frank Lloyd Wright designed many of his masterpieces in nearby Oak Park, and the locally famous Keck brothers (building as Keck & Keck from the 1930's through the 1950's) did suburban houses that gestured to the landscape. Before formulas set in, suburbia was the petri dish.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Life Throws Morris Lapidus a Few Good Curves
IN the early 1990's, after his wife's death, the legendary architect Morris Lapidus found himself staring at a calendar white with blank dates. The designer of Miami Beach's Fontainebleau and Eden Roc hotels, Mr. Lapidus, then in his early 90's, had retired from active practice and was sitting alone in his ocean-front duplex, bored.
In 1994, after serving on a review panel for work by architecture students, he had lunch with a fellow juror, Deborah Desilets, and more lunches. 'He was so removed from professional life,' she said. 'I realized that he had so much to give that it would be a shame not to find some way to make it happen.' Eventually they formed an informal partnership, taking him from deep retirement to shallow retirement. Now, at 97, he is back in business, sketching.
With Ms. Desilets, 41, he has conceived a new hotel for Miami Beach, which is awaiting financing, and several stores for Roots, a Canadian clothing chain. Yesterday, their new project, Aura, a restaurant, opened on Lincoln Road in the Art Deco district. Sitting in the immutable apartment he designed here many years ago, Mr. Lapidus said with the groomed voice of a gentleman from the old school, 'After I met Deborah, things got interesting again.'
Before he was America's pre-eminent hotel designer, he was the country's pre-eminent store architect. He has shaped the restaurant to entice customers inside. 'I hate the box, so all of my stores have undulating curves and lines,' he said. 'The curves get almost psychedelic.'
The curves sweep people into a bath of red, orange, pink and aqua. Mr. Lapidus has used his signature free-form shapes to conceal lights throughout the restaurant, which has 1,900 square feet and 60 seats. Aura is named after the glow.
He is quick to credit his collaborator, Ms. Desilets, an architect, who develops his preliminary designs. 'Some people keep wondering what this old man is doing with this young woman,' he said. 'She makes the work possible. She's an excellent draftswoman. The details of architecture don't interest me anymore. I depend on her. She edits me. I want to design, but that's all I want to do.'
With her assistance, Mr. Lapidus began lecturing across the country. The lectures in turn led to the first of the new commissions. 'Mr. Lapidus knows how to give emotions physical form,' she said. 'His space swirls you; it prompts you to move; it's an interactive architecture.'
As in his hotel designs, there's hardly a straight line in the restaurant plan. Many people see only the decoration in Mr. Lapidus's work and are unable to appreciate the brilliant complexity of the plan. 'A lot of interlocking forms, one curve moving in and another swinging out in the opposite way,' he said. 'People don't move in straight lines like an army -- they meander. So, my plans meander. At the Fontainebleau, I used everything. Normally, an architect would do plans, and the drapes would be done by somebody else. I wanted to do it all, and I did.'
Aghast at the dripping chandeliers and swag curtains, critics bashed the Fontainebleau and his other hotels. 'The International style had taken over,' he said. He recalls what Serge Chermayeff, a Yale professor and Museum of Modern Art consultant, once said, 'You can like Lapidus's work, if you're blind.'
But others didn't rush to judgment. 'Philip Johnson said years ago that he'd like to wait and see,' Mr. Lapidus said. 'When we had lunch about three months ago in New York, he embraced me and said, 'You're the father of us all.' It's a very pleasant memory.'
Mr. Lapidus, who trained at Columbia when Beaux-Arts decoration was integral to the curriculum, straddled traditional and Modernist architecture. When critics ostracized him, he was deeply hurt. The bitter architect sent truckloads of drawings to the incinerators when he closed his office in 1984.
'Mr. Lapidus was an intuitive designer doing emotive architecture at a time when architecture required a reason for everything,' Ms. Desilets said. 'The architectural fishbowl was too small for him to breathe in.'
Now, Mr. Lapidus enjoys the pulpit. 'I've been rediscovered,' he said. 'And the attention I'm getting, it's very pleasant, as if people never knew me. At first I defended myself, but now I don't.' He believes that his kind of architecture appeals to people, and has always appealed.
Today, he will work with only Ms. Desilets. 'The only enjoyment I have now is my lecturing and the chance to do some designing with Deborah,' he said.
Ms. Desilets said, 'Once we realized that the mind has no age, we've had a raving good time.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"The Architectural Blame Game
FISSURE. Cracking. Collapse.
Those were the distressing words -- the ones no architect, engineer or builder ever wants to hear -- that filled news accounts of a disaster early Sunday morning at Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Paris, where part of the new Terminal 2E gave way, killing four people.
But there was another word buried just under the surface of those early reports: hubris. In their descriptions of the elliptical concrete, glass and steel terminal's 'ultramodern' and 'futuristic' design, journalists were at least implicitly making the case that its French architect, Paul Andreu, and his structural engineers might well turn out to be the primary culprits in its collapse.
In fact, by Wednesday, French officials were speculating that the blame would ultimately be laid, instead, at the feet of the contractors.
'When incidents like this happen, the press loves to trot out this morality play suggesting that the reason for the disaster is that the architect wanted to do something new or unusual,' said Terence Riley, chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan.
He added that after four workers were killed in the collapse of a garage at the Tropicana Casino and Resort in Atlantic City last fall, a building with much more straightforward design than Mr. Andreu is known for, 'nobody thought it had been caused by the architect.'
Though new technologies or design strategies have sometimes led to problems, the results have rarely been deadly. The windows falling in 1973 from the John Hancock Tower, built by I. M. Pei & Partners in Boston, got huge amounts of press attention, but killed no one. And when Foster & Partners' Millennium Bridge in London began swaying after it opened in June 2000, thanks to what engineers memorably called the problem of 'synchronous lateral excitation' caused by pedestrians, plenty of people were nauseated, but no one was injured.
Mr. Andreu's design for the collapsed terminal relies in part on systems that are used in tunnel construction rather than in airports. Still, the terminal hardly looks daring compared with the feats of gravity-defying fancy that architects and engineers, aided by powerful and flexible software, are pulling off with regularity these days.
Buildings by architects like Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas, whose angular public library in Seattle opened last weekend to rapturous reviews, are upping the ante, leading the public to expect jaw-dropping engineering of one type or another in practically every major new building. At the same time, the engineers that make those swooping or cantilevered designs possible are themselves gaining a higher profile. Cecil Balmond, an engineer who often works with Mr. Koolhaas, has published his own stylish monograph, while the work of Guy Nordenson, an engineer based in Manhattan, has gained a following.
The trend is perhaps best epitomized by Santiago Calatrava, the Spanish architect who is also trained as a civil engineer, and whose buildings, including a planned transit hub at the World Trade Center site, often include anthropomorphic moving parts.
But all has not been rosy lately in the land of daring architects and their engineering partners. Mr. Nordenson is no longer part of the design team on the Freedom Tower at ground zero, a job that promised to raise his profile even higher. Mr. Calatrava, too, has seen his star dim a bit: his new roof for the main Olympic Stadium in Athens is only half complete and has become an unfortunate symbol of the city's rush to overcome construction delays as it gets ready for the Games this summer.
Now the collapse of Mr. Andreu's airport terminal seems to be adding to the perception that high-design solutions can sometimes make for little more than expensive experiments. In truth, most cases of building collapse have nothing to do with how innovative the architecture is, said Leslie Robertson, who was a chief engineer of the World Trade Center towers.
'When problems occur, it's usually in the interface' between architects, engineers and contractors, he said. In other words, it is in translating the design from one office to the next that mistakes are amplified and become deadly. 'Seldom can one say with any certainty, 'That's it, that right there is where the trouble happened,' ' he added.
No matter what the investigation into the collapse ultimately reveals, said Jon Magnusson, chairman and chief executive of Magnusson Klemencic Associates, a structural engineering firm in Seattle, 'It can't solely be the architecture.'
'Every structural engineer has a duty,' he said. 'If the architecture doesn't allow you to do something that needs to be done to keep the building up, you must stop.'
Mr. Andreu is one of the world's most prominent airport designers, having worked on dozens of such projects. He has also designed a new Chinese national theater in Beijing. Chinese officials said the Paris collapse would not affect plans for the theater.
If they had decided to scale back the project, though, it probably would not have come as a shock. We have always asked architects to help push the boundaries of art and science but turned on them, even when they were not fully, or even partly, to blame, when we feel buildings have put us at risk.
The most telling case is probably that of the 13th-century Gothic cathedral in the French city of Beauvais. Anyone who has taken an architectural history course will recall the story of that cathedral, whose highest vault fell in 1284. Plenty of historians have blamed the collapse on overly bold design, peppering their accounts with architects who 'rushed' into the sky.
But Marvin Trachtenberg, a professor at New York University, said the evidence actually suggests a more mundane problem. The vaults fell, he said, 'because there was a miscalculation in the buttressing, an eccentric placement of key supports.'
In other words, the cathedral gave way not because the architects tried to go too high or because they were experimenting with new forms, but because they failed to properly apply structural knowledge they had used before, with predictable success. Perhaps this will turn out to be what happened in the same country exactly 720 years later.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"An Eastern Fantasia, Asleep for a Century
TREND-WATCHERS, take note: Lockwood de Forest may be big. Very big.
De Forest, a turn-of-the-century artist and designer who rose to eminence, then sank into obscurity, is now on the brink of rediscovery. A Manhattan gallery recently featured some of his oil sketches. A desk embodying his design philosophy is part of an exhibition on Orientalism at Williams College in Massachusetts. The Indian-style interiors he championed are being echoed by hip designers like Muriel Brandolini and Lulu Kwiatkowski. And in this Hudson River Valley village two hours north of New York City, furniture and architectural elements he produced have been brought together by the filmmakers Ismail Merchant and James Ivory in what must be his first one-man design show since the 1893 World's Columbian Exhibition.
Scion of a New York clan whose family tree blossoms with myriad lawyers and the occasional flamboyant -- a great-uncle was the painter Frederic E. Church, and a great-niece was the Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick -- Lockwood de Forest was a pivotal member of Associated Artists, a short-lived design firm founded by Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Its specialty was self-conscious splendor, exotic interiors that were one part ABC Carpet & Home, one part 'Arabian Nights.' Brass lanterns hung from stenciled ceilings. Persian carpets were flung over harem-style balustrades. Fireplaces glimmered with Moorish tiles. And thanks to a woodcarving studio that de Forest discovered in Ahmadabad, on the Arabian Sea coast of India, his trendy ensembles for clients like the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad heiress Mary Garrett and her lover Martha Carey Thomas, a president of Bryn Mawr College, incorporated exquisite teak furniture and architectural fittings that resemble petrified lace.
The eight chairs, two tables, chest of drawers, fireplace surround, two doors, two settees and standing screen in 'Lockwood de Forest' at the Merchant and Ivory Foundation exemplify the top-dollar exoticism that was de Forest's hallmark in the 1880's, the high point of a fitful career that ended when he died in 1932 at 82. Rendered in cinnamon-colored teak with delicately chiseled foliate and geometric designs -- there are a couple of cast-iron firebacks, too -- most of the pieces come from the collection of David L. Petrovsky, who owns an eponymous antiques shop in nearby Hudson.
On a recent visit, Mr. Petrovsky gazed wide-eyed at the feet of a gleaming armchair produced by Indian woodcarvers working under de Forest's direction. 'Look at those,' he said. 'They look like garlic bulbs with toenails.' Eye-catchingly odd, yes, but no more so than the bizarre finials higher up: the heads of impassive Hindu deities surmounted by sawtooth tiaras. The show, which closes Sept. 4, is one of several marking the 10th anniversary of the Merchant and Ivory Foundation, an arts organization founded by the Oscar-winning filmmakers. Its headquarters are in red-painted gristmill buildings near their Greek Revival house, which have been turned into exhibition and performance spaces.
'We've never had a show like this,' said Mr. Ivory, whose latest film, an adaptation of Henry James's 'Golden Bowl,' starring Uma Thurman, will open this fall. 'But a couple of months ago, David suggested it, and Ismail and I thought, 'Why not?' De Forest's work is very intriguing, and both Ismail and I are fascinated by everything to do with India, for obvious reasons.'
Lockwood de Forest was not the only American aesthete of his time who fell under the spell of India, a country that became a pop-culture influence after Queen Victoria became its empress in 1876. But the largely self-taught artist, designer and architect was the most passionately pro-India Yankee of his time, the American equivalent of John Lockwood Kipling, father of the empire-thumping poet and curator of a museum in the Indian city of Lahore (now in Pakistan) in the days of the British Raj.
Just as the elder Kipling's scholarship led him to create widely admired Indian-style rooms -- a dining room at Queen Victoria's Osborne House on the Isle of Wight and a billiard room for her son the Duke of Connaught at his country house in Surrey, Bagshot Park, now the home of Prince Edward -- de Forest's passion for the Mogul art and architecture of the subcontinent led him to install similar spaces from Ithaca to San Francisco.
'The 1880's were his glory days,' said Roberta A. Mayer, an art historian, who lives in Hopewell, N.J. De Forest's work was exhibited to acclaim at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London in 1886, and at the World's Columbian Exhibition seven years later, attracting an impressive array of clients: the steel king Andrew Carnegie, the transportation magnate Charles Tyson Yerkes, the hotelier Potter Palmer, even Mark Twain.
Though he did not have a hand in its design, a stylistically related desk by Associated Artists is featured in 'Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America, 1870-1930,' an exhibition that runs through Sept. 4 at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. Made of satinwood, brass, pewter and leather, it embodies everything that Associated Artists and de Forest stood for in the late 19th century: Eastern exoticism conjured for Western millionaires.
De Forest visited India on his honeymoon in 1879, a nearly two-year trip that he turned to his economic advantage, keeping his eye peeled for objects and inspirations that would benefit Associated Artists. In Ahmadabad, he met Muggunbhai Hutheesing, a philanthropist whose woodcarving studio would become crucial to de Forest's career. The studio was only a small component of a family fortune built on some of India's largest carpet and textile factories, as well as on opium trafficking.
Unlike European Orientalists, many of whom looked upon Asia and the Middle East with colonialist superiority, de Forest wanted to help the cause of Indian woodworkers and preserve traditional Indian arts and crafts, which were being forgotten in the wake of brightly varnished knockoffs being made in Paris. His equally enthusiastic wife, Meta, had her couturier transform cheap Indian cottons into dresses that were the envy of her friends -- until they learned of the fabrics' 'lowly' (i.e., non-Western) provenance.
'Having committed themselves as to the beauty of the material, it was difficult for them to crawl out of it with either grace or success,' Lockwood de Forest gleefully recalled. 'We had a fine chance to rub their ignorance in, which we often enjoyed doing.' By directing Hutheesing's carvers to copy or adapt centuries-old details from mosques, temples, tombs and mansions --  designs that were used in de Forest's interiors, furniture and accessories, including a wall bracket at Olana, the house of Great-Uncle Frederic -- one small part of India's artistry could continue to flourish, albeit reinterpreted in costly Western settings.
Part of him had a romantic response to all that beauty, but he was pragmatic, too, Ms. Mayer said: 'He wanted to make his art into a legitimate profession, a way to create beauty and make money at the same time.'
Unfortunately, de Forest's Indian experiment appealed to a fickle audience too conscious of fads to be loyal to his narrow vision. By the turn of the century, his romantic rooms were passe, a victim of the Francophile chic popularized by Elsie de Wolfe and Ogden Codman Jr. By 1908, he had sold his stock of moldings and furniture to his old friend Tiffany and retired to Santa Barbara, Calif., where he spent much of his remaining life quietly painting. (His son, another Lockwood, would become one of the state's great landscape designers.)
Apparently, not one de Forest interior survives intact, and even the bits and pieces remaining are not completely appreciated. His teak room for Andrew Carnegie, for instance, still occupies its second-floor spot in the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, the former Carnegie mansion, though its furniture was sold long ago and its carvings are obscured under temporary exhibition walls. As for de Forest's furniture, no one knows precisely how much was produced, a mystery that deepens when it becomes clear that none was labeled or marked, thus making it difficult to distinguish it from the often fine copies produced by competitors.
But it does show up periodically, often misidentified, at auctions and other, less likely, places. In 1995, Mr. Petrovsky discovered a seven-piece suite of furniture in a consignment shop in New Canaan, Conn. He says that Mitchell Wolfson Jr., founder of the Wolfsonian museum in Miami Beach, recently bought more than 100 pieces of carved teak, each a different pattern and individually numbered, apparently a set of samples that the artist used to guide the Ahmadabad carvers.
Even with the uncertainty, some of Lockwood de Forest's magic lingers. A house he designed in Baltimore is now an Indian restaurant called the Brass Elephant. His furnishings for Mary Garrett are scattered throughout several rooms in the Bryn Mawr alumnae house. As for the brick town house that de Forest built for himself at 7 East 10th Street between 1886 and 1888, once heralded as the most Indian house in America, it is now the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at New York University. Its extraordinary lacelike interiors have suffered over time, but its teak-bedecked facade, like that of the elaborate Burmese-style Ava apartments next door, is splendidly unaltered, an incongruous reminder of a trendsetter who once reigned in a city that too often forgets.
The Lockwood de Forest exhibition is open for the next two weekends, Aug. 25 to 27 and Sept. 1 to 4, at the Red Mills gallery, on Route 23 just east of Patroon Street in Claverack, N.Y. Hours: 1 to 5 P.M. Free admission. Information: (212) 586-6014.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Sugar and Spice, And Everything Plastic
A wallop of sugar was added this week to the frothy zabaglione that is the annual Italian furniture fair, where hundreds of editors and thousands of international buyers, manufacturers and designers descend each year to test, compare, cheer or dismiss new products.
Fearing that the latest sleek samples of minimal elegance and technological wizardry might not sufficiently wow the crowds, fair organizers asked 14 international artists to provide a supplemental jolt of novelty.
And so on Monday, the eve of the fair's official opening, installations by Robert Wilson, Yoko Ono and Peter Greenaway, among others, were presented within the city's splendid 19th-century Rotonda della Besana.
Each artist interpreted the theme of 'rooms and their secrets' before an audience of 2,000 -- mostly Milanese hungry for contemporary art.
There was plenty to ponder. In Mr.  Wilson's installation, a woman dressed like a character from Chekhov staggered around a darkened space where tall columns had been transformed into tree trunks. She reacted sometimes violently, sometimes disconsolately to a voice from her past speaking German.
Mr. Greenaway, the film director, flooded his space with water from about 10 bathtubs. Open suitcases also overflowed with the stuff of everyday life: bottles, appliances, tennis balls. A naked man sat in one tub while the room filled with steam.
The Bosnian filmmaker Emir Kusturica imported truckloads of Serbian dirt, cabbages and onions to a bunker recreated from his 1995 film 'Underground,' the story of two friends who go into hiding for a very long time only to find upon emerging that their homeland, Yugoslavia, has disappeared, along with one man's wife. 'There's no place left for secrets; there's only the underground as a place to hide your agenda,' he said cryptically. Mr. Kusturica also performed with a rock band (formed by his son). One observer joked that it sounded like 'a bar mitzvah band.' But many viewers felt the entire art installation, which runs through May 7, was overegging the zabaglione.
'It's useless,' said Achille Castiglioni, the legendary designer who at 82 remains a vital presence on the scene, as he emerged from a video installation showing two naked bodies struggling to fit into a small cube.  'It's trying to be experimental, but it makes no real point that I can see.'
The sideshow hardly seemed necessary, what with the Italian furniture business thriving, with roughly $101 million in sales to the United States alone for 1999, an increase of about 6 percent over 1998. About 2,300 exhibitors, all but 200 of them from Italy, were expected to show new wares at this year's fair. Indeed, many were groaning about sensory overload before it opened Tuesday.
While the artists may have won hands-down when it came to metaphor, the furniture designers were busy grappling with how to make technology more human, and if not poetic then at least practical.
At the Milan fairgrounds, the Italian furniture company Edra was once again in the forefront, presenting furniture upholstered in hybrid materials: their shimmery waterproof linen, in fashion colors, had a rain-slicker look. Wool injected with synthetic fiber gave off an almost Naugahyde sheen.
The shapes this year were appealing to the inner lounge lizard. One sprawling sofa at Edra, called Flap, designed by Francesco Binfare, recalled a squashed baseball mitt with fingers that could be raised or lowered as back and leg rests.
Perhaps it was this sofa, or any one of the many low-to-the-ground samples, that prompted the architect Adam Tihany to complain that Italians don't understand the American body. 'Don't they know that we all have bad backs?' he said.
Edra was not the only company that had a stake in technological derring-do. Kartell, the plastics giant, was also on hand with a love seat called Bubble Club by Philippe Starck. While old-fashioned in look with its rolled arms, the sofa exemplified the latest techniques in molding plastic. It required a special rotational device to make a piece that large, with comfy give in the seat. It will cost $400 to $500 when it arrives in the United States later this year.
Mr. Starck, wearing glasses with a Fendi tag still pasted to a lens, noted that to be able to make a piece of 'such size and durability for so little is a revolution; you can put it in your salon or forget it for 100 years in your garden.'
He added, 'It's kind of no style, coming from the collective unconscious. I like that it's not 'designed' by me.'
Understated minimalism is selling too well to dismiss. And there was plenty on show, with only the slightest deviation from years past: a little extra nub on the politely textured wool upholstery at B&B Italia, for example, but bring your magnifying glass to discern it. There are also new pieces by Antonio Citterio, the maestro of low-key elegance.
Instead of messing with the success of clean lines, many manufacturers opted for saturated late-60's colors straight from Barbra Streisand's wardrobe in 'Funny Girl' or  Andy Warhol's silk-screen portraits.
To assuage some apparent restlessness or perhaps just to attract a younger crowd, B&B also reissued a newly hip 60's classic: Gaetano Pesce's Up furniture collection in fabric-covered foam, with its bulbous  high-back chair resembling a Botero mother. The ottoman is a round ball tethered by a bungee cord. The chair will be about $1,729 in the United States. At the Satellite, a pavilion for aspiring designers, it was a great hit with young talents trying to catch some shut-eye between events.
Cappellini tapped two young designers, Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec from Brittany, who reinterpreted a native cloistered bed. The piece also invoked Australian shuttered architecture, including fire-watching towers, in its elevated 'treehouse' style.
Elsewhere, a few architects were invited to punch up the streamlined shapes. The company Driade asked David Chipperfield, one of the master minimalists of London, and Kazuyo Sejima, known among cognoscenti as the Rem Koolhaas of Japan, to contribute.
Ms. Sejima stretched further than Mr. Chipperfield, who designed a collection of regulation mahogany and aluminum home-office furniture. She  created a sitting room with multipurpose pieces that range from a tatami-inspired foam platform to a zany inflatable lime-green slipcover for side chairs.
'In Japan, everyone has these very hard chairs to sit on,' Ms. Sejima said. 'I wanted to find a cheap way to make them more comfortable.'
Although the prototype emitted a few embarrassing whoopee-cushion sounds when tested, it promises to be poetic and practical. Artists, please take note.
Next week: Milan's new faces.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Style Team Reinvents Polaroid As a Toy
TODD OLDHAM liked the camera so much he created a dress from its tiny snapshots. Britney Spears uses it onstage, snapping pictures of her fans. Polaroid's toylike I-zone, an instant pocket camera sold beside cash registers like a Snickers bar and offered in the shrill hues of teenage nail polish -- Wicked Wasabi, Go Grape Sorbet -- is the country's best-selling camera.
The thumbnail-size I-zone images are as grainy and dark as 'The Blair Witch Project' and enjoy a similar following: half the buyers are girls 14 to 17, who use them at parties and tack the pictures to notebooks and bulletin boards. Since last fall, two million I-zones have sold, at $25 each, making Polaroid profitable last year for the first time in five years. Polaroid, whose images were often found in real estate office windows, has returned to the party -- and the backyard and the family room.
The I-zone and its instant-camera siblings, the larger Popshot and Joycam, mark a radical departure for Polaroid, whose success in the 1960's and 70's was based on technological innovation. Founded by an inventor, Edwin Land, it was run for years by engineers. Now, its innovations are coming from design, said David Laituri, Polaroid's manager of design strategy, who offered a peek at Polaroid's future.
Mr. Laituri and his redesign team have taken pages from Swatch and Motorola to turn the cameras into highly personalized and fashion-influenced consumer products with a new design language, for a company that is speaking less formally and using a far hipper vocabulary.
'We call our design language 'double bubble,' ' said Mr. Laituri, who came to Polaroid in 1998 from Lunar Design, where he helped shape home computers for Hewlett-Packard. Here, his design theme consists of an oval intersecting a circle. The shape expresses the function: the round lens and oval viewfinder intersect, visually suggesting their similar functions; double bubbles recur in the shutter pull ring of the Popshot. The ovals lend unifying style to the Polaroid product line.
The I-zone was developed with Tomy, the Japanese toy and gadget maker, and became a hit in Japan in 1998. But Polaroid was slow to bring it to the United States, recalling failed forays into hipness like the Swinger (circa the late 60's). The low resolution images appalled many in the company, Mr. Laituri says.
The new cameras make smaller pictures than the SX-70 and top-of-the-line Spectra cameras. The 1-by-1 1/2-inch image emerges from the I-zone on a paper strip that looks like a large colorful Band-Aid. Veiled and dark, the images are somehow fresh and new, like the first photographs.
For a generation weaned on high tech and high resolution, the I-zone's small size and low resolution are welcome. So is the versatility of the sticker-backed film, inspired by photo vending booths in airports and bus stations. 'There was a lot of resistance within the company to the change,' Mr. Laituri said. 'The key idea at Polaroid now is that it's not the quality of the image that is important. It's how you use it.'
The use transcends the technology. This summer, Polaroid is introducing a hybrid camera, capable of producing I-zone film images or digital electronic images that can be downloaded into a computer, named the Combo Camera. Another product, developed under the name Webster, will scan I-cam images for posting on the Web. Both cameras tap the ideas of consultants like Ideo in San Francisco and Altitude and (Eleven), both based in Boston.
Polariod intends these cameras to be social devices -- like the cell phone, which the I-zone resembles in size and shape. Taking pictures of one another at parties is a way for teenagers to communicate. (Adolescent girls in particular say they fear looking bad in a picture. A photo that develops instantly can be destroyed instantly, with no nasty negatives.)
The idea is to produce cameras that reflect not just the personality of the owner but also her mood. New colors for the I-zone come out every few months. Feeling upbeat this morning? Grab a Go Grape model. More mellow? Go for the silver camera. A secondary line of 'tech translucent' colors will be introduced starting next month, with names like Phat Blue and Concrete Jungle.
If this seems far from the high-tech vision of Edwin Land -- he helped design the cameras in the U-2 spy plane in the late 1950's -- the I-zone harks back to his principles. He was both a brilliant technician and a man driven by democratic ideals.
His relationship with Henry Dreyfuss produced the SX-70 in 1972. Fine tool, but also fun toy, it was the camera Andy Warhol took to parties and discos, his portraits composing an informal documentary of the Manhattan scene of the 1970's. At this year's Walker Evans shows at the Metropolitan Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, Polaroid SX-70 photographs hang beside his best-known black-and-white photographs. Of the SX-70, Evans said that for the first time, one could 'put a machine in an artist's hand and have him then rely entirely on his vision and his taste and his mind.'
Land's first inspiration for instant photography was, he said, a request from his teenage daughter, who wondered why she could not see family vacation snapshots right way.
He had an idealistic vision of a camera that would release the artist in everyone. 'My basic faith, is in the random competence of people in all walks of life, at any level of income, of any derivation,' he said. 'There is a common sense of beauty and of manual aptitudes.'
That these competences should turn up at teenage girls' slumber parties would have delighted Land -- and probably should not have surprised Polaroid's engineers.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Milan Mandate: Grow the Brand
TALK of rising costs and slipping sales was willfully postponed this week in anticipation of the 42nd Salone Internazionale del Mobile, the world's premier showcase of elegance and daring in contemporary design, which opened yesterday in Milan.
The air of expectation was heightened by a frigid cold front that had people exhaling chilled clouds, even inside the palazzi courtyards and converted garages that are the traditional sites for many of the exhibitions outside the official fairgrounds.
Last year's dreams of opening a little shop in New York, maybe Tokyo and London too, to take advantage of the swelling popular interest in design has also gone up in smoke for all but a few. The fascination with design that the fair has been feeding on for the past five years has been tempered by the hard reality of a stagnating market. Home-furnishings exports in 2002 were down 5.1 percent, according to the Italian Statistics Bureau.
All the more reason that the focus this year is on a handful of furniture companies that still have an appetite for trying new things.
On Tuesday evening, Giorgio Busnelli, the chairman of B&B Italia, one of the largest Italian furniture manufacturers in size and prestige, paced his vast new store, where a new collection of black-on-white-check sofas with mismatching arms was on display. He studied the abstract graphics on a cool black and silver invitation to a party that had so far attracted only a gaggle of journalists. 'Maybe the dealers won't be able to read this and they won't get here,' Mr. Busnelli said.
In a funkier part of town near the Brera Museum, where flea market stalls are set up on weekends, Massimo Morozzi, the art director of Edra, all lean and leathered like a design world Mick Jagger, sat on a white couch in a white room with white lacquered floors. He too has a new store, with stark interiors that made the red and green worm-shaped love seats pop out all the more. Last year's room-size purple velvet divan made of entwined snake ropes captured the company's art and disco aesthetic perfectly. And yet Mr. Morozzi also has an eye on expansion, if not global domination. 'We are very small, but we have a strong image around the world, bigger than some fashion designers,' he said. 'We need to take it further, and this is a good first step.'
Forward-looking Italian furniture companies know that it is no longer enough to try to sell a plastic chair by having Philippe Starck tart it up with a silly name. The new approach is to have stores in major cities, tie-ins to artists and serious photography in oversize brochures. This is branding the way fashion started doing it 10 years ago. Murray Moss, owner of the Manhattan store Moss, said: 'It's no longer sufficient just to make furniture available to people. You have to give it a context, and just hanging on a sign that says 'new' isn't enough.'
On Tuesday night, a long line, at least eight people abreast, snaked out from the narrow entrance to the soaring groin arches of the 19th-century Rotonda della Besana, where Driade held its 35th anniversary party. Pale yellow plastic armchairs, glass tables and wooden storage units were bathed in swirls of smoke being coughed out by machines situated in four corners of the narthex. All the new furniture, however, was back at the store.
Driade has long understood the dynamics of establishing a brand. There is no one look to the furniture, and an ever-changing cast of star designers including the latest discovery, Tokujin Yoshioka, a Japanese designer who worked in the offices of Shiro Kuramata and Issey Miyake. Mr. Yoshioka designed a plastic molded outdoor bar ($300) and high stool ($190), both slightly dented in the midriff, like a freshly plucked mushroom stem minus the cap.
Driade, a small company when founded by Enrico Astori, his wife, Adelaide Acerbi, and his sister, Antonia Astori, now has more than 100 shops worldwide and three brand identities covering high-concept furniture, tablewares and kitchens.
B&B Italia is three times larger than Driade, and last fall the investment arm of Bulgari, the fashion company, bought 55 percent of B&B Italia from Mr. Busnelli and his family with the intention of expanding the brand. In partnership with the Marriott Corporation, Bulgari is soon to announce plans for a new luxury chain, outfitted by B&B Italia and designed by Antonio Citterio.
Some think that leaping in the direction of fashion and branding will not be easy. Adam Tihany, the New York designer, said: 'There's a fundamental difference between the two. Fashion is an impulse buy. And it doesn't matter if you're choosing between a $150 tie and a $150 lamp, people still see the one as a personal choice and the other as a real estate decision.' Other critics say that a large store offering only one look might be boring in our age of mix and match.
Dornbracht, an ambitious German faucet company, is taking the brand concept a step further. Andreas Dornbracht, the managing director, said the future is not in selling products but in rituals. To that end, he commissioned European and American artists to contemplate the bathing experience. The result is Rainwater, a work-in-progress ceiling plate, to be positioned over the bathtub, that rains five ways, from downpour to drizzle. The fixture (Mr. Dornbracht said it would cost more than $5,000) will also emanate sandalwood and other scents. The full concept -- that's the going word these days for amplified products -- would include lighting that simulates rays of sunlight and moonlight tracking across the room.
'The 90's were an era of aesthetic development,' Mr. Dornbracht said. 'This decade is about people trying to find more time to deal with themselves. They need objects with a new emotional function.' Perhaps it could more aptly be called the Age of Look, Feel and Spend.
Design Notebook",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; For Los Angeles Youths, Lessons in Architecture and Life
MERCHANT STREET is a tattered row of produce warehouses and auto body shops, its littered sidewalks and cracked street home to the poor and to drug addicts. This is not a pretty part of town, but here in the heart of what is known as skid row is a jewel.
At the back of an asphalt parking lot, in a wall decorated with dancing colored letters, a door gives a view into a charming urban courtyard. A cheerful ceramic fountain is covered in hand-painted hearts, fruits, flowers and birds amid ripening orange trees. Running almost the length of the courtyard is the glass front facade of a large, bow-trussed building. On any given day, the space inside is filled with children drawing, painting, acting or making music.
This is Inner-City Arts, a nonprofit arts school that is both an enlightened model for arts education and a showcase building where education is embellished by architectural example. Inner-City Arts, founded in 1989, provides visual and performing arts classes and English language instruction to students from public elementary schools -- largely the offspring of immigrants from Mexico and Central America who work in the local garment and manufacturing industries.
The school was founded by Bob Bates, an artist and teacher, and Irwin Jaeger, a Beverly Hills real estate investor who decided there had to be more to life, as he says, 'than working, taking vacations and going to charity dinners.' Their aim was to fill a void in arts education created by Proposition 13, a property tax cut initiative approved 20 years ago this month by California voters that slashed financing for public services and schools. In the year after its passage, said Beth Tishler, the school's executive director, virtually 'all arts curriculum was eliminated from the public schools.'
There are now more than 200 nonprofit arts programs in Los Angeles, many deemed excellent, but Inner-City Arts is rare in that it boasts, in its converted 8,000-square-foot auto body shop, an inspiring home, where the architecture elevates the social and arts-education experiences. The building, officially called the Mark Taper Center/Inner-City Arts, was designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture, with Marmol & Radziner Architecture and Construction. Mr. Maltzan, a protege of Frank Gehry and the project architect on the Disney Concert Hall planned for downtown Los Angeles, said that he felt compelled 'to do something' after the city's 1992 riots and that he did the work pro bono.
'L.A. was my adopted city,' he said. 'To see it rip itself apart was devastating.'
Inner-City Arts is expansive and bold in its sculptural forms, with light pouring in through its vast window wall. The plan, described by Mr. Maltzan as 'a village of objects' around a central courtyard, affords views from one area to another -- 'limitless horizons,' he says -- and flexibility: spaces are constantly used in different ways.
The design is also an object lesson in construction. Children study the raw surfaces -- the unadorned brick walls, the timber frame partly clad in plasterboard, the exposed trusses, the roll-up garage doors. They draw inspiration for their drawings and paintings from the strong, simple shapes. 'Kids use the building as material for some of their art projects,' Ms. Tishler said. 'They talk about how the building was put together, the ways in which they contribute to the changing and molding of the building.'
Many children live in lamentable conditions in apartments for transients or in housing projects. 'I love it -- it's big'; 'it's fun'; 'it has pictures all around,' were some reactions of a group of 7-year-olds on a recent visit. Nick Estrada, 18, a former pupil and now a volunteer there, said, 'Inner-City Arts is my home.'
Having started with 300 children from one school, Inner-City Arts now caters to 8,000 children annually from 11 public schools who attend classes twice a week for six weeks. More schools are clamoring to be included. In 1994, the school moved from two temporary bungalows to its current premises, at 720 South Kohler Street. (One entrance is off Merchant Street.) It has bought two adjacent industrial buildings and intends to triple in size, with plans that include animation studios.
The school -- now backed by an impressive list of donors, like the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mark Taper Foundation, which supports, among other things, social services and the arts -- has developed a unique relationship with the Los Angeles Unified School District. The district provides transportation and security and has helped the school create a program for teaching English through art.
'This private-public partnership is a national model,' said Leticia Quezada, a past president of the Los Angeles Board of Education. 'The quality of the arts experience the children are receiving is phenomenal, 400 percent better than it would be in the school classroom. There's a sense of confidence in the arts experience those children are getting, and we want to see it extended to other schools.'
Thanks in part to programs like this, attitudes toward arts education have begun to change. Buoyed by a revived economy, California politicians have, like their national counterparts, put education on the front burner. And arts education has crept back onto the agenda in part because of lobbying from the entertainment industry. 'There's great demand for talented visual artists, but unfortunately we have to get people from outside California and the U.S.,' said Scott Ross, a co-founder, with the director James Cameron, of Digital Domain, a visual effects studio in Los Angeles.
Delaine Easton, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, has called for the restoration of arts education in California public schools. And last March the Los Angeles school district passed stringent arts graduation requirements for all Los Angeles public schools.
'The hard part now is the implementation,' said Don Dustin, the Los Angeles school district's director of visual and performing arts. 'We do not have the resources, the background, the personnel.' It is at this point that Inner-City Arts, only nine years ago a modest alternative, has moved center stage.
While Inner-City Arts may be a curricular model, it is less likely to be an architectural one. Because many public schools are struggling simply to keep roofs from leaking and bathrooms cleaned, concern for the surroundings as an educational asset is not a priority.
After the construction of Inner-City Arts, Mr. Maltzan designed a new arts complex, completed in March, at Harvard/Westlake School, a private, affluent junior-senior high school in North Hollywood. It is an equally forceful architectural composition of art rooms and art gallery. Perhaps most important, the buildings surround a much-used communal plaza. Enrollment in art classes has increased since the opening.
But even at Harvard-Westlake and Inner-City Arts, Mr. Maltzan initially faced resistance to lavishing effort on the architecture. At Inner-City Arts, he said, 'they were used to living off donated paper.' At Harvard-Westlake, the school deemed teachers and computers paramount and architecture as enclosure. 'In lay people's minds and the minds of most trustees,' said Thomas Hudnut, Harvard-Westlake's headmaster, 'architecture implies added expense. It's not until someone catches the contagion of creativity and inspiration of architecture that one appreciates what it can do.'
At present the challenge is to get art back into the schools. Perhaps architecture will follow.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; This Is Your Life (It's Also Their Art)
IN the more than 25 years they've been married, Steven and Judith O'Connor have moved 18 times. They have lived in a small nondescript apartment in Iran with a Turkish toilet and in a heavily shuttered home in Athens, shortly after the collapse of the military regime. Then there was the cedar-paneled house overlooking a sound in Bermuda, the tile-roofed hacienda in Phoenix and the Provencal-suburban manor in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
Finally, just a loud honk from the Holland Tunnel, they're putting down roots, in a loft building in TriBeCa. But for the first time, the couple say, they're in terra incognita, a landscape mapped by architects. Where once they traveled freely with little more than what they could stow under an airplane seat, now their roots are planted in blue Brazilian granite, laminated glass and blackened steel plate.
Rolling stones they may be, but they have brought plenty of moss to this new frontier of bold, sleek architecture: personal penates and mementos, gathered over years of wandering. In the absence of a permanent residence, it was their things -- Oaxacan clay figurines, Persian carpets, a whirlwind of blown glass by the artist Dale Chihuly -- that defined them. At last, they were ready for a space of their own, but they didn't want it to be a curio cabinet.
They were ready -- but not prepared -- when Adam Yarinsky and Stephen Cassell of the downtown firm Architecture Research Office, offered a vision. In Mr. Yarinsky's words, it was of a wide open space responding to 'the daily and seasonal cycles of the sun, where materials, not walls would create limits.'
For starters, the entrance isn't even a door. Instead, a massive 5-by-8-foot pivoting panel of steel, acid-washed and waxed to a blackened sheen, sweeps open to reveal at a glance 4,000 square feet of open floor surrounded on all sides by windows and punctuated by three operatic gestures: a glass-and-steel staircase, a towering wall of blue Bahia granite and a three-story atrium of translucent glass.
Was the marriage (and who would deny that costly commissions assume the significance of a marital bond?) of these color-loving, stuff-hoarding world travelers and these spare-leaning, Adolf Loos-talking Modernist architects a union made in heaven or a case study for 'Can This Marriage Be Saved?'
'I wanted a place that when I woke up in the morning and walked around, I'd see something different every time,' Mr. O'Connor said. 'I wanted a space that would get me thinking.' Their travels may be over, but they still hankered for wide horizons, even of the interior sort.
At first, Steven and Judith O'Connor would not appear to be likely clients for Type A architecture. He's a burly guy who wears plaid shirts to work and likes to shoot pool and watch hockey games with his 14-year-old son. Now 48, he started out as an alternative-school teacher but switched, midcareer, to the financial world and made enough money to be able to afford an apartment costing upward of $4 million.
His wife, who trained as a graphic designer, has a craftsman's love of the handmade and a pack rat's tendency to accumulate. She abhors e-mail, and in the morning can be found dressed in voluminous print skirts and sensible rubber shoes, sitting at the kitchen counter writing letters in longhand. She is the first to admit that her aesthetic and that of her architects are somewhat at odds.
'Maybe it's from years of being in Iran, where the mosques and the bazaars dazzle you with so much visual texture and intricate patterning, but I like lots of color and a bit of a clutter,' said Ms. O'Connor, 47.  'I'm not bothered by stuff, and I know how that drives architects crazy.'
Mr. Yarinsky and Mr. Cassell wouldn't disagree, but they are professionals. 'Some clients want everything dictated to them,' Mr. Yarinsky said, diplomatically. 'We appreciate whichever way people choose to live.'
The Manhattan architects met while apprentice designers in the office of Steven Holl and set up their own firm five years ago. Their diverse clients range from Biotherm, the cosmetics company, to the Pentagon, for which they built the recruiting station that reopened this fall in Times Square, to the Cooper-Hewitt museum (they designed the 1997 Henry Dreyfuss exhibition). Mr. Cassell, 36, and Mr. Yarinsky, 37, have already established themselves as the kind of young architects -- brainy and modern but not afraid of their inner sensualists -- that everyone wants on the short list for new projects.
Color was a sticking point. The homeowners wanted more; the architects said that less was more. Ms. O'Connor stayed her ground. She recalls: 'I kept telling Adam: 'This is too bland, this is too blank. I know what you're going for, but I need more interest when I look at something.' '
Of the Brazilian blue wall with its bold black veins, the yellow silk curtain wall in the bedroom, the red-and-silver screening room, the grass-green rug (not yet installed), and the cobalt, turquoise and gold glass bathroom tiles, Mr. Yarinsky said only: 'It's true. I'm more of a minimalist than they are.'
The couple came to the project  with their eyes wide open. 'We knew in going in to build a modern apartment that they're complicated, they're difficult and they require different kinds of space,' Mr. O'Connor said. 'And this particular house has a striking architectural feel. Glass, steel, marble -- those are pretty cold materials if you come to think of it. That made Judy more nervous than me. That was the single biggest issue -- to design a place not to look and feel like a museum.'
Ms. O'Connor still chafes in recalling the story of the delivery man who stepped off the elevator and exclaimed: 'Wow, some gallery! Is it yours?' And there's no denying that the main space does have the commanding scale and hard surfaces of a public venue -- that is, until you notice the little bowls of peanut butter candy, the pool table and the snow dome on the window sill. No corporate office or gallery has so sunny a disposition both in its design and in its furnishings.
Knowing that travel to the sun-drenched climes of Iran, Greece and even the Southwest had made their clients lovers of natural light, the architects laid the oak floor in diagonal segments -- call it marquetry moderne -- that track the path of the sun through the apartment from dawn till dusk. (Their cat does its part as a kind of ambulatory sundial as it picks its spot for naps.)
They placed the couple's bedroom to the east, where its interior walls are the translucent glass of the atrium light well. (As a result, the bedroom is so bright that Ms. O'Connor has trouble sleeping in on weekends, even with silk curtains.)
The kitchen, hidden behind the oh-so-Miesian blue wall, has become the couple's favorite place to sit, take their meals and enjoy the view of their home. Out in the middle of the space, a dining table for one of their previous residences made by Terence Main, a New York artist, is more sculptural than practical. 'The chairs remind me of something out of 'Beetlejuice,' ' Ms. O'Connor said of the bronze-ribbed seats that each weigh at least 50 pounds. 'They're more comfortable than you'd think, but they aren't exactly for lounging.'
The late afternoon sun settles in the far corner of the loft, in the area designated as the library. The corner is paneled in mahoghany-toned bubinga wood, but the cabinetry holds a 30-inch television set, not books.
It took a pool table to stir up some action. 'These modern houses can be static,' Mr. O'Connor said. 'You can admire a blue wall -- you can't interact with it.' The pool table invites people in to play. 'People can't just stand by and look at it,' he added.
He also pointed out a whimsical chandelier by the German designer Ingo Maurer, made of note paper skewered on long wires, some scribbled with notes and some blank. The couple have filled in a few with poems by Yeats and E. E. Cummings.
The glass-and-steel stairway plays a double role, as sculpture and passage to the roof. The architects decided to make it a real prima donna. Steel and wood treads appear to float down from the sky, steadied, almost invisibly, by clear sheets of thick glass, a feat of engineering (worked out by Guy Nordenson) so unusual that it was featured in trade magazines even before it was finished.
Ms. O'Connor wasn't impressed -- not, that is, until the handrail, an eel-like swerve of bead-blasted stainless steel, was put in. 'At first, it was too angular and linear for me,' she said. 'The railing made all the difference. It's softer now, more human.'
The spirited, even sportsmanlike, tug of war between clients and architects seems to have been relished by both parties, without converting either. A few weeks after the owners moved in, an employee from the architects' office surveyed the space -- from the tweaked-up modern 'Chinese ancestor portraits' by Larry Yung to the upright Victorian music box to the papier-mache dog's head -- and uttered a sentiment heard frequently by anyone who has ever conversed with architects: 'It was so beautiful when it was empty.'
Correction:  November 5, 1999, Friday  An article in House & Home yesterday about an architect-designed loft in TriBeCa misstated the surname of the couple who own it. Their given names are Steven and Judith; for privacy, they required that their surname be withheld. (O'Connor is the woman's maiden name.)",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"The Stones Speak With Sensitivity in Montauk
IMAGINE a house in the Hamptons that doesn't scream for attention. Or one that isn't a genetically engineered version of the grandes dames still holding forth on beach and pond front.
Modesty and appropriateness are not A-list qualities on that long finger extending into the Atlantic. Yet, in Montauk, where nothing upstages the pounding surf and rolling dunes, a new house manages to be the strong and silent type, with just enough attitude to be exciting. It was designed by Scott Phillips and Peggy Deamer, New York architects with a growing reputation for homes that are sensitive to the landscape and have low-key panache, along with elegant built-in cabinetwork to impress even the Shakers.
The clients, a Manhattan couple who are so self-effacing they wouldn't be named, didn't want the old cliches anyway. No wideplanked verandas, no screened porches and painted shutters, no shingled eyebrow windows blinking at sunrises. He grew up on the coast of Spain in Basque country where, he said, 'the buildings on the ocean have to be substantial.' She summered in the Hamptons in an architect-designed modern house. They told Deamer & Phillips to find their inspiration in the former and, please, to avoid the latter. 'I'm a little tired of those modern statements. It works in a museum, like Bilbao, but it's hard on a home that you're supposed to live in,' he said.
Stretching to accommodate a more European-influenced approach, the architects suggested a massive stone wall as the element that would quietly but distinctively set the 3,200-square-foot house apart. One face evokes the farmhouses of the Basque and establishes a fortress-like wall against the battering winds on the north. It is stern but romantic, and the tiny windows minimize disappointing views of the surrounding 50's-era ranches as they gradually give way to mega-haciendas. But the architects did not want to build -- and the clients couldn't afford -- a house literally made of stone.
Instead, it became a house of layers and shifting moods.
The basic mass is a shingled box with a pitched standing-seam copper roof (after one the clients had seen and liked at the Duck Walk Vineyards on Route 27). The wall, made of dry-stacked quartzite, runs along only the north and west and is pulled out from the body of the house almost like a shell from a mollusk, with a strip of skylight acting like connecting tissue. 'We wanted something to link the house to the landscape and to wrap the house without necessarily being of the house,' Ms. Deamer said. The wall cost about $100,000 in an overall project of about $1 million.
On the oceanfront or south-facing side of the house, a flat wall of continuous glass doors and windows is bumped out and slightly skewed at one end to give the dining area on the lower floor and a bedroom balcony above the more advantageous views along the bluff. On this side of the house, the feeling is of an informal getaway.
Pass the lemonade. The lawn chairs sit on the grass just a few feet from the path down the dunes to the beach. An outdoor shower stands in the middle of the lawn.
But people are more likely to seek refuge from the wind whipping through the pages of their summer reads by gathering at the 40-foot cerulean blue pool, whose water laps right up to the stone wall. It was a lucky compromise that led to this elegant moat. Ms. Deamer and Mr. Phillips had thought to locate the pool on an adjoining lot, while the clients saw it going down on the beach below the bluff. They received approval to build there shortly before a new zoning law would have prohibited it. Then, even as the bulldozers were gunning their motors to rip through the sands, the owners had second thoughts, asking their architects to figure out how to fit the pool between the front of the house and a small garage-guesthouse along the road. 'We were dismayed -- the ongoing assumption was that it was going down the bluff,' Ms. Deamer said, noting that the homeowners flattered them by saying they were so ingenious they could  'make something good out of a bad situation.'
Clients and architects alike agreed that the pool must not look suburban, but rather grotto-like, Ms. Deamer said. So the pool was pushed right up against the house. Vertical channels were cut out of the rock face to collect rain water. (Little spouts in the grooves can be turned on for instant waterfalls.) The landscape, made in collaboration with the designer Margie Ruddick, combines the European with the native: cyprus hedge, shad and olive trees. If it isn't Tivoli's Villa d'Este, it certainly transcends suburbia.
The interior is modern without being stark. The clients decided against metal detailing except in the kitchen, where the walls are sheathed in stainless steel.
The plan is open, in typical contemporary home fashion. 'It's always important to be able to circulate in a light-filled space rather than be subjected to a rear corridor at the back of the house,' Mr. Phillips said. Basic living spaces are on the ground floor, and there are three bedrooms on the second.
Weekend-ready white canvas furnishings are coupled with Deamer & Phillips's signature built-in pale maple cabinetwork -- demure ornament that works. Here and there, the clients used bolder detail to reiterate the feeling of a rustic Spanish farmhouse. A pair of heavily carved shutters serve as doors on a cabinet for Champagne glasses.  A medieval wooden door, complete with iron studs and hinges, was imported from Switzerland. 'I forced it on them,' one of the clients said of the architects. 'It was against their grain.' But, he added that  'they accepted it.'
The contrast to the simple maple cabinetwork throughout the interior is notable, but the heavy doors on the threshold also capture the overall achievement of the house and its mastery at combining creatively the modest with the moody.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Capt. Koolhaas Sails the New Prada Flagship
IF this keeps up, people are going to expect a new Rem Koolhaas building every couple of weeks.
After years in which this supremely influential Dutch architect labored to get anything more than a few interior commissions finished in the United States -- and lost several high-profile projects including a planned expansion of the Whitney Museum in New York -- he has now completed three buildings in this country in the last nine months alone.
At the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, a student center -- a cheeky, colorful building with a commuter train tunnel embedded in its roof -- opened last fall, followed in May by a huge gemlike public library in downtown Seattle.
The latest stateside design from Mr. Koolhaas and his Rotterdam-based firm, Office for Metropolitan Architecture, is a Prada flagship store that opens here Friday on Rodeo Drive. (Prada and Mr. Koolhaas prefer to call it an epicenter, joining other large stores like it in New York and Tokyo, and one in San Francisco that may never be built.) The building, whose budget has not been released, covers 24,000 square feet on three levels, on a lot squeezed between Gucci and Brioni, just down the palm-lined street from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.
It is a piece of architecture whose most dramatic gesture is invisible: the building is completely lacking a storefront in the traditional sense. Before the store opens each morning, a gigantic garagelike aluminum door will retract into the basement, leaving no barrier -- no windows, no columns, no doors -- between the $400 sandals and the sidewalk.
The threshold is protected from Los Angeles's rare spells of bad weather by an air-curtain system that responds to outside temperature and wind speed, and by the second story, which features an aluminum-covered box, 45 feet long by 12 feet high, that is cantilevered over the entrance.
'We wanted to use this absence of facade to let the public enter absolutely freely, to create a hybrid condition between public and commercial space,' Mr. Koolhaas said.
That is hardly an inconsequential gesture on a street where some retailers position conspicuously armed guards near the front door. At Prada, security sensors are hidden in the floor at the entrance, but keeping shoplifters from exiting absolutely freely will offer more than the usual challenge.
There is also nowhere to affix the all-important logo. Prada is betting that the nonfacade facade will be highly conspicuous in its absence, suggesting the company's supreme brand confidence. It is a calculated, even arrogant kind of nothingness, the architectural equivalent, Prada hopes, of a woman beautiful enough to risk showing up at a gala without a bit of makeup.
'That is what makes Prada unusual as a client,' Mr. Koolhaas said. 'They are willing to experiment with their identity rather than insisting on overdetermining it.'
The firm explored a similar public-private mixture in its Manhattan flagship for Prada, which occupies a prominent corner in SoHo (formerly occupied by a branch of the Guggenheim Museum) and includes a stage for public performance.
The idea, Mr. Koolhaas said, was to shake up Prada's reputation as one of the most exclusive brands in fashion by stressing an openness, even what he calls an 'easy' and 'welcoming' quality.
Whether the willowy, perfectly turned out Beverly Hills clerks will greet browsers wearing T-shirts and Dockers in a way that can be described as welcoming, of course, remains to be seen. But it does seem at least plausible that the grand humpbacked stair that rises from the entrance and descends at the rear of the store will become an occasional hangout for Rodeo Drive regulars, as the New York store's own dramatic stair has for SoHo shoppers.
'A lot of high-end retail spaces are done in a minimalist style that only looks good if nobody's in there and nobody's touched anything,' said Ole Scheeren, a 33-year-old partner in Mr. Koolhaas's firm who helped lead the Beverly Hills design team. 'We wanted to create a space that was exclusive but also more informal, where you could sit on the stairs and try on shoes if you want but also just talk to your friends.'
The store opens at a time when speculation about the rise and fall of Mr. Koolhaas's fortunes is as intense as ever. Even as ecstatic reviews of the Seattle library continue to pour in, rumors are swirling that his largest commission to date, a $730 million, 5-million-square-foot headquarters for Chinese state television in Beijing, is in danger of being canceled. Losing that project would be a huge blow to the firm, which has bet heavily on China as a future home for cutting-edge architecture.
Mr. Koolhaas was adamant this week that talk of trouble in Beijing was unfounded. 'These rumors are longstanding,' he said. 'But we meet with the client on a monthly basis, and they are absolutely convinced that the project will be built.'
Nevertheless, the uncertainty surrounding the firm's prospects in China is taking some zip out of the Rodeo Drive unveiling. It is not the first time that Prada's projects with Mr. Koolhaas have been thrown into shadow by events beyond the company's --or the firm's -- control. The Prada store in Manhattan opened just weeks after Sept. 11, when its bold high-design theatrics struck many New Yorkers as less than appropriate. In the wake of the terror attacks, Prada was one of many global companies to stumble financially, and it was forced to put the 10-story San Francisco store on ice.
Meanwhile, the one epicenter that Mr. Koolhaas did not design, in Tokyo, has been an unqualified architectural success. Although this building, like the others, has its roots in Mr. Koolhaas's consulting work for Prada, its design was ultimately handed over to the Swiss firm Herzog & de Meuron, which maintains a friendly rivalry with Mr. Koolhaas's office. The firm produced a glowing, crystalline structure six stories high that many critics said they preferred to the SoHo Prada store. That praise did not go unnoticed in Mr. Koolhaas's offices.
'Tokyo definitely upped the ante,' said Eric Chang, 34, an architect based in Mr. Koolhaas's New York office.
The firm has responded by producing a store here that tries to outdo the one in Tokyo not with jaw-dropping form but with an accumulation of precise if expensive details, along with a deployment of Mr. Koolhaas's always-inventive attempts to carve out visual connections between various levels of a building.
Several elements are borrowed from the SoHo store, including the central stair; the glass panels that can go from transparent to opaque at the flick of a switch; digital displays that hang from the racks like plasma-screen dresses; and fitting rooms with special mirrors that allow shoppers to see themselves from the front and the back at the same time.
In an alcove underneath the inverted V of the stairway, the architects have created a Prada time capsule of sorts. The room includes copies of the checkerboard marble floor and antique wood-and-glass display cases that filled the very first Prada store in Milan, which opened in 1913.
There is also an emphasis throughout the building on an ever-shifting palette of materials, including Sponge, a coral-like substance of Mr. Koolhaas's invention that lines the walls of the second floor. It is the only prominent material in the store that uses the shade of green that can be found in all of Prada's smaller stores.
While the second floor is essentially a darkened box, the top story is flooded with natural light from tall windows and a roof with panes of blue-tinted glass between long-span galvanized tube steel beams. Mr. Koolhaas has included a V.I.P. space at the rear of the floor that is connected directly by elevator to the parking lot at the back of the building. It is a very Los Angeles touch, allowing near-immediate access from air-conditioned car to air-conditioned fitting room.
The stars who choose to arrive this way, however, will miss the front entrance, and the dramatic open-air facade. Maybe, once all their purchases are stacked in the trunk, their drivers will pull around to the front so that they can have a look.
Design Notebook",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Metal as Warm As Brandy
'WINTER looms large in the Canadian imagination,' said Brigitte Shim, an architect whose buildings, with their layering of warm materials and graceful blending with the landscape, are helping to put this city on the design map.
For Ms. Shim, 41, and her husband and partner, Howard Sutcliffe, 42, the challenge is to design homes that do more than hibernate behind brown lawns and covered pools during the long snowbound months; they try to help clients experience winter as more than a void where nothing happens. 'It's seen as a dormant season,' Ms. Shim said, 'but it's very rich.'
For David Fleck, an executive at a Toronto investment firm, and his wife, Yvonne Domerchie-Fleck, Ms. Shim and Mr. Sutcliffe designed a home for all seasons with a palette of golden Douglas fir panels, a gurgling lily pond and, improbable as it may sound, a steel facade that has weathered to an inviting leathery patina.
'I find the house comforting, a very warm spiritual kind of environment to be in,' Mr. Fleck said. 'When you wake up, you know immediately what kind of day it is. You see the sky and the clouds and the birds circling over the valley -- but you're still in the city.'
When summer finally arrives here, the family gravitates to a large poolside deck adjoining the kitchen. They slide open the big glass doors around the pond, allowing butterflies and ladybugs to slip inside. They swim along the lap pool toward the skyline barely visible through the birch grove.
Koi thrive and tropical water hyacinths bloom all summer in the warm pond. 'The kids like to sit with their ice cream cones and dangle their feet over the ledge,' said Ms. Domerchie-Fleck, who floats candles on the water lilies. 'Every night before dinner, they go outside and feed the fish, so they feel more a part of nature.'
The Flecks' home is in North York, an outlying neighborhood bordering one of the wooded ravines along the eastern edge of the city. In 1998, the Flecks hired Ms. Shim and Mr. Sutcliffe, whose firm, Shim-Sutcliffe Architects, is known for thoroughly modern spaces assembled with sensuous materials. The couple draw inspiration from Alvar Aalto, the midcentury Italian architect Carlos Scarpa and traditional Japanese construction, among other sources.
'Brigitte represents a stream of thinking that unfortunately is not respected by many architects: that is, how things get built, the role of materials, and a direct relationship between construction and space-making,' said Robert A. M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, where Ms. Shim was a visiting professor last fall.
Ms. Shim and Mr. Sutcliffe met while studying architecture at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. They opened their firm in a former garage in downtown Toronto five years ago. Low-key and gregarious, they are among the leaders of a rising young Toronto design community that includes the designer Bruce Mau and the interior design firm Yabu Pushelberg.
'Brigitte and Howard have set the standard in Toronto's design community,' Mr. Mau said. 'They are intellectual without being distant or hermetic.'
Mr. Fleck and Ms. Domerchie-Fleck selected Shim-Sutcliffe after visiting local projects, including Ledbury Park, completed in 1998, which features a 300-foot-long reflecting pool that converts to an ice-skating rink in winter. The pool is spanned by a weathered steel footbridge and is sheltered by an allée of linden trees. The Flecks also toured the architects' own home in the city's unassuming East End, a modest but sophisticated structure with a small walled-in water garden. 'We thought they would create something clearly modern but with a soft edge, not cold,' Mr. Fleck said. 'We also had a good feeling about them -- a personality fit.' The couples have children roughly the same age.
The Flecks initially imagined that their home would have a natural stone exterior; Ms. Shim and Mr. Sutcliffe persuaded them to use Corten steel, which weathers to a rusty brownish-red. By Mr. Fleck's own admission, the prospect of a steel house made him 'a little nervous.'
'They had to sell us on it,' he said, 'because we only had railroad bridges and Richard Serra sculptures to look at for comparison.'
The couple admit they worried when the blue-gray steel skin began to rust while the house was under construction in late 2000. 'We really had to trust the architects at this stage,' Ms. Domerchie-Fleck said. 'But once it reached its soft nubuck-chocolate texture, we were delighted.'
Still, the steel wrapper raised a few eyebrows in the neighborhood. 'People asked, 'When are you going to paint the house?' ' Ms. Domerchie-Fleck said. 'One guy called it a rust bucket. Some thought we were building a bulletproof house.'
But when the plywood construction fence came down, neighbors found that the thoughtful alignment of windows made the house almost transparent: from the sidewalk, they could peer through the house to the wooded ravine beyond. And rather than creating a big chill, the rusty steel wrapper warmed up the exterior when the trees were bare and the lawn turned brown. One neighbor even asked Ms. Domerchie-Fleck what kind of wood was used on the exterior.
Just inside the front door is a hallway that functions as an elegant mudroom. Slushy boots are removed on a wooden bench built into a wall of vertically grained Douglas fir cabinets used to store overcoats. The living and dining rooms, with rich mahogany floors and tawny Douglas fir ceilings, lie a few steps up from the entry hall; the kitchen and family room are a few steps down beyond the dining room. The master suite, children's rooms and a guest room are upstairs. 'The house has so many different experiences, but you never feel isolated or disconnected,' Mr. Fleck said. 'We're like a bunch of bears going into a den, but we still get to see outside.'
You might expect a crackling hearth to be the focal point of any Canadian household, but in this case, it's the lily pond, which occupies an outdoor niche between the living and dining rooms. The living room's mahogany-framed glass doors wrap around the water, so the family lives in intimate contact with it. The pond cascades into a second pool. Beyond them, the lap pool, spanned by a small wooden bridge, points the way toward a grove of newly planted river birches and the landmark CN Tower in the distance.
In winter, water flows through the Flecks' pond, and vapor billows off the lap pool. A thermostat keeps the water just warm enough to prevent freezing. 'When there's snow around the pool, it's spectacular,' Ms. Shim said. (A motorized retractable pool cover is used primarily for safety, and to keep out autumn leaves.)
The tall clover lawn specified by Ms. Shim in collaboration with the landscape architect Neil Turnbull becomes 'insanely green' in the summer, Ms. Shim said. The owners clip it just four times a year, and it requires no herbicides or pesticides. It's so thick that footprints take an hour to vanish.
Winter and summer, sunlight casts dappled reflections from the pond onto the living and dining room ceilings. The huge sliding glass doors bring the outdoors in. Rainwater drains from the roof through a large steel scupper, past two tall windows and into the pond. 'You're always aware of the weather and the water,' Ms. Shim said. 'That kind of impact on day-to-day life is powerful.'
Even the synthetic Corten exterior charts the passing of seasons as it mellows over time to an almost purple-brown. 'The steel has just recently begun to get a soft streaking, which makes it even more organic,' Ms. Domerchie-Fleck said. Because she and her family can see parts of the exterior from inside the building, they are attuned to the steel's weathering process. 'We feel like we have watched the house grow up,' she said.
Architectural Stops For Toronto Visitors
FOR Brigitte Shim of Shim-Sutcliffe, Toronto is a garden of architectural delights. Her recommendations for design-minded visitors include the Mies van der Rohe towers and banking pavilion (King Street at Bay Street), clad in verdigris marble. 'It's like Mies in Technicolor,' Ms. Shim said. Another must-see is the City Hall, by the Finnish architect Viljo Revell, completed in 1965 (100 Queen Street West; 416-338-0338). Nathan Phillips Square, adjoining it, with a farmers' market and ice-skating rink, is 'a very Canadian public space,' she said. She browses at the Design Exchange galleries (234 Bay Street; 416-216-2140) and Ballenford Books on Architecture (600 Markham Street; 416-588-0800). David Mirvish Books/Books on Art (596 Markham Street; 416-531-9975) has a Frank Stella mural. The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (231 Queens Quay West; 416-973-4949) has a show of the designer Bruce Mau through May 26. And the private Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation (778 King Street West; 416-413-9400; Saturday afternoons or by appointment) has shows that Ms. Shim called impeccable.
RAUL A. BARRENECHE
DESIGN NOTEBOOK  Correction:  May 23, 2002, Thursday  An article last Thursday about a house in Toronto designed by Brigitte Shim and Howard Sutcliffe misstated the given name of an Italian architect who influenced their work. He was Carlo Scarpa, not Carlos.
The article also misstated the year that Ledbury Park, another Shim-Sutcliffe project in Toronto, was completed. It was 1997, not 1998.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"The Hum Heard Across America
AS Memorial Day looms, few pronouncements strike more terror in the heart than those inevitable words, 'Hazy, hot and humid.'
For 73 percent of American homes, the most convenient, though perhaps not universally loved remedy for summer oppression is the air-conditioner. Without it, we would not have (choose one): Disney World, Las Vegas, the Houston Astrodome or 'The Phantom Menace,' the ritual of the summer blockbuster being a direct byproduct of air-conditioning.
To Donald Albrecht and Chrysanthe Broikos, curators of 'Stay Cool! Air-Conditioning America,' the new exhibition at the National Building Museum, little has been more influential in 20th-century building than that relentless whir. America's perpetual summer embrace of man-made weather was perhaps best expressed by Marilyn Monroe in the 1955 movie 'The Seven Year Itch,' where she is lured to a neighbor's air-conditioned apartment in 95-degree heat, rapturously kicks off her shoes and coos, 'Ooooo . . . this is really the most.'
And so Americans largely have seen it. Yet, the nearly universal adoption of this 'defining technology of modern times,' in Mr. Albrecht's words, has not been without its costs, some of them profound. The exhibition, financed by the industry and on view through Jan. 2,  celebrates and scrutinizes, perhaps too gently, the air-conditioner's social, even political impact. Visit during Washington's notorious summer, if you dare, and contemplate Gore Vidal's 1982 observation that before air-conditioning, the capital was deserted from mid-June to September, but now, 'Congress sits and sits while the Presidents -- or at least their staffs -- never stop making mischief.'
As Mr. Albrecht noted the other day (a mild one), there is something quintessentially American about the notion of controlling weather. Air-conditioning has deeply affected our relationship to nature and the design of offices and homes, hastening the demise of attics, overhanging eaves and porches. It promised nothing less than wall-to-wall perfection, a temperate climate anywhere. 'Make every day a good day,' the manufacturers of flowing air beckoned. 'You can bring spring indoors to stay.'
The exhibition, cleverly designed around a series of duct-work towers by the design firm Pentagram, starts with air-conditioning's grip on industry. Before it, when temperature and humidity fluctuated, cotton threads broke, cigarette machines jammed, bread grew moldy, film attracted dust, pasta lost its shape, and chocolate turned gray. All this changed,  thanks to Willis Carrier and other pioneers.
But most of all, the air-conditioner made the movies, and vice versa. Until its arrival in the 1920's, the movie industry suffered summer doldrums. Only the hardiest souls ventured inside sweltering nickelodeons, which were widely viewed as a public health risk. Air-conditioning gave rise to the atmospheric picture palace, theaters like the Fox in Atlanta, which were designed to simulate courtyards, with sunrises and sunsets projected on the ceiling. Even more galvanizing to the movie business was the ritual of the summer release. Suddenly, pictures could be profitably shown 12 months a year. Ticket booths sprouted ersatz icebergs and icicles. The ultimate summer come-on was '20 Degrees Cooler Inside.'
In 1929, the first residential air-conditioner, made by Frigidaire, came on the scene, a clunker weighing 200 pounds and measuring 28 by 18 by 49 inches. Like much in American life, the air-conditioner made its debut in the mansions of people like Andrew Carnegie and the public provinces of the elite, including the New York Stock Exchange, before filtering down to the masses.
Convincing the great uncooled to air-condition their homes was no small task, however, in part because it meant persuading women to put a noisy ungainly machine in the living room. Some manufacturers, like the Trane Company, used television commercials to create guilt, by urging husbands to 'stop boiling' their wives.
By the 1950's, the post-World War II building boom, especially the suburban tract house, made the popular embrace of air-conditioning a fait accompli, as Gail Cooper, the exhibition's consulting historian, writes in her book, 'Air-Conditioning America: Engineers and the Controlled Environment, 1900-60' (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). It documents more fully and darkly than the museum's exhibition the convergence of business, architectural and banking interests that 'reconceptualized from a luxury to a necessity' the status of the air-conditioner and led The New York Times to write in 1955 that it 'has replaced the television and the washing machine as the most wanted item by homeowners.'
Consider these responses to air-conditioning in 1950's and 60's consumer surveys: 'We've sold our summer house -- we're so comfortable we stay home all summer.' And: 'It's much easier to be nice when you're cooler. Our friends seem more jovial.'
But the new postwar houses required air-conditioning to make them comfortable. Their sought-after modern features, like low roofs, sliding glass doors and picture windows, 'looked appealing, cost little and turned in a very poor environmental performance,' Ms. Cooper writes in her book,' adding, 'Windows were useful for letting in light but no longer needed to open.'
Better Homes and Gardens told readers in 1949: 'in houses planned for air-conditioning, you can omit basement, screens and movable sash to offset the extra cost of the equipment.' The disappearance of thick walls, overhanging eaves, porches and other traditional cooling strategies was compounded by house lots cleared of greenery, all of which made the house hotter. The solution was air-conditioning. Architectural Forum observed, 'These new industries, with their devices and materials, offer ambrosial hopes for bright, new, indoor tomorrows.'
That bright indoor tomorrow was strikingly symbolized by the glass-walled skyscrapers of the 50's, most notably New York's Lever House and United Nations Secretariat building. Though the epitome of urban sophistication, they were sealed glass boxes dependent on air-conditioning. The result, as seen in office parks across America, was the modern tower with frozen windows.
'Too often air-conditioning has been used to make thousands of bad buildings palatable,' said Dr. James Marston Fitch, author of the 'American Building: The Environmental Forces That Shape It' (reissued by Oxford University Press, $40). Dr. Fitch noted that heat-related deaths, long a feature of summer life in poor neighborhoods, particularly tenements, could be mitigated by air-conditioning. But he added, 'The idea of a 24-story cube protected by a sheet of glass against all the elements of the North American climate is ludicrous.'
In recent years, there have been strong signs of a backlash against canned air. Home designs by the so-called New Urbanists in places like Seaside and Celebration, Fla., recall life before air-conditioning, when summertime social life revolved around front porches, breezes and sidewalk lemonade stands. The difference, Mr. Albrecht said, is that today 'the porch is being brought back as a symbol rather than a functional necessity.'
A deep yearning for fresh air and the open window is even beginning to affect office design. At the new 'green' Gap headquarters, designed by William McDonough in San Bruno Calif., for instance, employees control the air-conditioning and ventilation of their individual cubicles. A new skyscraper in Penang, Malaysia, combines air-conditioning and natural ventilation, including balconies. 'The top complaints among employees are 'I'm too hot' and 'I'm too cold,' ' said Bill Browning, founder of green development for the Rocky Mountain Institute. He is helping companies rethink ventilation, spurred in part by energy saving and indoor air quality. 'We've learned how to allow people some degree of control over temperature and air flow in their work space, with about half the energy consumption of conventional office buildings,' he said.
Though Mr. Carrier didn't intend it, a certain amount of ambivalence may have been built into air-conditioning. In New York, there is nothing quite like summertime in the subway, when passengers squeeze sweatily into the frigid cars and leave the tropical ones empty. There is also nothing quite like feeling cold raindrops dribbling down the back of your neck on a summer day in midtown, then looking up at the sky, mysteriously blue, and realizing it's air-conditioning.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"America's Design Legacy . . . . . . Going, Going, Going
IN London, Washington and, most recently, New York, attendance at the traveling exhibition on Charles and Ray Eames, the postwar design mavericks, broke museum records. But people filing by to marvel at their plywood molding experiments -- prototypes that didn't cut it and (eureka!) ones that did -- were unaware that nearly every major American institution had passed up the chance to buy the Eameses' legacy of furniture invention.
The Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art were among those that turned it down, leaving the Eames family facing huge inheritance taxes, the threat of eviction from their offices and the prospect of selling off the products piecemeal to resale stores.
'Cherry-picking would have paid a lot more to the family,' said Eames Demetrios, the designers' grandson. In 1988, the Vitra Design Museum in Germany came to the rescue, acquiring 400 Eames objects. It has gobbled up the estates of the American designers George Nelson, Harry Bertoia and Alexander Girard, as well.
The preservation movement that routinely takes up arms to protect buildings of established cultural significance has yet to take an active role in saving America's modern design legacy. While any museumgoer can inspect the preliminary studies of great painters, Donald Albrecht, a guest curator at the National Building Museum in Washington and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York, is one of many experts who fear that the lack of interest in the design process, from objects to blueprints, will mean a loss of 'intellectual underpinnings, and the context that explain how our world is put together,' as well as inspiration for future generations. 'It's very shortsighted of American institutions not to be going after the great designers,' he said.
When Raymond Loewy, the industrial designer who stamped his streamlined vision on such familiar objects as Greyhound buses and Lucky Strike packages, died in 1986, his widow auctioned his best concept drawings in Europe, where they disappeared from view. The widow of Minoru Yamasaki, the architect of the World Trade Center, destroyed her husband's papers and drawings when no institute expressed interest in taking them.
'How do these things slip away?' asked David A. Hanks, a museum adviser in New York. 'It's an ongoing tragedy, because the public doesn't realize the importance of archives.'
Architects of the predigital generation like Frank O. Gehry, Richard Meier, Michael Graves and Robert A. M. Stern are filling storerooms to the I-beams with their prototypes and correspondence but say they have yet to find serious takers for the accumulations of their lifeworks. 'It's a big problem,' said Terence Riley, the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. 'The approach in America is all too often helter-skelter. There ought to be a big national archive of American design.'
The de facto attics for American design have been university libraries, private European museums, corporate collections, foundations, government institutions and the Library of Congress, to which Charles and Ray Eames donated their papers, drawings and photographic images. But these institutions collect scattershot only those donations they can afford to preserve and maintain, squirreling them away for persistent scholars but rarely exhibiting them for public enrichment. It took the Library of Congress about 10 years to pull together the Eames exhibition, with the help of Vitra, I.B.M., the Herman Miller furniture company and the Eames family. (It opens Saturday at the St. Louis Art Museum.)
The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles did not express interest in buying the architectural outpourings of Richard Meier, even though he designed the Getty Museum. The institute prefers to collect single projects.
'Archives since the postwar period have grown incredibly in size,' said Wim de Wit, the head of special collections at the Getty Research Institute. 'The number of drawings are gigantic. You'd need warehouses for them.'
In contrast, well-financed European institutions are methodically and aggressively pursuing the creative overflow of significant living architects and designers, among them the Netherlands Architecture Institute; the Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain, a state-financed archive of art and architecture outside Paris; and the Royal Institute of British Architects. More recently, the Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal scooped up the archive of Peter Eisenman and the works of a handful of other American architects as part of its program to focus exclusively on projects and people 'who make new proposals to the international current of ideas,' said Nicholas Olsberg, chief curator at the center.
Archives tell the story of the invention process and the evolution of new ideas, said Stephen VanDyk, who presides over the archives of Henry Dreyfuss and Donald Deskey, which were donated to the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. 'You can see their thinking,' he said. Dreyfuss, for example, designed the 20th Century Limited and innovative household appliances. 'You can look at drawings showing how he made a round thermostat' by analyzing rectangular ones already in use and watching how people handled them, Mr. VanDyk said.
'You can see the inventor in him at work,' he said.
Last month, the John Lautner Foundation was established with an annual budget of just $13,000, gleaned from private donors and copyright fees. Its goal is to assure that awareness of Lautner, the iconoclast who designed the Chemosphere House and other Los Angeles architectural landmarks, will be kept alive through exhibitions, publications and educational events. (Both the Getty Research Institute and U.C.L.A. made offers that the foundation found all too easy to refuse.) 'Our ultimate goal is to move into a building designed by Lautner, like the Corbusier Foundation,' said Frank Escher, the archive administrator.
Some living architects are more interested in getting top dollar for their work than wide exposure. Frank O. Gehry thinks he is sitting on a golden egg. 'If it's worth something it would be nice to get something for it before I die,' said the 70-year-old architect, who has meticulously saved just about everything he's ever produced, from cardboard chair prototypes to silver-paper models of the Guggenheim Museum at Bilbao, Spain. He said that work pertaining to an unbuilt house in Ohio for the patron Peter B. Lewis fills 200,000 square feet of storage space.
Mr. Gehry says he does not know what will happen to his archive. But Mr. Olsberg of the Canadian Center for Architecture said: 'I know Frank sees it as multiple millions, and it will be. It ought to be.' Even so, Mr. Olsberg, whose center asked to buy only the Lewis house documents, added: 'There are a hundred major architects out there, and their archives are worth one to three million dollars each. They all aren't going to find buyers.'
THE architect Michael Graves has not been approached by the institutions that are known for going after archives. 'The usual suspects don't go after me,' said Mr. Graves, whose Tuscan watercolors at the Max Protetch Gallery in 1979 set off the craze for collecting architectural renderings. 'My 15 minutes are over. I'm a dinosaur.'
His archive is now 'in a warehouse somewhere out on Route 1' in New Jersey, said Mr. Graves, who hopes to make his own home an archive open to the public, and might possibly donate it to Princeton University.
The Getty Research Institute would be pleased if Richard Meier donated his materials related to the Getty building that he designed. But Mr. Meier said, 'I would like my things to go to an institute that would keep them all together and make them accessible, and not just be a repository.'
If the value of a design archive is its ability to convey to a future generation an appreciation for the past -- its design history, social commentary and labors of love -- then it is perhaps odd that no institution has pursued the archives of Robert A. M. Stern, the architect who so acutely represents the nostalgic yearnings of certain well-to-do Americans.
As a result, he plans to give them away. 'One day some university will see a truck pulling up with all my papers inside,' said Mr. Stern, who is dean of the architecture school at Yale University.
Ultimately, the question of who is going to get what may be moot. If the next generation of designers relies on a computer mouse more than a pencil, its archives will all be stored digitally, by the gigabyte. And cocktail-napkin doodles will go the way of celluloid.
'It's a scary thing,' said Bernard Tschumi, dean of architecture at Columbia University. 'We are a generation in transition.'  DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; Return to Innovation In a House That Dares
WHATEVER happened to truly innovative houses? Houses so radical in concept, so bold in execution and at the same time so comfortable and appealing that they made people want to change the way they lived?
Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater (1935) was one: its rooms flowed as smoothly into each other as the river running under the house. The Maison de Verre, built in 1928 in Paris, revolutionized the way people thought about using glass as a residential material. An entire wall of glass block admitted light while maintaining privacy.
Those were the days when houses were considered the seedbed for architects' brave notions. In postwar America, architects focused on mass production as the way to make better houses not just for the wealthy but for everyone. While they were at it, they redefined what was formal, what was informal; what was inside, what was out, and how rooms without walls could reflect a more casual living arrangement.
These days, new houses in America seem to be more about size than innovation. Architects save their inspiration for museums, libraries and performing arts centers. (Even Frank Gehry, who used unheard-of materials like chain link in his own Los Angeles home in 1978, has eschewed houses in favor of designing cultural institutions.) As a result, developers are the ones who decide how everyone should live, and how many Palladian windows to install.
It is possible to see how house-making could be different with Margaret Nomentana's place in Maine, designed by Scogin, Elam & Bray of Atlanta. Part Zermatt, part 'Three Little Bears,' this 3,600-square-foot house only looks as if it zoomed in from another dimension. It is a direct descendant of the houses that cast off tradition only to make a richer experience of place.
'The house is the great experiment in American architecture,' said Mack Scogin, an architect and former chairman of the architecture department at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design, who designed the house with his partner and wife, Merrill Elam. 'Not just because it represents the great American dream of owning your own house and individualizing it, but because the reality is so achievable.'
Ms. Nomentana's fantasy was at first deceptively simple: to build a house on a lake carved out of nature just for her and her three dogs. And it should have an edge as abstract as the contemporary artwork she admires. 'My parents had commissioned a house back in the 50's in the days when people thought architecture could solve all the problems in the world,' she said. 'My parents bought into that.'
Like them, she wanted a house that dared to be different. Unlike them, she didn't expect it to solve the problems of the world.
Ms. Nomentana, 53, is a petite dynamo of a woman (just back from kayaking off the coast of Turkey), a trained interior designer and painter who likes her canvases to be at least twice as tall as she is.
Her architects did not present her with an abstract sculpture spun out of their own intellectual interests, the kind of avant-garde derring-do that people have good reason to dread. That's not Scogin and Elam's design style. The excitement in their work is generated by the belief that the personal experience of home -- the owner's ambitions, as well as her daily chores -- ought to dictate the design.
From the materials used in the house to the way the layout accommodated her dogs, the architects strove to let their client's ideas guide their hand. When Ms. Nomentana told them of her interest in the minimal beauty of Japanese architecture, specifically the work of Tadao Ando, they chose a cement-based fiberboard (a common, highly durable siding material usually disguised to look like clapboard) that would imitate the look -- but not the cost -- of Ando's concrete houses. The window frames are wood, but painted black to have the more abstract look of steel.
When their client told them that the dogs needed space, they designed a room and positioned it across from her bedroom because they knew where the dogs really slept. 'The last thing we wanted to do was to put Margaret in a box,' Ms. Elam said. 'The house we did is the opposite of what you'd expect from a house on the lake with a big room and a plate-glass window looking out at the view.'
Walking through Ms. Nomentana's house -- built on girder-stilts that anchor the house to its steep slope going down to the lake -- is an exploration turned revelation.  Touring the house is like scaling some unfamiliar peak. On a first visit, leaving crumbs seems advisable.
A short arc of bridge springs from a black metal walk to the pre-weathered zinc door. The bridge handrail looks as elegantly telegraphic as Japanese script. Once through the door, visitors stand inside a three-story cube, walls lined with books. It's the library, and there's a staircase at its center that winds around a glass-enclosed outdoor well, a shaft of nature, which the architects call the impluvium. At top it opens to the sky, and at bottom it is filled with smooth rocks. To get anywhere, it's necessary to circumnavigate the impluvium, but there are no clues as to which way will take you where you're going.
The experience is disorienting, and thrilling. Toto, we're not in Maine anymore.
Mr. Scogin said that visitors are supposed to feel a sense of traveling through and discovering new places -- not arriving at a specific room. 'All the spaces are equally privileged, and every one of them has something of interest to offer,' he said.
Indeed, even the main hall, a kind of spine, is busy with things to look at: views of the lake and other parts of the house through slots of windows; a perilous suspended bridge overhead; paths to follow.
In one direction is the kitchen, dining room, eating porch and living room, which at 350 square feet feels small, even cocoonlike, because of a massive fireplace and caterpillar-ribbed orange furnishings. 'Margaret specified that she didn't want it to be particularly large,' Ms. Elam said. 'She just wanted lots of glass.' Two solid walls are nothing but.
To counter the living room's intimacy, a porch explodes, releasing you into nature. Its exuberant design sheers off part of a support wall, veering off at a vertiginous angle. (The sheered wall was the result of a builder's mathematical error, which created a gap that everyone liked so much that they kept it.)
At the other end of the house, the main corridor makes a sharp left, tracks up a few stairs -- past an office alcove -- and ascends a few more steps to a private wing. Within this part of the house is Ms. Nomentana's bedroom with a black zinc fireplace, her private sleeping porch ('I'm a bed person,' she said. 'I could spend all day in bed reading.') and a separate room for her Champagne-colored poodles: Avalon, Glastonbury and Cornwall, with a doggy door and ramp to their yard.
Upstairs, the guest bedroom is larger than the master suite. To get to Ms. Nomentana's studio, you must climb a tower, traversing the suspended bridge over the main corridor, with a sheer drop to each side.
Ms. Nomentana bought the 2.8-acre plot of Maine forest (a two-hour drive west of Portland) when it was under four feet of snow. ('That's really hard for a Southerner to understand,' Ms. Elam said.) Ms. Nomentana was determined to move from Los Angeles after the earthquake of 1994. She chose Maine because that's where she had spent childhood summers.
From the start her architects were aware that a person alone in the woods might feel lonely. No other house is within view -- even in winter. So, they gave the sprawling house a companionable feeling 'like a village,' Ms. Elam said, 'so that when she looked out the window, she'd always be looking at another part of the house.'
The effort it takes to negotiate the place is its most exciting innovation. Unlike most modern houses, key rooms are strung out far from each other to make travel time through the house as prolonged, even complicated, as possible. 'Margaret was clear about wanting to be challenged,' Mr. Scogin said. He laments that modern conveniences have sapped the vitality from many houses, making them too easy, too boring, to inhabit.
Ms. Nomentana -- who as an adult took her last name from the Via Nomentana in Rome -- wanted surprises. When the floor plan showed a kitchen nowhere near the garage (making grocery-portage a long haul), she never blinked.
This is a difficult house to understand at a glance. The house as journey of discovery defies the Kodak moment. It becomes familiar only with time, like a person with depth, and there are always a few secrets in reserve. More important, it shows that the American tradition of reinventing how to live is still a vital experiment. 'The process was so much fun, I'd do another house in a second,' Ms. Nomentana said. 'Except that there's no reason to ever move again.'",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"The Half-Life Of Must-Haves
THE phalaenopsis orchid must have, in the wise words of Hollywood, changed agents this year. It is appearing as an interior accessory in Architectural Digest, Elle Decor, Traditional Home, House Beautiful and Real Simple.
'They're pretty much on every page of every magazine,' said David Stanley, the owner of Horticus in Los Angeles, a flower shop that specializes in orchids. Mr. Stanley's sales of the $35 white phalaenopsis have shot from 100 to 500 plants a month in the last year. 'I can't imagine anyone getting tired of something so beautiful,' he said. 'But it's happening, thank God. I'm sick of them.'
The furnishings world has always had fashion envy, but it would do well to remind itself that fashion has its victims.
Every fall season brings its bumper crop of styles and looks for the home, and with it, gently put, a ubiquity beyond belief. Coral, Andy Warhols, square table lamps.
For every Mombasa bag, the horn-handled handbag not seen at the New York fashion shows last week (it was a waiting-list item in March), there is also a piece, a pattern or a palette that has shown up at one too many parties in the September-October whirl of decorating magazines, catalogs and shops.
On the horizon: overscaled houndstooth checks. Sailing toward the horizon: the French 1940's. Off the map: Asian fusion, and pink.
'I wouldn't base my whole life on pink now,' said James Leland Day, a stylist for photography shoots whose own pink apartment is pictured in Living Room magazine. 'I don't think it's over, but it's peaking.' There are also stories featuring pink in October's House & Garden and House Beautiful. Mr. Day moved to a new apartment last month and painted it green and blue.
'I had to push the envelope,' he said.
White is the new black this year in design fashion, in particular a 1960's Pop Art movie-set white, seen most prominently in September's 'Glamour Now' Vogue. White leather seemed as kicky as a plastic go-go boot when it showed up last year on Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona chairs in the private Playboy Club-like penthouse at the Park in Chelsea. It is pictured in the new catalog from Design Within Reach, a mass-market modern furniture retailer, on Barcelona chairs and daybeds, traditionally upholstered in black. The English club furniture in the public rooms at the Viceroy, a late-model boutique hotel in Santa Monica designed by Kelly Wearstler, is also upholstered in white leather, not brown.
'It's beachy, it's crisp,' said Ms. Wearstler, when asked what inspired her. 'I'm a leader, not a follower.'
Morocco is a popular at-home destination this year, in September's W and October's Chic Simple. 'The Marrakesh thing is over,' said Nate Berkus, a decorator in Chicago, speaking of its power to excite as a style. 'It's everywhere; it's exhausting. The family room as opium den. I wish that was my family.'
Margaret Russell, editor in chief of Elle Decor, said, 'One too many lanterns.' (September's Elle Decor included a Moroccan-themed 'hippy chic' TriBeCa loft.)
How does Ms. Russell determine what not to publish? 'You just reach a saturation point, in submissions, like you're seeing the same place over and over again,' she said. Ebonized floors and the '15th take on Christian Liaigre' are Code Red, red not being the new black.
Ms. Russell still likes toile de Jouy, something of a reprieve. 'When you saw it, you knew it would come and go,' said Mr. Day, the stylist. The French fabric, printed with 18th-century patterns, which streaked through decoration several years ago, fashionable and fresh-looking in modern interiors, has come -- and gone to the bank laughing. Target is selling it, as draperies and pants. Look for toile as place mats from E.A.T. in New York and bedsheets and tablecloths in the Martha Stewart mail-order catalog.
'The collection is selling unbelievably well,' said Stacy Senior Allan, marketing manager of Thibaut, a wallpaper and fabric company with a choice of 22 toiles.
'We asked our customers recently about whether it was peaking,' Ms. Senior Allan said. 'They get worried when they see it on pants. But we think it will be a long-lasting trend.'
Unlike sunflowers.
'Big in 1994 and '95,' she recalled, like the remotest history.
Or monkeys.
'They're cute, but we're tired of them,' Ms. Senior Allan said. 'It was part of the British colonial thing. It's hanging on in parts of the South.'
Ms. Senior Allan observed that trends now had longer lives because of economic recession and a desire for familiarity.
'Even in fashion, they're letting women wear things for two seasons instead of one,' she said. 'It's the same in home furnishings. You have to get comfortable with it. They're smart not to let people think they're out of fashion, that they have to redecorate every year. They'll just give up.'
Jonathan Adler, a popular designer, when asked if he felt at risk of becoming a cliché, or if his work was in danger of being overexposed, said, 'It takes a lot more courage to extend a trend than to start one.' Mr. Adler's signature vases and pillows, with his name firmly attached in captions to pictures, have showed up in more than a few magazines lately.
'We in New York live in a very rarefied world,' he said. 'Jaded and 'too cool for school.' As someone in the business of selling things, I've discovered how small the jaded world is. And how poor.'
Mr. Adler, a potter by training, has stores in Los Angeles, East Hampton and SoHo and plans to open a new store on the Upper East Side in November.
Ikea, the international cheap furnishings giant, has unleashed an advertising campaign to unmoor people from their emotional attachments to household possessions, and to promote disposability in decorating -- a high-speed obsolescence not unlike your standard trend.
'If you're in a bad relationship with old furniture but don't put an end to it, you are crazy,' reads an advertisement that pictures a sturdy, serviceable table lamp that looks like someone's first spouse.
How do you learn to love again?
'If I love it, we adapt it,' said Thomas O'Brien, the president of Aero Studios in New York, and its principal designer. Mr. O'Brien's square-based, square-shaded table lamp, designed in 1992 and still in production, is instantly recognizable, in large part because of the number of look-alikes.
'It's a classic form from the 1920's and 30's,' he said, acknowledging his own sources. 'I have a big belief in subtle changes, like different finishes, or recoloring, or scale.' Mr. O'Brien explained, 'It's like clothing -- what we retire is the finishing, not the form.'
Mr. Berkus, in Chicago, concurred. 'Decoration is so expensive,' he said. 'You have to be careful about what you choose, that it doesn't play out quickly. You can call it classic, but . . . a $10,000 sofa -- it's like a commitment ceremony. There should be a blood test.'
Mr. Berkus advised indulging a taste for fashion in other ways. 'Don't even buy new furniture,' he said. 'Start at the smaller local auction houses. Paint, wall coverings, moldings, lighting, window treatments, carpeting -- the backdrop can change easily.'
What does Mr. Berkus do when clients come to him with magazine pictures of popular trends in hand?
'Toile is one right now,' he said. 'You go with something that's similar -- it might still be a two-colored woven French textile, but it's not the Japanese garden scene you're seeing on the cover of Pottery Barn.'
Joseph Riccio, a New York designer, advised touches, not strokes, that can be quickly erased. 'Pillows, etc.,' he said. 'Bring clichés in as minor elements. As soon as the look is over, it's easier to reinterpret, instead of changing direction.'
David Netto, a New York designer whose white 1960's-style basement Pop Art playroom project appeared in Living Room, said that it was designed at the client's instruction, which was 'lacquer, lacquer, lacquer -- white was appended to that.'
'I like not to have a signature look,' Mr. Netto said. 'The first thing I thought when I saw Bilbao was, 'This is great, but I wouldn't want to see two of them.' '
Mr. Netto's client had contemporary art to display, from a family collection in Houston. Mr. Netto chose work by Chuck Close, Christo and 'small Rothkos.'
Any Andy Warhols, King of Pop? Warhol's Factory produced, like a 20th-century toile de Jouy, nearly 10,000 silk-screen images on canvas, according to the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Seven, including portraits of Goethe and Jimmy Carter, made cameo appearances in October's House & Garden and The World of Interiors -- as properly bourgeois an interior decoration as a Vermeer in a 17th-century Dutch town house.
'No,' Mr. Netto said of the job. 'Warhol is exactly what you would expect to find.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"On the London Scene, Practicality Is Radical
HERE'S an idea. Design innovative furniture. Make it useful. Sell it.
At London's recent 100% Design, which is Britain's premier design exhibition and now a required stop on the Paris, Cologne, Milan and New York show circuit, there were trends, and there was a new, potential take-away factor, too.
The bratty British design scene, co-opted by the Blair government in 1997 with its 'Cool Britannia' campaign, didn't drop out. It grew up. The raw thinking and uncommercial energy of newcomers like Inflate, a company that in 1995 showed lights blown up like beach toys, is showing responsibility as well. Inflate has spent five years investing in manufacturing machinery. This year it showed up at the sixth annual British show with an inventive, inexpensive bed, as in, try to get a mass market to lie in it.
London's student princes are like all people you know in their 30's -- a few years on, still fun, working on commitment. The city's four-day calendar of design events was more like a proud new house tour, home by 10, than like the old late-night clubbing.
From architectural tilework to tabletop ceramics, from living room lounge seating to workplace desks and chairs, the new design was radical in its applicability, as much as in its forms or materials.
Even at Designersblock2000, an off-site event staged in St. Pancras Chambers, a derelict 19th-century Gothic railway hotel, the newest designers were showing things that looked more like furniture than ideas -- pragmatic, original updates of the everyday with little nostalgia for the uncommon or conceptual. What was revolutionary was their confidence that design was now viable with the public.
At the official exhibition at Earls Court 2, which ran from Oct. 5 to 8, British designers and their European colleagues were translating excitement into maturity: a new practical wisdom about what people want and how to get it to them. Maybe, wisely, they understand that designers who want to stay in the profession have no choice.
Even the conceptual work -- and it was strong -- had its feet on the ground. There were several collections of furniture for children, including Biscuit for Oreka Kids (www.orekakids.com), a new company, whose 10 designers were a virtual roundup of the avant-garde names of five years ago. And babies and children were the big vogue everywhere, including a 7-year-old girl in a silver shag-rug A-line dress with matching shag pillbox hat leaving the Christopher Farr party in Notting Hill. How much realer can you get?
The exhibition, a trade show open to the public, was largely of prototypes or new products being previewed for manufacturers, the interior design trade and retailers. (And the actress Charlotte Rampling, who walked by during the kickoff cocktail party, tawny as a prize cat in a leather jacket and ankle-high plaid pants, and froze Sir Terence Conran in his tracks.)
But in great evidence at 100% Design was the fact that the designers and companies, especially the new names, have Web sites to visit and to shop at -- with collections, not selections, of their work. You don't have to wait for a local design store shopping the show to pick it up and bring it back. In addition, the shipping and handling on a direct order could be less expensive than a shop's markup.
The satisfaction expressed by exhibitors this year was the same as the dissatisfaction: the show, which is now five times the size it was in 1995, included major companies like Ligne Roset and Wedgwood, and lacked the unholy rudeness and punkish presence of the unpolished, independent designs that gave it its reputation.
'I see excitement now very differently,' Nick Crosbie, 29, a founding partner in Inflate, said. 'I look at the stands of the big companies, and I can really appreciate what they've done to construct that credibility. Five years ago, I would have looked and thought, 'That's really boring.' '
Inflate's big product introduction, Snoozy, a plastic, pop-apart bed, easy to ship and store, is manufactured with a process used for making highway cones. It is intended as a midprice alternative ($:585, or about $850) to the low-end futon and the high-end designer bed. It will be available at Inflate's Web site (www.inflate.co.uk).
'Production is as important as design,' Mr. Crosbie said. 'To make a real product, rather than just being on magazine pages. If you can't buy something, then it doesn't actually perform its task.'
ANDREAS ENGESVIK, a partner in Norway Says (www .norwaysays.com), a young Norwegian design collective, showed a tiny, upholstered armchair called Tennis that looked like a space-saving Muppets version of Harry Bertoia's classic Diamond wire chair for Knoll. Mr. Engesvik's colleague, Frode Myhr, who was still in design school when Norway Says exhibited in Milan in April, sat in Birce, his red flying carpet of a seat on steel, voicing concern that the traffic was too light. Though tender in age, Norway Says means business -- it sold a half-dozen designs shortly after showing in Milan, to Herman Miller, Saporiti and other companies.
Down the dank hall at Designersblock2000, Thomas Winkel and Tobias Jacobsen, Danish designers, displayed Tatami, a dining table that folds down, like a horse kneeling, into a low bed.
'It's a new way of giving furniture an expression,' Mr. Winkel (thomas@winkel.com) said, speaking of utility. 'I feel that when there's a lot of furniture in your apartment, it takes away your freedom.' Mr. Winkel, who lives in a small apartment in Copenhagen, demonstrated by pressing his back against a crumbling wall.
At 100% Design, there was much of the same practical-minded versatility -- a kind of suggestiveness in objects that was smart and fresh. 'Not prescriptive, but multifunctional and playful,' said Michael Marriott, who organized the designers for Oreka Kids.
'We thought about how kids use adult furniture as toys,' Mr. Marriott said. 'Playing under the table, or in a box.' His Nice steps-and-storage design ($:270, or about $390) also rolls and has a crawl-in cabin at the back -- the cockpit for a rocket ship or a racing car. It also makes a handy television and VCR stand.
'It isn't going to be cheap, like Ikea, so we wanted to give the pieces longevity,' Mr. Marriott said. 'They don't end life as children's furniture.'
Schmidingermodul's storage system, designed by Harri Koskinen, is built upon modular, molded birch plywood cases with the rounded corners, liftable lids and carrying grips of suitcases -- baggage for the house. They also stack as pedestals or sit squatly in a sequence, to make benchlike seating (www.Schmidingermodul.at).
Like much that was seen at the exhibition and elsewhere that week, the designs were startlingly low-tech. The best technological innovations involved explorations with traditional materials. Lubna Chowdhary (lubna.c@virgin.net) showed ceramic tiles with the color fields and surface relief of Abstract Expressionist painting.
Foundation 33, the London-based team of Daniel Eatock, an English graphic designer and Sam Solhaug, an American architect, displayed simple plywood tables. Their concept is in the investigation of the material in their construction: a basic 4-by-8-foot sheet of plywood is cut into thin strips, then glued, sanded and laminated into a minimal but beautifully striated surface. There is no waste of wood; the tables are 33% lighter than the sheets they are constructed from, because of the sawdust lost in cutting -- hence the team's moniker (www.foundation33.com).
Mari-Ruth Oda (Mari
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; Cruise Ship Design Challenge: Find the Ocean
BEFORE the jet age, when ocean liners were built to cross seas, not cruise them, passengers would sit in wooden deck chairs and promenade the long teak decks to exult in the grandeur of the world's biggest landscape.
Now, it's the ships that are breathtakingly big. And while cruise companies defend the bigness -- 'Our ships still look like ships,' said Julianne Chase, a spokeswoman for the Holland America Line -- it seems that the ocean is being eclipsed. It's a new challenge for designers.
By the year 2000, new cruise ships will be carrying as many as 3,000 passengers, said Steven Gordon, publisher of Star Service, a travel industry guide, adding that just a few years ago, 800 seemed big (the Titanic carried only 2,200). 'You can't put 3,000 deck chairs out,' he said.
Richard Sasso, president of Celebrity Cruises, calls them 'floating cities.' Celebrity has launched three in the last three years, including the 1,870-passenger Mercury in October.
Travel experts say cruises are more popular than ever, with movies like 'Titanic,' oddly enough, attracting younger passengers. But unlike the old liners, new pleasure ships,  built to hop from port to port, are packed with air-conditioned amenities that make the out-of-doors seem beside the point.
The focus has moved indoors to spas, lounges, lobbies, casinos, theaters and much grander cabins. 'You're never sure whether you're in a Liberace casino, a cucaracha lounge, or the Peachtree Center in Atlanta,' said the architect Lee Mindel, who designed some of the Mercury's interiors.
Whatever happened to the water?
When Celebrity Cruises (now owned by the Royal Caribbean line)  asked Mr. Mindel and Peter Shelton, of Shelton, Mindel & Associates in New York, to design the main dining room and other public spaces on the Mercury, the architects had one priority: to reverse the prevailing trend and remind passengers they are really at sea.
But the spaces still had to be snappy enough to wow the regulars and strong enough to hold up against bold schemes in rooms designed by other noted firms -- including Birch Coffey Design Associates of New York -- that had been hired to make the Mercury what Mr. Sasso calls a 'five-star, upscale, premium product.'
In addition, Shelton, Mindel had to figure out how to maintain the firm's own standards for warm and elegant modernism.  'Simplicity is probably the most complex thing to execute,' Mr. Mindel said.
Le Corbusier, in his 1923 primer, 'Towards a New Architecture,' rhapsodized about the natural modernism found in ships, citing as an example the teak-and-steel promenade deck of the Empress of France: 'An architecture pure, clear, clean, neat and healthy,' he called it, unfettered as it was by 'carpets, cushions, canopies, wallpapers' and other comforts then in favor with modernism's opponents.
But in the 'feeding frenzy of accouterments,' as Mr. Mindel describes cruise ship design, Le Corbusier's ascetic is not easy to pull off. Initially, Celebrity Cruises 'wanted to soup things up, add more embellishments, put shoulder pads on everything,' Mr. Mindel said. To win them over, he and his partner made a computerized movie in addition to the usual drawings to show just how dynamic their elegant design would look in reality.
Eating is the main activity on a cruise ship -- and Shelton, Mindel designed the Mercury's main dining room, the Manhattan Restaurant.
Demetrios Kaparis, the naval architect,  had put the dining room at the very back of the ship instead of in the usual midships location, and had squared off the stern in a two-story picture window -- a feature Mr. Kaparis says is unique to Celebrity ships (three of them have it).
'With the aft sheared off, you see the wake of the ship trailing behind you, the thrust of the water, and begin to feel the power of the movement,' Mr. Mindel said. 'The view is panoramic, almost cinematic, and that's what started to generate our design.' The problem was the view at night, when the sea turns black and the big picture window becomes a mirror. So for evening, the architects ordered up photo murals of the Flatiron Building. They slide from the ceiling like stage flats for a big Broadway musical.
The double-height space feels urbane. Tall, timberlike columns wrapped in teak-stained cherry flank a long, sleek staircase railed with stainless steel. Overhead looms a giant steel chandelier inspired by one designed for the Empire State Building.
The architects also gave the dining room a 1930's-inspired wool carpet on which abstract flocks of birds seem to be soaring over a deep blue sea. 'We wanted it to look as if Cubist gulls were following the wake of the ship,' Mr. Mindel said.
A bold interior was necessary to absorb the bright daytime glare. 'Inside, you need a strong palette of clear, bright colors,' Mr. Mindel said. So the architects chose a mix of red, white and deep blue.
'They are nationalist colors,' he continued, adding that they are meant to evoke 'great institutions and the great ships like the Ile-de-France and the Queen Mary.'
The architects designed two other public spaces, Rendez-Vous Square and the Aft Atrium. In the Aft Atrium, two bars on top of each other -- one for martinis, one for  champagne -- are housed in a three-story, cherry-wood cylinder. To enhance the vertical line, they studded the cylinder with small recessed light fixtures and steel rivets. Bubbles abound in laser-etched glass walls that the architects call 'faux holograms' and in the bubble-pattern carpeting.
On the wall behind the cylinder, a mural of wavy ribbons by Sol Lewitt lends color. It is part of the Mercury's 400-piece floating collection of contemporary art.
The Mercury's cool-weather route is from Florida to the western Caribbean and the Panama Canal. From June to September, she heads up to the North Passage. In Alaska, Mr. Mindel explained, the big, cinematic window of the Manhattan restaurant frames a real show-stopper: pure ice.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; The Twain Not Only Meet, They Collaborate
On the face of it, they couldn't be more different.
Dakota Jackson, one of America's few celebrity furniture designers, appears to create from the gut; Peter Eisenman, the famously iconoclastic architect, from the brain.
Mr. Jackson is a mini-industrialist with a highly successful, streamlined factory operation. Mr. Eisenman is by nature an academic -- a chaotic businessman who claims to be $500,000 in debt despite large new projects on the boards (a Holocaust memorial in Berlin, a stadium-convention center for the Arizona Cardinals).
Mr. Jackson is the darling of shelter magazines, Mr. Eisenman of highbrow college journals. Mr. Jackson luxuriates in materials and craftsmanship. He lovingly caresses the blond maple wood of his Library Chair, waxing poetic about its curves and joints. Mr. Eisenman could care less about the tactile. 'What's it made of?' he shouts to a staff member when asked about the construction of a canopy in his current project: the new Dakota Jackson showroom and West Coast headquarters in the Pacific Design Center.
So one wonders what brought them together. Could it provide Mr. Eisenman an entry into Los Angeles, home of his friend and rival Frank Gehry, where Mr. Eisenman has never built? But this project is tiny, Mr. Eisenman insisted by phone from his office in  New York. 'It's just a dumb showroom,' he said. And if it gives him entry into Los Angeles, it's 'by the  back door,' he explained. Still, it is a beachhead for both men, stars in their worlds, known as much for their powerful personalities as for their work. So 'dumb' or not, the showroom -- and their unexpected collaboration -- is the talk of the design world.
Given the traditional animosity between architects and interior decorators, the Jackson/Eisenman pairing is even more unusual. Many architects, particularly those of the 'high art' school, despise the makers of chintzes and overstuffed armchairs, even ones with the restraint of Dakota Jackson's. And the feeling is mutual. Moreover, the architect often hires the designer; in this case it is the reverse -- 'a good  feeling,' Mr. Jackson said.
Mr. Jackson is notoriously charismatic, as he demonstrated in a recent preview of the new showroom. He is tall, with wavy, graying hair, aquiline features and the ramrod back and gait of a dancer. Wearing a loose black suit and black turtleneck, he glided through his new creation, expounding on art, Freud, magic and, above all, on his art, his furniture.
'My focus has always been on the object and how it might influence different kinds of relationships with an individual,' he said. Standing before a mint green and black cocktail cabinet, with eyes fixed on a visitor's, he related how it started as a  vanity, inspired by his fascination for his wife and for all women. 'I was intrigued with her doing her makeup and this idea of the kind of ablutions one goes through where transformations occur.'
Clutching the plump leg of a dining table in his new Ocean line, he elaborated on the human connection: 'I've always looked at chairs as forming this very intimate relationship with the human body, and so having it suggest body parts has always been of interest to me. Is it satisfying, is it appealing, or is it repulsive to have these very meaty, very dense, almost overscaled limbs next to you?'
Then, drawing the visitor to sit close beside him -- disconcertingly close -- on chairs placed side by side,  he discoursed on the contradictions between the cerebral and the romantic, the sensual and the restrained.
Mr. Jackson's career took off in the mid-1970's with the design of a desk for Yoko Ono, as a gift for John Lennon. Its unfolding leaves and concealed drawers drew on tricks of the family trade -- magic. The son of a magician and a former magician himself, Mr. Jackson has evolved from sometime dancer and one-off object maker to the stars into a mass-production designer with several lines of residential and contract furniture, pieces displayed in museums in Europe and the United States, 140 employees, two factories with computerized robots in Long Island City, Queens, and plans for an architecturally provocative industrial park, perhaps in Queens.
But despite his talent and salesmanship, Mr. Jackson declares himself to be a pessimistic and nervous person. At 48, he had arrived, he said, at a point in his life where he needed to expand his vision and he wanted to bring an edge into his work. To that end, he hired Mr. Eisenman to design the new showroom.
Reviled and adored in equal measure for his role in subverting the art of architecture into a cerebral game, Mr. Eisenman has made a career of designing buildings based on abstruse theories and creating a lot of noise about it. He enjoyed spectacular eminence in the late 1980's, when he became the high priest of Deconstruction, in which he applied the linguistic theories of post-structuralists like Jacques Derrida to architecture, and went from being largely a 'paper' architect to receiving large commissions. The Wexner Center for the Visual Arts and the Greater Columbus Convention Center, both in Columbus, Ohio, are examples of his seemingly gravity-defying, disquieting designs.
Like Mr. Jackson, Mr. Eisenman, 65, can be charming, albeit in the manner of the stand-up comic who makes you feel special by insulting you. He can be engaging and viciously witty, refreshing in a profession where wit is in short supply. And he is notorious for a Svengali-like grip on students and young architects who clamor to work free for months in his office; for much-vaunted neuroses explored at one point through two -- yes, two -- psychiatrists, one in Los Angeles and one in New York, and for an ambition to control architectural discourse.
Mr. Eisenman said he would not normally do a project like a furniture showroom. But when Mr. Jackson proposed the idea -- Mr. Jackson was in bed with the flu that day, 'feeling slightly delusional,' he said  -- Mr. Eisenman jumped at it.
Why did he take the job? Mr. Eisenman gave a simple answer: they liked each other. 'Dak Jaks is very seductive,' he said, using his pet name for the designer.
So, apparently, is Mr. Eisenman. 'Peter is so charming,' Mr. Jackson said. 'And he's very clever.' He cites Freud as the inspiration for their friendship. 'What appealed to me about Peter,' he said, was 'the notion of anxiety' visible in his work.
The two, who met by chance on a school boat trip for their children, have become good friends. Mr. Eisenman met Mr. Jackson before he saw his furniture, and he now critiques his work, telling him he's 'got to move on.'
Mr. Jackson points out that the clumsy, tapering legs of the Ocean collection (a more refined version of the overscaled, sloping forms of designer furniture seen in recent years in Los Angeles) have the awkwardness and sense of perpetual imbalance characteristic of Mr. Eisenman's work. But in turn, Mr. Jackson chides Mr. Eisenman, 'Peter, you've  got to make things beautiful.'
So, finally, what of the showroom? The new home for Dakota Jackson is on the ground level of the Pacific Design Center, Cesar Pelli's gargantuan blue and green glass honeycomb of decorators' showrooms at the epicenter of the Los Angeles interior design world. It is a 36,000-square-foot shoe box that Mr. Jackson and Mr. Eisenman have rendered beige -- beige-painted walls and beige flooring.
'We didn't want stark, and we didn't want cozy,' Mr. Eisenman said. Dispersed throughout the space are Mr. Jackson's past and present furniture designs, a profusion of mahogany and blond wood chairs and tables and honeyed fabrics. The distinctive feature is a large canopy in the front portion of the showroom -- a white-painted, theatrically light metal structure, aluminum on a steel frame, with three asymmetrical flanges, creating 'energy in space,' Mr. Eisenman said. Two of the tapering flanges are anchored in the floor; the third lodges in a wall.
The intention, Mr. Jackson said, was to create an 'awkward moment' in an otherwise 'dumb space.' This leaves the chairs free to do the talking, which is, after all, the point of a furniture showroom, as both architect and client acknowledge. And that is what they have achieved. The canopy provides a mild frisson, but in the end, this is  still a furniture showroom, pleasant but architecturally polite. It won't scare off any Beverly Hills matrons. Mr. Jackson wanted 'edginess' in his new showroom, but not enough to edge out his market.
He said that when he chose Mr. Eisenman he was, in fact, a little concerned about how it would affect  his company's image. But his decision was idealistic. 'I wanted to capture the expansiveness of the post-war modernist designers,' he said.  'Peter grew out of that tradition. He has that heroic vision.'
A heroic vision that might be lost  on some. 'I didn't know what it was -- it was an obstacle I hadn't counted on,' one early visitor was overheard to say, referring to the canopy. 'It was blocking the view of a very beautiful cocktail cabinet.'
Frances Anderton, the former editor of L.A. Architect, is a producer of 'Which Way, L.A.,' a current-affairs program on KCRW-FM, a public radio station in Los Angeles.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"California Modern's Emerging Voices
PERHAPS Los Angeles seems like a city without a past because the better part of its architectural history this century has been modernist: the clean stucco planes and crisp corners were conceived to look forever new.
Already in the teens and 20's, the architects Irving Gill, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Viennese prophets R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra came here as though to a promised land, establishing the start of an enduring modernist tradition.
That tradition of experimental architecture is now five, going on six, generations long, and a group exhibition at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood -- 'New Blood: 101' -- showcases 101 emerging voices.
A continuous easel of panels hung on metal studs marching down a wing of the Pacific Design Center -- the installation was designed by Robert Hale -- attests to Los Angeles's depth on the design bench, and the critical mass of projects, some real, some hypothetical, implies that there are schools, clients, land, attitude and bank loans behind what may be a unique architecture culture within the United States.
The organizer of the show, the architect Bernard Zimmerman, who has a three-decade track record of timely group exhibitions, decided to look beyond the usual suspects -- Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, Eric Moss -- 'to expose, reframe and validate emerging or reinvented design practitioners hidden from view by standard routes of power,' he writes, somewhat stiffly, in an introductory overview.
By inviting designers in other disciplines, Mr. Zimmerman and a selection committee also make the point that the architects are part of a larger interdisciplinary pool in which the boundaries between graphics, fashion, photography, landscape, industrial design and video are liquid.
Each of the 101 architects and designers presented a cluster of four panels, and collectively the panels show there is no single line of thought here, but an impressive range and intensity of research.
As in past decades, the house in this city of single-family homes is still the most frequent medium of invention, because it is the most accessible to the small firms that are the Los Angeles norm. Sometimes, the commission that proves a talent is simply a small addition or modification to a house, as in a kitchen with a strikingly inclined roof by Dagmar Richter or a dynamically shaped two-story entry space with listing walls for an existing Santa Monica bungalow by Scott Parker, of the William Taylor Architecture Studio.
Joe Addo, an architect involved in the restoration of the Watts Towers, captured all the drama of living on the hills of Los Angeles with a house in Palos Verdes whose glass-walled rooms project into space.
To judge by the panels, all phases of modernist history are currently subjects of investigation and reinvention. Architecture in the embrace of nature, the machine in the garden and the influence of Japanese buildings are still familiar themes and issues in Southern California, though in the hands of an architect like Jeffrey Daniels, the leaning forms, with a hint of cartoon dynamism, make them new.
The lowly 2-by-4 has provided a great assist to the prevailing climate of design freedom. The postwar promise of mass-produced housing was never realized, because steel never quite won over the cowboy contractor with hammer slung at his hip. Wood remains the material of choice and economy. Wood studs flex in earthquakes and are highly malleable, lending themselves to ad hoc site decisions and custom tailoring. A bedroom addition by Lanier Lubowicki, with a large volume telescoping into smaller living areas, emphasizes wood as both structure and esthetic.
When steel appears, it is as exception rather than rule. Two houses by Finn Kappe mix messages by combining wood and steel, as well as surface finishes made of different but complementary materials -- glass, metal, wood, stucco, stone. Mr. Kappe does not strive for the purity often associated with modernism but for complex character that embraces both the warm and the cool.
In this city of maverick small-scale entrepreneurs, the relative absence of a corporate mentality is mirrored in the design community, which is constituted largely of boutique operations in which a single person, or two people of the same mind, determine the design.
Some architects have succeeded in extending that independence to a scale beyond single-family houses, as in a housing and community center by Hok Sik Son, a former Gehry associate, where he breaks the so-called dingbat formula of standard low-rise stud-and-stucco housing with an apartment block packed with units elegantly wedged at an angle: the jostled balconies on the facade express the angled internal organization.
Modernist design here was radically transformed two decades ago by Mr. Gehry, who deliberately mixed art into his architecture, and about the same time by the Southern California Institute of Architecture, an alternative school founded by Finn Kappe's father, Ray, based on experimentation.
The fallout for many designers is a practice of uncertain, apparently chaotic geometry. Michele Saee, who teaches at the school, wrote on his panels that architecture cannot represent 'the Big Machine of a Newtonian world' any longer. The fractal geometries of his design sketches resemble a Richard Chamberlain crashed-fender sculpture.
One casualty of these investigations is modernism's famously flat roof, which has been bent and folded into strangely beautiful topographies, as in Janek Bielski's design for St. Vibiana Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles. Similarly, a long roof of a low-slung house by Melvyn Bernstein has the profile of a readout from an electrocardiogram that concludes in a heart attack.
The resistance to corporate culture, and the ethic and cult of individuality, has found its way even into some large-scale corporate firms and from there into major institutional projects. Mehrdad Yazdani, formerly with Ellerbe Becket and now with Daniel Dworsky, displays on his boards a poetically complex Los Angeles subway station at the corner of Vermont and Santa Monica Boulevards, nearing completion, with elliptical shapes inside and out, and elaborate stainless-steel armature for air ducts.
A premise of the exhibition was to show architecture within a larger visual culture, to reflect 'a more pluralistic, heterogeneous sense of design in our community,' Mr. Zimmerman writes. The furniture designer Lisa Krohn created a collection of looping-metal chairs that look like line drawings in space -- some have become instant classics.
In a panel called Transarchitectures, Marcos Novak -- a teacher at the University of California at Los Angeles -- speculates on the impact of cyberspace and physical space on each other in geometrically complex computer images.
With Los Angeles's modernist design culture now a decade or two shy of being a century old, there are several distinct design genealogies. The Gehry office has spawned several smaller firms, including those of Michael Maltzen, Daly-Genik, Narduli-Grinstein, Greg Walsh and Hagy Belzberg, who exhibited highly dynamized plans of a house that juts out from its hillside site like a wing taking flight.
In an exception to small-scale explorations, John Lumsden -- whose father is Tony Lumsden, an eminent Los Angeles architect -- produced high-tech, high-rise buildings of virtuoso complexity, the pristine shapes beautifully sheathed in anodized aluminum.
'New Blood: 101' may be a large show without a single viewpoint, but scope and pluralism are precisely the issue, and if the shape of the exhibition seems formless, the high standards of selection keep it from mere cheerleading.
Pandora escaped from the architectural box here some time ago, and she is still very alive, well and kicking conventions.
'New Blood: 101' runs through April 30. It is available on line at www.volume5.com.  DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Passing the Torchier
TIMES are changing. Redecorating, you might say.
This is nowhere more apparent than at the 32nd annual Kips Bay Decorator Show House at 603 Park Avenue (64th Street), which opens to the public on Tuesday and is on display through May 31.
In the pantheon of a place like Kips Bay, decorating's Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where decorators are invited to exhibit in a kind of celebration of their arrival as prominent professionals, Thom Filicia, 34, was a basic nobody five years ago.
But as one of the Fab Five on Bravo's 'Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,' Mr. Filicia is a television star today. He has never exhibited at Kips Bay before, and he is undoubtedly the most famous designer in it. With no licensing deals, coffee-table monographs or any of the traditional apparatus for decorating fame a year ago, pre-TV, Mr. Filicia is now the celebrity spokesman for Pier 1 Imports. He has two fan clubs -- one official and one unofficial. And he is the figurehead for an office makeover contest sponsored by Xerox and Entrepreneur magazine. When you request information about Mr. Filicia, you talk to his manager, not his office.
In the world of prime time and not the polite pages of Architectural Digest, Noel Jeffrey, 61, who has shown at Kips Bay 10 times and is by rights the grand old man of the house, is a basic nobody.
But Mr. Jeffrey -- a consummate professional whose work, to judge by his almost academically appointed salon for this year's Kips Bay, is only getting better -- will undoubtedly be working, client by client, in the years to come. And Mr. Filicia, who said he works with his decorating roster largely by telephone between airplanes, and who designed a bathroom for Kips Bay in a partnership with Waterworks, a high-end fixtures showroom, could be water circling the drain if 'Queer Eye' loses its gleam and the endorsement deals dry up.
Still, the tide is clearly turning toward a new, different awareness of decoration. If the 25 designers are to be believed on the subject of their ages (and this gets as tricky as dating French furniture), the median age of participants this year is 44, an astonishing low for the rarefied fraternity of Kips Bay. The 2004 show house looks and feels younger, too, a reflection of both the decorators and their clients, who are now in their 30's and 40's as well as 50 and beyond. And they are a group as likely to watch Mr. Filicia, or any of the 'reality' decorating shows, in the evening over takeout as they are to attend the Winter Antiques Show.
'A lot of designers feel I've raised the bar as far as makeover shows go,' Mr. Filicia said in a telephone conversation on Monday.
An advertisement in the Kips Bay catalog for Elle Decor magazine, whose average reader is 40 years old, sums up that younger clientele neatly, calling it 'The New Generation of Affluence.'
Jeff Lincoln, a 41-year-old decorator exhibiting for the third time, agreed that a shift in taste and practice is under way. 'The clients have gotten younger,' he said. Mr. Lincoln's clients, often young families in the New York metropolitan area, are typically what he described as 'Wall Street meritocracy types' who are investing substantially in real estate and want comfortable homes that don't lose sight of their precociousness as young people.
'They're more adventurous, more open to ideas,' he said. 'They don't feel they need to copy their parents. Decorating used to be a junior version of what they grew up with. Now they want homes to reflect their own personalities.'
How this translates into decoration is apparent in Mr. Lincoln's sitting room. It has a desk in the style of Louis XVI, but executed in industrial stainless steel. The pillows that dress the sofa and armchair have Warhol-like pictures of Chairman Mao. The juxtapositions and references are as immediate as the message on a T-shirt.
In a large wood-paneled living room downstairs, designed by Eve Robinson, 39, an air of decorum and formality prevails. But the signature pieces of art and antiques are two painting-size contemporary photographs and a midcentury modern sofa by T. H. Robsjohn-Gibbings. The 'chandelier' is a light fixture with a double-drum shade more appropriate to a late-model restaurant. As befits its Park Avenue corner location, it is still an important room. But the restraint evident is not propriety or stiffness: it is more along the lines of an attractive young mother who has conscientiously recovered her figure. The presumed occupants, like Ms. Robinson's clients, want design excitement, but they don't want to be out of touch with their money when they put their car keys down.
'They want a home for today, but not trendy,' she said.
NOTICEABLY absent at Kips Bay is the 'Las Vegas Liberace' quotient, the showstopping that makes new reputations or, like hair spray, keeps old ones cemented in place.
And in what has got to be a first, there is art-world appropriation and intellectual parody. On the fourth-floor landing, Dave and Chris Faust and Noël Shields of Faust & Shields Decorative Arts in Pottersville, N.J., based a mural of a forest on paint-by-number kits.
'So much decorative painting is about faux effects, like trompe l'oeil,' said Chris Faust, 39, who said he and his twin brother, Dave, fine-art painters by training, got their idea from the Gerhard Richter retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 2002.
Scott Snyder, 43, a traditional decorator who designed a full French Empire dining room that looks aristocrat-ready, is so self-consciously out of step with the rest of the show house that his work might be an installation piece at the Whitney Biennial. Eclecticism 'R' Not Us.
'Decorating is very expensive -- we all know that,' he said. 'Even Crate & Barrel adds up. If you're going to spend money, it's nice to have something to show for it. I don't like lavender Ultrasuede.' Estimated retail cost of the dining room, as per the designer: $1.6 million.
Mr. Snyder happens also to be the decorator for Mr. and Mrs. Sherman Cohen, who own the 25-room 1920 neo-Federal property that Kips Bay is occupying this year.
'This is a $30 million town house,' Mr. Snyder said. 'It deserves a formal dining room. I don't consider this a fantasy.'
Across the hall is Mr. Jeffrey's drawing room. As Kips Bay's resident master this year, his assembly of Art Deco and fine French furniture, modern art and neo-Classical antiques, is a lesson in balance, if not populism. But it has a distinctly American cast, the America of entrepreneurship that has settled into money and privilege and that wants to explore design patronage -- not unlike the clientele showing its force in the rooms by Ms. Robinson and Mr. Lincoln elsewhere in the 2004 show house.
There is a Cubist painting over the fireplace by Burgoyne Diller, an American, done in 1932. The effect recalls the apartment created by Jean-Michel Frank for Nelson A. Rockefeller at 810 Fifth Avenue in 1939, with murals by Matisse and Fernand Léger above the fireplaces. Mr. Rockefeller, then 31, and Mary Todhunter Clark Rockefeller, his wife, were themselves a young family -- five children under 7.
Mr. Jeffrey, asked whether that apartment was a model, said: 'No. But I know the room very well. And my work is influenced by design like it.'
Attendees to the house take note: great clients also make great design.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Wield a Match, Not an Ax: Ventless Fireplaces
LAST week some of us in the House & Home section burned our fingers, roasted tiny marshmallows on skewers and worried about the soft drift of ground plastic foam that flecked our clothing and floated in and out of the flames of the three ventless fireplaces set up in a photo studio in our office. (The day before, there had been a holiday gifts shoot; the foam 'snow' was left over.)
Lacking any sort of fireplace feature (as they say in the hearth business) in our own homes, we had long been intrigued by the ventless or gel fuel fireplace -- a sort of supercandle powered by a Sterno-ish fuel (like ethanol or isopropyl alcohol) in a chimneyless ersatz hearth -- and ordered in a few to test. We were particularly drawn to new slick-looking European imports that recalled either flat-screen television sets or hurricane lamps.
Patrick Lane, director of e-commerce at Southern Enterprises, an American company that puts gel fuel into traditional-looking mantels, said that even though the European models are brand new, his company has been selling ventless fireplaces for about three years, at a rate of about 10,000 a year.
'We are the shameful secret of the fireplace world,' he said. 'It's been a fun niche for us.' Mr. Lane sent his best seller, the mahogany-stained Paula model, to test alongside the glass and steel numbers from Europe that arrived for sale in the United States this month, at Arango Design in Miami and Lekker home furnishings in Boston, among other retailers.
We were curious, and a bit apprehensive. What kind of heat does an alcohol fuel throw? Does it make a proper flame? Does it smell like camping? Could you roast a marshmallow, your toes, your apartment?
We phoned the New York City Fire Department to inquire whether the devices and the fuel were approved for use.
'They are very new to us, and so we haven't much to say about them yet,' said Jim Long, a Fire Department spokesman, who said the department has no records of any accidents or problems. 'We will do a thorough investigation of them,' he said, adding, 'Some background information for you to consider: think about how decorative and how nice candles are, and how deadly.' It seemed best not to tell Mr. Long about the plastic snow.
A note on fuel: it comes in two forms, liquid and gel. The liquid is about $9 for a one-liter bottle, and is supposed to burn for four hours, although a half bottle burned for only one. The gel we used only for the Paula fireplace, because that's what its manufacturer sent. The gel crackled, which was nice; we also liked the fact that we didn't have to touch it or do any pouring. It lived in its can, as Sterno does.
Both forms of fuel smelled the same -- vaguely fondue-pot-ish -- which wasn't unpleasant, but we missed the wood-smoke aspect of a traditional fireplace. Many retailers promote ethanol fuel as being an environmentally happy thing. Ethanol, pointed out Robert Niziol, an executive at Planika Decor, a Polish manufacturer of glass fireplaces as well as liquid fuel, is made from some sort of living crop. 'Ours is made from potatoes, like vodka,' he explained proudly.
BLOMUS CHIMO FIREPLACE -- $1,260 at Lekker Home, lekkerhome.com or (617) 542-6464.
This is the fireplace that takes its aesthetic cues from a flat-screen television set. Over two feet square and six inches deep, it is designed to be mounted on a wall, but assembling the Paula was so exhausting that we just sat the Chimo on the floor against a metal stool.
It has a rectangular reservoir, which was easy to fill to three-quarters of its depth with liquid fuel. The reservoir is covered with a grate, and features a nifty damper that can be pulled over the open part with a huge forklike tool.
We were inclined to like this one the best; we could imagine it on our walls at home, and felt very excited. Sadly, its flame was a dim little thing, barely three inches high. Size matters with the Chimo, since its hearth (imagine the screen of a television set) is so large and black. You want the flame to cover at least half its expanse, as it does in promotional pictures like the one at top right. Had the reservoir been filled to the top, it might have produced a more satisfying conflagration, but we were anxious about causing a full-on building fire.
One person described the effect as being like a hibachi in a really expensive frame. 'Too broilerlike,' another said dismissively. Somebody was reminded of a subway fire (the grate is very much like a street grate), and that seemed sort of interesting, as if there were a fire beneath us, but only for a moment. The flame threw no heat, but the back of the hearth, which is metal, began to warm up after 10 minutes or so. In the end, however, 'cold' was the vibe consensus.
GENIOL GLASS FIREPLACE -- $750 at Arango Design, arango-design.com or (800) 279-1602.
Here is the beauty queen of the category. Though many of us dismissed it as just a huge candle -- David Russell at Arango in Miami said his customers set it out on their coffee tables -- some liked the purity of the thing: it's all about the flame.
Because it wasn't filled with enough fuel the first time, it had to be refilled and relighted, and both times its ignition made a terrifying 'pop,' like a gas stove exploding. Once lighted, though, the flame was higher than any of the others; further, it was reflected in the glass, giving it a lovely heft and texture. (The Geniol also has a neat damper: a disk of metal hanging from a metal cord.)
One person, who preferred the Chimo for its proscenium shape, remarked that a flame in the round could satisfy 'a floor-hugging 'groovy' crowd of fondue-sters.' Another shrugged it off as 'pagan ritual.' Most of us were simply hypnotized, if also frightened silly: the glass gets extremely hot, and the flame ricochets alarmingly from edge to edge. As one of us put it, 'You'd hate to think your neighbor was getting one of these.'
PAULA MAHOGANY FIREPLACE -- $349 at CSN Fireplaces, csnfireplaces.com or (800) 457-2106.
It took an entire morning to put together the Paula, the only fireplace requiring assembly. (It isn't hard to do, but it takes time, and several pairs of hands help.) In any case, at over four feet square and a foot deep, Paula cuts quite a figure. It is furniture, hokey but stolid, if not exactly solid.
Putting aside the cheese factor, there were those who liked the fact that you could lean upon the Paula, or that it provided 'another place to stack stuff.' Its fake log was its worst feature: it had an amoeba-shaped cutout that let you see not only the flame, but also the can the flame comes from, which spoiled the effect.
Mr. Lane suggested using three cans, but we were too chicken and lighted just one. Still, the fire made an appealing sound and had a true yellow flame. Mr. Lane sent it with FireGlo fuel, which costs about $80 for a box of 24 13-ounce cans, or more than $3 per can (or $9 per 'fire').
One person offered a summary: while he allowed as how the ventless numbers were the fireplace version of ambient music -- or kind of like watching the water in a sink instead of the sea -- he did experience 'that puppy-stomach rub' sensation you get from watching a flame. 'I got a little sleepy,' he said. 'I wanted to slump in a chair. I didn't want to do anything else.'
HAPPY HOLIDAY HEARTH DVD ($8 at Virgin Megastores or at virginmega.com).
We tried this out the next day, and it turned out to be everyone's favoritefire. The three-minute loop, which we played on a laptop, made the flame seem to burn in double-time, but the aural feature -- the crackle -- was realistic and soothing. (You can also play it with 23 holiday songs, or choose both crackle and songs.)
The H.H.H. is not, it should be pointed out, a DVD of the WPIX Yule Log, the beloved televised fire broadcast from 1966 to 1989, when it was retired because the sound was so poor, and subsequently lost. Yule Log aficionados will be happy to hear that on Dec. 23, 24 and 25, all three hours of the Yule Log will be broadcast -- remixed, remastered and generally gussied up -- along with an hourlong special called 'A Log's Life,' a history of 'the Log,' as the folks at WPIX call it, with interviews with experts like Joe Malzone, the creator of the Yule Log fan blog, theyulelog.com.
The documentary's title takes its name from a clerical error: turns out that in 2001 the original 35-millimeter film was finally found in WPIX's archives in New Jersey, where it had been misfiled in a 'Honeymooners' film can under the title 'A Dog's Life.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"This Season's Must-Have: The Little Black Roll
LAST Monday night, both the men's and women's bathrooms at the Double Seven, an ink-and-gold nightclub on West 14th Street, carried new accessories: rolls of black toilet paper, though you could hardly see them through the gloom. (The Double Seven's bathrooms are tiled in black, have black toilets and sinks and are lighted by candles.)
Laurie Black (her real name), a 34-year-old customer relations manager at an information technology consulting firm who was there having a drink with her boss, obligingly tugged out a length of the stuff and squinted. 'It certainly doesn't jump out at you,' she said finally. 'I imagine once you'd pulled it out your train of thought would be interrupted. You'd stop worrying about whether or not you'd paid for your last drink or whether you were going to go home with this guy. You'd think, wow, black toilet paper. Am I really going to use this?'
Good question. If black is the new black, again, should its influence extend to toilet paper? Can toilet paper make it as an object of design, a touchstone of chic? More important, should it?
'The question for us was not why, but why not,' said Paulo Miguel Pereira da Silva, the president of a Portuguese paper company called Renova, which has just begun testing its new product, Renova Black, otherwise known as black toilet paper, in this country. Mr. da Silva, who speaks Portuguese and French, communicated with this reporter by e-mail, his answers and my questions translated by an employee.
Mr. da Silva wrote that he had been thinking about the idea of spectacle and how it relates to consumer products while at a trade show in Las Vegas. Black was an intuitive choice for toilet paper, he suggested, because it signals 'avant-garde creative work.'
'In a design sense,' he wrote, black means 'irreverence, maybe touching a bit on the core nature of art, which is to break rules and set new ones.
'Culturally, deep down, Renova Black invites people to break down whatever might be limiting as common sense ideas,' he wrote.
Mr. da Silva ventured that his new product was 'neither solely a product, an object or a communication tool,' but some heady combination of all three. He also admitted, more prosaically, that when he stocks his bathroom with Renova Black at parties, guests tend to pinch the rolls.
In any case, hoping to capitalize on the concentration of design folk in town for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair next week, Mr. da Silva's company has hired Kelley Blevins, a soft-spoken, Tennessee-born public relations executive at OnTrend International, to find Renova Black just the right context. (He's already placed it in urgent hot spots like the Double Seven, Frederick's Bar & Lounge, Frederick's Restaurant and the basement bar at La Esquina.)
'I wanted as many tastemakers and influencers as possible to have a personal encounter,' said Mr. Blevins, who claims to be the man responsible for making the Chupa Chups lollipop a fashion accessory a few years ago, and so has had some experience in giving a stylish sheen to unlikely items.
Black toilet paper is enjoying its pre-buzz stage, said Mr. Blevins, who as of Tuesday had promises from Conran's, Catherine Memmi (a furniture and design store in SoHo featuring much dark wenge wood and white leather), Troy, Vitra and a gaggle of meatpacking district boutiques like Stella McCartney, Carlos Miele, Rubin Chapelle and others that black toilet paper would be a staple at their furniture fair parties.
'Basically, everyone with a bathroom said yes,' Mr. Blevins said.
A few weeks ago, when André Balazs threw a party for his girlfriend, Uma Thurman, at Frederick's Bar & Lounge on West 58th Street, the buzz was so soft no one heard it. Reached in London last week, Mr. Balazs, after a muffled conversation with the birthday girl, said the toilet paper was 'there, and, uh, it was very black.'
'O.K.,' he admitted, 'nobody noticed.'
Mr. Balazs was more voluble, however, when asked if, as a hotelier, he had ever given a toilet paper brief to anyone on his design team. 'I certainly did,' he said. 'We worked on a special sticker for the toilet paper at the Standard Downtown,' he added, referring to one of his Los Angeles hotels.
'The concept was that the whole place was part of a mythical evil conglomerate from the 1970's, something that John DeLorean might have run, and so the artist Ryan McGinness, who is fascinated by corporate logos, designed a language based on the human pictograms you see in airports.'
Mr. McGinness, Mr. Balazs said, designed a toilet paper pictogram of a man in the middle of doing that for which toilet paper is made.
He did not.
'He did, too,' Mr. Balazs said. 'Go and look. There is really no end to the amount of attention that one should lavish on the bathroom.'
Not even the versatile Philippe Starck, who has designed everything from a toilet cleaning brush to an earwax scooper, has ventured so far as toilet paper, however. Though in 1960, the fashion designer Pierre Cardin, in a licensing frenzy, did put his initials on the stuff, said Marian McEvoy, a contributing editor at Domino. 'Which is kind of funny, having the letters P.C. on toilet paper,' she said. 'I'm just wondering why someone hasn't done black before, though I could see it, too, in an electric, on-fire blue, or maybe stripes.'
Black toilet paper is an obvious fit for the dream-world of club and hotel bathrooms, but a weirder fit at home, unless you happen to have one of those stainless steel toilets that were all the rage a few years ago.
David Mandl, an architect, has a guest bathroom in his Manhattan apartment that's all steel and slate, and features the brushed stainless lavatory manufactured by a company called Neo-Metro. 'I wanted to give the bathroom an edge,' he said the other day. 'With black toilet paper I think it would look awesome.'
(You can't buy Renova Black in stores here yet -- remember, this is its pre-buzz period. But you can buy it online from the company, at renovaonline.net, for about 2 euros, or about $2.50. There is a horrifying deep red version on the site too, but it's only for sale to Europeans.)
Donald Albrecht, the curator of the Dorothy Draper show at the Museum of the City of New York, said he thought Mrs. Draper would have taken to the concept with gusto. 'We've got a recording of an Edward Murrow interview where he asks her what she'd most like to design, and she says, 'A butcher shop, which would be all white except for the noses of the pigs, which would be bright pink.' If anybody could be serious about color and toilet paper, it would have been her.'
Or Halston, who was Miles Redd's first response to the notion of black toilet paper as a decorative gesture. Mr. Redd is an interior designer in the Dorothy Draper mode, whose own bathroom is a mirrored, 1930's original he found in Chicago and fit to his house here in NoHo; it's big enough and glittery enough to throw a dinner party in (which Mr. Redd has indeed done).
Black toilet paper, he said, 'sounds so Halston, so balls of cocaine.'
'My theory is that most everything can be chic at some point or for some period of time,' he said. (Mr. Redd has never 'done' toilet paper, though he has gone so far as to choose toothpaste for a client because the packaging appealed.) 'I can see it in a powder room,' he continued, 'because that's a place where you can have whimsy or shock value, and you don't get tired of it because you're only there for a short amount of time.'
Henry Petroski, a design theorist and professor of engineering at Duke University, worried that 'shock' and 'bathroom' are an unhappy couple, at least when combined outside a nightclub setting. 'In the end, I expect that many people who use the toilet do not want to be shocked,' said Mr. Petroski, whose book 'Success Through Failure: The Paradox of Design' was published this year by Princeton University Press. 'They want to go to the bathroom in calm and solitude, without the intrusion of objects that distract them from the business at hand.'
But Miguel Calvo, who is one curator for the Mobile Living Experiment, a design showcase dedicated to the props of nomadic living filling 18,000 square feet at the Skylight Studios in SoHo during the furniture fair next week, said he liked the 'wow factor' of the black toilet paper, and was happily laying in a stock of it for his event. 'All global nomads need toilet paper,' he said. 'Is this fabulous or banal? Who knows?'
His co-curator, David Shearer, said, 'Maybe what's important is not the product but a sense of process: you've changed the color of something very ordinary, and so people are going to interact with it in a very different way.'
Or perhaps, as David Rockwell, veteran of so-called entertainment architecture, said: 'We've reached the logical end for thinking about that product. Black doesn't say anything to me about the particular use of the product. It's not really form following function; it's counterintuitive, so that's sort of interesting.'
Mr. Rockwell, whose design credits include W Hotels and Nobu, said he was not tempted by toilet paper. What he would really like to try his hand at is Band-Aids.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"The Stylish Seek Stars, but TV Seating Draws Crowds
RECENTLY released to video, 'Equilibrium,' a movie starring Christian Bale, is a sci-fi tale about the future. People's feelings have been declared dangerous and are being suppressed by the authorities.
As always, the future is loaded with great-looking design. And as always, most famously in Orwell's '1984,' the modern hero stumbles upon the lair of someone living in the past, amid the unlawful artifacts of emotion and memory. There Mr. Bale, working for the authorities and looking like a piece of high design himself, has a violent showdown with his feelings -- provoked by a lamp with a fringed shade.
It was hard, while walking down the aisles of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center last weekend, not to be reminded of the sci-fi stance that contemporary design takes against the past. And it was hard to imagine what role it will play in the future. Most people's idea of modern furniture design is more than 50 years old -- the work of Ray and Charles Eames or the great 20th-century architects like Aalto, still on display and pulling them in, like a reunion tour, at the show.
But design, no matter how good, will never, by itself, be able to invest an object with meaning. It will always be an artificial heart. And though new items on display at the 2003 fair, like Christopher Deam's handsome Glide chair for Lolah (www.lolah.com), which has the action of an old porch swing, cleverly go through the motions, will anyone ever feel nostalgic about them? If the house caught fire, would you grab Glide, or your childhood blanket?
There's a lot fogging design's pristine mirror right now -- an iffy economy, unease about security. In the world of design, where looks can be everything, vanity seems uncomfortably self-conscious this year. Though there were more exhibitors than last year, including an increase in newcomers, the fair was perceived by participants as a modest statement, with an apprehensive emphasis on biz, not buzz.
Jerry Epperson, an industry analyst with Mann, Armistead & Epperson in Richmond, Va., said that the businesses at the fair, generally smaller manufacturers, represented 10 percent of the furniture industry in the United States. The wider 'contemporary' market is defined by anything that is not historically derivative (including recliners and home theater seating) and is strong in sales -- roughly 50 percent of the upholstered furniture sold.
But Mr. Epperson added that 'nostalgia is the hottest category in the business right now.' He characterized it as 'your grandmother's furniture.'
On a sleek island of black at the convention center, Bernhardt Design (www .bernhardtdesign.com) showed a vampirish collection of steel and white-leather furniture designed by Fabien Baron, the graphic designer best known for his makeover in 1992 of Harper's Bazaar magazine.
The minimal-as-a-knife-edge design and dressed-to-kill attitude in the Bernhardt group were reminiscent of another Christian Bale movie, 'American Psycho,' based on Bret Easton Ellis's novel of 1991. Patrick Bateman, the protagonist, also believed in life as a perfect surface.
But many exhibitors were trying to make concessions to the comfort of the consumer -- if not physically, then emotionally or financially. That, and not form, function or finish, seemed to be what was newest and most hopeful. And meaning, a favorite conceit for designers, especially young ones, took a secondary role to the kind of friendly, easier allusions that make one feel lucky to have a home to furnish.
Pulse Requisite, an Oakland, Calif., outfit (www.pulserequisite.com), presented Juice, a wooden breakfast table with a scalloped-edge top that makes it look as if it has a cloth on it. The 'cloth' edge has a daisy-flower cutout in it too. The table, $1,350, looks like the product of a happy childhood, not a design degree or a jigsaw.
Denyse Schmidt (www.dsquilts.com), a well-known contemporary quilt maker who has exhibited hand-sewn quilts for eight years, showed Denyse Schmidt Works, machine-sewn quilts that cut the price to $800 -- roughly a quarter of the cost of her hand-sewn quilts. She is also in licensing negotiations with Terence Conran Shops and Design Within Reach, which is developing a line of bedding.
Snowlab (www.snowlabdesign.com), a Canadian company that exhibited for the first time last year, returned with a much cheaper version of its well-received, flat-panel wall lighting and introduced blown-glass hanging lamps that were antithetical to its futuristic first collection. Snowlab did $27,000 worth of business at last year's fair, enough to bring them back. But the writing was on the wall as to what would sell -- and it wasn't phosphorous ideas alone.
Even at the 'off-site' or 'alternative' events staged in galleries and showrooms throughout New York City during the fair, which are typically more radical in concept, there were indications that design's unbroachable barriers -- the 'you're either into it or out of it' thinking -- were being cracked by anxiety.
At Core77's 'Canary in a Coalmine' presentation at Gallery 91, Todd Falkowsky, a Toronto-based designer (www.coroflot.com /tfalkowsky), showed his Toy chair, upholstered with stuffed animals. As comfort, it's proactive -- a chair that wants to give you a hug.
And at the convention center, student work, represented in booths set up by schools like Pratt Institute with large design programs, and a preview of problems to be solved by the next class of professional designers, was an uncharacteristically pacific mixture of acknowledging the present and appeasing the past.
Day Off by Kanjana Chaiwatanachai (at Pukan_07@hotmail.com) is a futonlike floor cushion with flexible extensions that relieve the stresses of a workweek by accommodating anything you might care to do on your day off -- read, eat, watch television. Past Lite by Geoffrey Young is a translucent resin table illuminated by neon (gyoungdesign@aol.com). An ornamental cast in the resin appears when the mantel-like table is lighted -- classical inspiration as a kind of night vision, like dreams.
The fair's 2003 Editors Awards were telling too. Blu Dot, the seven-year-old Minnesota company (www.bludot.com) that staked its success on practicalities like utility, attractive pricing and dependable shipping dates, not daring design, took the prize in the furniture category. Its new shelving, which sells for $279 for a 36-inch-wide unit, is raw particle board -- design has literally dropped its veneer. Anne Kyyro Quinn (www.annekyyroquinn.com), based in London, was named best new designer. Ms. Quinn creates pillows and throws.
'I'm much more cautious about my buying this year,' said Douglas Burton, an owner of Apartment Zero, a design store in Washington, who was walking the fair.
As an independent retailer, Mr. Burton has recently felt the pressure of staying in business. Several exhibitors, including Blu Dot, reported losing accounts from design stores, once a measure of metropolitan sophistication and a staple of cities big and small, which are closing -- in part because of competition from design 'chains' like Design Within Reach, a catalog and Internet company now also opening showrooms.
'I'm not writing as many orders,' Mr. Burton said. 'I'm getting all the materials, going back to the store and talking with my employees about what customers really want. There might be an amazing piece, but it might be a $6,000 chair. People aren't spending money on those pieces now. We need that great chair that's $500.' Mr. Burton concluded, 'They're coming to us for great design, but they're coming to us for pricing now, too.'
Not inappropriately, the moment seems grounded in serviceable home furnishings. At the fair, there were pieces to admire with ambitions no greater than to be chests of drawers, like e15's mahogany model (www.e15.com), or stylish side chairs, like Hussl's ST6 (www.hussl.at), which is available in a variety of colored lacquers. Pure Design (www.puredesignonline.com) showed a bar stool ($305) that was as long as a love seat, for those who don't like to drink alone.
Cocktails were on people's minds, as were children, some indication that many younger designers at the fair, like Mr. Deam, are now older and beginning to act, if not like their parents, well then, like parents. Mr. Deam, 41, had twins this year. There was contemporary children's furniture on view at Truck (www.the-truck.com). Jennifer Carpenter, one of the company's three partners and its manager, also had a child this year. David Netto (www .nettocollection.com), a fashionable interior designer in New York, showed baby furniture, including a crib.
Down the aisle from Mr. Netto's nappy changing table, Bombay Sapphire was pouring martinis -- the first time that the fair has served cocktails. And at noon on Saturday, the impromptu lounge was crowded.
Generation X, it appeared, had discovered the business lunch.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Graphic Artists Cross a Line: We're Not Just Hired Pens
ON a hot, airless afternoon earlier this month, Geoff McFetridge, a graphic designer, showed up for a quick session at a skateboarding park a few miles north of the house he shares with his girlfriend in the Los Feliz neighborhood here. A slightly built 32-year-old with a mustache and a dusting of freckles, Mr. McFetridge climbed out of a Land Rover carrying a battered skateboard and wearing a dark blue 'Hang Loose Hawaii' T-shirt. Rounding out his 1980's throwback attire were a chunky black Casio watch and a pair of red Vans sneakers faded almost to pink.
Just as he was about to tip his board into the concrete bowl, the park attendant yelled out, 'Elbow pads!' Mr. McFetridge, slipping on the pads, just shrugged: he wasn't about to try anything that would cause a fracture. 'It's not like when I was a kid, and I was desperately trying to learn some crazy new trick all the time,' he said.
Once a week or so, he said, he visits the park with Mike Mills, a 37-year-old graphic designer and filmmaker. With a laugh, Mr. McFetridge said Mr. Mills's style is even more old-fashioned than his own. 'Mike skates vintage,' he said.
Mr. Mills and Mr. McFetridge are featured prominently in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Triennial, a sprawling survey of contemporary American design that opened on Tuesday in New York. On their home turf in Southern California, they operate within what might be called the design-hipster nexus, a group of directors and artists whose résumés qualify as insider, but whose creative work -- as varied as music videos and skateboard design -- tends to celebrate outsiders. Both have had solo gallery shows in Los Angeles and are members of the Directors Bureau, a production company founded by Mr. Mills and Roman Coppola, a filmmaker and a son of Francis Ford Coppola.
The Directors Bureau is a sort of clearinghouse that helps line up work directing commercials and videos for its small group of principals. Its aim is to avoid the slickness of other Los Angeles production companies, but it has acquired a certain gloss in spite of itself.
'It's the most pretentious thing in the world to try and be unpretentious,' Mr. Mills said, 'but that's what we're trying to do.'
To the teenagers who rub elbow pads with them at the skate park, Mr. McFetridge and Mr. Mills may well seem ancient. But to commercial clients and the design world establishment, they represent youth -- or at least a direct pipeline to its fickle sensibilities. Mr. McFetridge created an animated graphics campaign in 2001 for the ESPN Winter X Games, a competition thick with snowboarding events, and is working on a watch and a shoe for Nike. He has designed title sequences for films like 'The Virgin Suicides,' directed by Roman Coppola's sister, Sofia Coppola, and 'Adaptation,' directed by Ms. Coppola's husband, Spike Jonze. With a partner, Mr. McFetridge is also starting a new skateboard company, to be called Atwater.
'They're not in this old model of graphic design where the designer says: 'I have a client. I assess their needs. I get my check,' ' said Ellen Lupton, one of four curators of the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition. 'The way they work is much more like an artist.'
At the same time, she said, 'these guys are very entrepreneurial -- they want to have some control over the means of production instead of doing just work for hire.'
That ambitious and hybrid approach to design work is a major theme -- perhaps the major one -- of the show. 'Typically, graphic designers provide the spit and polish but not the shoe,' Ms. Lupton writes in the show's catalog. 'Not so for some of the most interesting designers working today. They are creating products, furniture, garments, textiles, typefaces, databases, magazines, novels, music, critical essays, films and videos. They have become producers, working to initiate ideas and make them happen.'
Ms. Lupton called Mr. McFetridge the 'poster boy' for that trend. Along with devoting the catalog's front, back and flap covers to his graphic and textile designs, she and her fellow curators have hung several of them in large wallpaperlike sheets on the second floor of the show, emphasizing the domestic setting of the ornate Cooper-Hewitt building, a former Carnegie family mansion at Fifth Avenue and 91st Street.
Mounting shows in a former house 'has always been a challenge,' Ms. Lupton said. 'This time we're kind of going with it, saying, 'Look, it's a house.' You can put wallpaper on the walls, only it's contemporary, crazy wallpaper. The tone of it is to make the graphics consume the environment.'
Back in the front seat of the Land Rover, Mr. McFetridge wiped a few beads of sweat from his forehead. As he steered up one snaking road after another, the 'Hollywood' sign appeared briefly between hills. A few minutes later he pulled up to the curb in front of a ranch-style two-bedroom house tucked into a hillside.
Inside, he kissed his girlfriend, Sarah De Vincentis, who is seven months pregnant, and talked with a couple of friends who had dropped by to give him a present for his 32nd birthday, which had been a week earlier. The house is modest but airy, with a long galleylike kitchen and a wedge-shaped fireplace, open on two sides, dividing the living room from a sitting room near the front door. A faded copy of 'Landscape for Western Living,' one of the Sunset series, sat on the kitchen counter.
A view of lush hills and of nearby Griffith Park was framed perfectly through a large square window in the living room. A mix of flea market finds and well-known pieces of midcentury design filled the rooms, along with art photographs and stacks of vinyl records. In the sitting room a bright-orange bird chair by Harry Bertoia sat next to a love seat covered in a fabric pattern, 'Stoner Forest,' by Mr. McFetridge. The décor seemed to celebrate a Southern California style of living that is unfussy but stylish.
Sinking into in a boxy blue thrift-store side chair in the living room, Mr. McFetridge said he had been surprised to learn that he had been included in the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition. 'I just don't think of myself as part of the real design world,' he said. 'I mean, I've spoken at the Walker in Minneapolis before, but that's about it.'
A banging noise kept interrupting him. He explained that he and Ms. De Vincentis had hired the architect Barbara Bestor to renovate the bathrooms. 'We're having a baby, and babies need bathtubs,' he said. 'That's the word on the street, anyway.'
Mr. McFetridge, who calls his design firm Champion Graphics, grew up outside Calgary, Alberta, and moved to Southern California in his early 20's to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree in graphic design at the California Institute of the Arts. After a stint in freelance skateboard design, he took his first real job as art director of Grand Royal, a short-lived but influential magazine financed by the Beastie Boys. 'Sometimes it was wheel-spinning, staying up for 10 hours doing one page,' he said. 'But I was excited, because I thought that magazine was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.'
The computer design tools that he began learning to use in that job and has since perfected have let him take on a wide range of work -- directing commercials for Japanese television, for example, and designing wallpaper and fabric for Ligne Roset, the French furniture company. 'Basically every project I do is an experiment,' he said.
Mr. Mills, who grew up in Santa Barbara, Calif., moved to New York City to attend Cooper Union. (He and Ms. Lupton met there.) He said his parents -- his father is a retired museum director, and his mother was an architect -- were disappointed that he didn't become an Abstract Expressionist.
Like Mr. McFetridge, Mr. Mills began his career as a graphic designer, working in his 20's for Tibor Kalman in New York, but is now concentrating on filmmaking. He directed 'Paperboys' and 'Deformer,' both documentaries, and is trying to raise money to film his own adaptation of Walter Kirn's 1999 novel, 'Thumbsucker,' with Keanu Reeves and Tilda Swinton.
He has also designed skateboards and postcards for the Paris design boutique Colette, and has directed music videos and designed album covers for Air, the Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth and Ol' Dirty Bastard. One of his latest projects is a series of commercials for Volkswagen's Beetle convertible aimed squarely at people in their 20's and 30's.
As the banging from his bathtub-in-progress died down, Mr. McFetridge considered the décor in his own house. 'When we bought it, there was this horrible old 1950's wallpaper all over the place, and we took it all down,' he said. 'But now, I have to say we're thinking, 'Should we put new wallpaper right back up?' '
He said a few friends had installed his wallpaper designs in their bathrooms. But nobody has gone wallpaper crazy the way the Cooper-Hewitt curators did. Though his mustache marks Mr. McFetridge as somebody who is not afraid to embrace a revivalist trend in its earliest stages, he said he isn't sure about this particular one.
'Wallpaper in the bathroom is one thing,' he said. 'But wallpaper in the living room -- that's the real plunge.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Defining Sprawl: From A to Z
DOLORES HAYDEN, a professor at Yale, was driving north on Interstate 95 into the chaotic blitzkrieg of Americana that has become her turf.
'There's a toad!' she exclaimed, referring not to a warty amphibian but to a defunct Toys 'R' Us (Toad: Temporary, Obsolete, Abandoned or Derelict site). In her green Passat wagon, she zoomed past a profusion of 'litter on a stick' (billboards) before spotting some 'ground cover' (cheap, easily bulldozed buildings, often self-storage units, put up to generate income while a developer waits to build something more profitable).
'When you see self-storage units, the most important thing to ask yourself is, what's next?' said Ms. Hayden, a Yale professor of architecture, urbanism and American studies, whose new book, 'A Field Guide to Sprawl,' will be published next month by W. W. Norton. 'Ground cover is a way to avoid an alligator' (real estate scheme gone belly up).
Conceived as a dictionary encompassing 51 species, from alligator to zoomburb (a city in the suburbs growing faster than a boomburb) the guide may well establish Ms. Hayden as the Roger Tory Peterson of sprawl.
'I was struggling for words to describe places like Tysons Corner,' she said of the Virginia suburb one recent morning while driving among local examples of development gone haywire. 'If you don't know what to call something, you don't know how to criticize it.'
Ms. Hayden, 59, is perhaps best known for 'The Grand Domestic Revolution' (M.I.T. Press, 1981), a groundbreaking study of the 'material feminists' of the 19th century, who sought to liberate the home and workplace from isolation and drudgery. This time around, Ms. Hayden is playing the role of reformer herself, taking aim at invasive species like the snout house (dwellings with jutting, full-frontal garages). 'They fail the trick-or-treat test,' she said, paraphrasing Portland, Ore., planning officials who thought children should be able to find the front door. (Portland banned snouts in 1999.)
The idea for a field guide grew out of Ms. Hayden's own frustration as a scholar and a citizen. She moved to Guilford, 12 miles east of New Haven, in 1991 after 11 years teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles. With its pristine New England village green and one of the largest collections of 18th-century houses in the country, Guilford, on the rural fringe about 100 miles from Manhattan, 'is a very typical battleground for preserving the sense of place,' she said.
Several years ago, Ms. Hayden, who wears a silver and gold ring in the shape of a three-dimensional courtyard with a stair and a bridge, wound up serving on a citizens advisory committee examining encroaching development. 'The town's zoning code was so convoluted nobody could read it,' she recalled. 'After a while I got to see that a lot of it was designed to frustrate discussion rather than enable it.' At the same time, she noticed that her graduate students at Yale, who came from different disciplines, including American studies, architecture, planning and anthropology, had difficulty describing the everyday American landscape without resorting to impersonal jargon. 'I began to see that one of the most useful things to do might be to develop a common language,' she said.
To probe the dark, semantic recesses of sprawl, Ms. Hayden combed planning glossaries, newspaper columns and Web sites for trade groups like the National Asphalt Pavement Association, and she went through slang dictionaries and real estate manuals. Along the way, she unearthed the origins of now ubiquitous terms like 'gridlock,' coined by two Manhattan engineers in 1980, as well as unwieldy euphemisms like 'nonattainment area,' plannerspeak for impermeable smog that fails to meet federal clean air guidelines.
Her personal favorite is boomburb, a word that 'gives the feeling of a place that's growing double-digits when you say it,' she said. (As a published poet, she is particularly attuned to nuances of language.)
In addition to naming names, Ms. Hayden critiques a landscape based on unrestrained growth, one, she writes, championed by federal policies since the 1920's, when Herbert Hoover, as commerce secretary, encouraged bankers, real estate agents, builders, automobile manufacturers and road builders to form a lobby to promote real estate development.
Four years ago, she and her graduate students created a Web site that used aerial photography to document growth around Guilford, a technique she also employs in the book. Like language, she said, aerial photographs have the power to demystify abstract or hidden aspects of the landscape, including garbage dumps and gated communities.
Ms. Hayden grew up in a six-story apartment building in New Rochelle, N.Y., Her father, J. Francis Hayden, was a lawyer; her mother, Katherine, a social worker who re-entered the work force in her 50's. Ms. Hayden originally trained as an architect at the Harvard Graduate School of Design in the 1970's, where she studied with the cultural geographer J. B. Jackson, 'the guy with the motorcycle who came to tell us we'd better look at America.'
The politics of design are a continuous presence in her work, from the 19th-century activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who criticized private houses as 'bloated buildings, filled with a thousand superfluities,' to Latina garment workers in Los Angeles, whose lives and experiences were part of a public art and history project she spearheaded while teaching at U.C.L.A.
Ms. Hayden's decade in Los Angeles, she said, influenced her more than her childhood in suburban New York: returning to the East Coast, she kept noticing apparitions of Los Angeles appearing on the horizon, like industrial parks bearing names like Concept Park ('no concept, no park,'). Her interest in the culture of cities and historic preservation led her full circle, back to the suburbs. 'It became clear to me as an urbanist that if I didn't understand what was going on in the suburban fringes, I couldn't keep writing about the city,' she said. 'Historically, city centers are where the action is -- where the men were, where the culture was. It was always considered less significant to be writing about 'the metropolitan area.' '
In 'Building Suburbia,' a history five years in the making published by Pantheon last year, she writes about suburban growth as a series of seven historical layers, an evolution that began with the borderlands and picturesque suburban enclaves of the early- to mid-1800's before changing into mass-produced urban-scale 'sitcom suburbs' of the 1950's and eventually into big boxes and category killers in the 1990's and beyond.
She advocates preserving the best aspects of each layer, even the numerous, once-derided sitcom suburbs around Guilford, which are dense enough to support neighborhood stores and local bus lines.
'She is a socially engaged scholar who sees sprawl not as inevitable but a byproduct of ongoing political decisions,' said Christopher Wilson, professor of cultural landscape studies at the University of New Mexico.
Ms. Hayden's field guide joins a wave of new scholarly devotion to sprawl, including '20th Century Sprawl: Highways and the Reshaping of the American Landscape' by Owen D. Gutfreund, director of urban studies at Columbia and Barnard and recently published by Oxford University Press. In his forthcoming book 'Sprawl: A Compact History,' to be published next year, Robert Bruegmann, a professor of architectural history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, will take a counterstance to Ms. Hayden's, emphasizing the positive aspects of sprawl as an urban form.
'It gives a lot of people the mobility, choice and privacy that once only wealthy people enjoyed,' he said in a telephone interview. 'The same sense of highbrow outrage leveled at semidetached houses in Victorian London and suburban stockbroker Tudors of the 1920's are being leveled at McMansions today. Every generation sets an aesthetic standard based on what they knew when they were younger.'
Ms. Hayden, who lives in a restored 1893 general store with her husband, Peter Marris, a sociology professor at Yale and a novelist, and their 16-year-old daughter, Laura Hayden Marris, continues to discover new sprawlisms practically weekly, among them, 'slurry stricken,' a British term for those who have encountered agricultural waste.
Alone, perhaps, she curates the language of the lulu (Locally Unwanted Land Use), the banana (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near) and nope (Not on Planet Earth).
If citizens wind up identifying rare 'life Lulus' the way birders might a mottled duck or a worm-eating warbler, Ms. Hayden will consider her mission accomplished. 'This is the U.S.A.,' she said. 'This is the stuff.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; Motel Makeover: No Room for Kitsch
FOR 15 years Miracle Manor, a divey 1940's motel 10 miles northeast of Palm Springs, seemed scripted more than operated by Lois Blackhill, a sometimes-topless facialist noted for channeling a spirit named Omra.
Ms. Blackhill attracted an unusual cast of characters to this Southern California Lourdes, which sits atop a geyser reputed to gush the most balanced mineral water in America into its spa and pool. She was the crazy aunt in the desert whose eccentric family charm attracted off-the-marquee movie-industry people and others who wanted to park themselves in a balmy anonymous nowhere for a good read and a long soak.
Once a fashion model in Paris and a cabaret singer in North Africa and later a globe-trotter with a particular interest in China, Ms. Blackhill was the impresario of a real-time sitcom. When she died of cancer in 1996, her ashes were sprinkled under the fronds in the motel's garden. She would be a hard act to follow. Could there ever be a sequel to Lois?
Today, the rusty neon sign is lighted again. The modest stucco establishment, with zoomy roofs lifting off from the parking lot toward a long desert view, now belongs to a Los Angeles couple, April Greiman, a designer, and Michael Rotondi, an architect, both regulars at the motel since the 80's.
'When it became available, we didn't think twice,' Mr. Rotondi said. 'We wanted a place in the desert with water as a second home.' As for running a motel, he said: 'It's real intimate, like having house guests, except everyone who stays out here helps pay the mortgage. We think of ourselves as managers who stay here for free.'
The internationally known designers want to maintain this pokey corner of a town of 15,500 people that has seen better days: the down-home retreat, a two-hour drive from Los Angeles built in the late 40's with charm that only an architect would notice, is an unlikely object of their affection.
Nonetheless, the two set about remodeling the pool-side complex, inventing a new character for the place, paying for the furnishings with their credit cards.
'The construction cost about $100,000 total,' said Ms. Greiman, whose diversified practice includes the design of books, dinnerware, interactive television and Internet prototypes and most recently the graphic identity and image for the aviation exhibition '2003 Dayton Century of Flight.' (Her posters have been collected by the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Institution and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.)
Mr. Rotondi, after a decade as the director of the avant-garde Southern California Institute of Architecture, is now focusing on his architectural practice. 'Our conceptual framework was to treat every practical issue as an esthetic one,' he said.
The six-room retreat, whose charm was its modesty, resisted a glamorous makeover. The original 1940's design consisted of two small stucco-covered frame buildings wrapped around a courtyard. The property also contained an enclosed spa of naturally heated water. Mr. Rotondi, well known for complex residential and institutional designs that refer to the myths of the surrounding landscape, had to exercise restraint.
'I first thought of ripping the roof off to create a secondary structure on top, but I got it out of my system,' he said. 'A real active physical design wouldn't be relaxing.'
With a Naugahyde chair in every corner and wall-to-wall shag carpeting throughout, the Manor was a minor miracle of kitsch, but in the hands of Ms. Greiman and Mr. Rotondi, it was in for a life change.
They wanted to put people in the desert without the interference of decor. Their decision to simplify and clean out the rooms and grounds meant returning the motel to its pre-Lois days, when it was a set of rudimentary buildings. The pair inherited an architect's large painted rendering of the complex, with happy-hour Champagne-bubble stepping stones around the pool and buildings with a purity equal to the desert's.
'I've always liked the buildings for being so straightforward and generic,' Mr. Rotondi said. 'They epitomize the problem of the motel in the desert, this small building in a huge landscape. The idea was to be elemental, not intellectual.'
They re-established the original shapes and, where the air-conditioners had been, opened exterior walls with 2-by-8-foot horizontal windows to capture desert panoramas.
'Many motels we've visited weren't conducive to the experience of the desert,' Mr. Rotondi said. 'Often they have wall-to-wall carpeting, windows sized for ventilation instead of views, and heavy furniture and curtains better in the city. The way the rooms were cluttered with synthetic materials, you just wanted to crash and leave.' He added, 'What we talked about was how to keep people in a room rather than letting the furniture force them out.'
Ms. Greiman said: 'A lot of people liked the kitsch -- it was like a time warp. But we wanted it to be visually quiet and serene. The desert outside is an awesome landscape, so we wanted the rooms to be monastic, with a kind of interior life that allowed quiet and peace of mind.'
Ms. Greiman and Mr. Rotondi opted for understatement. Clothes hang on a simple rod sticking out from a wall or go into boxes that wheel under the platform beds. Simple birch plywood floor panels are inset within cool-to-the-feet concrete borders. Long desks of plywood (with snake lamps hanging from above) accommodate those who arrive with their laptops. The generous headboards contain reading lights. A room without a kitchen costs $80 a night; with a kitchen, $125.
But not everyone is happy with the makeover. 'It's like your parents sold the house you grew up in, and it was renovated,' said Dane Holweger, a movie production designer, who remains faithful to Ms. Blackhill's interpretation. 'The place is starting over again, and that's fine -- it'll have to create its own history.'
What would Mr. Holweger have done? 'I would have devoted each room to a decade -- 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's period room. I wouldn't be interested in doing a 90's room. There's no kitsch value in that.'
The motel's exterior almost failed to get Jamie Adams, a painter, and Stephanie Silverman, an actress and writer, out of their car when they found the place by mistake. 'But it turned out to be exactly our take: no TV's, nice and quiet,' Ms. Silverman said. 'In the other places around here, you don't want to stay around -- very noisy, with karaoke rooms and deejays on weekends.'
And what would Lois think?
'The first time I was here, strange things happened,' said Brandi Chase, who started working as caretaker at the Miracle Manor motel several months ago. 'The hot spa would go up to 150 degrees and then down to 80. So, I decided to introduce myself to Lois. And after that everything mellowed out.'",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Under Pressure to Withstand an Unforgivable Beating
AT 23 it is two years older than Venus Williams and two years younger than Jennifer Capriati. The Wilson US Open Tournament Select has been the official ball of the United States Open since 1979, the year a mop-haired John McEnroe won the first of three consecutive singles titles.
While tennis rackets have evolved from wood to metal to carbon fiber, Wilson's fuzzy yellow ball remains virtually unchanged. When it comes to tennis balls, constancy is the greatest virtue.
It was one thing to design a ball to withstand the serve and volley of wooden rackets. Today, a bigger, stronger breed of players delivers serves that exceed 140 miles an hour. 'The ball is getting impacted much more severely than in the past,' said Paul Zalatoris, business director for tennis balls at Wilson, which is based in  Chicago. 'Our main focus is to withstand the beating.'
Wilson's perennial challenge is to make the balls identical -- and durable, yet lively. 'This ball is lighter, easier on the arm and very consistent in its playability,  more than other hard-court balls I've used,' said Sandrine Testud, the 18th seed in the women's draw.
For the tournament this year, Wilson shipped more than 71,000 US Open balls (12,000 pounds worth) to Flushing Meadows. With players using their own custom rackets and wearing sponsor-supplied shoes, if they lose they have only the umpires to blame -- or the balls.
Therefore, every ball in play has to meet specifications of the International Tennis Federation and the United States Tennis Association for weight, size, hardness and rebound. (Wilson submitted eight dozen US Open balls a year ago for 2001 tournament approval.)
Bill Bishop, principal engineer at Wilson's rackets technology laboratories in Elk Grove, Ill., tests balls for hardness in a hefty metal desktop ball smusher called the Stevens Machine.
'It measures how much the ball is squeezed by an 18-pound load,' the industry standard, Mr. Bishop said. Some 15 to 20 percent of the balls for the Open were sampled in the Stevens Machine.
Leeway among balls is so slim that the standard allowance for deformation, or change in shape, is from 0.220 to 0.290 inches. Balls for the U.S. Open meet even stricter standards of uniformity: within five-thousandths of an inch, or between 0.240 and 0.245 inches. 'A pro playing with a 0.220 and then a 0.290 could feel the difference in hardness,' Mr. Bishop said. 'Obviously we can't supply balls that vary one to another for million-dollar tournaments.'
Ideally, for several months leading to a tournament, players would use the same brand. But some players came into the Open after having used different balls at other tournaments.
And to a pro, the range of difference can be immense. The tennis ball's core is made of natural rubber; because the Open is played on a hard court, the ball's covering is a heavy felt weave of New Zealand wool with a bit of nylon. (For match play, the felt on the men's ball is the slightest bit thicker than on the women's ball.)
'Any natural product inherently varies,' Mr. Bishop said. 'But here you have to make sure two natural products, rubber and wool, fall within certain governed parameters. When you're speaking of 100 million tennis balls a year, that's a lot of natural product that has to be made consistent.'
The ball also has to be attractive. The single biggest production challenge is getting two flat strips of wool and nylon (cut in shapes known as dogbones) to meet smoothly around the ball, joined by a white adhesive. 'This part of the process will always be manual,' Mr. Bishop said. 'You have to have a personal ball-coverer -- that's what they do for a living -- tweak it and make it look pretty.' The ball-coverer's rule of thumb: the squarer the dogbones, the more the covering tends to wrinkle.
Wrinkles and bad 'hair' are to be avoided in tennis balls as much as among aging players. The felt that covers the balls calls for Frédéric Fekkai-level care; it's a delicate balance of maximizing durability and minimizing fluff. 'You make one aspect of the cloth better,' Mr. Bishop said, 'you're probably going to make another aspect worse.' A covering might last forever, 'but more than likely it's going to fluff up badly.'
The goal is to allow just enough fright wig on the ball so that the racket face can grab it, but not enough to create aerodynamic drag. When balls emerge from the heat and pressure of the manufacturing process, the felt is compressed, like the matted coat of a wet dog. It is then steam-fluffed in industrial driers. The objective is to pull the fibers up and make the balls fuzzy so they don't fluff up dramatically during play. 'We call those Don King or troll balls,' Mr. Bishop said.
Players know that fluff affects performance, and they will cull through balls looking for the kind of fuzz that will suit their game. On the first serve, some players like to take the skinnier ball, where the fuzz is still down, said Tracy Austin, a two-time U.S. Open champion and USA Network analyst. 'Those feel like they're going to go quicker through the air, come off the court quicker.'
Mr. Bishop added: 'For the second serve they usually pick a scuffed-up ball.' That allows them to  hit the stuffing out of the first one, he said, 'and put a little more English in the second serve to make sure it drops in.'
After all the testing and primping and selecting, the professional life of a tennis ball is short and brutish. At the Open, one set of balls is used for the warm-up and the first seven games, then retired. After that, balls are retired after every nine games. The United States Tennis Association donates the used balls to school and youth programs.
Wilson's contract to provide the official ball runs to 2003. It pays the tennis association an undisclosed fee for that privilege plus royalties for each product Wilson sells with the U.S. Open name on it.
The tennis ball is one of the few products for which both the object and its packaging contain pressurized air. 'Putting a metal lid onto a plastic container under pressure is an engineering feat in itself,' Mr. Bishop said.
To make sure the balls have a consistent 12 pounds of pressure per square inch, a veterinarian's 20-gauge needle is attached to a test gauge and plunged into 10 percent of the balls. The cans should be at 13 pounds of pressure to guarantee the balls have a long shelf life.
Wilson's canning machines come from the food industry, adjusted to insert pressure rather than create a vacuum. But the rubber ball itself is not a great insulator of air, Mr. Bishop said, nor is the canister. 'The plastic can leaks; air permeates through the sidewall. And if you think of the necks of juice and soda bottles at the grocery store, the tennis ball canister opening is a very large one in the lid world.'
The balls that come popping out of the can for the Open are optic yellow. The traditional white tennis ball gave way to color in the late 1970's to accommodate television audiences. Yellow remains the best way to insure visibility against different backgrounds.
'You have a dark green surface, a lighter sky and sometimes a white ceiling indoors,' Mr. Bishop said. 'So you already have to go from light to dark extremes. For tournaments, you also have to contend with spectators, the rainbow-colored sea of shirts in the stands. Fortunately, not too many people are wearing optic yellow, now that we're out of the late 1980's.'
Even at 143 miles an hour, the Wilson -- optic yellow, pressure tested, durable and consistent -- remains the official ball of the U.S. Open. 'Wilson's been with us as long as I can remember, and we're really happy with them,' said Jay Snyder, tournament adviser of the Open. 'We've really gotten used to those balls.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; From Latin Memories, Tropical Modernism
EVERY summer, Madeleine Sanchez, now a 38-year-old architect, would visit her grandmother's small turquoise and ocher house in Cayey, P.R. She was often awakened in the middle of the night by the moonlight, which streamed in through cracks in the wooden planks that made up the small hand-built casita where her grandmother lived and died.
Ms. Sanchez's reminiscences about her grandmother, 'a fearless woman who refused to leave her house during hurricanes and who got up at 5 A.M. with the roosters,' never became a conscious element in her architecture. (She founded her own firm in 1992.) But those snippets of memory -- of her grandmother's transom, the shutters facing the mountains and the way the moonbeams shone through -- are subtly interwoven in a freestanding pavilion she designed for 'Dream Houses: Three Latino Constructions,' an exhibition highlighting the work of young Puerto Rican architects, which opened yesterday at the Hostos Center for Arts and Culture in the Bronx.
Along with her colleagues in the show, Warren James, 38, and Miguel Rivera, 33, Ms. Sanchez, a New York-born 'Nuyorican,' represents a new generation of Latino architects who are using their histories, attitudes and dreams -- their shared psychic terrain -- to create their own fusion architecture in New York and Puerto Rico. Their sensibility is perhaps best symbolized by the 'guagua aerea,' the three-and-a-half-hour air shuttle between Kennedy Airport and San Juan.
'Many Puerto Ricans in New York have a house on the island, or a piece of land, or are saving for a piece of land,' said Mr. Rivera, who grew up in Bayamon, P.R., and studied architecture in San Juan and at Columbia University. 'I created a house not just for me, but for all the supers of New York.'
The exhibition, whose curator is Nina Rappaport, is the first devoted to Puerto Rican architects in New York since the Museum of Modern Art's survey 'Latin Architecture Since 1945' 25 years ago; the timing is apropros. This year is the centenary of Puerto Rico's becoming a possession of the United States, and for the young architects, all of whom have their own small design firms in Manhattan, the question of Puerto Rican identity has deep resonance. Although Puerto Ricans comprise about 12 percent of New York City's population, only six architectural firms in the entire state are owned by Puerto Ricans.
The work of these three architects continues the piquant stylistic cross-fertilization that has long existed in Puerto Rico; in their case, the influences combine traditional Ivy League educations with island vernacular and the zoomy tropical modernism that blossomed in Puerto Rico and Latin America around the turn of the century.
'Exile always heightens the search for identity,' observed Prof. Jorge Rigau, dean of the New School of Architecture at the Polytechnic University in San Juan. 'In trying to establish what they inherited, they are furthering the vital connections between New York City and Puerto Rico.'
Ms. Sanchez's dream house at Hostos is topped by translucent fiberglass, evocative of the island's ubiquitous corrugated tin roofs, and has a 'fish floor' where bamboo is suspended over a cove of turquoise and orange glass pebbles that shimmer like the ocean. The roof pivots and can be opened or closed, depending on the weather.
She was educated at Smith College and Yale University and has twice been an artist in residence at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. 'What you grow up with is indelible, but I wasn't conscious of it,' she said. 'When you're with a client, all you're thinking about is getting the Sub-Zero refrigerator in.'
Warren James -- the son of a Spanish mother and, he said, a 'total Massachusetts Wasp' father descended from William James -- calls his architectural style 'glocal,' a fusion of global and local. After studying at Cornell and Columbia Universities, Mr. James went to work for Robert A. M. Stern and the Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill before cognitive dissonance -- 'being a Puerto Rican designing a shingle-style house in the Hamptons' -- set in.
He grew up in Arecibo, P.R., in a hotel on the plaza mayor -- the central square -- owned by his grandparents. As a boy, he spent every afternoon serenaded by canaries on a balcony, observing the festive welter of life on the square and gazing toward the mountains and sugar cane fields. With  amusement, he would study the huge Arecibo Observatory, a futuristic landmark featured in the movie 'Contact' that he calls 'a big ear listening to outer space.'
Those hours on the balcony have made themselves felt in his architecture. In the 3,400-square-foot Alpha Loft he designed with Daniel Montroy for Alex Shpigel, a real estate investor, and Rachel Arfa, a lawyer, Mr. James treats raw space like a plaza mayor with little urban buildings surrounding it. The kitchen, the powder room and the breakfast room are freestanding geometric forms, with adjustable sandblasted windows. The enclosed breakfast room is inspired by fiesta kiosks on the town square.
In a compound on Shelter Island, N.Y., Mr. James conjures up images of an island. The house -- under construction for Mr. Shpigel and Ms. Arfa -- is a series of floating planes up on plinths; the living room is a glass cube that glows like a lighthouse at night. 'Every house is an accretion of shapes,' Ms. Rappaport, the curator, noted of Mr. James's work, 'an evocation of a town within a single residence.'
His dream house at Hostos -- two intersecting cubes, one solid, one transparent -- was inspired by the Puerto Rican vernacular of wooden jalousies and shutters contrasted with thick Spanish colonial walls. It also, not surprisingly, contains a balcony.
The image of a town square teeming with life is perhaps an apt metaphor for the architecture of Puerto Rico itself, in which many traditions intertwine. 'It's both-and,' Mr. James said of the architects' collective approach, 'not either-or.'
Modernism, a strong force throughout Latin America, developed its own distinctive regional identity in Puerto Rico, 'an island culture ready to roll,' as Mr. James put it. In part, the adoption of modernismo was climatic; the concrete beloved by modernists was the perfect material because it resisted hurricanes, humidity and termites. Tropical modernism embraced vernacular traditions, particularly the use of shutters, interior courtyards and open floor plans that brought the lush outdoors inside. Second-story balconies remain a dominant feature, especially in urban settings.
The growth of suburban developments after World War II furthered those trends, incorporating concrete sunshades, iron fences and grillwork and open plans that responded to the tropical environment.
Mr. Rivera, who divides his time between the Manhattan firm of Mitchell/Giurgola and his own firm, designed a variation on this theme for the Hostos Gallery. It is a fragment of an affordable house he hopes to build one day on property he owns in Puerto Rico, inspired by his experience as someone 'who chooses to live in North America but who dreams nostalgically of home and hopes to maintain a foothold there.'
Made of concrete block, with a cantilevered roof, the house is designed to open and close, with pivoting concrete walls and sliding screens. Mr. Rivera addresses security with decorative gates that can slide on tracks. 'The question is, How can you live in the tropics enclosed?' he said.
Mr. Rivera has clients in both New York and Puerto Rico. For Dr. Ian Canino, a psychiatry professor at Columbia University, and his wife, Teresa, a social worker, the architect used the couple's collection of antique Puerto Rican santos, or carved wooden saint figures, as a cue. He exposed the apartment's wooden beams and contrasted their roughness with white-painted brick walls lined with Latin American and Puerto Rican art. (The Caninos both grew up in Puerto Rico.) 'Our roots were the same,' Dr. Canino said. 'It was a professional endeavor, but also a personal one.'
For Agustin Fernandez, a Cuban artist living in New York, Mr. Rivera is reconfiguring a five-story modern town house to accommodate his three grown children and their families. 'It is like a traditional Puerto Rican L-shaped martillo, a house of generations, except it's vertical,' Mr. Rivera said.
Mr. Fernandez didn't actively seek a fellow Latino as his architect, but 'when it happened, I was very happy,' he said.
'We had a very easy understanding of each other,' he said. 'We only needed to talk half-words.'
Hostos, whose student body is mostly Latino, expects the show to travel to Puerto Rico and possibly Miami, and there will be spinoff programs for Bronx public schools. 'No Latin student can aspire to be an architect if they've never been exposed to one,' Mr. James said. Beyond their residential work, the architects are reaching out to the larger community: Ms. Sanchez is currently completing the Bushwick community center, Mr. James works for the Julia de Burgos Latino Cultural Center in East Harlem and Mr. Rivera reviews student projects at the City University of New York.
Their work is flourishing here. But in the closet of Mr. Rivera's one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, there is a hammock hidden away, to be stretched between two avocado trees on his land in Puerto Rico, one day.
'Dream Houses: Three Latino Constructions' runs through June 19 at the Hostos Center for the Arts and Culture, 450 Grand Concourse (149th Street); (718) 518-6700.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"From 2 Brothers, Bolts of Lightning
WHILE the plot thickeners are all in the mix -- two ambitious brothers, a multimillion-dollar family business that began with the proverbial pushcart, an indomitable father -- the Maharam story is no made-for-television melodrama.
But it is a tale about the warp and weave of the design-crazed 90's. And about how those brothers managed to make office upholstery something to rave about -- and even to bring into the home.
Maharam is a century-old textile company transformed over the last four years from a dowdy, mass-market operation known for commercial fabrics sturdy enough to withstand a blowtorch into a company throwing off sparks. Last month the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum announced that Maharam is a finalist in its annual National Design Awards, which will  be presented on Wednesday.
Having long outgrown its 1950's motto 'House of Service,' Maharam is now associated with some of the most progressive designs in the textile industry. It has commissioned patterns from hot Dutch artists, and has upholstery being spun at the same mills that make Prada's knapsacks. Maharam has also chalked up insider points by reintroducing patterns by design legends like Charles and Ray Eames, Alexander Girard, Verner Panton and Gio Ponti.
'They made a complete turnaround to become a real front-runner,' said Jack Lenor Larsen, the modern textile designer and éminence grise of the industry, speaking of the Maharam brothers, Michael and Stephen, the fourth generation to run the company.
In an intensely competitive half-billion-dollar industry that sells contract textiles -- fabrics prized less for their looks than for their durability and flame resistance -- Maharam has played the panache card, and in the process, doubled profits to $100 million over the last four years, said Stephen Maharam, at 39 the younger of the brothers.
'These are times when the difference between most designs is not the good versus the bad, but good versus great,' said Michael Maharam, 42, the more outspoken of the brothers, who are both handsome in a wide-eyed Buzz Lightyear kind of way. 'But there's too much splashy, flashy fluff out there,' he added. 'We're trying to do textiles that are clean, beautiful, perfect.'
This swatch-world makeover began in the late 1960's with two brothers playing in the storage basement of an old Times Square warehouse. Their toys were Styrofoam balls, retractable extension rods and Mylar sheets, castoffs from their grandfather's garment-district business; he made stage curtains for theaters and panels for department store seasonal displays.
During their childhood, their father, Donald Maharam, had steered the company away from gold lamé curtains to tap into a huge new market for hospital curtains, cubicle panel fabrics and grill cloths for RCA's first 10-inch color television cabinets. 'It was not a company about creativity,' Michael Maharam said. 'It was about selling as many zillions of yards as possible.'
The unglamorous held no appeal for Michael Maharam, who spent his 20's in self-discovery, working as, among other things, a maintenance man servicing celebrity aquariums in Beverly Hills. 'Candy Spelling always wanted new fish brought in to match the color themes of her parties,' he recalled of the wife of the television producer Aaron Spelling. In San Francisco, he met Uschi Weismüller, a graphic designer from Switzerland, whom he married in 1997.
He returned briefly to Maharam in 1990, but left for travel abroad in protest of the hidebound managers who had assumed control of the company as his father phased himself into retirement.
All the while, Stephen Maharam worked steadfastly for the company, absorbing his father's strict sales technique. 'First, nothing is ever 'nice,' ' he said. 'My father always insisted that you search for better words, like 'gossamer' or 'luxurious.' ' But after 12 years of rising at 5:30 a.m. and wining and dining clients five nights a week, a frustrated Stephen Maharam gave notice  in 1997.
In response, Donald Maharam made a proposition to his sons: he would buy out the company shares controlled by the two remaining partners and back the two boys if they would take command.
With no experience running anything like a company, much less one with 350 employees and 30 showrooms, the brothers did hesitate -- but not for long. 'We were on a ski lift in Switzerland' Stephen Maharam recalled, 'and we decided to give it a shot.'
Michael would take over image and marketing; Stephen would run the show. The timing couldn't have been better. By the mid-1990's, new design was the currency of the hip culture, and the brothers began repositioning the company with a vengeance. Michael was forceful in demanding that the new Maharam have a fashion-inspired edge. No more sedated maroons and navy blue to muddy up the conference room. Maharam would sell the same palette that was cat-walking down the Milan runways.
The first line under Michael Maharam's direction featured a full run of Gucci-compatible materials with a cling fit called Ready to Wear, about $45 a yard. Another new line, Action Fabrics, $35 a yard, is made of a duotone synthetic mesh textile in Nike-cool colors like lime on aqua, and orange on red. According to Mary Murphy, Maharam's director of design, they were the upholstery of choice for dot-com offices, where the workstation was, for a while at least, the vocational equivalent of an extreme sport.
With their on-the-pulse designs -- and lofty press release references to the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and Hans Hoffman, the Abstract Expressionist -- Maharam made design savants tingle down to the tips of their credit cards. 'I was never interested in contract textiles before I talked to Michael,' said Murray Moss, who showcases Maharam's boldest bolts at his store, Moss, in SoHo. 'They showed that contract doesn't have to be brown, washable and indestructible. What made it more interesting for me was that they also understand the link between fabric, pattern, graphics and furniture.'
Michael Maharam, with his Yohji Yamamoto black shirt and vaudeville smile, is the public persona of Maharam. And he likes to lunch. Even before the breadbasket arrives, he has run down his history of early rebellion, wanderlust and odd collecting habits (brass mouthpieces and Italian fishing lures). A favorite topic is his professional courtship of the daughters and widows of famous designers. Lucia Eames, the daughter of Charles and Ray, invited him into her parents' house to inspect their favorite colors in situ. On a visit to Milan, he met Lisa Ponti, daughter of Gio, who ripped off a strip of an original 70-year-old pattern ('Lovers at the Window, $120 a yard to the trade) and handed it to him for reproduction.
While much of the credit for the Maharam revival belongs to the fabrics themselves, a tightly orchestrated image plays a part as well. In 1998, Michael Maharam's wife, Ms. Weismüller, took over the graphics, designing everything from fax cover sheets to showroom signs. The look has the clear simplicity of classic Modern, with a Scandinavian brightness. The offices near Gramercy Park were redesigned by Fernlund & Logan, architects of the offices of the avant-garde journal Visionaire. Sample books in satellite showrooms are presented in color-coded cubic wall units à la Donald Judd. 'Employees were told to put away the Beanie Babies,' Michael Maharam said, 'and there would be no more handwritten labels.'
Everything would be graphically clean, 'even pharmaceutical,' he added. Commissions went out to designer darlings, like Hella Jongerius, the Dutch designer, and Bruce Mau, the Canadian graphic artist. In addition to the archival reintroductions that endowed instant seriousness of purpose, Maharam is also developing a stringently monitored environmental line.
In keeping with the dictate that 'nice' won't suffice, the Maharam sales force now attends monthly lectures by design cognoscenti like Aaron Betsky, a former curator at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. 'I want the truck drivers in the warehouse to be able to talk about Gio Ponti,' Michael Maharam said.
Competitors admire the way Maharam has inflated its image. 'It's rare to find a company that has managed to inject the emotional and the inspirational into their project while still keeping an eye on efficiency and fulfillment,' said Greg Parsons, the president of Herman Miller Red, a company that has collaborated with Maharam.
While figures are not available, the contract industry is beginning to slow down along with the rest of the economy. Maharam, Stephen Maharam says, is flush enough to undertake a complete overhaul of its Hauppauge, N.Y., warehouse.
After 45 years in the business, Donald Maharam spends half his time in Florida with his wife, Bonnie. 'Not to insult those who are not in the upper echelons,' Donald Maharam said, 'but the boys moved us up many notches.'
The absence of an heir apparent -- Stephen is single; Michael and Uschi say they have no plans for children -- for the company that will turn 100 next year doesn't disturb Donald Maharam. 'It's just a vehicle,' he said. 'If they want to do something else, they'll do it. I'm not into any of that family dynasty nonsense.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"In Venice, the Future Takes a Twist
MOVE over, tall towers with your lean and mean silhouettes  a new shape's coming to town.
By the look of the ninth Venice Architecture Biennale, which opened on Sunday, the race to scrape the sky with ever-higher buildings is all but irrelevant to the new generation of architects coming into their own.
In place of thrusting tectonic giants, the show features sloping, sprawling, cloudlike and bent forms that hug, swell and merge with the landscape. Complex engineering feats and the three-dimensional imprint of the computer grid are beginning to be felt, as projects long confined to the groves of academic speculation start to go up in the real world.
The exhibition is a heady end-of-summer rite for members of the global design world with ample travel budgets. It promises to deliver, and perhaps decipher, the most compelling architecture under way, today and into tomorrow. In the vast, towering halls of the 16th-century Corderie dell'Arsenale, where the Venetians once launched their mighty fleets, over 200 design projects from 170 design studios are on display. Racing through the roughly 1,000-foot-long space, glancing neither at the placards describing the projects nor at the row upon row of seductively made building models, took a foot-swelling 15 minutes on Sunday.
Not to be overlooked are the 33 national pavilions at the Public Gardens, a short walk away through charming narrow alleys strung overhead with drying laundry, where the up-and-coming talent is often featured. Really to absorb it all would take days of concentration, and a lot of sneakers. The exhibition runs through Nov. 7.
Many friends of architecture showed up simply for a weekend of schmoozing in style and swapping appraisals about how new the 'new' really looked while downing cocktails and olives at Harry's Bar or on the waterfront terraces of the outrageously luxurious Hotel Cipriani and Gritti Palace.
'The biennale is a good predictor of the near future,' said Terence Riley, the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 'It's like reportage that can sometimes be a bit more profound. But if I'm going to travel halfway around the world to see what's happening, I prefer the net to be cast as wide as possible.'
This year, earnest talk of 'fluid form' and 'structural solutions' was ramped up by star sightings -- Nicole Kidman! Scarlet Johansson! -- since the opening overlapped with the Venice International Film Festival.
The exhibition theme, 'Metamorph,' was chosen by Kurt W. Forster, the director of the event and a curatorial power in the design field who founded the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and was the director of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. His goal was to chart what he called 'profound shifts,' and a sea change was readily apparent.
For the Musée des Confluences in Lyon, France, Coop Himmelb(l)au, the Viennese architectural firm, designed a stridently horizontal structure propped on slightly splayed columns. In the model at the biennale, the largely windowless steel skin, part billowing, part faceted, looks as if it has been buffeted by unknown forces. The accompanying text offers the project up as 'a spatial arrangement trying to spur public curiosity' that will turn the museum, which focuses on biology, ethics and technology, into an irresistible community hangout.
Almost every project in the show bears the look of buildings made newly possible by a sophisticated grasp of computer technology. 'We're all part of the post-digital age who were trained in predigital methods,' said Lise Anne Couture of the New York firm of Asymptote, who, with her husband, Hani Rashid, designed the exhibition displays. 'We're on both sides of the coin, but we have learned how to use these new technologies firsthand, and we understand how to manipulate and use them at every stage in the process, from conception to construction.'
Asymptote's design neatly captures both old and new: a series of curved platforms march down the Arsenale hall, each holding 3 to 11 models. The platforms curve upward like skateboard ramps, their ends contorting gradually as they rise overhead. Their twisting length suggests both a Möbius strip and the old hemp ropes made in the Arsenale 500 years ago. This being Venice, they might also be interpreted as oversize ghost gondolas.
'We swim in a fluid cultural medium where everything speaks to us all the time,' said Mr. Forster, seated on a purple satin pillow in a far corner of an ancient naval building transformed into an auditorium. 'Shapes are melting, walls become roof, the site infiltrates the structure, distinctions between geology and form disappear.' As examples he cited 'One Day 1:1,' a full-scale model of a section of a room at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, by the UN Studio of Rotterdam, and the Paul Klee Museum by Renzo Piano in Bern, Switzerland.
Like a wave beached on sand but still rolling, the Klee museum by Mr. Piano, a Genoa-based architect, has not a single flat surface; it's a ripple at a standstill, which visitors enter through the upward swing of a curve. 'Structure no longer needs an armature to hang onto,' Mr. Forster said. 'Things can stand by themselves, like a frozen nightgown in the night.' The project, like several others represented in the show, is midway through construction.
The intense shapeliness of the architectural models and drawings on display may originate in computer technology and sometimes -- as in the timber balloon framing of a house by the Irish team of O'Donnell & Toumey -- even seems to replicate a computer grid. But the intellectual underpinnings rise from Peter Eisenman, whose supersize City of Culture of Galicia, in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, is well under way.
Mr. Eisenman, who received the Golden Lion award at the biennale for lifetime achievement, celebrated among friends and former students at the Hotel Monaco bar. Asked later if a generational shift was on show, he sounded jaded, the signature of someone who has long labored in the trenches of the avant-garde. The computer has finally made possible forms that are radically different, he said, at the same cost as the standard box of old. 'This is the first biennale where clearly the kids are all into some form of what one would call newness, not stale oldness,' he said. 'What I saw was stale newness.'
For the American pavilion, Architectural Record magazine commissioned six new voices in architecture to rethink such ubiquitous but often banal structures as the cloverleaf, the stadium and the mall. Kol/Mac Studio of New York envisioned an apartment high-rise with pods so customizable that residents who like golf could have putting greens on their roofs; those who want to move could detach their units and take them to, say, the beach.
The tower, called Resi-Rise Skyscraper, has the skeletal look of stacked dinosaur vertebrae. To make it, the architects used two new technologies, vacuum forming and computer-driven milling, which make unprecedented shapes possible and are beginning to be used in large-scale construction. 'Craft as we've known it is being left behind,' said Sulan Kolatan, a Kol/Mac partner, 'and a new idea of making is taking over.'
At the biennale, newness that is more smoothly sculptural than radically alien is found most often in designs for cultural institutions like a concert hall for Rio de Janeiro by the French architect Christian de Portzamparc and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, by Preston Scott Cohen. Outside, the Tel Aviv Museum looks fairly predictable, with more than a few square edges. But inside, the building, which is partly underground, turns molten, with sleekly curving walls unfurling into a well of light.
Mr. Cohen, though just 43, has already participated in four architecture biennales. As if to guarantee freshness, Mr. Forster did not invite him to submit work until late May. In the rush to prepare, Mr. Cohen watched in horror as a plywood model that he was about to ship to Venice -- even though he had missed the deadline for free shipping -- caught fire.
But once he got to Venice, he said, it was fair sailing. 'People are going to look back at this moment and see that this really was the beginning of something new,' he said.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Greetings Printed as if for Christmas Past
THE kiss of metal.
It may not sound like one of those obsolescent 19th-century comforts, like cutting gardens and transferware china, that Martha Stewart is forever resurrecting. But in the case of old-fashioned letterpress stationery, it's the 'kiss' of inked cast-metal type pressing down on soft, thick paper that produces a palpable impression -- literally and figuratively. And lately, it has been the kiss of luck.
As e-mail and other high-tech modes of communication lose their novelty, letterpress printing is enjoying a comeback as a sort of Luddite luxury. Letterpress was the country's predominant form of printing until the 1940's. Until recently it was headed for extinction, replaced by offset lithography. But whether for personal stationery or for holiday cards, letterpress craftsmanship is catching on with a new generation eager for an antidote to the slick, ephemeral quality of modern correspondence.
'Letterpressed things are tactile,' said Eve Ashcraft, 39, a Manhattan color consultant who uses letterpress Christmas cards and business stationery. 'It makes paper an object -- it changes it from planar to sculptural. And it holds color beautifully, almost as if the pressed areas are like reservoirs of ink. I also find that people are reluctant to throw it away, which helps from a business perspective.'
At one old-fashioned stationery shop, the Printery in Oyster Bay, N.Y., sales of letterpress stationery have doubled over the past three years, according to William S. Miller, an owner. And at the three locations of Kate's Paperie in Manhattan, sales of letterpress products are 60 percent higher now than two years ago, said Melanie Nerenberg, the marketing director. 'And I'd say that in the last five years, the number of people supplying letterpress has risen 500 or 600 percent,' she said. 'You can't believe how many young, fresh letterpress companies there are now.'
By comparison, James van Pernis, an owner of Saturn Press, a letterpress business in Swans Island, Me., that specializes in Art Nouveau imagery, said he remembered when he was the only letterpress operator at the annual National Stationery Show. A spokeswoman said there were five times as many letterpress vendors at the show this year as five years ago.
The letterpress renaissance is a clear reaction against the glut of cheap desktop-published cards and stationery, and offers an alternative to the most widely used formal process, engraving. As Martha Stewart puts it: 'It has personality and individualism. Letterpress invitations are more personal than engraving. They have a little bit of warmth that engraving doesn't have. Each one is slightly different, whereas with engraving, the whole point is that they're exactly alike.'
Across the country, crafts workers are acquiring discarded antique letterpresses, which now cost roughly $600 for an amateur version and $3,000 for one capable of commercial output.
For all its outmoded technology, letterpress stationery is still as costly as engraved stationery. At Kate's Paperie, 100 letterpress cards and envelopes are $500; the engraved equivalent is $450.
Nowhere is the charm of the letterpress more evident than at Bowne & Company Stationers, 211 Water Street in the South Street Seaport. Conceived as a replica of a 19th-century print shop, Bowne has had an increase of 30 percent in letterpress orders in three years, despite a sharp drop after the Sept. 11 attacks. The shop is known for holiday cards with images of 19th-century New York, accompanied by passages from Whitman and Melville.
While engraved stationery still dominates formal correspondence, letterpress stationery personalized with name or initials has a slightly offbeat appeal. 'Engraving is very elegant, and it's always been more expensive, so it has a certain cachet,' said Barbara Henry, the director of Bowne & Company. 'But it's also very conservative.' By contrast, she said, letterpress printing was originally used for 19th-century posters, banners and pamphlets, and it therefore developed typefaces with a playful, unceremonious quality. 'We definitely have the bad-boy typefaces here,' Ms. Henry said.
Of course, letterpress will never regain its place as the primary printing process, but, as with professional presses, the number of amateur letterpress printers is on the increase, and so are the number of universities adding letterpress centers for printmaking and graphic design classes. The Center for Book Arts, a nonprofit New York organization that promotes traditional bookmaking crafts, offered 46 classes in letterpress in 2000; this year, it had 96.
Elizabeth Nevin, a hobbyist printer in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., with a letterpress resource Web site (www.briarpress.org), said there seems to be no end to the interest. 'I just sold two antique iron hand presses on eBay,' she said, 'one for $9,300 and one for $9,200, sight unseen. That never would have happened a couple of years ago.'
So e-mail may be losing currency, but on eBay, ephemera are forever.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"House Museums Get Pushy
WHEN two Gustav Stickley cabinets go up for sale at Christie's on Nov. 29, as part of Barbra Streisand's Arts and Crafts collection, representatives of the Craftsman Farms, the Stickley home that the cabinets were designed for, will be there bidding.
In August, the farms, a nonprofit house museum, began raising $75,000 as a war chest to recapture the cabinets. It also made public its frustration with Ms. Streisand for refusing to donate the pieces or sell them privately to the Stickley house. But the tactic may be backfiring: with the winds of war -- and publicity -- rising, the estimates have escalated from $26,000 to $34,000 to $40,000 to $60,000 each. Whatever the outcome, one thing is clear: house museums are busting the dust on the way they do business.
They now number 4,000 to 5,000, from the White House, with 1.25 million visitors annually, to the typical out-of-the-way institution like Craftsman Farms in Parsippany, N.J., which had 10,000 visitors last year. After years of polite attrition, they are capitalizing on the potential of their cultural assets. With tourism breaking attendance records at the nation's large institutions, house museums are pushing hard at endowment goals to restore buildings, add visitors' centers and expand programming, and they are exercising a new aggressiveness in their strategies for acquiring objects.
'The historic house field is the next phase of American museums to professionalize,' said Kenneth Snodgrass, curator at the Samuel F. B. Morse Historic Site in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., which began construction on a 22,000-square-foot visitors' center last year. Mr. Snodgrass, a graduate of the New York University museum studies program, is an example of the new breed of historic site curator: he does much of his shopping for the Morse house online, at Ebay.
In Hartford, at the Mark Twain House, Ken Burns, the filmmaker, is shooting the orientation film for a visitors' center scheduled to open in 2001. Because Twain was a humorist, Garry Trudeau, Roy Blount Jr. and Calvin Trillin have appeared for evening events.
Most important, said John Boyer, executive director of the Mark Twain House, 'the entire framework with which collections are built has changed because of the aggressive marketing strategies of Christie's and Sotheby's and the Internet.'
House museums need the goods, and they are going after them.
'That's what the historical site business is all about,' said Edward Bosley, director of the Gamble house, designed by Charles and Henry Greene, in Pasadena, Calif. 'It's very rare to step into a house and be confronted with what was there in 1908, for instance.'
Reproductions don't work, Mr. Bosley continued, adding: 'In many cases, the reproductions are too good; they're better than the originals. They're overdone.'
When house museums don't have the money, they use pull. Or try push.
When an urn designed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Susan Dana-Thomas house in Springfield, Ill., now a state-owned site, came up for sale at Christie's New York earlier this year, James R. Thompson, the former governor of Illinois, made the successful bid on behalf of the house.
'I went off to New York with $150,000,' Mr. Thompson, now chairman of Winston & Strawn, a Chicago law firm, said, having gone down his list of chief executives and friends, including the Pritzker family. It cost him $260,000; Mr. Thompson's list made up the difference.
He also went to The Chicago Sun-Times before he left town, which ran several articles on the house's interest in returning the urn. Mr. Thompson is on the paper's board.
'I figured I needed all the help I could get,' he said. Mr. Thompson added that he didn't think the maneuver was a conflict of interest, or that it gave him an unfair advantage over other bidders.
'They didn't have to compete against publicity,' he said, 'only compete against my dollars.'
Mr. Thompson also bid on items for the Dana-Thomas house at Christie's in 1987, as governor. Because of advance publicity that the house wanted them, Thomas S. Monaghan, then chairman of Domino's Pizza, who was Wright's most active private collector, gave Mr. Thompson $25,000 toward purchases, agreeing not to bid against him.
Mr. Thompson said that collectors' attitudes had changed. In 1987, 'there was forbearance on the part of the collecting community,' he said, to allow the Dana-Thomas house to make the winning bids. 'They thought it was a noble purpose,' he said. In 1999, in the case of the urn, he said, 'Collectors now are willing to go up to bat against you.'
Susan Stein, the curator at Monticello, said with philosophic sadness, 'Our entrepreneurial values so far outweigh the idea of public patrimony.' Ms. Stein added that the dilemma would only get worse: 'The decorative arts are becoming increasingly valuable, and being treated more like works of art, like paintings.'
Like most older house museums, Monticello has rarely depended on the kindness of strangers. When she wanted two chairs from the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis sale at Sotheby's in 1996, Ms. Stein made arrangements with Patricia Kluge, a neighbor and benefactor, who bought them with an agreement that they would go to Monticello in 10 years.
The White House was not so lucky. It lost the bid on a writing table at which President Kennedy signed the nuclear proliferation treaty, though it had expressed interest in the item privately, prior to the sale.
The Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis auction had its historical irony. As first lady, Mrs. Kennedy virtually invented the patriotic popularity of returning objects to the White House, including a French chair from the Monroe administration that a woman in Pennsylvania donated after recognizing its matching table on television during the first lady's 1962 White House tour.
'Her televised tour was a major factor in publicizing the interest in bringing things back,' Betty Monkman, the White House curator, said.
But Mrs. Kennedy's style of civic responsibility has become as rare in the world of house museums as the objects they hope to retrieve.
'It's a crying shame,' said James Rees, resident director of Mount Vernon, 'when truly wealthy collectors place their objects at auction, often without even contacting the houses in question. Even if they don't intend to donate, it's nice to think that the home would be given a chance -- like a right of first refusal.' Mr. Rees added: 'Most times, I am aware that an item is coming up when we receive the printed catalogue. At that point, it's very hard to put together the funds to buy it.'
Traditional incentives like tax advantages for charitable donations must now compete with the prospect of inestimable prices realized in the open market, especially in fashionable, fast-moving collecting fields like Arts and Crafts.
Ms. Stein at Monticello said that newer financial devices like the bargain sale helped to attract donors, by bridging the gap. 'The seller sells an object to a museum, at something under its appraised value, and is able to claim the difference as a charitable donation,' she explained. 'There's an element of philanthropy as well as benefit.'
Arrangements with larger, more prestigious institutions, like long-term loans or the promise of gifts, present themselves less frequently to small house museums. 'It can take generations to get it right,'  Morrison Heckscher, a curator of American decorative art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, said of  fruitful relationships with collectors. 'It's not something that can be rushed.'
But the specter of public sale can produce impatience, if not panic. Tommy McPherson, executive director of Craftsman Farms Foundation, is prepared to take a quicker offensive, and risk professional disapprobation, as the foundation is doing with the Streisand sale. 'It would be more unfortunate for the foundation not to attempt to return them and simply wait for another generation of collectors to return them,' he said.
House museums have no reason to believe that the next generation of collectors will be charitable.  'Though there's a huge transition of wealth now, to the baby boomers,' Mr. Boyer said, 'there's a part of me that worries about the upper middle class giving away objects when you look at the rest of their lives: educating their kids, managing retirement, putting their parents in nursing homes.' As collectors, he continued, 'they may have bought objects because they loved them, but they might be forced to view them as investments.' Collectors strapped for cash 'won't be able to be art patrons,' he added.
But taking collectors to task for selling objects on the open market discounts the role they play in conserving the furnishings at all; in many cases, they are alone in their interests -- and their investments -- until their collections create appreciation at auction level.
Mitchell Wolfson has collected decorative arts for 30 years for his public collection, the Wolfsonian at Florida International University in Miami Beach. It was only after he bought neglected treasures like Harry Clarke's stained-glass window, commissioned, then rejected, by the Irish government as its contribution to the League of Nations in Geneva, that institutions like the Irish government sought their return.
'When I made them respectable,' he said of his possessions, 'then they wanted them back.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"In Fine Form, Bamboo Shows Off Its Curves
ON Monday evening, as the first full day of summer ended with a rosy sunset over Queens, a subdued crowd of architects and curators gathered at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City for a preview of a bamboo canopy spanning the entry courtyard.
The structure, a delicate grid of arched bamboo poles tied in place with stainless steel wire, cast a filigreed shadow on the gravel-covered ground.
The installation, designed by Mimi Hoang and Eric Bunge of nArchitects, is appropriately titled 'Canopy.' Their design is the winning entry in the fifth annual MoMA/P.S. 1 Young Architects Program, a competition that turns the P.S. 1 courtyard into an outdoor party space and urban playground for 10 weeks every summer.
If past seasons are any indication, Monday's well-behaved guests, who examined the structure as if it were a delicate museum artifact, will give way to raucous, scantily clad revelers when the courtyard opens to the public at noon on Sunday.
'It's a nearly impossible design problem: a temporary pavilion where 4,000 to 6,000 people can dance safely, even though most of them are drunk,' said Alanna Heiss, executive director of P.S. 1.
'Canopy' includes a gentle dune , a knee-deep pool made of bright green foam contoured for half-submerged seating, and a ring of nozzles that spray bystanders with a cool mist. A side courtyard, the 'Rain Forest,' is shaded by a grove of live bamboo and filled with the sounds of recorded chirps and whistles.
The Museum of Modern Art and P.S. 1 started the competition in 2000 to help young architects showcase their work. Past winners include Tom Wiscombe, William E. Massie and SHoP/Sharples Holden Pasquarelli.
For Ms. Hoang, 32, and Mr. Bunge, 37, the commission was a chance to build their largest project yet. Their previous work has consisted of apartment renovations and gallery installations.
Working with a budget of $60,000, Mr. Bunge and Ms. Hoang set out to create their installation with a single natural material. They chose bamboo because it is lightweight but strong and will change color from green to golden yellow as it dries over the summer.
'It's more about shadows than shade,' Mr. Bunge said. 'We wanted to create a canopy with a single, but different, material. We thought about the word itself: a forest canopy, a cloud canopy.'
But making the bamboo cooperate with their design proved unexpectedly difficult.
'There are no books on how to build with fresh green bamboo at this scale,' Mr. Bunge said.
The architects' initial design had much tighter curves than the gentle arcs they eventually built.
'They were expecting the bamboo to bend more than is actually possible,' said David B. Flanagan, owner of Bamboo Fencer Inc., a supply company based in Jamaica Plain, Mass., who advised the designers. 'The idea that it's a flexible material is a bit misleading, even though they make fishing poles out of it.'
Ms. Hoang, Mr. Bunge and a team of 15 architecture students, recent graduates and employees built the structure by trial and error. (A dozen friends volunteered on weekends.) The original 1,100 poles were stripped of leaves and branches and cut in a single week so they would arrive fresh and still easily bendable. The architects had to order an additional 300 poles to replace the ones that cracked without warning, and to expand the canopy and make some sections denser.
Ms. Hoang and Mr. Bunge stored the poles under weatherproof tarps and hosed them down twice a day to keep them pliable. They sprayed the canopy at least once a day until every one of the roughly 1,300 poles was tapped into its final, carefully calculated position.
Maneuvering the poles into the right spot often involved a gentle whack with what Ms. Hoang calls 'the world's largest Q-Tip,' a bamboo pole with one end wrapped in a wad of cotton cloth.
The combination of high and low technology -- a complex structure engineered on the computer but built with jury-rigged tools from a simple natural material -- is part of what impressed the competition jurors.
'Every year I keep thinking we won't find a winning scheme,' said Terence Riley, chief architecture and design curator at the Museum of Modern Art and one of five jurors. 'Maybe we're being pessimists, but how many different ways can you do this courtyard?'
Ms. Hoang and Mr. Bunge said they had a leg up on the competition because they had been part of the crowd almost every year since the installations started. 'We were familiar with the program and had a lot of time to think about how to use the space,' Mr. Bunge said.
This summer, they are defining the scene, not just basking in it.
When to See The 'Canopy'
'Canopy' will be open to the public through Sept. 5 from noon to 6 p.m. on Thursday, Friday, Sunday and Monday and from noon to 9 p.m. on Saturday. The suggested donation is $5.
The P.S. 1 courtyard will also be the setting for 'Warm Up,' a series of musical events on Saturday, 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., starting on July 3 and continuing through Sept. 4. Admission is $8.
For complete information, call (718) 784-2084 or go to www.ps1.org.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; Fountain Fantasies, From Cascades to Curbs
MOTHS are attracted to flames; humans to fountains. Whether they are towering plumes ingeniously engineered to rise Excalibur-like from a becalmed lake or monumental gushes churning through some mythological deity, fountains are irresistible messengers.
Hope, renewal, power, melancholy, joy -- almost any ambition or emotion, it seems, can be served by the clever manipulation of hydraulics. At least, that's the impression made by the exhibition 'Fountains: Splash and Spectacle' that opened on Tuesday at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in Manhattan.
The early role of fountains -- fueling and refreshing humans and livestock -- quickly  took on metaphorical, even propagandistic functions. What better way to awe courtiers than with the Apollo fountain at Versailles, where the chariot-borne sun god, his stallions spewing, charges out of a deep pool heading east toward the palace of Louis XIV rather than west?
The Cooper-Hewitt show begins with the golden age of fountains in the Renaissance and Baroque ages, when the spectacular waterworks of the Villa d'Este in Tivoli were turned on and the great fountains of Rome were designed by the greatest sculptors of the day.
The show ends in the present, with the waterfall memorial dedicated last year to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Washington. But rather than present them chronologically, Marilyn Symmes, the exhibition's curator, has arranged the show's approximately 250 photographs, drawings and videos into themes that address fountains as commemoration, as propaganda, as entertainment and as spectacle. There is even a section on the history of hydraulics.
Fountain design has tended to go in opposite directions: the architecturally pompous and the seemingly naturalistic. The Trevi Fountain of Rome by Nicola Salvi, finished  in 1762, epitomizes both. It seamlessly merges, Ms. Symmes said, 'the organic and constructed worlds of stone.' Out of the  symmetrical arches, columns and pediments (which compose the architectural facade) bursts forth stupendous travertine boulders -- each one carved by Salvi to look as if it were pried from some hoary, wet cavern. The Trevi was already a tourist attraction in 1773, as seen in Giovaninni Battista Piranesi's etchings. (One is included in the exhibition, along with original sketches for the fountain by Salvi.)
'It all comes down to magic,' said Thelma Seear, the founder of the Fountain Society of London, whose group made a pilgrimage to New York to see the exhibition. 'Fountains are the magic that binds the world together,' she said. 'Of course, they have to work to do the magic. That's why it's so fascinating that there's a lot about hydraulics in the show.'
Indeed, one of the points of the show is that short water supplies have never discouraged the building of great fountains. Diverting rivers was not uncommon, even in the days before electric pumps. The Avenue of the Hundred Fountains at the Villa d'Este was made possible by rechanneling the Aniene River. And the 1,000 fountains of Versailles were activated by water pumped from a tributary of the Seine, 40 miles away.
One might expect a considerable gap between fountains developed for public display and those built for private consumption. Oddly, the evidence suggests that when it comes to fountains, public and private often differ only in matters of scale. Geneva's famed Jet d'Eau suspends seven tons of water in a column more than 400 feet high at any given moment. The New York designers Stephen Sills and James Huniford have their own jet d'eau at home in Bedford, N.Y., albeit one that shoots up only 20 feet.
Dan Kiley, who has landscaped more than 1,500 public and private gardens, sees almost no difference beyond size. 'The thing about water is that it can do what nothing else can do,' Mr. Kiley said. 'But it's always the same process.' For Fountain Place in Dallas, Mr. Kiley composed terraces of water, cascading from level to level, dotted with 440 bald cypresses and enhanced with 263 bubbler fountains.
Something quieter was called for at the Kimmel residence in Salisbury, Conn. One of the main features of the house overlooking the Taconic Mountains is a croquet lawn edged by two 100-foot water canals that are flush with the grass, thus creating shimmering slick mirages of water. Where they meet, a small fountain erupts, as if bubbling euphorically over the view.
Fountains needn't be so precise or ornate, Mr. Kiley said. 'Everyone should have some kind of water about them,' he continued, extolling the virtues of the hose and the unplugged fire hydrant.
The most recent fountains featured in 'Fountains: Splash and Spectacle' are freer interpretations of the word. Maya Lin's Sounding Stones, situated at the Federal Courthouse plaza in lower Manhattan, is made of large stones of granite carved with viewing holes; water runs within, audible but not visible. It draws passers-by to approach, peer through the holes, perhaps to touch the water, thus refreshing the body as well as the soul.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Heavy Metal Jacket, Luxe Lining
THIS year for the first time, Art Basel Miami Beach, the four-year-old annual art fair, is being accompanied by a series of high-profile design events, including installations by Zaha Hadid, the architect, and Ron Arad, the furniture designer, and an exhibition of furnishings organized by Murray Moss, proprietor of Moss, the influential SoHo design store.
But when the fair opens today, design's boldface names may be upstaged by Adam Kalkin, an architect and artist who is unveiling his Push Button House, a shipping container with motorized walls that unfold like an elaborate Murphy bed to reveal an unexpectedly muted interior with the refined furnishings one might find in a Park Avenue apartment of patrician taste, complete with a couch from George Smith and a lacquer chandelier.
'It works like a flower -- you push a button and the thing transforms itself,' Mr. Kalkin said last week as he puttered in the 8,000-square-foot factory he rents in Kenvil, N.J., while welders and electricians finished up the Push Button House before loading it onto a flatbed truck for the trip to Miami. 'All the finishes inside are milky and human and delicate,' he added, 'all trapped inside this heavy mechanical box.'
Houses fashioned from shipping containers are hardly new, as Mr. Kalkin readily admits. A wave of prototypes has been produced over the last few years by architects like Jennifer Siegal and design firms like LOT-EK. But Mr. Kalkin, 41, has continued to push the medium in new and sometimes idiosyncratic directions, often in an unlikely collaboration with Albert Hadley, the 85-year-old society decorator.
'Most architects have a prerecorded message, but Adam's imagination is endless,' said Mera Rubell, a Miami art collector who said that Mr. Kalkin is a candidate to design an addition to her family's private museum, the Rubell Family Collection. 'He's not held back by conventional necessities. If you want to conceptualize something out of the box, Adam will take you there.'
Mr. Kalkin has used the container as a centerpiece in a broad spectrum of projects that include affordable housing, refugee shelters, performance pieces, movies and Web sites. 'I'm not into the container per se,' Mr. Kalkin said. 'It's what I can do with it emotionally; transforming a commodity into poetry.'
Mr. Kalkin's latest series of projects, which he refers to collectively as the Velvet Fist of Happiness, defies easy categorization.
'Kalkin's work lies somewhere between performance art and architecture,' said K. Michael Hays, a professor at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. 'I love the way he flirts with the decorative, verging on the kitsch. That's part of his edginess.'
Mr. Kalkin's self-published book, 'Architecture and Hygiene,' contains childlike renderings of unrealized art projects with titles like the 'Sphincter of Loneliness' and the 'Bicycle-Powered Electric Chair' alongside ready-made plans for container houses.
But for all his enigmatic posturing, Mr. Kalkin still grounds his work in the real world. He created his own house in Bernardsville, N.J., by encasing an 1880's farmhouse in a cavernous prefab aircraft hangar, a surreal juxtaposition of homey sentiment and industrial grit.
Mr. Kalkin has already received 10 orders for his Quik House, a three-bedroom prefab built from five containers that was exhibited last year at the Deitch Projects' Wooster Street gallery. The house, which costs between $150,000 and $175,000, plus shipping, depending on the options (the premium version includes a stainless steel kitchen and mahogany sliding doors) will go into production next month at Mr. Kalkin's factory in Kenvil. It can be trucked to a site and assembled within a week.
A pared-down version of the Quik House, called the A-Pod, will also go into production next year. Selling for $75,000, the A-Pod ('A' stands for Adam) is made from a single 20-by-8-foot container furnished with spartan restraint. Mr. Kalkin describes it as a 'luxurious monk's cell.'
'You come up with a core idea and then there are all of these spin-offs,' he said. 'It's like making a good bomb. You want it to fragment into five thousand pieces, not just split in half.'
MR. KALKIN is also using containers for humanitarian purposes, most notably a series of recreation centers for underprivileged children in Russia. Mr. Kalkin created the design pro bono for Natalia Vodianova, a fashion model whose charity, the Naked Heart Foundation, has raised $500,000 to build the first one next year in Nizhny Novgorod, Ms. Vodianova's hometown and Russia's third largest city, which has agreed to provide a 20-acre plot near the city center.
Mr. Kalkin has also developed a prototype for refugee housing with students at the Pingry School in Martinsville, N.J. The idea was to create a safe, defensible space in the event of war or disaster while also providing a teaching tool. Each dwelling unit, capable of housing up to 40 people, is made up of eight containers stacked on two levels and positioned around a communal courtyard covered by a roof made with parachute fabric. Students are helping to build a prototype on campus.
Oddly enough, the Velvet Fist of Happiness has also included Wall Street speculation. Last February, Mr. Kalkin borrowed $1 million from a bank and used it to trade stock online. He carefully recorded his transactions, which will be published in a book to be called 'Adam Kalkin, Day Trader.'
Within eight weeks he made $65,000, much of which will be used to cover the $50,000 fabrication costs of the Push Button House. Mr. Kalkin is also donating $10,000 to a Tanzanian orphanage and leaving $1,000 cash in a paper bag on a public bus.
'Since I made the money as a performance, I wanted to spend it as a performance,' Mr. Kalkin said. 'I'm treating it like art currency.'
But he sees all of his transactions, both cultural and financial, as part of the same operation. 'There is a deep humanity in our economic exchanges,' he said. 'They tend to be rational, but occasionally magic enters into the highly regulated system.'
Even as Mr. Kalkin plays the inscrutable artist, he also produces relatively conventional architecture, as he did for Anne and Matthew Adriance of Oldwick, N.J., who commissioned him to design a 4,000-square-foot summer retreat on a rocky peninsula in Brooklin, Me. Mr. Kalkin stacked 12 orange shipping containers in a T-shape formation on either side of a central living space that was covered by a prefabricated metal roof. The cost was about $125 a square foot.
'It's the opposite of cold and steely,' Ms. Adriance said. 'There's nothing cozier than waking up on a cold winter morning in your own little container.'
To brighten the interior and diminish the spam-in-the-can effect, Mr. Kalkin replaced some of the steel panels with broad windows overlooking Blue Hill Bay. Two fireplaces and radiant heating in the concrete floors also help. The hard industrial edges were further softened by Mr. Hadley, the interior designer, who provided deep soft couches and billowing drapes made from pine-green microfiber.
The Push Button House, on the other hand, is not meant for habitation, though its furnishings, bolted in place, are haunting remnants from a certain kind of entitled lifestyle.
'I was looking for a kind of traditional elegance, something that screams good taste in a super quiet, understated way,' Mr. Kalkin said. The house itself weighs about 10,000 pounds while the four hydraulic walls each weigh a ton.
'It's not about play,' he said. 'This could crush you. The mechanisms wouldn't even register the fact that they were crushing you.'
While the Push Button House may not be intended for mass consumption, Mr. Kalkin is thinking of using hydraulic walls in some of his more commercial projects.
'He takes everyday life and accelerates the gnarly parts,' Mr. Hays said. 'His houses allow you to restructure the hierarchies of everyday life so that it's not about living in the 19th century.'
Earlier this week, as Mr. Kalkin oversaw the Push Button House's final assembly in Collins Park in Miami Beach, he anticipated its unveiling. Ever the performer, he orchestrated the event so that the hydraulic walls would open to reveal his father, Eugene Kalkin, a 76-year-old businessman, sitting on the couch reading.
'My father is inside the seed,' he said. 'He's my progeny, in a way.'
Instant House
ADAM KALKIN'S Push Button House will be exhibited today through Sunday at Collins Park, between 21st and 22nd Streets in Miami Beach, as part of Deitch Projects at Art Basel Miami Beach. Hours: Noon to 8 P.M., free to the public. Information on other projects by Adam Kalkin is at architectureandhygiene.com.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Genial Mosh-Pit Offices Keep New-Media Workers Happy
WHEN William Wordsworth wandered lonely as a cloud amid all those daffodils, he addressed the poignant dilemma of the individual trying to find a unique place among the masses. One can only wonder how the poet would feel at a new-media company.
Consider Screaming Media, created in 1996 to provide customized information gathered from hundreds of digital sources to subscribers, mostly special-interest and corporate Web sites. It is in the fashionably raw Starrett-Lehigh Building at 601 West 26th Street.
Most Screamers, as the employees are known, spend their days trolling the Internet for content or signing on new clients. They sit in a vast open room, designed by Hut Sachs Studio, in which views of the Hudson River are upstaged by numerous hulking shapes, each a different color, pale yellow to deep-sea blue, and tattooed with Futurist exhortations 'curated' by the graphic designer Milton Glaser. These are the conference rooms and 'phone booths,' giving employees visual relief from their monitors -- and their only chance to congregate in semiprivacy.
In this landscape of anonymous desks and striking sculptural forms, Andrew Meranus, 28, a team manager, says it's inspiring to share a table with five other people; at a glance he can take in 60 more co-workers and supervisors. 'It keeps you energized, looking at all these people with one mission,' he said. 'No one's hiding behind a closed door or cubicle.' For privacy, there's his cell phone, and the street.
Oxygen, a company integrating a 24-hour cable channel with a Web-site network, all geared to women, is lodged within the top floors of the old Nabisco factory (Chelsea Market is downstairs) and houses an even greater range of activities -- from filming live interviews with the likes of Meryl Streep to writing adventures for Oxygen's Web-site superheroine, Break-Up Girl. The key to the plan is . . . a tire rack.
Fernau & Hartman architects, of Berkeley, Calif., have used metal-frame shelves commonly found in car repair shops to provide storage and to arrange flexible work stations. In-line-skate wheels attached to tracks on the shelves allow desks to slide together as needed to become conference tables.
Joy Huang, 30, a producer, sits at a rust-colored desk attached to the tire rack, dubbed 'the zipper.' When she looks up, she is sometimes blinded by the lights of television cameras at the center of the open space, when, for instance, 'Pure Oxygen,' a show that begins on Feb. 2, is being taped.  From a balcony, a D.J./announcer spins music during the show.
'You get used to it after a while,' Ms. Huang said. 'I did, by putting on earphones.' In fact, Ms. Huang said she was learning a lot just by watching from her desk. When she needs to concentrate, she comes in early or stays late, sometimes till 3 a.m.
Screaming Media and Oxygen use architecture to hammer home the message that this generation of new-media worker bees is not about to do business as usual. And while there isn't much new about office spaces that try to liberate their workers from cubicles, these companies have an even more expansive vision of the workplace as playground where recess is taken very seriously. Free of corner office suites, hierarchical office planning, even walls, these new domains celebrate community over privacy, collaboration over solitary invention.
Both companies wanted design on a budget. Oxygen spent approximately $60 a square foot; Screaming Media, an extremely modest $45.
Strolling around Oxygen's hangar-size office on Ninth Avenue and 15th Street, Kit Laybourne, the director of animation and the husband of Oxygen's co-founder Geraldine Laybourne, called the space, which he helped conceive, part learning institution, part nourishing community, but basically 'a digital sweatshop.'
'We wanted a cool office that was fun to work in so that we'd attract digital kids,' he said.
Richard Fernau, its architect in association with the Phillips Group of New York, called his approach to the design an improvisation act. His job: 'accommodating chaos.'
His overt attempts to transform O2  into a visible motif, with fish tanks bubbling away in conference rooms and scrims rippling in jet streams, get lost in the hubbub. Yet, some neologisms have taken hold. Employees at Oxygen do speak of working 'on' or 'off' the zipper (yet on a recent visit, no desks appeared to have been moved together).
At Screaming Media, the looming structures that float throughout the space are known as pods, while blue curving tables for temporary workers are called ponds. ('Very Bilbao,' said Martha Stewart, who is creating a completely open floor of offices for her company in the same building.)
Jane Sachs, Screaming Media's architect, said she was inspired in these sculptural gestures by Richard Serra and Frank Gehry -- but primarily by her 20 years as a potter. She added: 'To leave it open would have been deadly. With a sea of desks, it would have looked like the drones in 'Metropolis.' '
Another influence on the design was Jay Chiat, the chairman of Screaming Media, and most recently of Chiat/Day, the advertising agency, where he gave staff members laptops and told them to work wherever they liked. At Screaming Media, Mr. Chiat has a desk in the middle of the space. 'Everyone knows who's important here,' he said. 'They  don't need offices to establish that.'
At Oxygen, his counterpart, Ms. Laybourne, does have an office, with walls of wavy translucent garden-shed plastic.
'Geri has evolved,' Mr. Fernau said. 'She was out in the open in her last office, but kept retreating to the conference room. So we gave her an office.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"A Cellphone For Calling Butterfield 8
AS a resident of Manhattan for more than a decade, I have made a hobby of watching design trends that bloom out of nowhere and spread through the masses. Each gadget ultimately earns its rightful longevity, weaving its path between function and fashion.
So I eagerly awaited the New York reception to an ingenious cellphone attachment, the Pokia, which gives mobile units a proper, old-fashioned handset.
The retro accessory, now only a series of prototypes made in London by the British designer Nicolas Roope, was inspired by Mr. Roope's disdain for the trends in cellphones, which seem to have reached a dead end with metallic and miniature becoming moronic and minuscule.
Mr. Roope sent me one of his originals, a 60's Ealing model with matching spiral cord. I plugged it into a Nokia cellphone, and I was off, walking the streets of Midtown Manhattan this week. It felt strange at first, but the way the Pokia cradles in your hand, and fits against your head, was comforting. And it truly can be hands-free -- with the receiver trapped between head and shoulder.
But saying goodbye was a jolt. I kept wanting to place the receiver on the body of a phone that wasn't there. The receiver is large, but luckily, I had jeans with large pockets.
The sight of a man walking down the street talking on a disembodied old-fashioned phone elicited a smile or a knowing laugh from passers-by, but no one seemed to want to interrupt my conversation to ask me about the phone. (Aren't New Yorkers polite?) Then again, an explanation didn't seem necessary. People seemed to get what the Pokia was saying.
Mr. Roope, 32, co-founder of the British creative agency Poke, came upon the idea for a hands-on cellphone receiver when he was a consultant for a cellphone company. 'I noticed a complete lack of cultural context in their new product design,' he said from London by telephone.
'Ten years ago, we were all excited by cellphones because they were new,' he said. 'Manufacturers and designers alike responded to this excitement by designing them as futuristic and sci-fi. Now, 10 years later, they're still stuck there.'
Mr. Roope (whose phone Web site is www.pokia.com) said it takes about an hour to put each phone together. So far he has sold his phones only on eBay.
'It's an easier way to let people scrap it out than get into arguments about how I choose to fix a price,' he said.
His prototypes, made from handsets he finds, range from the Ealing in British Health Care pink to the Mayfair model -- an old-fashioned, mock brass and wood candlestick design, complete with an earpiece that latches onto the side.
Mr. Roope said he hopes to get the Pokia produced around the world. But he admitted, 'The design is a bit of a one-trick pony, a fad.'
'It's not a solution as much as it is a stimulant or catalyst to draw people's attention toward the fact that cellphone design has been heading in one direction for too long,' he said.
Nevertheless, Mr. Roope's idea and his various prototypes have been covered enthusiastically in British, Italian and Swedish magazines and are starting to be noticed in technology-crazed Japan.
Bidding on eBay for one Pokia phone, he said, reached $140. Other phones sold there include a red Hotline handset, and the Boston 661, an ivory-colored plastic model with a squared-off mouth- and ear-piece, which sold in March for $40 to Neale Willis in Wimbledon.
In an e-mail, Mr. Willis called the Boston 661 'a tasty little number,' and wrote, 'My flatmate is in awe of it.'
Since Mr. Roope's idea made its debut over a year ago, knock-offs have popped up on eBay and elsewhere on the World Wide Web. It turns out that with an old handset, a soldering iron and a little technical skill, pretty much anyone can make one.
'My biggest strengths are revealed in the title 'idea person,' ' Mr. Roope said.
Changes in the design of technological devices can sometimes be frustrated reactions to a ho-hum marketplace. Hence the digital cuckoo clock, or stereo speakers made of hollowed-out gourds. These fads are signals that the digital clock, for instance, is no longer new and that the stereo speaker has fully insinuated itself into everyday life. But however fleeting reactionary fads may be, they can have an impact farther down the line.
As far as cellphones are concerned, maybe it is time for a rethink, for a step backward. On the surface, humorous nostalgia might not be the most forward-looking aesthetic choice.
Mr. Roope's accessories may look like a throwback to car phones from the 'Starsky & Hutch' era, but I would like to see his idea take off, in some form, among the bobbing herds of Manhattan pedestrians (half of them gabbing on infinitesimal silver cubes jammed to one ear, the other half babbling on headsets).
Could you imagine New Yorkers holding various 70's hues of bricklike plastic to their heads, with a spiral phone cord attached to a cellphone clipped to their belts?
Impractical perhaps, but when has that ever stopped a trend explosion? I imagine hipsters slumming outside Schiller's Liquor Bar on the Lower East Side, smoking cigarettes as they gab away on plastic handsets attached to the hip pockets of their Habitual jeans.
I see rows of spiral plastic cords bobbing in unison behind the large glass windows at Crunch. The drivers of the antediluvian pedicabs I see around town would be talking on large red handsets, fielding calls from customers. I see a cellphone store on 14th Street that actually has an interesting selection.
Of course, that would happen only if the Pokia goes into production.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; The Windsor Hoopla: Reading the Poignant Subtext
AUCTIONS are about shopping. But increasingly, they are becoming a chance to reflect on the ultimate futility of acquisition.
Consider Sotheby's dispersal of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor's household chattel, from the formula for her L'Oreal hair dye to his painted taffeta heraldic banner to their 1940's neo-traditional furniture by Jansen, the eminent Parisian design house. These and more than 40,000 other Windsor relics will be disposed of in a nine-day sale that begins Tuesday at Sotheby's.
Emboldened perhaps by the round-the-block lines for the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis sale in 1996 and last year's auction of the estate of Pamela Harriman, Sotheby's specialists have used the Windsor windfall to exercise a curatorial breadth and narrative swagger that is more typical of museums than of auction floors. This distinction is partly due to the expertise of Ralph Appelbaum Associates, a New York design firm specializing in museum shows. Instead of simply setting out the possessions like so much merchandise to be moved, Appelbaum, in partnership with specialists at Sotheby's, has transformed two selling floors into a theatrical fun house suffused with a flair similar to the one Diana Vreeland brought to the moribund Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1970's.
Half documentary and half high-tone estate sale, the auction and its installation carry a poignant subtext that gives visitors an experience that may be more serious than they, and perhaps even Sotheby's, bargained for. The Windsor story, as seen here, is a contemplative and deeply moving visual biography that tells several cautionary tales -- of consumerism run amok, of lives unfulfilled, of chances wasted, and of cultural wounds that remain resolutely unhealed.
One elderly man was overheard at a preview this week muttering deprecations about the Duchess as he glared at a giant image of her and the middle-aged Duke beaming in the entrance hall of their mansion in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. After 62 years, it is apparent that neither style nor time has given the Windsors a break. Of course, they only had themselves to blame.
When measured by reality's cold light, the Windsors' celebrity was based solely on one rash act. 'Why are we celebrating?' an old acquaintance of the Duchess's pondered in his journal when the dethroned King and his wife drove through her native Baltimore in an official motorcade. 'She brought down a king.'
The Duke made no lasting impact on history, except in fashion, with the Windsor-knotted tie and a daredevil abuse of tartan. The Duchess, who wrote that 'the possession of beautiful things is thrilling to me,' supported none of the arts except couture.
Neither of them said anything particularly memorable, though the Duke's declaration that he abandoned his country for 'the woman I love' has a certain fatalistic glamour. The Duchess's brittle bon mot  about never being too rich or too thin (Elsie de Wolfe, one of her decorators, probably said it first) resounds  with what Noel Coward once called the potency of cheap music.
In the end, the sum of the Windsors' lives is not a matter of history but of the accumulation of possessions. The public exhibition of their goods opened on Tuesday and runs through Monday. Net proceeds from the sale, which Sotheby's estimates will bring in $5 million to $7 million, are to be distributed to children's charities that were supported by Dodi al-Fayed and Diana, Princess of Wales. The sale had been scheduled for September but was canceled when the couple were killed.
A close look at the Windsors' displaced furnishings reveals a luxurious, slightly camp stage set on which not even the actors seemed secure in their roles. A magnificently stylish pair of tortoise shell and ivory consoles by Jansen turn out to be artfully painted wood an eighth of an inch thick. Then there is the avalanche of oversize monograms, exquisitely worked in gold, red or blue -- on handkerchiefs, handbags, pillows, shoes, telephone books, note paper, even china toothbrush cups.
There are so many monograms one gets the uncomfortable feeling that the Duke and Duchess spent their 35-year marriage on the defensive, barricading themselves behind a battalion of interlocked W's and E's, legitimizing their 15-acre kingdom in the Bois de Boulogne with a constant visual reinforcement of their position as semi-royal exiles.
Various reasons have been given for the emptying of the Windsors' turn-of-the-century house, where they lived from 1953 onward (the Duke died in 1972 and the Duchess in 1986). Mohamed al-Fayed, who owns Harrods in London and the Ritz Hotel in Paris, leased the house and bought its contents after the Duchess's death and spent the next three years  restoring it as a private museum. Then last year, he suddenly announced that he and his family needed more room -- specifically that occupied by the Windsors' oddments.
'More room' is a reason any New Yorker can understand, but after walking through the Sotheby's installation, it seems possible Mr. Fayed's decision to sell was more personal than spatial: perhaps the psychic weight of the Windsors' possessions was too oppressive to bear.
Sotheby's show -- an intersection of gossip, society, decoration and politics -- takes the benighted Windsors from cradle to altar to grave. Transparent white panels printed with larger-than-life photographs of the Duke and Duchess and interior views of their three-story mansion serve as backdrops that give the essence of 10 of their rooms: the entrance hall; the salon; the dining room; his bedroom, bathroom and study; her bedroom and dressing area, and their private sitting room.
Chairs and tables, set on either side of the scrims, surrealistically fade in and out of view, as in holograms. Quotations from letters and poems are flashed onto the walls of the chronologically arranged mise en scenes, providing a shorthand account of how Queen Victoria's towheaded great-grandson grew up to inherit his family's throne, only to renounce it 11 months later to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson, a twice-divorced American.
There are treasures here, of course. When a couple's only hobby is spending money, they are bound to make a few good purchases. The most valuable Windsor relics were dispersed long ago, however. The Duchess's vast jewelry collection was sold by Sotheby's in Geneva in 1987 for $50.3 million, and most of the 18th-century French antiques and porcelains were willed to Versailles and the Musee de Sevres. But hundreds of choice items remain.
Some are personal, like the Windsors' honeymoon photo albums and a rag doll in the guise of a chimney sweep, reputedly made for the infant Duke by his mother, Queen Mary. Others are decorative, like the multiple sets of china, the dashing Jansen furniture and a baroque painted commode once owned by Syrie Maugham. Then there is the abdication desk, a plain-spoken Georgian antique from Fort Belvedere, the Duke's bachelor retreat near Windsor Castle, that by all rights should end up in a museum in England, not a living room on Park Avenue.
Objects related to the abdication crisis -- the desk, the speech, the newspaper clippings and private correspondence -- are indeed mute witnesses to one of this century's great political stories.
But the intimate possessions are distinguished solely by their associations: the Duke sat on this, the Duchess sipped from that. Curiously, it is precisely because Sotheby's has taken such pains to detail every facet of the Windsors' lives that the implied importance has been beaten out of  nearly every object. In the end, the Windsors were just Wally and David, a smug, rich suburban couple.
Twenty years after the Duchess slid into a decade of suspended animation, a prisoner in the kingdom of her own design, it is possible to view her towels and costume jewelry and bed as mere things, the sad trappings of a philosophy of living that led her to write a psychologically revealing love letter.
'Darling,' she wrote the dethroned King in February 1937, as she cooled her heels in Cannes while waiting for her divorce to be made final. 'I want to leave here I want to see you touch you I want to run my own house I want to be married and to you.'
It is the sequence of words that shivers the spine: running a house is more crucial to her well-being than the man who would share it. And the relics that Sotheby's has enshrined for public delectation are symbols not so much of a great romance but of a passion for security.
And so it is not inappropriate that her domain -- in exile, as much as she and the Duke ever were -- would be relinquished chair by chair, pug by pug. Until at the end it will have vanished entirely, leaving Sotheby's salesrooms empty and placing the Windsors where they rightfully belong: on the fringes of cultural consciousness, grace notes in the concert of 20th-century history.
Correction:  February 13, 1998, Friday  An article in the House and Home section yesterday about an auction of property once owned by the Duke and Duchess of Windsor misstated the day on which the nine-day sale begins at Sotheby's. It will be Thursday, not Tuesday.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"The Zsa-Zsa Decor War
TASTEFULNESS is not something David Bouley is used to worrying about. On the plate, it hasn't been a problem for Mr. Bouley, the chef and owner of the four-star Bouley Bakery. But he is standing in the entry of his new 3,800-square-foot restaurant, Danube, worried about the speckled Brazilian granite that he thinks looks like Gustav Klimt paintings, 3,000 copper leaves that canopy the ceiling like the Secessionists' dome in Vienna and every other detail of the $1.8 million establishment, opening on Monday at Hudson and Duane Streets.
'I don't know what I'm doing, to tell you the truth,' Mr. Bouley said of his newly flexed decorating skills. 'I wanted it to be a special place. I wanted people to have a shock.' He let out a nervous laugh at what could be a self-fulfilled prophecy. 'I mean, do you like that stone?'
Under the laurel-leaf crown, Mr. Bouley, 46, wore an unpressed white shirt, dusty blue jeans and duck-foot-shaped French shoes, his curly hair what the French would call a melange of peppers: black, white and gray.
Danube is Mr. Bouley's Scheherazade-meets-Kubrick's-Arthur-Schnitzler interpretation of a high-water mark in 20th-century culture: the Austria of Gustav Mahler and Josef Hoffmann, and the arts and cuisine of the Eastern European countries along the river Danube.
Whether waltz or schmaltz, Paulina Porizkova, the Czech model, was overcome. 'She walked in and she said she had to sit down,' Mr. Bouley said. 'She felt wrapped up, like she was with her mother, going to Prague.'
Danube's Zsa-Zsa decor is the opening shot in the New York restaurant world's Russian-Austro-Hungarian war. Warner LeRoy, the impresario behind Tavern on the Green and briefly Mr. Bouley's business partner, is rebirthing a legend: the Russian Tea Room on West 57th Street, scheduled to open on Oct. 4. Four years in labor and two years late, the seven-story tea-room construction site looks less like a theatrical extravaganza inside than the scene backstage at the Metropolitan Opera House during a cancellation-plagued production of 'Boris Godunov.'
On the second floor, cavernous as a Caribbean-cruise-ship dining room, the Tea Room's mascot -- a 15-foot-high, 2,500-pound acrylic bear-shaped aquarium that will house live sturgeon -- is headless and benignly bubble-wrapped, like a diver without his helmet. Shards of sapphire-blue and white mirror spike the sheet-rocked walls like broken glass. On the third floor, Mr. LeRoy's Tiffany-glass ceilings, recycled from his restaurant Maxwell's Plum, are in place; on the walls are more anatomically neutered larger-than-life Russian polar bears, discoing like intoxicated singles in carvings on 10-by-5-foot glass panels.
'We had to be very careful to make them completely nothing,' said Kathy Bradford, the Colorado-based glass artist involved, of the boy- or girl-bear issue.
Missing in action is the $500,000 Faberge-inspired Venetian glass-egg tree. The bronze bear chandeliers fabricated by the Indian company that supplied Trump's Taj Mahal in Atlantic City are nowhere in sight. Still a coming attraction: the Red Square diorama with a working model of the Kremlin, created by Keith Gonzales, who helped design the 'Siegfried and Roy Spectacular' in Las Vegas.
The Russian Tea Room was to be Mr. LeRoy and Mr. Bouley's wedding hall. The partnership that brought together two of New York's most prominent restaurateurs in 1995 blew apart two and a half years later, with a lawsuit filed by Mr. LeRoy charging that Mr. Bouley misappropriated funds. The suit was settled out of court.
Now, it is difficult not to view the timing of the two new venues as anything less than a duel: a midtown-downtown showdown.
Mr. Bouley's Prussian operetta of a restaurant is a few bullets shy of Mr. LeRoy's $20 million box-office Muscovite bear burlesque, but as another of Vienna's famous turn-of-the-century citizens, Sigmund Freud, demonstrated, obsession can make history, too.
Standing in Danube's Orient-Express-like bar, beneath a red plaster ceiling that was flown in from France, Mr. Bouley corrected the impression that the little room was a sunburst of gold paint.
'No, that's gold,' he said. 'It's either 22-karat or 18-karat or composition gold.' In his bomb-shelter-style office across Duane Street in the Mohawk Building, which is to become two more restaurants, a cooking school and a food court, he keeps a box of gilt samples: gold, platinum, silver; frail as leaves of phyllo dough.
'I wanted to create something that was as far from the minimalists as I could go,' he said. 'You can't just do a few fancy things, I realized. It's better to do none, or many and create a harmony.'
Mr. Bouley has come a long way from the painted rain gutters that formed the lighting coves in the original Bouley restaurant, also on Duane Park, which he designed and built himself in 1986 with his brother Martin.
The stakes are higher now. 'It's like buying an expensive car,' Daniel Boulud, the chef and owner of Daniel, the three-star French restaurant, said of the current relationship between dining and decor. 'You buy it for the engine, but the leather, the details -- these amenities count as much. It's important today.' Mr. Boulud, who designed his first restaurant with Mara Palmer, his wife's step-grandmother, hired Patrick Naggar, a residential designer, for his new dining room, a mock palazzo that drew criticism for its lack of intimacy. Mr. Boulud, who has redesigned parts of it, called it a 'work in progress.'
Danube's silk-pleated, Edwardian-fringed gaming-table lanterns, gold-mica-waxed ceilings, Venetian stucco work, Secessionist murals and full-scale reinterpretations of well-known Klimt paintings, including 'The Kiss,' are meant to 'bring back a richness of atmosphere that really made you stand up and take notice,' Mr. Bouley said, 'things that are beautiful from a craftsman's point of view: the hand of the artist.'
He hopes that this atmosphere will complement his craft in the kitchen, where with the executive chef, Mario Lohnigner, he is producing a menu of such Austro-Hungarian specialties as Wiener schnitzel and spatzle newly interpreted, like the Klimts.
Mr. Bouley worked with a decorator, Jacques Garcia, whose Paris office superintended commissions like the French gold, cut-velvet draperies, the mock-Turkish English carpet and the Joseph Maria Olbrich-style black-lacquered furniture.
Mr. Garcia, 52, who has a reputation for opulent, historically detailed interiors, is to be the star of the French Designer Showhouse opening on Oct. 14 in New York. Mr. Bouley admired his work for the Hotel Costes in Paris, where they met. Mr. Garcia also designed the Sultan of Brunei's 60,000-square-foot residence on the Place Vendome. The decorator restored a 17th-century Norman chateau, Champ-de-Bataille, with a 30-acre Le Notre garden, for his own use. The French Government had refused it as a gift because of renovation costs.
Despite his client's four-star knack for simplicity, Mr. Garcia said that he thought Danube's lavishness revealed Mr. Bouley.
'What is complicated comes from perfection itself,' he said. 'David is a perfectionist, absolutely.'
Mr. Bouley's effort involved 30 European craftsmen and a mid-waltz change in architectural partners, from Harman Jablin, Mr. LeRoy's team, to Kevin White. After three tries, Gerard Coltat, a muralist from Nice, got Klimt right. At Mr. Bouley's insistence, he replaced the faces in two portraits.
'The first one was too ugly,' Mr. Bouley said. 'The staff called her 'Bucky.' ' She now looks like Cindy Crawford in a pompadour. Mr. Coltat also exposed a breast.
With its Brahms and Strauss CD's swirling like ballroom-dancers through a $12,000 music system, the 65-seat Danube, whose exoticism proved to be unexpectedly elegant on a recent evening, will be a private entertainment by comparison with the Russian Tea Room.
James Kuryloski, the owner of the Felber Ornamental Plastering Corporation, which is supplying Mr. LeRoy with fake stag heads, said of the Russian Tea Room, 'As far as anything we've done, the only thing close is Opryland down in Nashville.'
'We found a fellow in Texas, a taxidermist, who was able to get a beautiful natural pair of antlers as a model,' Mr. Kuryloski said. 'Warner said there weren't enough spikes on them, so we had to add spikes to suit extreme tastes.'
For his part, Mr. Bouley isn't closing the book on expanding the realms in his empire. 'Danube is a byproduct of some of the energy that went into that,' he said in his office, where he thumbed through a thick ring-binder with close to 1,000 Russian recipes that he had developed for his venture with Mr. LeRoy. 'I had a good time doing this,' he said. 'I'll have to open a Russian Tea Room one day.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"The Place Setting As Life's Cure-All
IN Russel Wright's hands, even a hostess plate could be didactic. With its indented thumb hold, raised ring for holding a glass and partition ridges for church-and-state segregation of meat and potatoes, the plate, like all of Wright's enormously popular tablewares, linens and furnishings from the 1940's and 50's, had an agenda: to show Americans that life at home could be as easy and efficient as a new washer-dryer.
Rarely has product design been wielded so effectively as a tool for change. While Wright was not the first modernist to espouse the simplifying, streamlining benefits of the machine-made, he was among the most determined to give that lesson an elegant form suited just for the home.
'Russel Wright believed in good design for everyone,' said Robert Schonfeld, co-curator with Donald Albrecht of 'Russel Wright: Creating American Lifestyle,' opening on Tuesday at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. 'He was dedicated to a notion of service and wanted to deliver something good, virtuous and of a positive value for the American consumer.'
For all his conviction that modernity was the path to smoother domesticity, however, the show also reveals that Wright's own life -- spent commuting between Manhattan and a country house, with the help pitching in to change even the cabinet doors to the right seasonal color palette -- was anything but streamlined.
The exhibition presents a wide array of Wright's designs, from the most familiar (a complete table setting of American Modern in lettuce green) to the exceedingly rare (1932 pony-skin Cowboy Modern chair). The exhibition and accompanying catalog (Abrams, $35) offer a cultural snapshot of the three decades starting in the 30's when Wright was at his most influential -- and ubiquitous, thanks to department store demonstrations, Life magazine profiles, advertising campaigns and books. Ralph and Martha, take notes.
'He was very much part of the moment that was experimenting with Modern and trying to give it a personal touch, like Nakashima or Frank Lloyd Wright,' said Michael Graves, the architect and a prolific product designer himself. 'Where Bauhaus Modernism was pretty chilly and antiseptic, his work was certainly not machine-driven, but very hands-on, even craftsy.'
While other industrial designers like Raymond Loewy, Donald Deskey and Gilbert Rohde focused on corporate offices, Wright understood that the American middle class needed help at home. The Depression and World War II had erased the old domestic landscape. Servants were no longer affordable; formal parlors were impractical; private bedrooms de rigueur, even for children. Beneath the banner of 'convenience,' consumerism was on the rise. And Wright was at the ready. With the help of Mary, his wife, muse and in-house marketing maverick, he resolved to teach Americans how to modernize their homes, down to their compartmentalized sock drawers.
The new suburbanites were isolated. So Wright proposed the buffet as a way to throw people together. He analyzed the buffet table with logistical precision, prescribing a T-shaped layout for maximum efficiency.
For department stores, Wright devised 'starter sets' of his best-selling American Modern plates, allowing those who hadn't inherited Grandma's Limoges to start a collection (a six-place setting cost about $14.50 in 1939).
Last month, Sakura, a division of Oneida, introduced a 13-piece reproduction line of Wright's tablewares based on pieces from the American Modern and the sturdier Iroquois Casual china in signature colors including lettuce green and bean brown, for $7.99 to $29.99 a piece.
A brand-name success long before Lifshitz became Lauren, Wright put his name on everything, from bedsteads to glassware. 'They were precursors to my idea that approaching the mass market with good design and good quality at reasonable prices is a good thing to do; and I like that,' said Martha Stewart, who collects American Modern tablewares, but only in granite gray.
Essential to Wright's enormous success -- American Modern was one of the best-selling tableware lines in history -- was his ability to create Modernist forms crossed with American traditions. His early furniture was made of maple, Mr. Albrecht said, to bring to mind Colonial styles (it also came in a pale wood, which Mary Wright was the first to label 'blond'). Prompted by reports of a rise in juvenile delinquency and well before developers concocted the great room, Wright advocated large kitchens dominated by family dining tables and even couches.
In 1950, the Wrights published their manifesto, 'Guide to Easier Living.' It captured the spirit of an upbeat era that reduced all of life to engineering problems with scientific solutions. A chart explained the 32 steps to 'Scientific Bedmaking.' Housekeeping essays were based on the latest time-motion studies, and sketches showed dinner guests doing the party dishes.
The Wrights' portrait of a streamlined suburbia bore little resemblance to their own lives. Both came from well-to-do backgrounds -- his father was a judge in Ohio; her family owned textile mills -- and they never considered exile to the suburbs. They divided their time between a triplex penthouse on Park Avenue and an 80-acre estate in Garrison, N.Y. According to Ann Wright, the couple's daughter, guests like Amy Vanderbilt and the Rockefellers considered it an amusing lark to help with the dishes.
Then in 1952, Mary Wright died of cancer, leaving her husband to take care of Ann, then 2. 'His life became all about being a single parent and adapting to a situation he had never anticipated,' Ms. Wright said. Her father became more controlling. 'All the drawers were labeled in the kitchen. He even labeled his own drawers: winter socks, summer socks. There wasn't a lot of room for free thought, but at least you always knew where everything was.'
By the 1960's, Wright was still a merchandising phenomenon, but his new designs were no longer mass-market hits. He continued to experiment, as in the Ming Lace Leaves plates, with real jade leaves embedded between melamine plastic. In 1965, his last line, Theme Informal, was made of lacquered Bakelite but never caught on as a brighter, more artificial sensibility took hold in America.
By the 70's Wright had withdrawn to Garrison, where he had built a house buried into the rock of an old quarry. His daughter named the place Dragon Rock. Domesticating its outcroppings into indoor-outdoor dining ledges and bathrooms with hot-and-cold waterfalls instead of faucets became Wright's final design for living. He died in 1976.
Magnificently impractical, Dragon Rock embodied many of the contradictions simmering just beneath the surface of Wright's domestic philosophies. With walls of rock it was nearly impossible to clean. He enlisted his daughter and the housekeeper into projects like pressing hemlock needles into epoxy for a wall screen and stapling seasonally color-coded curtains to the ceiling.
Dragon Rock was magical and improvised, said Ms. Wright, who lived there until eight months ago (now called Manitoga, the Russel Wright Design Center, it is open seasonally and by appointment; 845-424-3812).  'But he still wanted it to be always neat,' Ms. Wright recalled. 'It was up to the English governess to run herself ragged keeping it clean.' So much for easier living.
Design Notebook",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Rooms With a Caligula-Slept-Here Look
CRUMPLED dish towels dry on an exposed radiator, paint flakes off a windowsill and electrical cords snake their way to a low table decked with dirty cups and saucers. Scattered crumbs and coffee scum are clearly visible.
A gritty scene set in a prison cell in the television drama 'Oz'? No, it's the latest sales catalogue from Habitat, a home furnishings chain owned by Ikea, and it's available in Britain and elsewhere abroad.
With its models in wrinkled clothes face down on a pile of pillows, seemingly passed out in an unmade bed or rubbing the sleep from their eyes, Habitat is firing the first salvo in a radical image makeover. Call it the Morning After Look: take two aspirin and call a cleaning lady as soon as possible.
In Britain, where the catalogue has already sold a million copies, 20 percent more than last year, some people are scratching their heads. 'Habitat does heroin chic for the home?' asked Simon Mills in The Evening Standard, a London newspaper, referring to fashion's recent dalliance with hard-core realism.
A Habitat spokeswoman, Berna Sermet, leapt to the defense. 'Habitat did not consciously produce a catalogue to reflect a trend in untidiness, but to display beautiful products within realistic homes,' she said.
Needless to say, the position of every scattered pistachio shell was calibrated by a battalion of stylists. (The absence of any cigarette butts or even wineglasses underscores how carefully this vision of authenticity was edited). The social realism of the Habitat catalogue is just as artificial as the latest trendy pad in Wallpaper, where even the flower petals seemed fixed in styling gel.
Defining the boundary between what's real and what's really real has become a favorite parlor game on the culture scene. In the movie 'American Beauty,' zombie suburbanites anesthetized by the good life finally break out and live an even better good life (complete with feet on the sofa), suffering only a few violent consequences.
The Morning After Look may not be catching people literally in bed, but at least there are signs of life in these pages. Karrie Jacobs, the editor of the forthcoming American magazine Dwell, considers it a welcome change and hopes to incorporate a sense of realism in her own magazine. There is something unsettling about the way homes are usually shown in magazines and catalogues, she said.
'Don't people in these photographs ever eat anything but perfectly arranged fruit?' she asked. 'Don't they ever buy packaged goods? Their homes all look like they were photographed shortly after a neutron bomb hit.'
Nest magazine, a design guide for idiosyncratic esthetes, has already carved out a niche for its own brand of highly stylized realism. In the spring issue, a living room is shown with four cat litter boxes under a coffee table, plastic bowls brimming with kibble under the stereo and a protective blue plastic cover on the sofa. The cats themselves lurk on the sofa, a radio and a battered table.
Joseph Holtzman, Nest's editor, said he wasn't so interested in the home's realism but in the decorative patterning expressed by a pack of cats loose in a room. 'I'm obsessed with the presentation of atmosphere and surface,' Mr. Holtzman said. 'That's where the realism of photography should be focused, not on the butts in the ashtray.' Nonetheless, the reader gets the message: enter this room at your own risk.
Stuart Ewen, author of 'All Consuming Images' (Basic Books), described the look of dishabille as 'a real break with suburbia and the sense of home as a place of leisure.' He added that the ideal consumers to respond to this esthetic of the undone are new media moguls and computer technocrats with plenty of money to spend but no interest in ever leaving the office. The Morning After, apparently, follows a night spent staring at a computer screen.
'These images address people who don't view their homes as the centerpiece of their lives, people for whom home life is a necessary inconvenience on their way to work,' Mr. Ewen said.
The perfected image of life presented in magazines like Martha Stewart Living may be losing its cachet. Getting the attitude right has taken priority over getting the right sofa.
The creative team at Habitat came up with the catalogue's look by combing through back issues of the catalogue to find the groovy images of real life that Terence Conran formulated in the 1970's to sell the same molded plastics and ladder-back dining chairs that are popular today and are once again in the catalogue. Sir Terence, who founded Habitat and sold it to Ikea, said he warned the company against selling mood. 'They told me that they wanted to recreate what I had done many years ago, and I said: 'Listen, you've got it all wrong. What we were trying to do was just be optimistic. Just show the products!' '
Sir Terence is hardly immune to setting a little tone. When the new Conran's catalogue is issued next month and shoppers come across two half-empty glasses and a bottle of Heineken beer on the kitchen table, they should remember that it's not attitude -- it's real life.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"At Last, Cedar-Lined Places to Unwind Après Work
IT was only a matter of time before New Yorkers, who have been called every kind of bum, would want to be ski bums too. Not in Aspen or the Alps, but right here. That bottled mountain water you see in every hand is going to people's heads.
Three scene-savvy restaurants and clubs -- Chateau, Industry (food) and Butter -- have opened in New York in the last month, with enough planed sauna cedar, cowshed-plank cubbies, split-birch-log lounges, copper-pot and kindling-twig ceilings, white photomural forests and live trees to make you ask yourself whether Heidi Klum is the only Heidi in the room.
Whether it's trickle-down Peter Zumthor, the Swiss architect whose wood-souled work has been widely featured in fashionable design circles recently, or the May ice-cap melt, anyone who thinks that a downtown-style drinking, dining or lounging experience involves, by necessity, concrete, glass, chrome or minimalism in other cool materials would be wrong, as of just now. The look's being axed.
'I spent a ski season in Lake Tahoe with my best snowboarding buddy,' said Alex Freij, an owner of Industry (food), at 509 East Sixth Street (Avenue A), where Madonna and Italian Vogue gave parties in the last three weeks. 'Tahoe's homey, woodsy. We always talked about making it happen in New York.' Mr. Freij -- in speed, altitude and concept -- makes talking on the telephone its own extreme sport.
'I don't like sterile restaurants,' he said, explaining that he added '(food)' to Industry's name because 'I want to be legitimized as a restaurant,' not a scene. 'After the definition crowd has left, we're looking for a neighborhood crowd. It has to be comfortable and approachable.'
Mr. Freij tried this with old wood, which he sourced online at www.antiquewoods.com, run by a company in Canada, and D&R Antique and Specialty Woods (www.dr-woods.com) in Flanders, N.J.
On Saturday night, a young polyglot crowd, shouting happily in several languages, looked comfortable as people approached one another at the Bunyanesque bar.
Industry (food)'s pine plank walls are 19th-century barn wood. The bar face is chestnut from a log cabin, circa 1800. The street facade is pine plank; the front door is split birch logs with a birch log handle. Mr. Freij's architect, Paul Carroll, furthered what he called the 'alpine retreat' effect by enclosing a backyard behind the restaurant, paneling it with planking and adding steel-frame exterior windows with greenhouse glass that look from the upstairs dining room down to the lounge, as though from a chalet balcony. Your waiter is a yodel away.
Mr. Carroll built around existing outdoor trees, which now grow through the bar, next to the D.J.'s turntables. Seating cantilevered above the two-story atrium is 'a reference to a ski lift,' he said. A glowing tiger's-eye cut-glass bar surface, lighted from within like a homicidal idea, lends the establishment the ambience of the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick's 'Shining.'
At Chateau, 133 Seventh Avenue South (West 10th Street), in the club space that was Moomba before it was put to pasture last year, the design's foundation is fondue. 'I used to go to Switzerland with my girlfriend,' said Gordon Von Broock, an owner. 'There was a fondue place in Zurich. That's the whole concept here.'
Chateau's weathered-to-gray cocktail nooks -- yet another 150-year-old barn busted apart -- lack only the hay to make them as nestlike to cute baby animals, like calves and kids, as to models and junior V.P.'s.
'It sat out in the elements,' said Kip Marsh, a partner in the Catenary Design Group, who worked with Mr. Von Broock to realize the interiors. In conversation, Mr. Marsh has an excitability that gives the impression that he is trying to answer any and all questions at once.
'Oh no man, that's raw,' he said, when asked if the wood had been enhanced. 'We wouldn't touch that. Nature's done a pretty good job.'
Mr. Marsh, like Mr. Carroll at Industry (food), cited an alpine lodge as his intention. His design group was unaware, he said, that two other projects with extensive wood finishes or literal forestry, Chateau and Butter, were also under way -- like the three Crusades projects neck and neck (and neck) in Hollywood offices this month.
Mr. Marsh credited a societal thought process, not a trend. 'Carl Jung calls it the collective unconscious,' he said.
Mr. Von Broock, coincidentally, shared a taxi with an owner of Industry on Sunday, after dinner at Butter, but was also unaware in planning Chateau that the Swiss hills were alive with the sound of New York night-life entrepreneurs.
'It's funny how it popped up,' he said. 'None of us knew. Glass and chrome got so boring -- like couches and drapes before them. It's very flashy, but truthfully, when you walk in, if it's not full, it looks empty. The trendy people move on.'
AT Butter, which opened last week at 415 Lafayette Street (East Fourth Street), a vaulted ceiling of red cedar veneer in the main dining room creates the same type of cathedral that tall trees would. On the back wall is a photographic blowup of a birch forest. Two sips on a cocktail at the bar and you start listening for birds. Four sips later you start praying for snow.
'It's slightly escapist,' said Andrew Phillips, the architect who designed it. 'Maybe it's a cabin. I'm not a fan of the narrative going too far.' Mr. Phillips said that the planed cedar that runs from the entrance to the dining room -- the world's longest sauna -- produces a 'great view' at the end, like walking outdoors.
'I associate it with freshness and lightness and youth,' he said. Gorp martinis might be an idea to work with too.
Downstairs, the lounge is dark, tight and bark.
Birch timbers, boiled on the split side to prevent cracking or decay, cover the walls like a logjam. The ceiling is lacquered twigs, also birch and 'younger,' Mr. Phillips said. Fireproofing killed the bugs, he added.
In discussing his design, Mr. Phillips mentioned Mr. Zumthor, the Swiss architect and cabinetmaker, who is a newly mythic figure in contemporary architecture. Mr. Zumthor is a master of the refined use of rustic wood in modern building.
'It's not so much the material used as making a universe of material,' Mr. Phillips said of Mr. Zumthor's genius. 'By taking wood to the nth degree, you produce an amazing richness.'
Woodman, spare that 8 o'clock table.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; A Place Setting For Pop Postage
IN her 1923 classic book, 'Etiquette,' Emily Post observed that 'older people invariably feel that the younger generation is speeding swiftly on the road to perdition.'
And so it is with stamps. Last week, the first domestic image on an American stamp was unveiled, heralding Mrs. Post's 'Etiquette.' The stamp -- of a 1920's place-setting with Lafayette Towle silver, a goblet and hand-painted Copeland Spode china -- is elegant and extremely proper (note the archaically correct placement of the salad fork, prongs up, next to the plate). But beneath that white damask tablecloth lurks a radical shift in the design and subject matter of these miniature snippets of everyday Americana.
In the not-so-recent past, 'Etiquette' would have been depicted by -- in the words of Terry McCaffrey, the senior art director at the United States Postal Service -- a 'dead head,' a sober engraving of Emily Post's profile, not a stylish photograph worthy of a shelter magazine.
But today, in part to lure a generation for whom E-mail is mail, and facing competition with everything from faxes to the Internet, the Postal Service is looking to produce stamps that sell, pushing the tasteful limits of stamp design. In the process, the agency is becoming ever more populist, designing stamps that are no longer simply the nation's calling cards but adhesive pop icons.
For the second time (the first was for Elvis), the Postal Service has held a public referendum on stamps. A vote that ended on Sunday, offering figures and trends to represent the 1960's, included Medicare but also the twist, Woodstock, shopping malls and the Ford Mustang. Those worried about the state of the nation will probably not find solace in the returns from a vote on 50's images, with drive-in movies and 'I Love Lucy' the most popular vote getters. President Dwight D. Eisenhower finished 16th, in a futile bid to appear on a United States stamp a ninth time.
The most conspicuous example of stamps' new look -- dismissed by serious collectors as 'wallpaper' -- may be in Times Square, where a triumphal billboard of the new Tweety and Sylvester stamp hangs from the Warner Brothers Studio Store. At the recent dedication, Bugs Bunny, who was the first in the Looney Tunes series of stamps and whose initial printing of 300 million sold in one month, passed a mailbag to his speech-impaired successors.
Visions of envelopes desecrated with Looney Tunes characters have caused many old-guard philatelists -- who still mourn the purple 3-cent monochromes -- to contemplate rash acts with their tongs.
Local post offices have begun to resemble a Warner Brothers store, filled with Tweety and Sylvester hats, ties and other synergistic souvenirs. (Shoppers, take note: they're cheaper at the post office.) Azeezaly Jaffer, the executive director of stamp services for the Postal Service, says Warner Brothers, like other companies, provides images for the stamps royalty-free, but profits from merchandise are divided in an 'equitable split.'
Mr. Jaffer, the Postal Service's Louis B. Mayer, added, 'Tweety is going to be important.'
The very mention of Bugs and Tweety has caused a phlap in the world of philately. As outlined by the Postal Service and the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, which reviews more than 40,000 stamp proposals annually, the official criteria for stamp selection says that stamps will not be issued to 'honor commercial enterprises or products.'
'Stamps are windows on the soul of the nation,' said Gary Griffith, a columnist for Stamp Collector magazine. 'They ought to be a place of honor, not a marketing gimmick.'
The new accessibility, in which Wolf Man and the Mummy are now on stamps, is in part a marketing response to the slow, painful demise of American stamp collecting. In past generations, America was a fertile seedbed of philately, a cherished stamp collection under the bed a fixture of childhood. But the future of this now-quaint pastime is in doubt.
'Our kids today are growing up amidst a technological revolution, a society in which they want and demand immediate gratification,' Mr. Jaffer said. 'Kids today don't go to post offices. Kids tomorrow won't go to post offices.'
In a sign of how commercial stamps have become, they now have their own lobbying blocks. Like a movie studio campaigning for Oscars, the Ford Motor Company had ballots shipped to 500 Ford dealerships in an effort to secure a stamp for the Mustang, according to Linn's Stamp News, a weekly.
Commerce aside, there is another force at work. 'Too often, we've been afraid to embrace some of our greatest American figures,' said the historian Douglas Brinkley. 'We somehow think there's something cheap or tawdry about the U.S. Government giving respect to an Elvis, a James Dean or a Marilyn Monroe. Now the Postal Service is wisely looking at the fullness of decades. The 1920's was not just about Calvin Coolidge, but also Josephine Baker and Langston Hughes.'
It was also about etiquette. In keeping with the broadening of stamps' graphic appeal, the Emily Post stamp was designed for a visually sophisticated audience. Until five years ago, photography was rarely used as a medium on stamps; today, Mr. McCaffrey said, about 20 percent of American stamps are illustrated with photos. (Children in particular 'like the immediacy and reality of photographs,' he said.) The Post stamp went through many 'image gyrations' -- the art of opening doors was considered briefly -- before a table setting was picked.
There were some faux pas along the way. Peggy Post, Emily Post's granddaughter-in-law, an adviser on the stamp, noticed that the placement of the salad fork was incorrect for the 20's, so the image was 'digitally flip-flopped,' Mr. McCaffrey said. Now it appears next to the plate, a la 1920's protocol. (A proper fish fork is nowhere to be found.)
The shift toward user-friendly images, of which the Elvis stamp is still the apogee, began with the Postal Reorganization Act of 1972, which established the United States Postal Service as a quasi-Government agency with no taxpayer support. In the late 1970's the Postal Service, under the aegis of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee, issued its first decorative package: a solid block of butterflies and owls.
'People went wild,' said Mary Anne Owens, a leading collector, who recently retired from the committee. 'Before then, stamps were primarily historical, mostly anniversaries, depending on who got talking to their Congressman,' she said. 'The post office said, 'Well, this is what the public wants.' '
Lighthouses, puppies, L VE and Elvis followed (the postal pelvis has had greater retention than any American stamp -- 38 million in its first 1 1/2 years). 'It didn't take them long to realize that revenue from stamps retained and not used was money in the bank,' said Michael Laurence, the editor and publisher of Linn's Stamp News, a weekly, in  Sidney, Ohio. 'That's how Tweety Bird and Sylvester have come to displace George Washington and Abe Lincoln, much to the dismay of old-fogy stamp collectors like myself.'
Virginia Noelke, a historian and the chairwoman of the citizens' advisory group, said that Looney Tunes and other commercial images raise 'serious questions' but that the Bugs Bunny stamp is 'historically defensible.' Bugs 'is an early bit of Americana,' she said. 'The notion is the greater good -- to get young people back to stamp collecting.'
Future stamps are likely to contain more colorful and complex images, with a greater emphasis on photography and illustration. Advances in printing will also affect design: last year saw star-shaped perforations and the first American triangle stamps. Controversial subjects, like war, will in all likelihood continue to be treated generically. (A 1994 proposal to depict the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a mushroom cloud aroused such furor that it was replaced by the image of Harry S. Truman announcing the war's end.)
STAMPS continue to be symbols of broad cultural approval, Mr. Brinkley said. 'You won't find too many radical, uneven figures,' he said. 'You'll get Rosa Parks but probably not Stokely Carmichael or Abbie Hoffman. The twist and Barbie dolls were not going to undermine the status quo.' He thinks Bob Dylan will make his way onto a stamp and, if Al Gore becomes President, possibly the Grateful Dead. Think of the joint marketing ventures.
At the recent Metropolitan Stamp Show in Manhattan, where grown men huddled over lamps with their magnifying glasses, the country's fate seemed to hang in the balance over the question of the future of philately. 'If Tweety is what it takes to interest kids in stamp collecting, absolutely,' said Jeff Fishman, a dealer from Arlington Heights, Ill. 'We're competing with high exciting things like Nintendo and the Internet. But we wouldn't have half the problems we have if kids stayed home and collected stamps.'
There were signs that Bugs might eventually endear himself to collectors. Recently, an imperfection -- the philatelists' reason for living -- was found on the Bugs sheet. On the decorative half of the pane, a single stamp is inserted next to a blown-up image of Bugs. On some sheets, however, it appears that the Postal Service forgot to perforate that stamp. So much for being cutting edge.
News of the flawed Bugs has swept swiftly through the beleaguered world of philately. 'It's much rarer than the others,' said Ken Lawrence, a columnist for The American Philatelist, with a twinge of rapture, noting that imperforate Bugses are already selling for about $150 a pane.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Forms That Trace a Previous Era's Angst
IT was a time when America was getting used to a new kind of war during peace and daily life was taking on new rhythms and shapes. A sense of fear and tension bubbled beneath an exuberant pop culture.
Those years -- 1940 to 1960 -- look both different and familiar in 'Vital Forms: American Art and Design in the Atomic Age,' opening tomorrow at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Americans were trying to come to terms with the bomb and the cold war, an effort reflected in painting, sculpture, architecture, graphic design, furniture and even toys.
Midcentury design has become as easy to caricature as the court of Louis XIV, from Elvis and Marilyn, tail fins and Stratocaster guitars to Eames chairs, Noguchi tables and the designs that inspired today's 'blobjects' and 'retrofuturism.' But 'Vital Forms' suggests a more three-dimensional era. 'There is optimism and energy,' said Kevin L. Stayton, the chairman of the museum's department of decorative arts and an exhibition curator. 'But there, underneath, something else is going on. You can see the tension.'
A camouflage poncho on display is an example of wartime functionalism that spilled over into graphic design, its blobs appearing in red and blue on K ration boxes.
War and peace, function and style: Charles and Ray Eames adapted a technique for bending plywood into splints and made furniture. Tupperware started out as a plastic used by the military. A Navy spring was used to make the Slinky.
Hula Hoops mimicked the orbits of Sputnik, and the bikini was named for the island where nuclear testing took place. At President Eisenhower's 1953 inauguration, Mamie Eisenhower wore a hat of rippling concentric circles called the Airwave.
The wasp waist of the New Look was found not only in fashions and Barbie dolls, but also in the Chemex coffeepot and in an Eva Zeisel room divider made with hourglass shapes. In the late 1950's, planes with 'Coke bottle' fuselages passed through the sound barrier. The same silhouette was visible in sports cars like Raymond Loewy's 1961 Studebaker Avanti. 'New Look' took on another meaning when Eisenhower borrowed the name for a defense policy based on massive atomic retaliation. Eero Saarinen's swooping airline terminals in New York and Washington celebrated the romance of world travel, but the darker side of living on the edge of war was suggested by the naming of the Washington airport after John Foster Dulles, the master of brinkmanship.
One of the most astonishing artifacts in the exhibition is a 1961 Gorham silver coffee set topped with the intersecting orbs of the iconic atom. The set was used aboard a nuclear-powered missile cruiser.
When the stylized atom's upbeat orbits conflated with the outlines of an amoeba, other blobs were born, traveling into Adolph Gottlieb paintings, Calder mobiles, Formica patterns and motel signs.
'Vital Forms' is the third in an important series: earlier exhibitions were devoted to the American Renaissance (1876-1917) and the Machine Age in America (1918-1941). Turning from machine imagery toward fluid vital forms, Mr. Stayton writes in the catalog, was 'at least in part a response to the unsettling ambivalence and anxieties of the new age,' when the exuberance of prosperity could be upset at any moment by vague, underlying threats. Even Elvis had to go into the Army.
Dr. Paul Boyer, a cultural historian who advised the curators, argues in the catalog that the soft blobby shapes and their plastic aesthetic suggested sheer possibility, 'endlessly melting, mutating and flowing into new shapes, or trembling on the verge of total disintegration.' Soaring optimism could quickly diverge to stomach-churning fear.
The Shmoo, a blobby Al Capp cartoon creature that complaisantly cooked itself up into any dish you wanted, is juxtaposed in the exhibition with similarly shaped Eva Zeisel salt and pepper shakers. The soft shapes of Ms. Zeisel's shakers are usually seen as a turn toward nature.  But Dr. Boyer sees another subtext in their design: uncertainty.
After Jan. 6, 'Vital Forms' goes to  Minneapolis, Nashville and Phoenix.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Skyline Views From Midstream
FLUNG boldly from West 70th Street into the Hudson River like a great fishing seine, Pier I at Riverside South Park is an ample acre of new public land, slightly longer than the Woolworth Building is tall. But that alone is not why the pier is already drawing visitors, even in the middle of winter, even without ribbon cuttings or signposts.
Pier I -- as in 'eye' -- is an entirely new way to see the towering palisade skylines of New York and New Jersey and the broad waterway between them, liberated from the shoreline and unconfined by gunwales. This is the privileged vantage of center stream. It is a perspective that comes rarely in pedestrian life; say, when a blizzard allows you to walk down the middle of Broadway or a parade puts you right on the Fifth Avenue median.
From the pier, 795 feet into the river, out among wheeling gulls and diving ducks, out where the slap of river swells is audible, the George Washington Bridge looks less like a muscular Erector set than a slender, silvery thread drawn through the sky. The elevated Joe DiMaggio Highway undulates like a ribbon, fused almost seamlessly to the roller-coasterlike outline of Pier D to the south, which was twisted by fire into a polymorphous contortion worthy of Frank Gehry. Even the towers of Trump Place momentarily take on Venetian magic, glimpsed as sensuous, rippled reflections in the wake of a passing ship.
A reconstructed vestige of the old New York Central rail yards, Pier I is to be dedicated in March as part of the first phase of a public park. It is financed by the Trump Organization and Hudson Waterfront Associates, the developers of Trump Place, overlooking the park. Their obligation is tied to the pace of development. Phase 1 of the park, which cost $14 million, corresponds with the completion of the third building at Trump Place, 160 Riverside Boulevard, between 67th and 68th Streets.
'It is the first tangible evidence that there was some major public benefit tied into the approval of this project,' said Michael W. Bradley, executive director of the Riverside South Planning Corporation. This nonprofit body, which includes the Trump Organization and five civic groups, oversees the design of both the development and the accompanying park.
Although a formal ceremony is two months away, the Parks Department is already operating the park. It opened the pier last week without fanfare. Neighbors discovered it quickly. The greatest gift of Pier I may be the way it allows New Yorkers to reacquaint themselves with the familiar.
Manhattanites may marvel at the panoply of development along the New Jersey bank of the Hudson, which seems close enough to touch. Upper West Siders may spot, perhaps for the first time, the stout Italian Renaissance lanterns atop the Art Deco Normandy apartments at Riverside Drive and 86th Street.
The pier also brings into much higher relief the nobly ruined gantry tower under which freight cars passed, after being ferried across the river, into the skein of railroad yards that once ran along the shoreline from 60th Street to 72nd Street. The yard was part of a freight railroad network, including the elevated High Line viaduct, that the New York Central built along the far West Side.
Unlike typical piers, which are perpendicular to the shoreline, Pier I and its companions -- B, D, E, F and G and the gantry tower -- extended into the river at a 55-degree angle, offering an easier turning radius from the yards. Pier I was wide enough to accommodate four parallel tracks, and had a spur leading to a roundhouse at the end of West 71st Street.
In its reconstructed form, the pier has been kept the same length. Its width has been narrowed to an average of 50 to 55 feet, but it has not lost its angle.
'We tried to uncover the history of the place and in some subtle way celebrate and infuse that in the park experience,' said Thomas Balsley of Thomas Balsley Associates, the landscape architects responsible for the park and pier. (Together with Lee Weintraub, Mr. Balsley also designed Gantry Plaza State Park at the Queens West project in Long Island City, which incorporates the old Long Island Rail Road gantries.)
Given the spectacular setting on the Hudson River, there seemed little need for architectural ostentation, though Mr. Balsley incorporated several features, playful and thoughtful, that add to the pleasure of an idle promenade. For more purposeful visits, there is even a fish-cleaning table, testament to the improving condition of the Hudson.
The southern edge of the pier is gently scalloped rather than straight, creating a sense of harmony with the river. Its geometry is further disjointed by an L-shaped jog at the end, which contributes considerably to the feeling of being afloat and cut off from land. That is heightened by the acutely angled intersection of railings at the pier's southwest corner, where Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet would feel at home.
Lighting the way along the pier are reflective-disk lampposts by the German manufacturer Bega. Grouped in snug pairs around the lamps are surprisingly comfortable contoured bucket chairs by Erlau, another German concern. The steel mesh and pipes of the seats complement the silvery railings.
What the pier does not have is planking; not when it would have had to come from Indonesian hardwood plantations. 'That stuff is horribly expensive,' Mr. Balsley said. Instead, the deck is made of precast concrete paving blocks, which lend an incongruous heaviness to an otherwise nearly weightless expanse.
Hardwood planking was not the only victim of a limited budget. Collaborating with the artist Jody Pinto, Mr. Balsley designed a beacon and spiral staircase for the end of the pier, which would have let visitors go up an extra 15 feet above the water. That has been eliminated.
So has a sunscreen in midpier made of angled panels meant to recall the wings of Canada geese flying overhead. So has the 'dragonfly tower,' an abstract evocation of the dragonflies found hovering over salt marshes, which was to ornament a small companion pier to the north.
'These are all candles and icing,' Mr. Balsley said. 'I'm pleased. I'm satisfied. We got the cake. For the most part, the public won't even miss what they never saw.'
Still to come, at the inland end of the pier and under the elevated highway, is a snack bar. Henry J. Stern, the parks commissioner, said that a request for proposals from potential concessionaires would be issued this spring, after being presented for review by the Upper West Side community board.
A more controversial plan to moor a floating concession barge alongside Pier I is now in 'choppy waters,' Mr. Stern said, adding: 'Let's see how the park works. Let's see how the snack bar works. One concession at a time.'
Although the other piers are eventually to be demolished, Mr. Stern said the hope was to stabilize -- though not restore -- the old gantry tower. There are certainly no plans to construct new piers, given the environmental and regulatory hurdles that they would face.
'To build in the Hudson River is an impossibility,' Donald J. Trump said. 'Part of the beauty of that pier is that you'll never have that again.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"'Virtual Officing' Comes In From the Cold
THE advertising agency that urges Apple Computer buyers to 'Think different' is once again on the cusp of an evolution in workplace design.
Four years ago, Chiat/Day led the charge into the brave new world of 'virtual officing' when its headquarters in Venice, Calif., proved too small for a fast-expanding staff.
Jay Chiat, one of the company's founders, equipped everyone with a mobile phone, a laptop and a personal locker, and turned a problem into a much vaunted workplace experiment. Now, just shy of the third millennium, TBWA/Chiat/Day, as the agency is now known, has traded virtual communication for the real thing, to combat employees' overwhelmingly negative response. It has just moved into a space in the Playa del Rey section of Los Angeles, where everyone has his own desk and human interaction is key, in a plan that draws from a model as ancient as telecommuting is new: the city.
The offices, in a vast warehouse designed for 500 employees by Clive Wilkinson Architects, are a microcosmic 'Chiat town' of private and group work spaces and public 'streets' and meeting places that provide for every kind of company activity. Staff members enjoy kaffeeklatsches in a 'Central Park,' mingle on a 'main street' and have a work space they can call home in surrounding 'neighborhoods.'
This turnabout by the progressive agency reflects a 'phenomenal shift in people's thinking' about the state of the art of the workplace, said Despina Katsikakis, director of DEGW, a London-based international consultancy on workplace design. While virtual officing is by no means dead -- TBWA/ Chiat/Day staff members still carry mobile phones and beepers, and connect by computer -- the latest experiment in breaking free from designs based on the old hierarchical pecking order is what Ms. Katsikakis called 'community-based planning.' It locates staff members in teams (rather than on status-implied floors), offers private spaces and includes clubby meeting areas.
This approach is now being tried at corporations like Andersen Consulting, in its offices around the world, and at Sun Microsystems in Palo Alto, albeit in a more conservative style than at TBWA/Chiat/Day.
The agency has always experimented with architecture and the workplace, starting with its move, in 1979, to the venerable Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. ('Jay didn't want the firm to lose touch with the consumer,' said Laurie Coots, the chief marketing officer for the company.) That was followed, in the mid-80's, by a move to the bohemian Venice, first to a temporary warehouse space and then to its own building, both landmark designs by Frank O. Gehry.
Mr. Chiat also had two of Mr. Gehry's fellow superstar architects, Rem Koolhaas and Gaetano Pesce, create, respectively, London and New York offices. In each space, the aim of the architecture was to keep  people stimulated and feeling part of a family, albeit one with a steely drive and a yen for knowing self-promotion. In 1976, the company ran an advertisement in Adweek declaring its pain at losing a Honda account. Now, it is cheerfully revising its thinking about what makes a workplace work.
The virtual office 'sounded good in theory, but ultimately violated human tenets,' said Lee Clow, the company's chairman. He added, 'People need a sense of place and belonging.' The idea behind the virtual office was that telecommuting would allow people to work anywhere, anytime, and that they would use the outgrown building only for teamwork. As it turned out, most staff members needed or wanted to work under the same roof.
Current and former employees paint a picture of harried workers fighting over too-few desks, defiantly displaying family photos and trying to stake out personal space in a place planned like a club. 'People felt like they were working in a cocktail party,' Ms. Coots said. The new place blends what the company sees as the best of the previous environments. Yes, TBWA/Chiat/Day staff members still share the airwaves. But now, Ms. Coots said, 'we share the same air.'
From a vivid yellow exterior gatehouse, visitors enter a large busy industrial-style space -- a playful version of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Youthful employees buzz about: up and down the mesh stairs and balconies; along the wide 'main street' of stacked 'cliff dwellings,' Hollywood Squares-style, that are home to pairs of art directors and copywriters who work as creative teams; in Central Park, a ficus-lined internal plaza, and on the hallowed basketball court, a symbol of the zest and competitiveness of the firm.
Scattered around this town center are neighborhoods of project dens: groups of desks enclosed by diaphanous spandex tent structures for privacy and open-plan work areas with freestanding aluminum work stations called Nests (for New Environment for Strategic Tasking), one-legged desks with screens for acoustic and visual privacy. (They are now manufactured by the agency in a co-production with the office furniture giant Steelcase.) The cute name refers to the very nesting instincts that virtual officing had rejected and that are now being increasingly factored into office planning nationwide.
TBWA/Chiat/Day has rebounded from a bumpy patch in the mid-90's, during which it was sold to a holding company, the Omnicom Group, was merged with TBWA and saw the departure of Jay Chiat, whose demanding, inventive spirit, company members say, lives on in the space and in the work.
It was unanimously picked as agency of the year for 1997 by the advertising trade magazines, and this year, it scored an Emmy for its Apple Computer campaign, which features arresting images of great achievers, stamped with the slogan 'Think different.'
But how innovative is the new office? The design merges the high-tech style popular in Europe, typified by Richard Rodgers's and Renzo Piano's Pompidou Center, with the robust warehouse office projects of Mr. Gehry and the late Frank Israel.
While it may be striking and lively, with its jazzy cliff dwellings, billowing tent structures, flying balconies, exposed plywood partitions and touches of whimsy (like a bar made of surfboards), it doesn't quite break the old pecking order. In following the principles of good town planning, the company has, in fact, introduced hierarchy, albeit of a more accessible kind than the mahogany-paneled corner office of traditional corporate America. Two company principals who once had spaces equal to everyone else's now each have impressive suites overlooking Central Park, and while creative pairs get prominent, private 'cliff dwellings,' most of the rest nest in the open-plan areas.
And as for staying in touch with the consumer, the new TBWA/Chiat/ Day is an interior world. Viewless, located at the end of a road of industrial buildings and bungalows (near where Dreamworks is due to start construction), the office is currently nowhere near cafes, shoe repairs, stores or pedestrians -- namely, the stuff and stimuli of daily life.
A former staff member, Rebecca Epstein, now a doctoral student at the school of film and television at the University of California at Los Angeles, said that she found it a somewhat isolating experience. 'Because the light is the same all day long, and you have no sense of time,' she said, 'it's a little like a casino.'
Even the new artwork is self-reflective: a fish tank from TBWA/ Chiat/Day's Energizer bunny campaign, agency commercials broadcast nonstop on a large screen over the basketball court, sofas upholstered in Levi denim (Levi's jeans is a new client), and a billboard featuring Picasso, one of the Apple 'Think different' personalities.
The all-seeing, all-knowing nature of the space, with its mezzanines, walkways and glass-fronted cubicles, reminded one visitor of the slightly totalitarian feel of a penitentiary. But an employee who refused to be identified said the new offices are 'like a big playground.' And she likes the fact that they are all on one floor, which, she said, 'invites more interaction.'
Ironically, Bob Kuperman, the company's president, said that some of the agency's best work was produced in its last space -- cocktail party or not. He cited the 'Think different' campaign, a provocative series of ads extolling television for ABC and the Taco Bell talking chihuahua. 'There's something to be said for the fact that the overcrowding did cause a high level of energy and creative output,' he said. A self-declared advocate of 'friction and upset,' Mr. Kuperman added that 'the company is right on the edge' with its new quarters.
Meanwhile in New York, the virtual office designed by Gaetano Pesce, however gorgeous, sent some staff members over the edge. Mr. Wilkinson says the agency has moved out of its overcrowded and confusing space into new offices that he is designing. And where is that new workplace? In the former bastion of the advertising elite, the epitome of everything the old Chiat/Day repudiated: Madison Avenue. Think different indeed.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"A Zen Pond Puts Wheels on Ideas
MEET the Personal Pond, a waist-high device that looks like the offspring of a Weber grill and the Starship Enterprise. Glowing with softly colored lights, humming with ethereal sound, it was designed as an inspiration generator for luxury car designers at Lexus, Toyota's premium brand, for whom the theme machine is like an audience with a design psychotherapist.
The electronic sculpture (formal name, Toyota/Lexus l'Finesse Personal Pond), a one-off, will be displayed for designers working at the company's studios in Japan, France and the United States. It was created by ECCO Design, a New York firm that has also designed blobby toothbrushes for Colgate, sleek cellphones for Virgin and ergonomic office furniture for Herman Miller. The goal, said Eric Chan, president of ECCO Design, is 'to imagine a car that incorporates the mental and physical processes of anticipation, memory and signaling, while also providing the user with luxury and comfort.'
Toyota, long known for its efficient production, is now trying to cultivate its creative side.
The Pond is 'a highly conceptual piece to capture the core value of the brand and translate it into a nonautomotive object for inspiration to the automotive designers,' said Shin Sano, a strategist at Calty Design Research Center, Toyota's design studio in Newport Beach, Calif.
The Personal Pond is interactive -- in a high-tech-Zen sort of way. Two stones, evoking boulders in a rock garden or markers in a game of Go, represent drivers. Users move the rocks to alter sound and light to match different moods (work, say, versus relaxation).
Hand motions also change the configuration of the system in an intuitive way: wave a palm upward to raise the volume of the sound or music, for example.
This isn't the automaker's only inspiration machine. Toyota recently called on Karim Rashid to produce an embodiment of 'vibrant clarity,' which he did with a series of 30 blobbish chairs incorporating unusual materials, colors and patterns. Mr. Rashid calls them meta-objects, but others might call them pods.
The object-pods, Mr. Rashid said, 'represent the schools of influence that shape and reflect contemporary product culture.'
Both theme machines were commissioned by Hideichi Misono, the senior general manager of the Toyota's Global Design Center, which oversees the Toyota City studio in Japan. They will be on display from May 13 to 15 at the Museum of Arts & Design in Manhattan at www .americancraftmuseum.org.
These abstract exercises have yet to be reflected in real cars. Pressed for translations, designers at Toyota talked about 'shadow surfacing' and 'beauty of contrast.'
The only hints of what those noble phrases might mean when rendered in sheet metal are embodied in two concept vehicles, the LF-S, or Lexus Future Sedan, which was shown in Tokyo last October, and the LF-C, or Lexus Future Coupe, unveiled at the New York auto show last month. The sedan, with a BMW-like roofline, was so much like earlier models that it was met with a resounding 'huh?' But the coupe, whose design was directed by Kevin Hunter of Calty, shows an energy in its sweeping roof and fenders that is new for Lexus.
Last fall, Toyota endowed an annual lecture at the Center for Creative Studies, the Detroit college known for training automobile designers, and Mr. Misono gave the first lecture in January, surprising his audience by criticizing his company. 'We need to have more focus,' Mr. Misono said. 'Lexus must be bold, confident and dynamic, but at the same time unpretentious and sophisticated.'
He promised to raise Toyota's 'J factor,' the 'Japaneseness' of its cars, even while searching for influences from around the world.
Toyota, pushing hard to dislodge Ford as No. 2, after General Motors, in total world production, is known for the efficiency of its assembly lines, the quality of its products and its green design innovations. But Toyota's designs have long been considered dull and look-alike.
The first Toyota, introduced in 1937, took its styling from the Chrysler Airflow. Today European and American designers often say Lexus tends to produce committee-bred approximations of the Mercedes-Benz.
The company's fresh approach may have been inspired by the revival of Toyota's rival Nissan, whose design is supervised by Shiro Nakamura. The need to redefine Lexus may also turn on the introduction of the Lexus brand in Japan itself next year. (Lexus models are now sold in Japan as Toyotas.)
But for some longtime observers of auto design, the Pond and the pods recall the Zenlike -- and much-derided -- brand statements that Infiniti began in 1992, when it required its dealers to display a waterfall and a sculpture by Takenobu Igarashi.
In fact, Mr. Misono's inspiration machines are a pretty abstract way to transcend a reputation for look-alike designs. Finesse, vibrance, clarity -- those are high-flown abstractions. But the processes that made Toyota great are also embodied in some pretty abstract ideas.
A lot, in other words, can be lost in the translation.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"The Ballot Weighed, And Wanting
ALL America knows them by now: the clinging chad, the pregnant chad, the trapdoor chad. These tiny defects in the punch card ballot system have focused national attention on the design of voting technology.
Whatever the final disposition in the courts, the ballot flap has already had powerful effects, drawing our attention to illegible ballots, spoiled ballots and the antiquated nature of our voting technology. The Florida case may be the first in which bad design has been charged with infringing on the constitutional rights of Americans.
Confusion about the Palm Beach ballot was evident at the polls, and the ballot has been accused of violating legal design specifications. Florida statutes require the printed ballot to allow for a vote mark at the right of the candidate's name and requires that the machine version of the ballot 'shall as nearly as practicable conform to the arrangement of the paper ballot.'
Theresa LePore, the Palm Beach County supervisor of elections, a Democrat, has said she ordered the type on the ballot enlarged to make it easier for older people to read. The unintended consequence was to force some names into a second column, right of the punch holes. This meant that while the punch holes for some names were to the right, others were to the left.
The inconsistency of the layout presents a basic problem, said Sylvia Harris, a graphic designer, who worked on the 2000 census form and now teaches at Yale. 'The check box can be to either the right or left, but it has to be consistent,' she said. 'The holes are disembodied from the names. And you never cross the gutter' -- where the punch holes are. 'It's counterintuitive and counterconventional,' she added.
Alex Isley, another graphic designer, found himself more bemused than appalled by the Palm Beach County ballot.
'My first reaction was, 'What's all the fuss about?' ' he said. 'It seemed harder to get it wrong than to get it right. It didn't seem they needed a professional graphic designer so much as common sense. Why didn't they just space the names out, for instance?'
But part of the problem lies with the punch card voting system used in Palm Beach County and by a third of the country, a lingering, century-old technology, long since abandoned by business and by most other branches of government -- the hanging chad of technology.
The punch card system is also a reminder of how closely our democracy has been linked to technology and its design. The punch card system was invented specifically to carry out the constitutional requirement that we hold a census each decade, which is used to allocate membership in the House of Representatives.
By the 1880's, adding up census results surpassed human ability. When the founders wrote the consitution, there were about five million Americans; by 1880, there were 10 times as many. Compiling the results of that year's census by hand took seven years.
Herman Hollerith, who had worked for the Census Bureau and was then in the Patent and Trademark Office, developed the punch card system to total the results of the 1890 census. Although the population had increased to about 60 million, Hollerith's machines finished the 1890 survey in just six weeks and saved the government $5 million. Hollerith based his invention in part on the railroad tickets (called 'punch photographs') that conductors of the time punched with information about passengers. (These registered hair and eye color and other information to prevent passengers from swapping tickets or otherwise cheating the railroad.)
Hollerith called the census a 'national punch photograph.' He made the cards the size of United States currency, to fit in storage files and other equipment used in banks.
Soon railroads, department stores and other businesses adopted Hollerith punch cards to track customers and cargoes. In the 1890's, voting machines also began to use the technology. Praised as part of the good government efforts of the time, they soon became common. The evolution of mechanical tabulating systems based on punch cards led to I.B.M.
Without punch cards, the Social Security system would have been impossible to create in the 1930's. Each citizen was recorded on a card. When the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the first modern toll superhighway, was completed in 1940, I.B.M. punch cards proved the only practical means for regulating tolls according to distances from exit to exit.
The way to fill out the Hollerith punch cards was at first by a hand punch, a device that looked like one of today's credit card sliders. By the 1950's, typewriter-style keyboards were available to program cards, translating from English into punched holes. Punch cards were the first mode of programming digital computers. ('On the Job: Design and the American Office,' a show opening on Saturday at the National Building Museum in Washington, traces the impact of the punch card system.)
Punch cards were always the source of potential computer error. The term 'chad' arose in the late 1940's in the labs of newfangled digital computers to refer to punched out bits of paper. Sometimes errant punches only dimpled, making the so-called pregnant chad, which gave William D. Delahunt a primary election victory for a Massachusetts seat in the House in 1996.
After 20 percent of the ballots apparently turned out blank, a judge ruled that Mr. Delahunt's votes were underrecorded because of mechanical problems, which left bulges but not holes. (The punch card system in the district was replaced.)
From the earliest days of punch card systems, floating bits of chad caused errors. Cards fed into a machine, or written, out of alignment could set off a chain of mistakes. This was called an 'offset effect' and was passed on like a bad gene to the magnetic readers, the offspring of punch cards, which are used to grade standardized tests. Students taking standardized tests live in terror of offsetting the entries on a College Boards answer sheet; if one answer is entered in the wrong place, all the rest can be wrong.
A.T.M.'s can also produce offset error, if the buttons don't exactly match the categories on the screen. And it was offset error -- an unclear association between name and matching hole -- that caused the suspected  confusion for Palm Beach County voters.
Census officials this year introduced an optical system that can read normal handwriting. Such technology would bring immediate improvement to voting, said Ms. Harris, the designer of the census form. But even before voting adopts new hardware, the ballots and labels could be improved.
Clarity could be increased, Ms. Harris said, not just by enlarging the type, but also by using a clearer typeface, like Congress, a clean sans-serif face with relatively large lower case letters, which Ms. Harris used on the census form. (It is also used in many Yellow Pages telephone directories.)
'And ballots should be tested,' Ms. Harris said. 'You'll never know whether any ballot or form works until you test it on real people under actual conditions.'
Charles Costello, director of the democracy program at the Carter Center in Atlanta, helps monitor elections around the world. There are no world standards for ballot design, he said, but there are 'best practice' standards and guidelines for ballots.
Most of the world, Mr. Costello said, still votes with pen and paper. Sometimes animals and colors are used to indicate candidates in countries with low literacy rates. Election commissions around the world, however, might be surprised at how low- tech the American system remains. 'Talk to anyone around the world who knows computers,' Mr. Costello said, 'and they would say, 'You mean you still use punch cards?' '
The Florida election, he added, has focused attention on the number of spoiled ballots in American elections. 'For years, we've regarded these as an acceptable margin of error,' he said. 'But technical problems become hugely magnified when the stakes are large and the results close.' The happiest result may be a recognition of how important design is to democracy.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Auditioning A New Mall For Oscar
HOW do you create a mall that gives tangible form to an illusion? How do you make it an attraction that draws both the tourists that celebrities wish to avoid and the celebrities that tourists yearn to see? How do you create a theater there that can be queen for one day (for the Academy Awards) and a working girl for the rest of the year?
These were just some of the many conundrums facing developers and designers of Hollywood and Highland, a mammoth urban entertainment and retail development that will have a new Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences theater as its anchor in March 2001. Ground broke last October on this development, which is being touted as the catalyst for revitalization of one of the most underwhelming destinations in Los Angeles, Hollywood Boulevard.
Hollywood and Highland is situated above one of Los Angeles's future subway stations at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue, where a fanciful 1932 office tower is already a landmark. This is a stretch of Hollywood Boulevard that has the trademark stars in the pavement and features its most famous landmarks, like Mann's Chinese (formerly Grauman's Chinese) and Egyptian Theaters and Musso & Frank's grill. But there are also the tacky souvenir stores, dusty if venerable old shops (including Frederick's of Hollywood, the Victoria's Secret of the girdle era) and a lingering taint of crime. It is an area that long ago lost its movie studios, saw its movie theaters fall into decline and settled into a less glamorous role as a seedy, eccentric small-town main street, offering just enough illusory promise to lure the tourists.
Hollywood began a quiet turnaround in recent years, with renovations of some of the old theaters and the opening of trendy bars and restaurants. But Hollywood and Highland seals public and private commitment to downtown Hollywood.  With 1.2 million square feet on eight and a half acres and a cost of $385 million, it promises to be the proverbial 800-pound gorilla.
Hollywood and Highland is being built by the TrizecHahn Development Company, based in San Diego, and David Malmuth, senior vice president, created the project. When he was vice president of the Disney Company's development unit, Mr. Malmuth oversaw the renovation of the New Amsterdam Theater on 42d Street, and he has vowed to bring to Hollywood Boulevard what he brought to Times Square. His aim is to reaffirm the area as the heart of the entertainment industry, with a home for the Oscars, a multiplex, a hotel, a ballroom (catered, Mr. Malmuth said, by Wolfgang Puck, who may also move Spago there, though neither deal has been signed) and restaurants and shops galore.
'An authentic bit of Hollywood,' Mr. Malmuth calls it.
Mr. Malmuth has tried to create a project that meshes the real and mythical Hollywood, a place that memorializes Tinseltown while preserving a pedestrian-friendly network of streets and plazas that can, in his words, 'reinforce the identity of the neighborhood.' To this end, he bypassed the superstar architects, who might have endowed the project with a grand formal vision, in favor of Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn, a firm with a solid track record in large, complex urban projects. He also hired the environmental and graphic design team Sussman/Prezja, who become famous with their visuals for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. For the theater, he chose David Rockwell, the designer-showman already well-known on the East Coast for the Nobu and Vong restaurants and the new W New York hotel.
The design emphasizes pedestrian-only streets, plazas and terraces and a mixture of sizes and forms rather than a monolithic building.  Neo-1950's style storefronts will line Hollywood Boulevard: the most explicit theming and gimmicks will be on the inside. These include Babylon Court, a multitiered plaza with big elephant-capped columns modeled after the set of the D. W. Griffith silent epic 'Intolerance,' and a triumphal gate that frames the Hollywood sign, the hillside icon that has helped keep the myth alive.
The main draw of the complex is of course the Academy's theater, but in order to make it pay its way (the City of Los Angeles has ponied up $90 million to subsidize the theater and pay for underground parking), the developers have had to cram in enormous amounts of highly visible retail space and restaurants.
The huge 3,500-seat theater has been consigned to the back of the site. Unlike the Chinese and Egyptian theaters, whose edifices arise from a public forecourt, the Academy's theater is behind a building that contains shops and the ballroom. To get to it from Hollywood Boulevard one will have to parade through the shopping arcade.
Mr. Rockwell is calling this seemingly counter-intuitive move 'an invitation to partake' in a striking processional experience. Just as Hollywood is as much about anticipation as arrival, here the route starts with the sidewalk's 70-plus-foot portals and continues through a series of grand arches.
For the theater, Mr. Rockwell is planning, in collaboration with Theater Projects Consultants (who also worked on the New Amsterdam Theater), a homage to the glory days of live theater -- to a time when, he said, 'the audience was as much the spectacle as the spectacle.' It is all people-watching boxes and balconies, with cast glass panels and a swirling silver-leaf lattice (called the Tiara) on the ceiling. Not surprisingly, Mr. Rockwell cites Busby Berkeley as one of his inspirations.
The interior is meant to be as spectacular looking from the stage as toward it, since there are so many shots of the audience during the Academy Awards ceremony.
Of course, the success of the theater and, by extension, of Hollywood and Highland itself, is predicated on a number of optimistic assumptions. One is that there is an audience for large live spectacles in Los Angeles despite the fact that, as Stephen Leigh Morris, the theater critic of L.A. Weekly, notes, five nearby theaters 'spent the best part of '98 empty.' Another is that the Oscar name will attract shops with the glamour of a Hollywood connection. And most important of all, that this potpourri of Babylonian stage set, arcade, photo-op view of the Hollywood sign and theme stores can live up to the illusion of Hollywood while avoiding the pitfalls of the packaged urbanism it most certainly is.
Some people are appalled by the project. To Margaret Crawford, a local resident, author and a professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, it is nothing more than 'a gargantuan mall that will destroy the urban fabric and suck up all the people.' Norman M. Klein, the author of 'The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory' (Verso, 1997), sees Hollywood and Highland as 'a monument to a false memory.'
But for the most part, Hollywood and Highland has what matters most in Hollywood, good buzz. Politicians are squarely behind it, as are many locals. The examples of Times Square and South Beach are invoked.  New businesses, including movie-related production companies, are moving nearby.
Mr. Klein calls this city-subsidized scheme a monument to 'a new political reality' in which the movie industry dominates Los Angeles. What remains to be seen is whether Hollywood and Highland, the megamall, will dominate Hollywood, the place.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Pledging Allegiance to the Season
THERE are two kinds of people this time of year: those who deck the halls and those who don't. The deckers normally hold to the belief that red and green and boughs of holly, mangers and eight tiny reindeer are the fitting seasonal images. But this Christmas, large numbers of deckers, departing from the standard repertory, are emulating the red, white and blue Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center and adding patriotism to their displays.
In the fashion world of holiday home trimming, red, white and blue are the new red and green.
By Thanksgiving, christmasdepot .com, an online retailer that also operates a 50-year-old ornaments store, Holiday Tree & Trim, in Bayonne, N.J., sold out its entire stock of red, white and blue drape lights.
The site sold $5,000 worth of wire-framed American flag light displays in November alone, according to Johnathon Schimetz, Tree & Trim's retail manager. He estimated that overall, Christmas light sales were more than 10 percent higher than last year. 'I think there's just a general feeling that people want a spectacular display,' he said. 'It seems a little more important now to make a statement.'
On the subtler end of the spectrum are four pear trees outside 170 East 88th Street that Edwin Albino, the building superintendent, wrapped in more than 15,000 lights: blue at the trunks, then ribbons of white and red, opening up into the outlines of twinkly, all-white branches.
'The days after the World Trade Center attacks, people seemed different,' Mr. Albino said, surveying his little electric orchard. 'Now things have slowly gotten back to what they used to be, everybody to themselves. I like to remind people that that special time did exist.'
Since he put up the lights, Mr. Albino said, more people recognize him in the neighborhood and come by at night to take pictures and introduce themselves.
'They'd go to work and come back, and I'd still be in the trees,' he said, looking up. 'Now I stand out here, and when people see the lights, they get friendly.'
Bill Leavey, a carpenter and stay-at-home father in Ossining, N.Y., spent a day building his own bright red, white and blue flag by stapling about 900 lights individually to a 4-by-7-foot sheet of plywood. He hung it on the wall of his garage and then spelled out 'God Bless America' in lights arranged on his roof. Both displays are visible from a nearby highway and have brought fascinated visitors to his door.
'Some guy stopped and wanted to buy the flag,' Mr. Leavey said. 'My wife said I should have made another one to sell to him, and I said: 'No way. That took me all day.' '
Because the flag took so much effort, Mr. Leavey expects to hang it again next year. 'I don't think it will be as potent then,' he said. 'At least I hope it won't be.'
Stringing lights may be a consolation for those staying home. The American Automobile Association estimates that 3.4 million fewer Americans will travel 50 miles or more from home this holiday season than last, a 6 percent decrease.
'A lot of people want to stay in one place and announce their patriotism,' said Tad Hale, an owner of christmaslightsetc.com, an online retailer in Cumming, Ga. 'We've done quite a bit of business out of New York, where red, white and blue is real strong. That's all anybody's thinking about, the war going on.'
So much so that the people of the gated community of Christmas Lake Village in Santa Claus, Ind., decided to make their holiday décor patriotic to commemorate Sept. 11.
Sometimes the Stars and Stripes just aren't enough. Robert Perez of Pearland, Tex., invested $400 in two five-foot flags in waving red, white and blue lights. Each flag is accompanied by four-foot-tall drummer boys ('as big as I could find') with rifles slung over their shoulders. 'It just felt proper and appropriate for this year,' said Mr. Perez, who had previously made do with a miniature Nativity set, Santa, snowmen and a sled arranged around his brick home on a golf course. Disappointed in the slim soldier offerings at local holiday supply shops, Mr. Perez drove 50 miles to seek out a few good men. 'Since I put them all up, my doorbell doesn't stop ringing,' he said.
Not changing a thing may be the strongest display of resilience of all. In Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York's epicenter of ornamental excess, the Polizzotto family has used the same elaborate 'Nutcracker Suite' tableau in its yard for more than a decade.
It takes a professional crew days to assemble the set, which includes 29-foot-high animatronic toy soldiers and 8-foot-high dancing reindeer, and draws about 150,000 tourists to their block each year.
'The thought didn't really enter our minds that we should reflect the events of Sept. 11,' said Alfred Polizzotto 3rd. His mother, Florence, agreed. 'We didn't think it would be in good taste,' she said.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Trademark Battle Over Pueblo Sign
IN a strange coda to a decade obsessed with branding, controversy has broken out over a surprising symbol: the Zia sun sign. The symbol -- a circle with lines radiating in four directions -- is one of the best-known images in New Mexico. It is on the state flag and license plates. It appears in the Yellow Pages with about the same frequency as the oversize apple used to promote New York City. And it shows up on everything from dishes and linens to motorcycles and portable toilets.
The 850-member Zia pueblo, about 35 miles northwest of Albuquerque, has been using the symbol since the year 1200, tribal officials say. And now the pueblo has asked the state, in testimony before a legislative committee, to pay it $74 million for employing without permission what the tribe's elders variously call 'a sacred symbol' and 'the symbol of our collective identity.' The figure represents $1 million for each year the design has appeared on the flag, up to 1999.
Partly in response to the dispute, the federal Patent and Trademark Office recently issued a report on the status of Native American symbols, in which it acknowledged a problem in trademarking the symbols.
The issue surfaced two years ago when American Frontier Motorcycle Tours, which runs tours of the state using Harley-Davidson motorcycles, received a trademark incorporating a version of the symbol. Roberta Price, a lawyer for the tribe, protested to the patent office but was told she was too late in the trademark consideration process.
She was outraged. 'You couldn't imagine Star of David motorcycles or Virgin Mary Porta Pottis, could you?' she asked. Ms. Price and Peter Pino, the tribe's administrator, asked Senator Jeff Bingaman, Democrat of New Mexico, to seek changes in the trademark law.
Senator Bingaman said: 'Since we do provide legal protection for symbols of other government entities, it's not a difficult argument to say we should do the same with tribes and pueblos. The way things stand today, a municipality that was incorporated yesterday is still guaranteed more legal protection for its symbol than a 100-year-old tribal government.'
In fall 1998, at Senator Bingaman's behest, Congress ordered the Patent and Trademark Office to begin an investigation of the legal status of Native American tribal symbols. Hearings were held, some with representatives of not only the tribes but also DaimlerChrysler, the maker of the Jeep Cherokee and Mohawk Carpets.
Ms. Price has tried to have the symbol protected through an amendment to trademark law that would put it and other tribal symbols under the same rules as the symbols of nations, states and municipalities. Such symbols are already protected by law, and trademark applications seeking to use them are rejected.
While trademarking the symbol itself might be a solution, the tribe does not have the money to fend off any unauthorized users of its symbol, Ms. Price said.
In its report, the trademark agency recommended no changes in the law but suggested that existing legislation was sufficient to protect tribal symbols. It also recommended drawing up a list of the symbols. The agency does not have the power to choose which symbols would go on the list, the report continued; Native American tribes have special legal status as 'domestic dependent nations.' But the agency said it would regard a tribal resolution as sufficient authorization for a tribe to claim a symbol.
The report said the agency would maintain a database of such official tribal insignia. In 1994, it said, the agency queried some 500 tribes and groups for such a list, but got only 10 responses.
If a symbol is put on the list, the agency will have the power to reject applications for similar marks, since it can forbid copyrights that suggest a 'likely false association' -- as for example, a food product that buyers might conclude was produced by the tribe, or anything that implied 'possible disparagement' of a group that owns a symbol.
The Zia pueblo had hoped for more. 'It is a very George Orwell, bureaucratic document,' Ms. Price said, adding that it didn't commit the agency 'to do anything two or three years hence.'
'It's understandable that some are disappointed,' said the report's primary author, Eleanor K. Meltzer, a lawyer and adviser to the Patent and Trademark Office. But she argued that the official listing of tribal symbols and the existing law would do the job. While listing did not work well in 1994, she said that this time, 'we are going to take the initiative -- we will make it clear to the tribes that we will do the work and make it as easy as possible for them.' The agency, she said, will not only protect the symbols, but also promote them. 'We are going to be very aggressive in publicizing them among the public,' she said.
'The tribes have an avenue for asserting their rights through the Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, part of the Department of the Interior,' Ms. Meltzer said. An earlier draft of the report, she said, placed responsibility for listing with the bureau, but officials of both agencies agreed that the trademark agency had more financial resources available for the job. 'Protecting symbols this way will cost the tribe nothing,' she added.
Once the list is established, in theory a tribe or another party -- say a coalition supporting Native American rights -- could push for the cancellation of existing trademarks incorporating the Zia sun or other Native American symbols. Trademark cancellation is not uncommon, but none of those who appeared at the trademark hearings pushed for it.
Mr. Pino, a Zia who has lived all his life at the pueblo and served as assistant war chief and war chief before becoming the tribal administrator, has traced the story of how the symbol became the center of the state flag.
In 1925, the Daughters of the American Revolution held a contest for a design for the flag. The winner, a Santa Fe physician named Dr. Harry Mera, suggested the sun symbol he had seen on a Zia ceremonial pot in the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, and the Legislature approved it.
That pot, Mr. Pino said, had been stolen: only ceremonial pottery was allowed to bear the Zia, and no ceremonial pottery was ever to leave the pueblo. And only the pueblo's elders can give permission for use of the symbol.
Why did the tribe not object in 1925? 'They were not even citizens,' Ms. Price said. 'They had no power and no money.'
'Doesn't the pueblo deserve as much protection as the smallest town in North Dakota?' she asked. 'Shouldn't it be given the same security as the 4-H Club or Boy Scouts?'
Tribal officials don't really expect the state to pony up $74 million for use of the symbol, Mr. Pino said, but they do hope there will at least be a recognition of the tribe's rights, a contract for the state's continued use of the symbol and a symbolic payment. It's probably a little late, however, to do anything about the fact in his last campaign, Gov. Gary E. Johnson substituted the Zia sun for one 'O' in his name.
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Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Ward Bennett Made It Modern
THE designer Ward Bennett, who died Aug. 13 at 85, was famed for everything from hats to houses. But he remains an enigma. There are no monographs of his oeuvre, and though acclaimed as an American icon, he never became a household word.
Bennett, a window dresser turned hat maker turned interior designer, could mix seemingly incompatible elements with effortless grace: modern with aboriginal, sleek with rough, restraint with flamboyance; and he felt equally at ease designing furniture, textiles, jewelry or sculpture. At a time when modernism was ripe for revision, and designers were beginning to turn back to tradition, Bennett found new breathing room within the canon. 'Ward influenced the entire design world,' said the designer Joe D'Urso, who started his career as Bennett's assistant.
Little known, however, are Bennett's houses for his clients. Not the ones he just decorated but the handful he designed from the ground up, in which he brought all his talents to bear in a single expression. 'You look out from any angle and it's uplifting,' said Jann Wenner, the publisher of Rolling Stone, referring to a 1968 Bennett house in Amagansett, N.Y., that he purchased in 1991 and remodeled with his now-estranged wife, Jane.
Ms. Wenner, who lives in the house with the couple's three sons, said she consulted with Bennett before the work. 'Originally I wanted to do a minor renovation, like adding a bathroom,' she said. One thing led to another and what began as minor alterations turned into one of the more intriguing collaborations in American design: a mature designer of 74 working with his younger self, more than 20 years after the fact.
Bennett had already made his mark on the modern design movement when the Wenners were just babes. 'The culture has absorbed his ideas, and many people don't even realize it,' Mr. D'Urso said this week. In the 1950's, Bennett reduced rooms to Zen-minimum basics with built-in furniture and conversation pits.
In 1963 he produced an admired collection of pared-down furniture, manufactured by Brickel/Eppinger. Much of it had been created for Chase Manhattan Bank and Crown Zellerbach, but the spare designs -- among them the Sled chair, whose woven-cane seat was cradled in a crisscrossing steel frame -- worked equally well in modern houses.
Bennett also paid tribute to that icon of modern architecture, the I-beam, in a series of tables with steel bases sheathed in walnut veneer, aluminum, even snakeskin, and topped with slabs of marble or glass.
The juxtaposition of organic materials and industrial rigor was as innovative as a 1969 project for Marella and Gianni Agnelli, then the president of Fiat. In the couple's Rome residence, he used rope hammocks and rough coco matting, according to an article in The New York Times in 1975. The project was a group effort by Bennett, the architect Philip Johnson and Piero Manzù, a Fiat industrial designer.
Though he inspired many other designers, Bennett never associated himself with a school or movement. He did create glassware for Tiffany & Company, but 'he never got into a mass-market mentality,' Mr. D'Urso said. 'He wasn't interested. Ward never went to school but he traveled all his life, and that was the source of his inspiration.'
Bennett, a precocious talent, dropped out of school at 13 and was sent to Paris at 16 by a New York dress manufacturer to study the couture collections. He told The New York Times in 1962 that he was a sponge, absorbing influences and lessons from 'fashion, display, theater, music and couture.' That breadth of interests resulted in a diversity of creations, from jewelry that earned a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art to sculptures exhibited at the Whitney Museum of Art.
An early architecture project was a house built in 1964 in Southampton, N.Y., for Marvin Sugarman, a producer of sports events. Here Bennett played with elementary geometric shapes executed in massive slabs of concrete, following the Mexican modernist architect Luis Barragán, but leached of all tropical color.
The living areas of the Sugarman house were raised high because of the possibility of flooding and to gain better ocean views. The windows were made of teak, as was the exterior staircase, its treads projecting from an angled wall without railings or supports.
The house the Wenners bought was built for Hale Allen, a stockbroker. Mr. Allen met Bennett at a dinner party in the Hamptons and commissioned him to design a summer home. 'I always thought of him as a hard-edged romantic,' said Mr. Allen, who now lives in California. 'I had seen a model of the Sugarman house before it was built and thought it was exciting, very modern and romantic at the same time.'
Made of monolithic slabs of reinforced concrete coated with smooth sandy-colored stucco and arranged like overscaled Froebel building blocks, the Allen/Wenner house on Further Lane is a heroic gesture. At the center of the structure is a glassed-in living room that hovers in the air, overlooking the sea. 'He was bent on making a sculpture that held rooms,' Mr. Allen said. 'A sculpture that would blend in with the dunes.'
For the interiors, Bennett chose industrial pieces like a hospital dolly for a drinks table and an unusual table he designed for the kitchen that could be used for both eating and working. The round top was made from thick maple, five feet in diameter, and could be raised on a hydraulic lift anchored into the floor. 'He was a perfectionist,' Mr. Allen said, recalling how Bennett insisted that the ceiling lights shine only on the walls and not illuminate any part of the ceiling or floor.
Unfortunately, the flat roofs leaked badly. 'Ward was a designer, not an architect,' Mr. Allen said.
After its purchase by the Wenners, Bennett opened up the house, adding terraces and installing more windows. He built a pool house to match the austerity of the main house and planted a dramatic allée of arborvitae that cuts across the property from the entrance to the dunes.
Inside the house are exotic touches more decorative than Bennett's reputation for high-tech minimalism might indicate: an antique Indian fountain for the courtyard; a 16th-century Flemish chandelier for the double-height living room; a screen with scenes of a Napoleonic journey. 'He loved exquisite details,' Mr. Wenner said. 'He would say, 'If you find something beautiful, just buy it!' and then figure out later where it goes.'
When Ms. Wenner went on a trip to Bangkok, Bennett advised her to buy bolts of the saffron-yellow cloth worn by Thai monks. He later combined them with Mongolian lamb's wool for bedcovers.
Bennett began work on his own house in nearby Springs in the early 1970's and made changes and additions over the next 25 years. 'It was a small house but it had a sweeping kind of presence,' Jack Lenor Larsen, the textile designer, said. 'Ward knew how to use materials in an honest way that expressed the structure.'
The original house, overlooking Accabonac Harbor, was a mathematically elegant pavilion that Bennett compared to a Japanese temple. It measured 40 by 40 feet, and was crowned at its center by a 20-by-20-foot skylight. Each corner of the house corresponded to the points of the compass. On the water side of the living area, a pair of giant pivoting redwood walls 10 feet wide opened into the house, creating niches on either side for dining and overnight guests.
An aging Bennett, who spent his last years in a nursing home in Key West, Fla., had urged the town of East Hampton to preserve his home as a cultural center. The house and its 26 acres of wetlands were sold last year for $2 million to Andrew E. Sabin, president of the Sabin Metal Corporation. He later submitted a proposal to subdivide the property, but after local controversy withdrew the plan.
Because no books or comprehensive catalogs document Bennett's work, it is not easy to evaluate his eclectic 65-year career. In the end, however, it may have been Bennett's approach to the creative process that left a mark more enduring than any single object.
'He saw no boundaries and felt he could design everything from a house to a rocket ship,' Mr. D'Urso said. 'He saw himself as a Renaissance man.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; Beyond Neutra: A Restoration Pays Homage
BACK in the 1930's, the running joke among young architects in the office of Richard Neutra, the apostle of modernism, was: 'What is the best material to build a steel house of?'
Neutra believed steel could advance the cause of mass-produced construction: true modernism demanded industrial materials. But he was obsessed with steel in a low-rise city of wood construction. (When steel wasn't in the budget, he sometimes just painted the wood silver; it was hard to tell, anyhow, in black-and-white photographs.)
To judge by a new steel-and-glass addition to a just-restored Neutra house in Santa Monica, it's taken about 60 years for technology to catch up with his vision. In 1938, Neutra designed a narrow six-bedroom beach house; though the long building and its bay window echo the body and prow of an ocean liner, the structure itself was conventional: stucco troweled over stud walls.
In most of Neutra's budgets, technology  was a financial stretch, but today it is an increasingly common means to uncommon ends. For the addition to Neutra's 5,800-square-foot beach house, the Los Angeles architect Steven Ehrlich designed a new structure that is next to not there. Neutra built a solid; technology helped Mr. Ehrlich create a vaulted void.
Neutra originally designed the house for Albert Lewin, head of the story department at MGM under Irving Thalberg. The staging of the house was cinematic -- drums roll as guests enter through a long, narrow Eden. The curved stairway, which Mr. Ehrlich has refurbished with a sweeping stainless steel handrail, was reason enough for Mae West to buy the house: what suits a living legend most is a curved, flattering white wall. The glamorous staircase faces the flowing spaces of the dining and living rooms, and the sequence climaxes in a semicircular bay front with wraparound windows. The slim property allowed Neutra most of his design opportunities on the beach facade, where the house erupts in the crisp, semicircular bay, a signature form in this classic early Neutra work.
'The house never suffered the onslaught of a major internal reconfiguration,' Mr. Ehrlich said. 'All the owners kept the original proportions of the rooms and even the materials -- the black linoleum in the kitchen and the yellow and gray opaque glass in the bathrooms.'
In the 70's, an owner hired the New York architect Charles Gwathmey to update the mechanical systems and add a pool.
The current owners, a couple in their 40's who entertain frequently, bought the house 10 years ago, but it was not until the empty lot next door became available three years ago that they called on Mr. Ehrlich. They needed space for guests and a family entertainment room where, they said, they could kick off their shoes. The Neutra house also had to be refreshed, and the swimming pool relocated. The challenge was that a long side facade, never intended to be seen, would become a principal feature of the extended property.
Mr. Ehrlich was self-effacing in the Neutra house: he replicated gutters and rainspouts; he stained the hardwood floors white, setting the furniture afloat. His main task was to add garage space, and guest and staff quarters, while giving the structure a new orientation to the side yard, where the family pavilion would be located.
Mr. Erhlich's solution at the front of the property was a collage of old and new. By expanding the garage along the street and adding above it a 1,400-square-foot second floor for the guest and staff areas, he deployed the expansion as a tall fence protecting the yard from the high-speed Pacific Coast Highway out front. If overscaled for the fragile dimensions of the original house, the pumped-up extension helps define a large garden, which Mr. Ehrlich -- who has admired indigenous courtyard houses during travels through North and West Africa -- developed into a protected precinct. 'A courtyard helps a house become a retreat,' he said. 'I was giving a primitive idea a modern voice.'
The L-shaped configuration created an inner sanctum large enough for a freestanding, 1,200-square-foot pavilion that serves as family room, party space and poolside cabana. The house and perimeter walls, a band of privacy around the property, allowed the pavilion to be transparent.
The addition, connected to the house by a glass tunnel, gives the illusion of opening up to the Neutra building as much as it does to the beach. But by being close to the house, the pavilion actually masks a repetitious facade that is not as interesting as the Neutra myth would have it, a myth the architect cultivated during his lifetime.
Today, Neutra's long white boat of a building stands next to a pavilion whose design fulfills the vision Neutra didn't always get to build. Mr. Ehrlich updated the steel frame Neutra favored with perforated, sound-absorbent metal ceilings, long stretches of stainless steel cupboards and butted glass planes.
At the touch of a button, a stainless steel gate in the garden wall rolls back to reveal the beach. Although Neutra would have been fascinated by the new materials and gadgetry, he would have recognized that the new technology gets architecture no closer to his ideal of building for the masses. Early modernism, high-tech and even Neutra himself have become expensive collectibles.
Inspired by Neutra's bay window, Mr. Ehrlich devised a dynamic roof with a flattened curve poised delicately on a steel frame. The beams -- a reference to a favorite Neutra detail -- stretch like outriggers to columns placed outside the glass walls. The roof acts like a parasol for a room whose real walls are the garden fence. At either end, glass walls slide back, opening the interior to the outside -- as in the most generous Neutra houses, where living room floors blend into carpets of grass.
The pavilion, the pool and the gate facing the beach align along an axis. From the pavilion, the mind and eye skip like a stone from the pool to the sand to the ocean. 'I'd like to think the pavilion, with the new materials and the evaporating glass walls, takes Neutra's ideas a step further,' Mr. Ehrlich said. 'It's much more minimal than he was ever able to achieve in those days.
'Just how do you build next to a serious  piece of architecture?' Mr. Ehrlich asked. 'My sense is that you honor the architect and make him proud by doing something new that relates to the original.'",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Elemental as Water: The Pool House as Muse
THE pursuit of delight, especially in the garden, has been an architectural commandment since the Roman architect and engineer Vitruvius set down his own Mosaic laws in the first century B.C. (The goals were to include 'commodity, firmness and delight,' he declared.)
Architecture history is well endowed with pavilions that deliver their occupants to panoramas of nature; designers shaping garden rooms are often hypnotized by the prospect of adding another chapter to this rich tradition. Unencumbered by the functional demands of kitchens, closets and bedrooms, pavilions can be designed without the usual constraints and without the safety net of excuses. Designers do not toss them off lightly.
Pool houses in suburbia, though, are another matter. Working cousins of the more aloof garden follies -- with their ancestral pedigrees -- these chlorine-perfumed repositories of musty towels, Ping-Pong tables and teen-agers have been overlooked as a serious genre.
In one backyard in West Hartford, Conn., however, the New York architect David Kriegel elevated the pool house from its status as a common utility structure to a true garden pavilion. A plywood shanty had existed next to the kidney-shaped pool belonging to Joseph and Sonia Gerber. (Mr. Gerber had designed and built the plywood pool house himself.) After demolition, all that remained was a concrete pad and a back retaining wall, both of which would be integrated into a new building.
Mr. Kriegel offered four designs for the small structure, but Mr. Gerber, an inventor and industrialist who won the National Medal of Technology in 1994 (awarded by President Clinton), had an engineer's sense of economy. He encouraged the architect to use as few elements as possible. 'He was an excellent critic,' Mr. Kriegel said of Mr. Gerber, who died three years ago, shortly after the pool house was built. 'The first designs were complicated, and I stripped elements away until I was left with only what was needed. It was an exercise in reduction.'
Mr. Kriegel finally drew inspiration from the simplicity of the surrounding garden, whose serpentine stone walls complemented the curves of the pool. 'I wanted to integrate the pool house with the landscaping,' he said. The architect extended the idea of the low garden wall with a spiral of stone that encloses an outdoor shower, open near the ceiling. A few steps away he built two changing cabins, sheathed in redwood. 'Redwood doesn't rot outdoors, and it's dimensionally stable,' Mr. Kriegel said.
The cabins look very much man-made, in contrast with the naturalistic shower wall. Steel columns carry a carefully designed assembly of redwood beams and rafters, supporting a corrugated fiberglass roof, whose aqua coloring and wavy profile echo the water in the pool. The structure, which is 100 square feet, cost about $30,000.
The solution was rational. 'That appealed to my clients,' Mr. Kriegel said.
But the design went beyond the rational. 'I love the contrast in textures,' said Mrs. Gerber, who was trained as an artist. 'I like the openness to the out-of-doors.'
The lyricism of the spiral and the naturalism of the materials are tempered by a quirky asymmetry: on one side, a single steel column holds a pair of beams, and on the other, a pair of columns supports a single beam. 'It does have a sense of humor,' Mr. Kriegel said.
The elemental quality of the wood and stone is contradicted by the aqua-colored columns and the translucent fiberglass roof, which tints the interior blue-green. 'I've never done anything this small before,' said Mr. Kriegel, who designed the vast, hyperkinetic Virgin Mega Store in Times Square.
Small, perhaps, but packed with mixed messages. Nesting against the old retaining wall, and built of stone and natural wood, the pool house recalls Frank Lloyd Wright's simple Usonian houses, odes to democratic building and nature that often intensified the landscape. Mr. Kriegel throws a swerve at the idyllic harmony with the corrugated fiberglass and aqua paint, and with the puckish humor of the columns.
'Each of the components has a different personality that speaks to the others,' Mr. Kriegel said. The simplicity of the straight-lined structure with the floating roof is also related to Mies van der Rohe's pavilions. But Mr. Kriegel's structure, with its diverse elements, has a complex simplicity.
An object of contemplation across the pool, the pool house is an object lesson in his practice, influencing his subsequent designs. 'In many ways, it was architecture without interference, without compromises,' he said, 'which is unheard of. The pool house remains one of my favorite projects, as tiny as it is.'
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Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Designers Send Message in Oversize Postcards
BACK in the 1970's, photomurals of snow-capped mountains, narcotic blue skies and palm trees swaying at sunset were fixtures in wood-paneled rec rooms and roadside bar and grills. Above the foosball tables and corduroy couches, a hyper-real paradise beckoned, made possible by large-scale photo printing.
Thirty years later, these brilliant nature scenes, printed on wallpaper, are showing up again, this time as incongruous backdrops in restaurants, hotels and clubs. With their Pop Art whimsy and often unsettling enlargements of nature, photomurals are a startling corrective to the poured-concrete floors and blond wood finishes that have dominated restaurant design. 'We've had such restraint and abstraction for so long now,' said Paola Antonelli, curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art. 'Apparently we want figure back.'
At Butter (415 Lafayette Street), a restaurant filled with Danish wood furniture, a backlighted mural of a birch forest is the light at the end of a tunnel-like room. 'It's framed like you're looking out of a window, sort of like trompe l'oeil,' said Maria Powell, who was waiting at the bar for her dinner date. 'It has a perfunctory-real quality -- so real that it's abstract and ironic.'
At Carne (2737 Broadway at 105th Street), a tropical beach scene stands beside white wainscoting and a deer head for a transporting, playful effect. 'We didn't want a cookie-cutter bistro or an overtly streamlined modern lounge,' said Jonathan Roy of Fada, a New York design firm. 'So we mixed it up a bit and threw in pieces and surfaces that are unexpected.' Mr. Roy and his partner, Alex Grossman, bought the murals on eBay for $80.
Photography, sometimes abstracted beyond recognition, is also showing up in object design. The Paul Smith furniture line introduced at this year's Milan furniture fair includes cabinets with silk-screen photo images of logs and pebbles. At September's Maison et Objet home design show in Paris, the Belgian furniture designer Catherine Beyens (e-mail: animastore@rendezvous .com), offered a cabinet with blown-up nature scenes on vinyl panels. And Ella Doran (www.elladoran.co.uk), the London-based designer, has layered her collection of coasters and place mats with photos of flowers. 'Photographs are much more surreal than anything you can paint,' she said. 'Especially close up.'
Photomurals can be the décor equivalent of the mai tai, a campy tropical caper. At Bungalow 8 in Chelsea, the architect Rafael Viñoly, and his wife, Diana, a decorator, hired the photographer Lucas Michael to shoot the pool scene at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The murals, printed on vinyl in the style of billboard advertisements, capture the seductive fabrication that passes for reality in Hollywood. 'The idea was to create the illusion of real, which is so L.A.,' Mrs. Viñoly said.
Photomurals are also appearing as a campy reflection of local landscapes. The walls of the lounge at André Balazs's Standard hotel on Sunset in Los Angeles offer a panoramic view of parched Southern California mountains. When hotel guests reach the top of the spare entry staircase at the Ace Hotel in Seattle, they confront snow-flecked granite peaks rising above the reception desk like an oversize Airstream-era postcard of the nearby Cascade Mountains.
'The generic boutique design hotel can feel a little soulless,' said Alex Calderwood, an owner. 'We wanted a little imperfection, a little humor and something completely out of context in this crisp white space.'
Photomurals can do for your home what the Kodak sign did for Grand Central Terminal: add the wow factor. Especially if your rooms lack distinctive architectural features. 'It's a great cheat,' Mr. Grossman said.
Most paint and wall-covering stores like Janovic (www.janovic.com) in New York and Wallpapers to Go (wallpaperstogo.com), a chain, offer selections of photomurals from Scandecor, Environmental Graphics, Universal Photomural and Ideal Decor. Expect to pay $65 to $120 for a wall-size mural.
At the Brooklyn antique shop cum restaurant Robin des Bois (195 Smith Street), there are two photomurals, side by side, overlooking a room of Virgin Marys, Vespas and lava lamps. Bernard Decanali, the owner, bought the murals new at Janovic for about $100. 'I've always had this kind of wallpaper in my apartments because it's crazy-looking and has an American 70's look,' he said.
'Sure, it's ironic, but if you live in the city it gives you a bit of nature.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Under-a-Thousand-Somethings for Under-40-Somethings
'ASK me what I had for dinner last night,' Lisa Versacio said. Without waiting, she shot out the answer: 'French fries and three glasses of Champagne.'
Ms. Versacio is the senior vice president of West Elm, a home furnishings company that made its debut last week when the first of 675,000 catalogs started dropping into mailboxes across the country. The French fries and Champagne were her way of dealing with the stress of the debut, not to mention the anxiety of two and a half years spent developing stylish items that 20- and 30-something city dwellers can afford.
Harder still, she is hoping to lure those who might previously have shopped at Ikea, Pier 1 and Target and are ready for a style upgrade. They make up an attractive piece of the market with some money to spend, even if they are not ready to pay $3,000 for a sofa.
It's a picky segment, too -- one that places a high premium on looks. Moreover, the so-called Gen Xers have resisted many of the marketing overtures that worked so well with their baby boomer elders.
It's a mind-set that Ms. Versacio knows well. At a photo studio at Chelsea Piers last week, wares from West Elm were piled around her, waiting to be shot for the summer catalog (a total of six catalogs are planned for this year). Ms. Versacio reached out a foot and kicked a platform bed made of dark wood and artfully draped with white sheets.
'I had been looking forever for a nice solid platform bed that didn't cost $10,000,' she said. 'Of course, my bedroom is very small, so I'm always walking into it and my shins are all bruised -- but the bed looks great. And we all know what's more important, right?'
West Elm is the latest offshoot of Williams-Sonoma, the San Francisco-based retailer whose other niche businesses include Pottery Barn, Hold Everything and Chambers (a catalog business selling high-end bedding). Ms. Versacio and Williams-Sonoma had kept the catalog-only West Elm venture under wraps. The rumor was that West Elm was going to be a cheaper version of Pottery Barn, which was how it was conceived. But after Ms. Versacio came on board, she convinced her bosses that what they needed was not a cheaper alternative to Pottery Barn, but one that was less San Francisco and more New York City.
What Williams-Sonoma should have, she argued, was the catalog equivalent of haute urban style, the look that brought in polished concrete floors, stripped-down Zen spaces and sleek, dark wood furniture. Something in the spirit of Christian Liaigre's décor at the Mercer Hotel, Wallpaper magazine, or Calvin Klein Home. Plus, Ms. Versacio said, it should be cheaper than Pottery Barn.
Ms. Versacio, 41, who grew up just outside New York and went into the fashion industry after high school, was crucial to developing what could be called the anti-Williams-Sonoma look.
'The Pottery Barn customer is not our customer,' she said firmly. 'Sure, you're going to get what we call dabblers -- the people who will buy one or two things. But the West Elm customer is different.' That person is a fashion-conscious sort, somewhere between 25 and 38, who probably lives in an apartment in the city.
So while Ms. Versacio may be earning enough to be a Williams-Sonoma customer, she is defiantly more West Elm. 'I don't cook,' she said, 'which is why I live in Manhattan.'
She fought the company for a year over the name of her unit. Williams-Sonoma initially called it Elm Street, a name she rejected as far too redolent of Freddy Krueger.
A New Yorker through and through, Ms. Versacio even refused to move to San Francisco to develop West Elm. Instead she commuted for two years between Manhattan and Williams-Sonoma's home office. 'My permanent address was the W Hotel,' Ms. Versacio said. Last fall, she moved the West Elm offices to a renovated loft building in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn.
The West Elm style, appropriately enough, screams out loft, but since much of the furniture is scaled a bit small, it also says apartment. The furniture tends to the ultrabasic, like a $327 three-sided wood bed frame that can be used either as a twin bed or a sofa, a hardwood and steel kitchen table ($499) or a simple white cotton sofa ($799). Fashion and personality are left to the impulse items and accessories, which include orange midcentury modern glass vases (three for $29), a set of blurry-polka-dot tumblers (four for $19), primitive-style wood bowls ($19 or $24) and armloads of tablecloths, embroidered sheets and linen gauze curtains. All of West Elm's merchandise is designed and developed in-house and made in various parts of the world.
Williams-Sonoma, which announced a stock split and a higher earnings forecast last Wednesday, is eager to promote West End, according to Dana Telsey, a retail analyst at Bear, Stearns. 'No one has been able to target this audience with a real brand identity, and Williams-Sonoma is such a terrific brand creator,' Ms. Telsey said. 'They're really in touch with their customers.'
Ms. Telsey remembers when Crate & Barrel was trying to corner the Gen X market two years ago with a CB2 store in Chicago. It got mixed reviews, and only now, after giving CB2 a drastic overhaul, is Crate & Barrel seriously considering expanding the concept to other cities.
Ms. Versacio said she thought CB2 made the mistake of extending the MTV ideal beyond the television set instead of treating their intended customers as adults. 'I hopped on a plane and went to Chicago when it opened, because I was worried,' she said. 'I remember there was a lot of plastics and a lot of bright colors.'
Such a simplistic approach to selling to young working people, Ms. Versacio said, 'is a little bit of an insult.'
She tried hard not to make the same mistake with West Elm, and with most of the East Coast's catalogs delivered by yesterday, she said early sales were positive.
'We ripped through the first month's projections in four days,' Ms. Versacio said.
Unless yet another change in taste brings a quick end to results like those, maybe Ms. Versacio can have something a little more substantial with her Champagne next time.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; Native American Quilts Rejuvenate a Tradition
IN 1947, so the story goes, Tessie Four Times, a doting grandmother on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Brockton, Mont., expressed pride in her grandson's basketball playing by wiping the sweat from his back with a shawl and then casting it onto the gym floor.
Though she didn't know it then, her small, loving gesture was the origin of the basketball star quilt, now a much-anticipated ritual at reservation high schools. Each basketball season, Sioux and Assiniboine mothers and grandmothers stitch basketballs into their quilts to honor the players' coming of age and the passage of life.
In this era of the Air Jordan XIII, the spectacle of kaleidoscopic star quilts hanging from gym walls -- reverently sewn gifts to players' families and coaches -- is surprising indeed. (Nike, meet Brockton.) It speaks to the distinctive ceremonial role, little known by outsiders, that quilts play in Native American communities.
Unlike basketry, pottery and other hallmarks of Native American design, quilting has long been a 'hidden art form,' said Marsha L. MacDowell, the folk-arts curator at the Michigan State University Museum and a curator of 'To Honor and Comfort: Native Quilting Traditions,' an exhibition that runs through Jan. 4 at the National Museum of the American Indian's George Gustav Heye Center in Manhattan.
The 40 or so quilts on display are testimonies to the spiritual dimension that can imbue cloth and thread. They also challenge stereotypes of just what 'Native American craft' should be. Few scholars, collectors or even tourists have paid much attention to Native American quilts, Ms. MacDowell noted, in part because they have been deemed 'too European,' and therefore, as a Waccamaw-Sioux quilter, Brenda Moore, puts it, not 'an Indian thing.' But Indians are now putting their distinctive spin on quilt design.
Though Native American textile production is ancient, quilting itself was introduced relatively recently by 19th-century missionaries.
The rich, ceremonial life of quilts in native communities carries them beyond the simple utilitarian object and gives them special resonance. Simply put, quilts are an intimate part of birth and death.
'To me, quilting is natural,' said Lula Red Cloud, an Oglala Sioux quilter from the Pine Ridge Reservation in Hermosa, S.D., whose quilts are among those in the museum show. She specializes in star quilts, which have taken the place of traditional robes made from painted buffalo hide. 'It's the artistic way of making things, a cloth on which to transfer our thoughts, ideas and feelings,' she said.
So personal an expression is the Indian quilt that women prefer to  work alone rather than in groups. 'It's like meditation -- and chatter is distracting,' Ms. Red Cloud said.
Among the Lakota Sioux, quilts are traditionally used to wrap babies' cradle boards and are draped across the coffin when someone dies. According to Lakota legend, beaded moccasins were thrown into the grave to assist the departed on their journey down the 'spirit road' to the Milky Way. Today, it's the star quilt.
Among the Hopi, quilts mark the beginning of life. Upon the birth of a baby, infant and mother spend 20 days together in seclusion; then, before dawn on the final morning, female family members, each bearing a quilt, gather together at home for a baby-naming ceremony. They wash and bless the child, say prayers and then the paternal grandmother wraps the infant with a quilt. If many women are present, the baby almost disappears under a mountain of quilts, before being carried to the eastern edge of the village to greet the rising sun.
At springtime on Nelson Island, about 600 miles east of Anchorage on the Bering Sea, coastal Yupik women, in a rough equivalent of a Tupperware party, celebrate their husband's first bearded seal catch of the season by giving away to other village women strips of cloth, along with store-bought goods. The cloth will reappear at wintertime dances as finished patchwork quilts.
Because they are so ingrained in everyday life and have not been widely marketed to outsiders, quilts have until recently been taken for granted in native communities. But there are signs they are becoming iconic -- from the Brockton gym quilts to quilt symbols on powwow posters, T-shirts and baseball caps. Jill Hemming, a folklorist who has studied quilting among the Waccamaw-Sioux, observes that Native Americans have begun to embrace quilting, dispensing with 'romantic cliches' of what's Indian.
Of course, quilting as a phenomenon transcends ethnic and geographic boundaries -- and sometimes combines them. In 23 years of documenting quilts in Michigan and elsewhere, Prof. MacDowell and her husband, Kurt Dewhurst, the director of the Michigan State University Museum, discovered historic Odawa quilts, which combine European applique techniques learned from missionary wives with floral designs clearly inspired by their own distinctive Woodlands Indian beadwork.
Today many Native American quilters are reconfiguring traditional motifs, turning log cabins into arrowheads or incorporating Hopi cornstalks into Irish chain quilts.
Caroline Wilson, a Navajo, makes quilts that mirror 19th-century geometric Navajo 'chief' blankets. Margaret Wood, whose background is Navajo and Seminole, merges her identities by blending Seminole patchwork and Navajo designs. She  spices her quilts by adapting decoration from Blackfeet Indian boys' shirts and Mimbres pottery.
Traditional motifs can have special significance. The star, for instance, used in Amish and German-American quilts, symbolizes the morning star rising, or new life. Many quilts are deeply rooted in a sense of place. The quilts of Harriet Soong of Waimea, Hawaii, are predominantly white and green, because 'it rains all the time,' she said.
'We were always wet, and so it was always green,' she continued.
Like their non-native counterparts, many Native American quilters are breaking with tradition, creating quilts that are more like paintings, complete with art's social and political messages. Sheree Bonaparte, known as Peachy, a 41-year-old Akwesasne from Cornwall Island, Ontario, has made two 'Tree of Peace' quilts. They reflect strife on the St. Regis-Akwesasne Reservation in 1990 in which a dispute over whether to allow casino gambling led to indiscriminate gunfire and the deaths of two people. While working, she frequently heard gunfire on the St. Lawrence River.
Beneath the traditional tree of peace, she stitched two war clubs and an AK-47. 'I was real nervous about doing it,' she said. 'It was almost sacrilegious to mess with a traditional symbol. My heart raced while I stitched. To calm down, I stitched in the three sisters -- corn, beans and squash -- at the base of the tree. They are the sustainers of life for our people.' She describes the quilt as a 'healing process.'
Ms. Bonaparte, who is pregnant with her 10th child, gathered at the museum in Manhattan one evening recently with some of her quilting cohorts. A sense of kinship enveloped the room. 'How's your baby?' asked Gussie Bento, a quilter from Hawaii.
'I'm having another one,' said Ms. Bonaparte.
'What do you do for sore fingers?' a novice asked Ms. Red Cloud.
'I never use thimbles. Try a Band-Aid,' she replied.
For these women, a quilt's power to embody the emotions is its enduring gift. Ollie Napesni, an 80-year-old Sioux quilter from St. Francis, S.D., stood beside a quilt panel she made to remember her grandson, who died four years ago at age 30.
In the quilt, she explained, a figure representing herself sits facing the horizon at the place where her grandson is buried, 'a beautiful place with wild turkeys and prairie dogs and pine trees all around, a good place to rest.'
For a long time after his death, she said, she couldn't quilt. But a year later, in keeping with Sioux tradition, a ceremony was planned to honor her grandson's memory.
'I got up at 4 in the morning and quilted, sewing and sewing and sewing, tears in my eyes,' she recalled. 'Some of those tears are on the quilts I made.'
On Saturday at the National Museum of the American Indian, a family quilting day will be held from noon to 4 P.M., including demonstrations by Native American quilters. The museum is in the Custom House at 1 Bowling Green (State Street and Broadway). For information: (212) 514-3714.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"No Slouching, Please, Toward a Well-Tailored Millennium
Once upon a time, everybody wanted to be in pictures. Now, every able-bodied celebrity or demi-celebrity wants to be in the furniture business.
Christopher Forbes, the vice chairman of Forbes, the magazine publishing company, was here to introduce furniture, lamps, rugs and bedding from a variety of makers inspired by the domestic trappings of his father, Malcolm S. Forbes, the Tangier-living, Elizabeth Taylor-squiring, Harley-Davidson-riding millionaire, who died in 1990.
A few blocks away, at Vanguard Furniture, Kathy Ireland -- the Sports Illustrated swimsuit model and 'a modern Renaissance woman' who is 'one of America's most respected women of achievement,' in the words of the company's news release -- conducted tours of a 3,000-square-foot display dedicated to a furniture collection bearing her name. (She already lends her wholesome good looks to a signature clothing line for Kmart, which Women's Wear Daily has declared the seventh-most-popular brand of women's clothing in the country.)
Elsewhere, Jack Palance, the great B-movie actor, was touting the virtues of Action Lane's reclining leather chairs and sofas. It was one of this furniture season's most inspired pairings: limber upholstered pieces and the septuagenarian actor, who dropped to the stage of the Oscar ceremonies a few years back to execute a flurry of one-handed push-ups like a demonic Jack LaLanne.
Even the trend forecaster Faith Popcorn, who has long scolded the male-dominated furniture industry for giving short shrift to its largely female consumers, put her money where her mouth is: her own home office collection for Hooker Furniture designed to appeal to women.
'Business is just real good right now,' said Jerry Epperson, a financial analyst with Mann Armistead & Epperson, an investment banking firm. The combination of a strong economy and the steady march of baby boomers toward midlife affluence was projected by the American Furniture Manufacturers Association to bump consumer demand for furniture to $61.1 billion in 1999, an increase of 5.5 percent over 1998. With 2,400 exhibitors and eight million square feet of showroom space -- and another million square feet to be added in the next six months -- the twice-a-year International Home Furnishing Market is the biggest wholesale furniture market in the world. It opened last Thursday and runs through tomorrow.
The mood in the opening days of the market was as buoyant as Mr. Forbes's on-site accessory, a Faberge-egg-shaped hot-air balloon that bobbed in the sky above a weedy vacant lot where Mr. Forbes made his presentation (bejeweled Faberge eggs were one of his father's passions). After years of grumbling about sluggish sales and thin margins, manufacturers were worrying about meeting demand. Few of them were rocking the boat with startling new products, however, preferring to concentrate instead on what was already selling. 'There's more merchandise being deleted than being added,' Mr. Epperson said. 'Why change?'
Showroom building corridors were filled not just with furniture buyers, but with buyers from office supply stores, home improvement stores and home electronics stores as well. (In one odd-couple matchup, Bose, the maker of high-end audio equipment, will start carrying Mitchell Gold furniture in some of its mall stores this fall.) Catalogue companies like Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel were given credit for rehabbing furniture's dowdy image among consumers.
'All of a sudden there started being all this good stuff available through catalogues,' said Thomas O'Brien, 38, a cofounder of the hip SoHo design firm Aero Studios, who was introducing a resolutely modern-minded collection for Hickory Chair, for 99 years a bastion of traditionalism. Mount Vernon reproductions, Mark Hampton historicism.
In general, two nearly antithetical style directions vied for attention, sometimes side by side in the same showroom. On the one hand, sophisticated retro-modern design continued to gain strength, and dark woods, especially mahogany, had all but displaced the light birch and ash of just a couple of markets ago.
Mr. O'Brien's vision for the millennium is sleekly elegant eclecticism with a gentle Mixmaster edge: a bit of 1940's Chinese here, some embossed velvet there, a slipper chair with an exaggerated towering back, a seriously scholastic scroll-arm chair based on a Greek Revival original that Mr. O'Brien has owned since he was in college. Even Stanley Furniture got into the modernist act. Its Reflections of the 20th Century collection was similar in feeling to Mr. O'Brien's serene chic -- but priced to reach the midmarket consumer rather than Hickory Chair's typical posse of well-heeled suburbanites.
The prevalence of clean lines, tight upholstery, exposed legs, sexy little ottomans and silvery hardware at almost every price level proved that modern design had lost its shock value. Or just maybe, the American consumer, though still in love with tradition, has begun to accept the obvious -- that it is 1999, not 1799.
The entire second floor of Mitchell Gold's cobalt-blue headquarters, once the epicenter of the slouchy slipcover look, was devoted to severe tailoring. 'I wouldn't make them if they didn't sell,' said Mr. Gold, the president of the company, whose stylish upholstery is a staple at Crate and Barrel and other outlets.
Other introductions, however, took a distinctly baroque route. Thomasville's Bellasera, Stanley's Coronation, Lexington's California Legacy, and Bernhardt's Coronado were Euro inspired and heavily ornamented, combining metal, stone and glass with light woods and painted finishes. The pieces were also scaled to behemoth proportions, aimed at consumers with bodacious suburban homes to fill and a weakness for flashy effects. It could have been called 'Married to the Mob.'
Despite Ms. Ireland's pronouncement that she was 'making it safe for people to take risks,' she gamely trotted out furniture that was neither controversial nor new: a bun-foot damask sofa, a whitewashed side table with barley-twist legs and nonthreatening rattan dining chairs.
By contrast, Baker's Continental Collection was a quietly elegant treat. Culled from surprisingly diverse sources -- Baltic manor houses, anyone? -- the 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century designs proved that clean, crisp design knows no era. The Biedermeier-style center table, for example, could be pure Eames.
The most notable Euro-style holdout was Lane Furniture, which introduced Colonial Williamsburg designs. But the introduction had more to do with marketing savvy than a devotion to history. In making the move from Baker, which had been licensed to produce high-priced reproductions for a small and rarefied market, to Lane, whose new 'interpretative' pieces are priced to appeal to a much larger audience, Colonial Williamsburg joined a mainstream trend: aggressive licensing.
In an industry notably short on household-word brands, an increasing number of companies hoped that a borrowed name -- whether of a museum, a designer or simply a celebrity, even a dead one, like Thomasville's Ernest Hemingway range, released last spring to consumer acclaim and critical drubbing -- would help create instant recognition. 'Branded furniture stores such as Ethan Allen are doing very well,' Mr. Epperson said. 'It's logical that brands would become more important in the future.'
If so, the industry will have to grapple with another challenge: how to sell brand names over the Internet. In an industry traditionally fiercely protective of sales territories, the Internet's borderless markets are both attractive and threatening. Nonetheless, a growing number of furniture companies gingerly crossed the line between E-information and E-commerce.
Directions, a Georgia-based manufacturer of contemporary upholstered and occasional furniture, maintains its own Web sit and is selling selected products through an E-retailer called Living.com. 'If we're going to jump into it, this is the time to jump into it,' said Al Lewinger, president of Directions. 'We're ready.'
Although on-line retailing still accounts for less than 1 percent of all furniture sales, representatives of Internet companies set up tables and monitors in every available space.
'The furniture industry is highly fragmented and a little primitive,' said Linda Lewi, vice president of marketing for Home Portfolio, a Web site (www.homeportfolio.com) that offers access to a wide range of home products, from kitchen appliances to paint. 'But there's a vortex of energy out there right now. Something's happening in furniture.'  DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"It's the Icon Challenge
DURING every Olympics, in a tradition as hallowed as the torch, viewers encounter a new set of pictograms: that menu of symbols representing the events of the Games. These abstract figures are meant to be legible to athletes and fans of any nation -- a visual Esperanto.
No United Nations committee tracks user irritation, but almost everyone these days seems to harbor a festering resentment toward one symbol or another. If these symbols are so universal, why do they need to be reinvented every four years?
In fact, universality is no longer the ambition of Olympic designers; reflecting local geography is. 'Each Olympics gets a new set of pictograms,' said Paul Saunders of Saunders Creative, the pictogram designer for the Sydney Olympics, 'because, abstract as they are, they are supposed to reflect the Olympic location.'
'Communicate globally, but stylize locally' is his method. So he substitutes a stylized boomerang -- the logo for the down-under games -- for any generic representation of the human torso. That some of the iconographic athletes appear to be wearing harem pants is a minor distraction.
'Designing these icons has become something like the Olympics of graphic design,' said Tucker Viemeister, an industrial designer.
On signs, computer screens, phones and instrument panels, baffling glyphs and symbols are increasingly irritating facts of daily life. The little shape on my cell phone's screen looks like a martini glass, but it signifies signal strength. What appears to be a cartoon hair dryer on my dashboard is supposed to be an internationally recognized symbol for traction control. When the singer Prince not long ago abandoned his glyph and reverted to the alphabetic version of his name, I took hope that other symbols, icons and pictograms might disappear as well. From such overused elements as the @ in e-mail addresses to the constantly changing meaning of the # sign on the telephone, visual symbols have become so abstract they no longer make sense.
Gavin Ivester, a Nike designer who once worked on prototype symbols for Apple's Newton computer, likes to refer to the buttons that regulate the seat heaters in his old BMW: a single wavy arrow means 'low' while three wavy arrows mean 'high.' 'It's been a joke in this car,' he said. 'Do you want one snake back there or three?'
Some symbols have different meanings in different contexts. An icon on a photocopier that looks like a pile of cannonballs signals insufficient toner. On a road map, it is a standard symbol for historical ruins.
Edward Tenner, the author of 'Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences' (A. A. Knopf, 1996), terms the drive for global visual symbols 'glyphomania.'
'The great force behind glyphomania is not efficiency but idealism, the search for a transcultural language,' he said. 'The global triumph of English makes this quest less functionally necessary but more diplomatically desirable.'
Idealism also inspired the designers at Xerox who created the first graphics for computers in the 1970's. They believed that icons were intuitive and thus easy to master. But increasingly, the global economy is highlighting local differences. For example, in China, a red traffic light means go.
Like Esperanto, the ideal of international iconism has come to seem quaint, and the footless, handless figures marking restrooms and street  crossings seem like relics of the 1960's. Mr. Viemeister notes that young designers regularly parody such symbols on everything from skateboards to CD cases.
In the Egypt of the pharaohs, Semitic scribes (think Moses) became fed up with the increasingly cumbersome hieroglyphs of the high priests. So they turned to an informal new kind of writing that became the forerunner of the phonetic alphabet. That system served civilization so well that it lasted thousands of years.
It has taken us only a few years of playing with new glyphs to suspect that the scribes might have been right after all.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK  Correction:  October 5, 2000, Thursday  The Design Notebook column last Thursday, about annoyance over cryptic Olympic pictograms and other icons, misstated the meaning of a red traffic light in China. It means stop. During the Cultural Revolution 30 years ago, an effort was made to change the meaning to 'go,' but the idea did not take hold.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Out Goes Majolica, In Goes Nothing
WHEN he burst onto the London fashion scene in the 1970's, the Japanese designer Gnyuki Torimaru -- Yuki, as he is known professionally -- acquired a reputation for elegant simplicity: evening gowns that hugged the body like poured silk, and jackets and cat suits that wrapped around their subjects seamlessly.
But not so in his red brick Victorian town house, where his proclivity for bare walls and uncluttered hallways was overruled by the fussier style of his companion, Desmond Morris, a former tennis star whose tastes ran to Minton majolica rabbit comports and 19th-century satinwood card tables.
When Mr. Morris died six years ago at the age of 85, Mr. Torimaru decided to sell the furniture, antiques and bric-a-brac collected over a lifetime, tear down what had been their home and build the house he had always yearned for: a monastic cube designed by the minimalist architect John Pawson. Dreweatt Neate of London is to auction the entire contents of the house on Wednesday. (Bids can be made by phone, 011-44-1-635-553-553; fax, 011-44-1-635-553-599; or www.auctions.dreweatt-neate.co.uk.; condition reports can be requested by e-mail: fineart@dreweatt-neate.co.uk.)
The only thing not for sale is Mr. Torimaru's dog, an Afghan hound. The 531 items include a George IV giltwood convex mirror (estimated value, $3,800 to $4,600), an early 20th-century six-branch cut-glass chandelier ($775 to $1,000), a set of four dining chairs by Yuki ($470 to $780) and a porcelain cupid clock ($620 to $935).
Also for sale is a collection of Yuki's designs, including a midnight blue pleated evening dress ($380 to $540) and matching handbag ($230 to $310) that Diana, Princess of Wales, tried on but did not buy. Mr. Torimaru will custom-design a dress for the highest bidder.
The proceeds from four items -- the midnight blue dress and bag, the custom-designed dress and a copy of a limited edition book of Mr. Torimaru's work -- will be donated to the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Fund. The rest of the proceeds will go to Mr. Torimaru.
Demolition of the structure, dating to the 1860's, is to start in early November, part of a three-year project expected to cost more than $2.3 million. The plan pitted Mr. Torimaru, 65, against the local planning board, which has expressed alarm at the prospect of a modern structure infringing on its red-brick, white-columned corner of Chelsea. Mr. Pawson had to modify his design to win the board's approval. Still, Mr. Torimaru, who has relocated to a mews house near Victoria Station, said the process had been liberating. 'It's almost like detoxing your body,' he said. 'I'd like to cleanse my life. Not that I had unpleasant memories. On the contrary, I had a very happy life. But life is never constant. It's moving all the time. And you can't hold on to something that is constantly moving. You have to go forward.'
Mr. Torimaru arrived in London from Japan in the mid-1960's and worked for Pierre Cardin before opening his own shop in 1972 in Harvey Nichols, the fashionable department store. He was known for loose, flowing garments, often topped by turbans. Mr. Torimaru said his approach to design was to start with an idea and see what he could strip away to arrive at the bare essence of a concept. 'He was minimalist before anyone thought about minimalism,' said Meredith Etherington-Smith, who was the London correspondent for the French edition of Vogue in the 1970's and is now the editor of Art Review.
His clients included Twiggy, Farrah Fawcett and the Princess of Wales, for whom he designed a royal blue pleated dress that she wore to a banquet given by Emperor Hirohito during her 1986 state visit to Japan.
In contrast to the more elaborate tastes of his partner, Mr. Torimaru said he secretly longed for a monastic existence and craved the unrelenting white spaces Mr. Pawson is known for. 'A bare house and bare walls to me are much more inspiring than having some painting or sculpture in front of me, because that would disturb my imagination,' he said.
Mr. Pawson's initial design called for a facade of alternating yellow and glass bricks stacked vertically, but it did not receive the approval of the local planning commission. Mr. Pawson was forced to eliminate the glass bricks and use a more traditional zigzag style.
The interior will be all Pawson. Each of the four floors will be treated as one giant room dedicated to a specific purpose: the basement for cooking, the ground floor for receiving guests, the first floor for a guest bedroom and the second floor for the master bedroom. Gone will be the bright red walls of the dining room, the midnight blue of the study and the birds, foliage and bamboo that Mr. Torimaru painted by hand in Japanese style on wallpaper in the entryway.
Aside from those personal touches, Mr. Torimaru said, the house had a resident ghost who used to traipse up and down the stairs. Mr. Torimaru said the former model Marie Helvin once saw what she thought was a ghost dressed in military uniform standing by the fireplace.
Mr. Torimaru said he tried not to dwell on the objects he was selling or the memories associated with them. 'I don't want people to think that I'm a heartless person,' he said. 'On the contrary, I'm very sentimental about people, but never about things.'
Once his new home is built (he plans to move in by Christmas 2003), Mr. Torimaru said, he hopes to embark on a new profession, possibly oil painting. 'Sometimes,' he said, 'it's good to completely throw your past away and start something new.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Behold The Artful Price Tag
YOU'VE read the same exciting story about design for years. As it goes, corporate America recognizes design as a point of difference, a sales edge, an emotional connection to buyers.
And buyers recognize design as fashion, coolness, lifestyle.
'The big D,' as Bruce Claxton, a designer, called it.
Companies like Apple Computer exemplified both sides of the thinking. With a series of highly design-conscious introductions like the candy-colored iMac and the milk-white iBook -- products with looks that had the hummability of pop songs -- Apple set itself apart. And consumers responded as a cult, which grew, culminating in the iPod, the personal music player, which quadrupled the company's first-quarter profit this year and increased Apple's revenue by 74 percent.
But the design excitement last week in Apple's latest introductions, the Mac Mini and iPod Shuffle, was not in the Mini's small simple box or the Shuffle's stick-of-gum wand. It was in the prices: $499 and $99.
In a conversation on Monday, Jonathan Ive, the company's vice president for industrial design, described Apple's newest generation of designs less by how they look than what he termed 'a whole new level of access to the product.'
This was not Apple's traditional design card, played at a premium for its core audience, a group that an editorial in The Times on Jan. 13 about Apple's move toward the mainstream called 'the lonely elite' (a phrase that despite the media buzz still adequately describes most of the interest in design).
The important feature of Apple's new designs was the price, not design as something you could not live without but, paradoxically, design as something you might finally be able to live with. Does design, too, have to think different now? As Apple reaches for a mass market, as yet out of hand, is it dropping the ball on design?
'The most affordable Mac ever,' Apple.com, the company's online store, announced. And the iPod Shuffle was pictured next to a package of bubble gum, as though to suggest that at $99 you could stuff it into your mouth and chew it for a while, then spit it out when it lost its flavor.
Eric Chan, the founder and president of Ecco Design, whose clients include Best Buy and Toyota, said: 'Design has become a commodity now, and the price has to come down. Even the Chinese are shipping us pretty reasonable design.' On the ability of design to command a premium or drive a business, Mr. Chan added: 'Coolness is overhyped. Apple was smart enough to do the high end first and then come down to this and connect both points. The new economy won't make money from the rich. Look at IM messages. It's a huge market on nickels and dimes on every minute.'
Tucker Viemeister, a designer and the president of Springtime USA, whose clients include Volkswagen and Heineken Breweries, concurred.
'Price trumps design every day of the week,' he said. Mr. Viemeister cited an observation of Tocqueville, whom he is reading. 'Americans care more about function than looks. This is not a new situation.'
Mr. Chan commissioned a survey of 200 people to learn what consumers identify with in a purchase.
'The fashion end is getting less important,' he explained. 'People want the feel-good end: ecology or comfort or genuine use.' Mr. Chan said that businesses like Whole Foods and American Apparel, which are perceived less as brands or labels than as intelligent generics, came out very high in the ratings of those surveyed.
'Too much superficial design was not good,' he added of their conclusions.
Scott Henderson, an independent designer who has worked at Smart Design, was comic on the subject of design as a perennial ingénue.
'Good design as a 'new thing' is a sad concept,' Mr. Henderson said sadly.
Transparency is a word being used by design professionals. It might translate as a new, lower profile, like that of the Mac Mini, which even its creator, Mr. Ive, described innocuously as 'nice.'
Bruce Claxton, who is the senior director of design integration at Motorola and chairman of the Industrial Designers Society of America, said that the physical appeal consumers quickly associate with design could 'become more invisible, more transparent.' In other words, you look through the design rather than at it and, it is hoped, register a product's appeal on a less conscious level. You still reach for your wallet; you just don't argue with yourself about whether it is a frivolous, design-driven purchase.
Rather than design excitement, 'design provides the focus of the product, of a particular lifestyle,' Mr. Claxton suggested of this next phase of product marketing. Citing the success of the iPod, he said that he believed industries like personal electronics would 'emerge past industrial design to design of a total activity,' providing devices like cellphones or music players that sold not a style but a point of entry to a stylish experience. And at a price. Was Apple once again a seer in the design world, or reading the writing on the wall?
'When you resonate well -- design with lifestyle -- people will pay more, but not enough people pay well,' Mr. Claxton said. 'The business saturates, and you have to expand your base. You drive up aspirations, then you move down the food chain, to the less expensive models.' Mr. Claxton mentioned BMW's 1 Series compact cars, introduced last year. The company has shelved plans to sell the series in the United States, sticking to the luxury sales strategy that Apple abandoned last week. Target, the chain of stores now inextricably associated with a business philosophy that integrates a belief in design with its corporate image and performance, unveiled its latest television advertising campaign during the Golden Globe awards on Sunday.
'Expect more. Pay less,' the spot concludes in a tagline, after a cavalcade of design-related imagery. The word 'design' floats across the screen, making acrostics with other stylish concepts, like a beautiful person's daydreams coming into view.
But Target, which has commissioned product collections from design celebrities like Michael Graves and Philippe Starck, is also taking a different tack now, quietly lowering the volume on a message that it thinks no longer requires noise and concentrating on 'nondesign' design.
'We helped build the case,' said Michael Francis, executive vice president for marketing, about design in the mass marketplace. 'Now it's time to take it a step further. Not all design is high design.' Mr. Francis used as an example Target's Archer Farms spring water, introduced three months ago, and other grocery items on their way to stores.
'We've shifted away from one designer with a point of view,' he said. 'We spent a lot of time with design partners that will inform thinking on the packaging that will never bear those designers' names.'
With a mass marketplace that now recognizes design when it sees it, though it refuses to pay for it, Apple's risk is very real. It has stretched its enviable earpod cord out on the block. Only a company with design charisma can make a price exciting, as Apple now knows, and would do well to remember.
'I don't think Apple's product cost reduction is a new industry trend or design watering-down,' Dan Harden wrote by e-mail. Mr. Harden is a designer whose company, Whipsaw Inc., designed the Rio Carbon MP3 player, which competes with iPod. 'It's Apple joining the rest of the real world. I just hope they remain a beacon of quality.'
Cheap on its own has never had much of a name.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"As Fashion on Two Wheels, It's a Roaring Success
AT a motorcycle gathering on a Tuesday night in May at the Ear Inn on far west Spring Street, Suzanne Schick, a patternmaker for the fashion designer Betsey Johnson, roared up astride her purple 1997 Ducati M750 Monster. She wore a matching purple leather jacket. Her hair was purple, too.
'When I first got my bike, I thought it was so beautiful I wanted to keep it in my bedroom,' she said. 'And Ducatis have the best sound of any bike.'
Ms. Schick chatted with another Ducati rider. 'I have three and live in Pennsylvania,' he said. 'There, I can really ride them and do illegal things. In the city, you can only do antisocial things.'
With their flamboyant red or yellow bodies and high performance Italian pedigree, Ducatis are rivaling Harley-Davidsons as the motorcycle of fashionable choice. Wispy models swathed in leather straddle Ducatis in catalogs for DKNY and Dior France. Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks -- even Rosie O'Donnell and the chef David Bouley -- have been photographed riding their Ducatis.
Ducati motorcycles have been on the roads for more than 50 years, but their worldwide sales have doubled in the last five years, as the company, based in Bologna, Italy, has redesigned everything from its letterhead to its stores. And, yes, it re designed the bikes, too.
Ducati has presented itself as the un-Harley, using highly sculptured Italian style to set itself apart from Harley's black-and-chrome All-American roadhouse look. 'Harley's keynote is chrome,' said Federico Minoli, Ducati's chairman. 'Ours is carbon fiber.' Devotees are known as Duca tistas. With a top-of-the-line model, the 996, costing up to $15,000, they have quite an investment to protect.
The Ducati company, founded in 1926 as a maker of radios, produced its first motorcycle in 1950. By 1985, the company was in the hands of the Italian Cagiva conglomerate. Production fell from 21,000 motorcyles in 1995 to just 12,500 the following year because of a shortage of capital. The Ducati makeover was the work of the Texas Pacific Group, a Fort Worth turnaround specialist, which bought the company in 1996.
Almost immediately, David Gross, Ducati's new director of strategy, commissioned an advertising campaign showing Ducati employees -- from accountants to stockroom boys -- photographed by Ferdinando Scianna, an Italian fashion photographer. 'Every other bikemaker was doing color, so we did ours in black-and-white,' Mr. Gross said. The company also set up a museum at the plant to display famous Ducatis of the past, and it started offering factory tours.
Mr. Gross hired Lella and Massimo Vignelli to create a new logo. The Italian-American Vignellis are known for their graphic designs for Knoll furniture, as well as the 1970's New York subway map. For Ducati, they provided a logo of a red circle with a simple slash suggesting an abstract D, with the company name boldly rendered in red Extra Heavy Oblique Univers, a typeface that leans like a racer in a curve.
The company transformed its gritty garage-style shops into spic-and-span boutiques designed by Gensler Associates, the firm that created modular storefronts and interiors for Gap, Banana Republic and McDonald's. Gensler established a store design built around gray metallic perforated panels, accessory cases of wood and glass and large photographs on the walls. The bikes preen on platforms. The storefronts display a frieze of backlighted, colorful technical drawings. Each store has areas dedicated to the company's history and racing. To match the metal of the bikes, Gensler specified Norman Foster's Nomos table and lunar-lander-style Techno chairs.
The first of the new stores opened in Manhattan in 1998, at 11th Avenue and 42nd Street, followed by roughly 60 more, from Philadelphia to Tokyo. Some dealers grumbled when they had to put their own money into the new interior, but Mr. Minoli could soon point to increases in sales.
The stores are also intended to increase sales of Ducati accessories, including windshields, carbon fiber fenders, gears, stylish helmets and clothing. Some of the clothes are designed by Donna Karan. Ducati found a happy ally in Stephan Weiss, Ms. Karan's husband and partner, who was a Ducatista even before DKNY stores displayed the bikes as props and turned out leather jackets and other clothing for the Ducati stores.
Again on the model of Harley-Davidson, which makes about 20 percent of its sales in accessories, Ducati hopes to double its accessories sales, Mr. Gross said.
The new owners also named Pierre Terrebranche its chief of design. A graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, he is known for combining the dirt-bike rawness and exposed parts of earlier Ducati models, like the Monster, with racing bike sleekness. He speaks proudly of bikes 'with their guts spilling out,' inspired in part by the Swiss designer H. R. Giger, whose drawings set the tone for 'Alien' and its sequels.
The Monster, the bike Ms. Schick rode to the Ear Inn, was inspired by California-style dirt bikes that 'grunge riders' stripped of their sculptured fenders. The Monster is actually a light, lowslung model favored by smaller riders -- especially women.
Of course, Ducati's new owners benefited from a wider appreciation of the aesthetics of motorcycles, which partly grew out of 'The Art of the Motorcycle,' a 1998 Guggenheim Museum show, and out of auction house sales of classic motorcycles. These events, Mr. Gross said, 'were important for popularizing the idea of motorcycles as collectible objects of industrial design.' But bikes are convenient in that you don't have to carry them from place to place to show them off. Indeed, they carry you.
Ducati owners seem aware of this fact -- up to a point. 'They may not ride them very much,' Ms. Schick said. 'They'll say, 'I don't want anything to happen to my 996 to reduce the resale value.' '
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"The More Trophies, The Less the Glory
AS the final match of the 16th World Cup was being played out in France on Sunday, a full third of the planet's population tuned in to witness the host nation's surprising capture of the most coveted trophy in the world: a thick, drippy, solid-18-karat-gold abstraction of two Atlaslike athletes shrugging the globe.
In at least one way the mania for the World Cup is understandable, for it is the ultimate trophy, one of the few that is singular: created in 1974 by Silvio Gazzaniga, an Italian sculptor, to replace the original, which survived World War II and theft before being retired to Brazil in 1970. The priceless cup is passed like a torch from victor to victor only every four years, compared with the factory-level output of Hollywood awards, whose repetition dulls their own glow.
The competition for the World Cup is also the largest in terms of participants; this year's winner was narrowed from 168 countries over a two-year elimination process.
Let soccer philistines in the United States consider the intense traffic of trophies in their own land. For every achievement there seems to be an arcane assembly -- and arcane loving cup -- to honor it. From hockey's immense Stanley Cup to basketball's tiered totems (proportional in height to its players), each sport has its cup, and so does every momentary prowess.
How else to explain GQ magazine's Man of the Year award (a crystal male torso with muscles as improbable as those sculptured by Botero), or MTV's movie awards (shellacked bags of popcorn as unappetizing as window-display sushi)? The paradox, of course, is that the more trophy winners there are, the less trophies are able to fulfill their function: to signify uniqueness.
The trophy glut reflects the growing cultural obsession with heroes, celebrities and winners. 'Part of it has to do with group identity,' said George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley.
'Competitions, even if one participates only as a spectator, reaffirm one's membership in the tribe. And part of it is that trophies identify role models, or attempt to establish new ones.'
With society ever more splintered, a trophy glut is inevitable. Each social faction has its criteria for greatness and devises a fitting emblem for it, feeding the factory of signs that define culture.
Though few will come by National Football League rings or Purple Hearts, almost everybody has been bestowed with a certificate or gold-plated trinket to identify competence at bowling, baking pies, flipping burgers, selling stereos, inventing theories, making art.
Geoffrey Nunberg, the usage editor of the American Heritage Dictionary and a cultural commentator for National Public Radio, agrees. 'A lot of what we see is spurious competition,' he said. 'Most trophies have no other purpose but commercial -- to sell the products of the sponsor, to fill air time and, mostly, to demonstrate the fact that we've gotten quite good at manufacturing trophies, events and celebrities.'
The function of the trophy has always been to single out the exceptional from the ordinary. Before the modern concept of the individual, the earliest exemplars were sacrificial victims. Ancient societies didn't expect their deities to be satisfied with common fare; hence, the election of the virginal, the clairvoyant, the brave for ascension.
Modern-day field sports find an antecedent in the Mesoamerican juego de pelota, in which the winner was killed, for he clearly qualified as the most worthy gift to the gods. He was the trophy.
Trophies gained their glittering, tacky dimension when they became representations of triumph as opposed to evidence of the triumph itself. Military trophies were the spoils of war: opponents' weapons, belongings, the opponents themselves (or parts of them), which were hung on trees or structures as indisputable proof of the conquest. Similarly, hunting trophies were the kill -- the animals, horns, head or hide -- a real trace of big-game bravery.
Just as early societies eventually figured out that they could substitute animals for humans and then objects for animals in their sacrificial rites, so modern societies have invested objects with symbolic value, affirmed by collective sentiment. The shiny cup, urn and plate (emblems of offering and receiving) remain the most common trophy forms, a testament to the persistence of traditional images of value.
'Although the value of trophies today is associated with the achievement, the form has to be recognized,' said Leo Brody, a professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of 'The Frenzy of Renown,' a history of fame, recently republished by Vintage.
As the expression 'trophy wife' indicates, the primary function of trophies is to be ornamental, and that explains their dazzling appearance.
It's not surprising that luxury-goods companies like Baccarat and Tiffany & Company have weighed in. Tiffany's is behind the new Women's N.B.A. trophy (a basketball on a pedestal), the New York City Marathon's (a platter etched with a map of the city) and the Lombardi Trophy (a silver regulation-size football).
On some level, trophy designs do attempt to be meaningful. MTV's popcorn trophy, for example, is deliberately kitschy, so recipients can't be serious when accepting it for such flip categories as Best Scream.
But the main thing is that it appear permanent. Hence, the justification from GQ's director of communications, Mary Wible, of the magazine's choice of a crystal torso for its Man of the Year award. 'We chose it because it's very masculine,' she said, 'and because it's heavy.'
Leo Brody suggests that the creation of heroes, celebrities and winners will only escalate, perhaps in inverse proportion to the duration of their fame. But there's nothing wrong with being honored for accomplishments, he said. 'One feature of a democratic society is the multiplicity of ways to get to the top.'
The cup of the Federation Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, is one of the few contemporary examples that recall the original meaning of trophies, for many reasons. The sporting ground is the last legitimate battlefield of civilized society, where individualism and nationalism can flare without too much bloodshed. Athletes don't go home with the spoils of the defeated, like their ears (though some might like to). But during the World Cup games, one of the most endearing rituals was the players' polite exchange of not blood but sweat-soaked jerseys at the end of 90 minutes of earnest ankle-hacking. Still, everyone held out for the cup, which is worth more than its weight in gold.
In an attempt to restore some of the old luster of trophies, the R. S. Owens Company, which manufactures the Oscar, Emmy, Clio and other high-profile awards, is issuing a new line of products called Art as Awards. Scott Siegel, its president, whose company grew from $15 million in sales to $20 million over the last five years, said, 'Nobody wants to decorate their home or office with useless junk.'
The company has commissioned a glass-blowing company to create limited-edition trophies that are 'works of art first and awards second.' (Although the idea of a limited edition of an object meant to convey uniqueness seems self-contradictory.)
Still, it proliferates. The trophy's commonness has already distanced it from its etymological root, which derives from the Greek 'tropos,' 'to turn,' as in an opponent's turn of fate, or defeat. As Mr. Nunberg said: 'It's not a trophy unless somebody loses. You can't just have winners.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; Call It the 'E Pluribus Unum' Floor Plan
NEW YORK's trophy apartments -- the Village charmers with front-and-back fireplaces, the TriBeCa lofts with three exposures, the prewar dowagers with haughty architectural bones -- probably inspire more action-packed dinner party tales than big-game safaris ever did.
But most of us working stiffs live in ordinary places, apartments with eight-foot ceilings and five-by-seven bathrooms -- apartments without a trace of excess, accident or eccentricity, but heavy with the sense that the meter was running when the apartment was being built. Many of these efficiency digs are in so-called 'vanilla' buildings -- bland postwar apartment blocks with glazed white-brick facades. For apartment snobs, such buildings occupy the mid to lower genealogical limbs of Manhattan's real estate tree. For architects, their down-to-the-square-inch plans allow little room for maneuvering.
Fredericka Taylor, an owner of the TZ'Art & Company gallery in SoHo and a member of the architecture and design committee of the Museum of Modern Art, lived in a trophy apartment on Ninth Street in Greenwich Village with drop-dead coziness: her duplex featured a double-height living room and a carved-plaster ceiling dating from the eclectic 1920's. In 1989, it was renovated by the New York architects Henry Smith-Miller and Laurie Hawkinson, and widely published. Ms. Taylor lived there happily until her two grown daughters left home, which netted her two spare bedrooms in an apartment that needed painting. It was time to move.
Chafing at the narrow dimensions of the town house, Ms. Taylor realized she wanted a more expansive environment: 'I wanted a place with outdoor space and a view.'
The hunt led her to the upper floors of an antiseptic white building in the Village with a Cinemascopic terrace view of the Hudson and the great valley of buildings between the Village and Wall Street. The terrace, however, came attached to a gaggle of small, maximally efficient apartments that had the potential to become a 2,000-square-foot 'loft.'
'I was totally taken with all the outdoor space and views,' Ms. Taylor said. 'Henry and Laurie hated it on first sight. They asked me whether I'd signed the contract. I told them it was too late. Now it was their problem.'
Styles of course come and go, but what is particularly telling in architecture is that moment when overlooked buildings like this iceberg suddenly edge their way back into visual consciousness -- when the familiar and invisible recapture the eye. 'I like it for its ordinariness -- the banality, the anonymity, the lack of pretension,' she said. 'I suppose 60's architecture has come back along with 60's furniture, and nontrendiness now is trendy.'
Ms. Hawkinson, who was the partner in charge of the apartment's design, said, 'Freddie's an insightful art dealer and had the kind of vision to imagine all of these rooms together.' Ms. Taylor's instinct was encouraged by a friend, the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas (author of 'Delirious New York').
'Rem saw it and said it's so quintessentially New York,' Ms. Taylor said. 'He absolutely loves this building, the New York horizontality of the space within Manhattan's verticality.' The low horizon line of her interiors complements the wide terrace panorama and recalls the influence of the open, flat landscape on America's Prairie School architects, especially Frank Lloyd Wright.
'I'm sympathetic with the 50's and 60's period, and a great admirer of its building stock, but of course the horizontality meant we had no height to manipulate,' Ms. Hawkinson said. 'We had to invent a way to work with what we found.'
Smith-Miller & Hawkinson was accustomed to her needs, having previously worked with Ms. Taylor on a prewar classic on East 93d, her gallery and the offices for an arts foundation, besides the Ninth Street apartment. 'She's a modernist -- the kind of adventurous client who doesn't care to have a parlor,' Mr. Smith-Miller said. Among her requirements were open space and generous walls for the art she likes to live with before it appears in her gallery.
After designing two apartments, the architects were also accustomed to the pieces of furniture that followed her. ('By this time, they're old friends, or enemies, for Henry and Laurie,' Ms. Taylor said.) They include her grandmother's antique desk and a hanging lamp by the early-20th-century Dutch modernist Gerrit Rietveld, as well as his complex wood De Stijl sideboard. 'I'm from Holland originally, and that piece becomes the heart of my apartments,' she said.
She asked for a guest room, a master bedroom and a kitchen open to a living area that would be large enough for receptions. The space also made its own demands. The basic functional issue was how to combine several apartments -- which yielded a surfeit of kitchens and bathrooms, even for a woman who entertains frequently. There was also the esthetic issue of the space so tightly sandwiched between floor and ceiling.
'I think I always make Laurie and Henry do things that are slightly off what they would naturally do,' Ms. Taylor said. 'It was the first time they'd worked in this kind of building. It was in a way liberating for them, because the apartment didn't have any historical details to contend with.'
The architects proceeded by a process of elimination. 'Rather than putting new things into an empty space, we were taking things away,' Mr. Smith-Miller said, describing a weeding process that turned out to be unpredictable. 'With a recipe, when you reduce a sauce, you basically know what the end result is going to be. But in a subtractive process, you don't, and we didn't. We just started taking out walls here, kitchens and doors and halls there. The things we could live without. Reduction is based in theory; the subtraction came from the field.'
The architects embarked without a grand master plan or even a preconceived esthetic -- 'to find out what was there,' Mr. Smith-Miller said.
After they stripped away walls, the architects found immovable trees -- that is, the plumbing chases, ventilator ducts, structural columns and gas lines. Those 'trees,' which the architects wrapped in steel sleeves and plaster, created a grove in the otherwise loftlike space, giving it a spatial porosity: the back living room is viewed through what they called a forest.
'The forest became a place for hanging art and placing sculpture that encouraged intimate viewing within an area you'd move through,' Ms. Hawkinson said.
Mr. Smith-Miller said: 'We're dealing with very late 50's modernism, but the developer had forgotten the open plan. We basically took out rooms that shouldn't have been there and made it into a generous open space.'
Within the overall strategy, the architects developed a tactic based on details. They removed paint from standard air-conditioning covers to expose the metal, and made light valances for paintings out of exposed steel. They laid floors of cold-rolled steel plate in the heavily trafficked kitchen and entrance. They exposed any and all mechanisms, like the tracks supporting a long sliding wall (which doubles the wall space for viewing art in the dining area). They left new hand-troweled plaster unpainted, emphasizing matter in the unstated battle every architect fights against the bland abstractions of plasterboard. In all ways they attempted to leave the mark of the hand, in response to the machine esthetic that had made the original apartments so dry.
All the decisions about materials and forms gather into an interlocking puzzle that confirms a law of chaos theory -- that simple systems added together breed complexity. Perhaps the boldest move was to float a lowered ceiling down the walkway from the entry to the living room. Made of oak flooring, what the architects call their 'surfboard' hyphenates the front and back spaces and gives the room a second height dramatized by backlighting.
Little by little, the boring, boxy interiors acquired an austere, elegant Shakerlike appearance, with blond wood and metal accents. Ms. Taylor furnished the interiors sparely with a red Eileen Gray sofa and a foursome of cube chairs by Le Corbusier. She brought her old Traulsen refrigerator along, which the architects displayed in the open kitchen like a piece of functional stainless-steel sculpture. The 1918 Rietvelt sideboard earned a niche of honor between the front and back living areas; coincidentally, the piece presaged the layered richness of modernist space explored in this apartment.
With their laissez-faire approach, the architects found a certain 'give' in apartments that were originally planned with designated places for beds, sofas and dining tables. The logic of the robotic assembly line had lived on in plans that implicitly regulated how people walked through their lives at home, as though on a factory floor.
'There's a postwar mentality of industrial standardization embedded in these populist buildings, which were built as inexpensive housing for the masses, like vertical Levittowns, and you had to accept that posture because the plumbing and layout locked you in,' Ms. Hawkinson said. 'We tried to subvert that.'
Granted, the architects had the luxury of 2,000 square feet, but they also freed the spaces of their cookie-cutter imprint and the concomitant idea that there are only one or two ways to occupy a room. The open kitchen, separated from the dining area by a freely shaped kitchen island and a cantilevered pass-through cupboard, epitomizes the new informality. Relaxing the apartment's attitudes proved that there was architectural life in the box yet, no matter the size. 'I don't think modernism has been exhausted,' Ms. Hawkinson said.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Factory Fresh: Interstately Homes
THE dream of a cutting-edge prefabricated modern house is inching closer to reality. A prefab from Austria has been pieced together in upstate New York. Another one, Glidehouse, is under construction and will soon be displayed in Menlo Park, Calif. Yet another, the LV, is already in production.
And a new book, 'Prefab Modern' by Jill Herbers (HarperCollins), which chronicles some of these innovations, is coming in June.
Architects are learning to adapt to the constraints of mass production, while modular housing companies, used to churning out fake tudor villas, are beginning to recognize the market for well-designed affordable houses.
But consumers hoping for an instant 1,500-square-foot three-bedroom home with shimmering glass walls and a cast concrete fireplace are learning that such houses are not coming off the conveyor belt like cars. And they are not for everyone.
Until recently, most so-called prototypes rarely went further than the museum courtyard. But some countries, including the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria, took prefabs more seriously, encouraging them with state-sponsored subsidies. Oskar Leo Kaufmann, an Austrian architect, designed one house, the OA.SYS (Open Architecture System), especially for North America.
One of these was recently built in Mileses, a small town in New York, where it now sits on a rolling 132-acre property owned by Matthew and Yolanda Hranek, who wanted a weekend escape from New York City. All parts of this pristine house, including the built-in furniture, were sent from Austria in four shipping containers and assembled in less than two months by a crack team that flew from Austria and stayed in a bed-and-breakfast.
'The level of craftsmanship and material were far superior to anything I could have imagined in a prefab,' said Mr. Hranek, who was delighted with the final results but had a caution for prospective prefabbers. 'Be prepared for the turmoil and added costs of site preparation,' he said. Total costs for OA.SYS, including site preparation and the expense of housing and transport for the assemblers, came to almost $300,000.
A younger generation of designers and architects in this country are re-examining modernist themes like modularity, prefabrication and mobility. Giuseppe Lignano and Ada Tolla, partners in the Manhattan-based firm Lot-Ek, have been leaders in prefab thinking, working with inexpensive elements, especially steel shipping containers. The prototype for their Mobile Dwelling Unit (MDU) was exhibited last fall at the art museum of the University of California at Santa Barbara. It will be shown next summer in the courtyard at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Rocio Romero, a patient and persistent pioneer in the prefab boom, has managed to bring her LV House prototype into production. A model home is currently on display in Perryville, Mo., and orders are coming in, about a third of them from Southern California, according to Marshall Mayer, the chief executive of LiveModern, an online company that markets the LV. 'Modernism isn't a dirty word there,' he said.
The 1,150-square-foot LV is clad in panels of corrugated aluminum (Galvalume) and features broad sections of floor-to-ceiling glass. Parts arrive at the building site on a single flatbed truck. The basic LV kit costs $29,000 plus shipping, usually around $3,000 in North America. But buyer beware: it does not include foundation preparation, electrical, plumbing or interior finish, nor does it include the glass panels that give the house its open, modern appeal.
Homeowners must arrange with local contractors to carry out those parts of the process, and Mr. Mayer estimates that these costs can run from $50,000 to $100,000. Even so, the total cost is still perhaps $100,000 or less.
Ms. Romero has also designed and built a rudimentary unit that she calls the Fish Camp house, or 'an adult treehouse.' While this is not yet in production, she hopes to market the Fish Camp, a modest 12-by-24-foot cottage, this spring at budget prices.
One big modular home manufacturer, Royal Homes, in Toronto, may be playing godfather to the mass production of modernist prefab homes. It is coming out with the Q series of modular houses designed by the Toronto-based firm of Kohn Shnier Architects. The Q series will have three different models ranging from 625 to 1,000 square feet and starting around $100,000. 'I wanted to design a product that was affordable and as accessible to the general public as Ikea furniture,' said Lloyd Alter, who is that rare exception in the mass housing trade: a trained architect with a sensibility for clean, modern lines. (He attended the architecture program at the University of Toronto in the 1970's.)
Royal Homes plans to go into production on the Q series and on a larger home called the Glidehouse in the next few months. The Glidehouse was designed by Michelle Kaufmann, a 35-year-old architect based in San Francisco. She and her husband, Kevin Cullen, initially developed the house for themselves for a half-acre lot in Marin County. 'We wanted to make it as green and sustainable as possible,' Ms. Kaufmann said. When several friends said, 'Hey, we want something like that!' Ms. Kaufmann took the next step.
She contacted home manufacturers through her company, MKarchitecture, but she had a rude awakening. 'At first they ignored me altogether,' she said. When she did reach someone it was only to hear, Why would anyone want a modernist house? 'We have so many nice styles already available,' they told her, traditional house styles with names like the Dutchess, the Brewster and the Patriot.
But Royal Homes was one manufacturer that showed genuine interest. 'What impressed me was it was one of dozens of prefab designs floating around that was ultimately buildable on today's production-line equipment,' Mr. Alter said. Royal Homes and Britco, a company based in Vancouver, will begin making Glidehouse this year. 'I have a lot of people already interested,' Mr. Alter said.
The standard Glidehouse is a 14-by-48-foot box designed to fit on a flatbed truck. The house has a slightly pitched shed roof made of standing-seam metal. Exterior walls are made of corrugated Corten steel that has been allowed to rust and turn a deep red. One full wall of the house has sliding glass doors; the opposite interior wall is made from birch panels that slide to reveal storage units (hence the name, Glidehouse).
A narrow deck runs around the front of the house. Wherever possible, Ms. Kaufmann introduced sustainable materials -- split bamboo floors, countertops made from a new concrete product that uses recycled paper, coal and granite ash.
Beginning on May 15, a demonstration version of the Glidehouse will be erected on the grounds of Sunset Magazine's headquarters in Menlo Park. It is one of the featured events at the magazine's annual Celebration Weekend, a lifestyle and product festival.
'There's a great pent-up demand for solutions to the housing problem,' said Dan Gregory, the home editor of Sunset, who looked at many of the prefab offerings but was most impressed by the Glidehouse. 'It's well proportioned and handsome and creates a strong connection to the outdoors,' he said. 'It reinvents the Eichler homes for today in a prefabricated, manufactured house.'
The standard version of the Glidehouse (at 672 square feet) will go for $81,000, including kitchen, bathroom and one bedroom. The next one up, the 1,344-square-foot two-bedroom house, is $161,000. 'Good design allows you to live comfortably with smaller spaces,' said Mr. Alter of Royal Home.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"When the Party's Over, It's All Serenity and Light
WHEN the dance beat dies and the stragglers disperse, Tom Whitman heads to the hills above the Sunset Strip for a little peace.
An event planner catering to Hollywood's gay community, he stages 200 or so parties a year, including Wonderland, the largest of the city's Gay Pride events, which will be held Saturday on Paramount Studios' back lot.
A party boy needs a place to unwind. So three or four nights a week, well after 1 a.m., he drives his silver Porsche convertible up the twisting back roads of Silver Lake, the once rough-at-the-edges neighborhood now populated by hipsters and musicians, to a 1921 Spanish bungalow he renovated last year as his refuge from all things rowdy and raucous.
'My job means being around thousands of people talking and dancing and having fun,' Mr. Whitman said. 'When I come home I want to simplify my life.'
The house is designed for calm, starting with the black slate steppingstones that meander across his abbreviated thatch of lawn and the pocket-size rock garden with beach pebbles and a trickling water basin that manages to feel authentically Asian.
The bungalow inside is simple, verging on austere, with little deviation from dark-stained wood, white walls and stainless steel. Mr. Whitman, 35, who bought the house two years ago for $600,000, outlawed any carpets or color. 'I never wanted it to be a crazy, vibrant place,' he said last month in a tour of the place, which he moved into in September. 'I don't think that's relaxing.'
He added: 'It may be a gay man's house, but it's masculine. It's not fussy.'
The only decorations are a series of Mr. Whitman's sepia-tone photographs of far-flung spots like the Hagia Sofia in Istanbul and a Roman fountain by Bernini. The pictures reflect Mr. Whitman's itinerant upbringing; his father was an Air Force colonel, and the family moved every two or three years around Europe and America. The bungalow is the first residence he has owned, and he said he sees it as his first real home. 'Home was always where my parents were,' he said. 'This is my first opportunity to translate the idea of home into a physical place.'
Mr. Whitman's architect, Michael Neumayr, also lives in Silver Lake, about a mile away in a renovated cottage he shares with his wife, Pia DeLeon,  a lighting consultant whose clients include Brad Pitt and Kanye West. She is also an owner of Plug Lighting (pluglighting.com), a West Hollywood store regarded by California designers as the West Coast's pre-eminent source of modernist lighting.
When Mr. Neumayr, who grew up in a remote part of Austria, settled in Silver Lake two years ago with Ms. DeLeon, he was unaware that the neighborhood was a showcase of Austrian design. R. M. Schindler and Richard Neutra, the Austrian masters of modernism, moved to Los Angeles in the 1920's after working for Frank Lloyd Wright in Wisconsin and Illinois, and built a disproportionate number of homes in Silver Lake, in part because their spare, progressive designs appealed to the movie industry's creative community, which was then concentrated there. Like his countrymen, Mr. Neumayr has found that Austrian modernism translates well to Southern California. He brought a Neutra-like modernist rigor to Mr. Whitman's bungalow, most evident in the kitchen, which has black lacquer cabinets and a 14-foot-long island with a black slate countertop. 'I'm not into manufactured materials,' Mr. Neumayr said. 'I like the beauty of humble natural materials like wood, metal, glass and stone, the materials you can find in any old Austrian farmhouse.'
Oddly enough, Mr. Neumayr also brought a taste for Asian tradition. At first a skeptic, he began experimenting with feng shui while renting part of a 12th-century castle outside Munich, and came to believe in its benefits. At Mr. Whitman's house, feng shui influenced the placement of the path and fountain at the entrance ('the East is considered the direction of wealth') and the careful symmetry of the floor plan ('you should feel like it's calm and balanced').
Feng shui also encouraged Mr. Neumayr to position the Bosch range in the cooking island so that Mr. Whitman faces guests while frying steaks or stirring soup. 'It's much better if you can look at people and talk to them while you're cooking rather than face a cubicle,' Mr. Neumayr said.
As a painter and a director of two animated short films, Mr. Whitman brought his own visual acuity to the renovation; the men say they pushed each other, particularly in the detailing. The master bathroom, for example, attained a level of refinement neither would have achieved on his own, with its painstakingly assembled oak wood floors, frosted glass, stainless steel and slate. A custom-designed black concrete sink and vanity stand in front of a mirrored wall with an integrated medicine cabinet. The materials seamlessly flow into one another without a single lip or overlap. 'It was the hardest thing I've ever done,' Mr. Neumayr said.
They chose to keep much of the front of the house, including its original white stucco facade, either intact or close to its original condition, and added white doors. The house grows more modern and the palette turns darker as you walk to the back where three French doors open onto a yard with views of the Hollywood sign and seating of poured concrete and ipe, a durable hardwood from South America, built around a fire pit made of Balinese lava stone.
Their collaborative push for refinement was not without its costs: the renovation budget tripled to $300,000.
Their only point of contention was the refrigerator. Mr. Neumayr advocated a compact version fashionable in Europe, in part because it would integrate neatly into the kitchen. 'But I'm an American,' Mr. Whitman said, 'and I wanted a big American refrigerator.'
They settled on a Frigidaire big enough for Mr. Whitman's ample supplies of Corona, wine and leftovers from Sunday afternoon barbecues.
By Mr. Neumayr's description, the completed house is mostly about its lighting. 'It's very theatrical,' he said, 'without being Las Vegas.' Of course, he may say that because Ms. DeLeon provided the lighting, choosing luminous hanging sculptures that glow against the subdued furnishings and white walls. 'Before now I'd always thought of lighting as an afterthought,' Mr. Whitman said. 'Pia taught me that the drama of a room comes from its lighting.'
In the master bedroom, for example, matching Drop pendants made of blown glass with halogen bulbs by Heinrich Fiedeler and Michael Raasch add a subtle industrial touch. Over the dining table hangs Clara, a pendant designed by Mr. Neumayr with dark wood and lampshades. (The couple met when Ms. DeLeon stopped to admire his design for the Clara lamp at a lighting show in 1999.) 'I wanted Tom's house to be lit in such a way that when he's entertaining, it's very sexy and diaphanous,' she said. 'It was important that the lighting be unobtrusive, so you noticed only the light, not the fixture. I wanted there to be a tactile feel to the light.'
At night the house glows like a lantern as Mr. Whitman passes the Coronas and turns up the fire pit. 'For me, hanging out with friends doesn't mean going to a bar,' he said. 'Because of my job, it's the last thing I want to do. It's nice to be away from all that. It's nice to be here.'
Design Notebook",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design's Endless Summer
THE blockbuster show here right now is 'Tutankhamen and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs' at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
But for those interested in modern design, a small exhibit at the Pasadena Museum of California Art could be the portal to equally amazing discoveries -- an antechamber to lost riches of the last golden age of American design.
The museum's second design biennial, which will end on Sunday, is a juried selection of contemporary California design that includes examples from obvious suspects like Apple Computer in Cupertino and Oakley, the eyewear designer, in Foothill Ranch.
But in the spirit of a remarkable series of exhibitions called 'California Design,' mounted by the now defunct Pasadena Art Museum and its director, Eudorah M. Moore, from the 1950's to the 1970's, the biennial also includes independents like Lauren Saunders in Ventura, who knits paintings as pillows; Trina Turk, a fashion designer in Alhambra; Bluelounge Design, a four-man office in Pasadena that designs everything from footwear to furniture; and Osborn, an architectural firm in Glendale that developed a set of paint stencils able to reclad an elementary school building quickly, with energetic color and pattern.
This is California, where even the weather feels both fortuitous and designed.
'California has a sense of -- why not, let's try it,' Ms. Moore said in a telephone conversation last week. She said of her exhibitions, 'There was a brilliant optimism to what people were making and doing, and I thought it was important to record it.' The shows, which were hugely popular at the time, are now largely forgotten outside the state.
'California Design: The Legacy of West Coast Craft and Style,' a book by Jo Lauria, an independent curator, and Suzanne Baizerman, a curator of craft and decorative arts at the Oakland Museum, to be published next month by Chronicle Books, will revisit Ms. Moore's work and California's midcentury moment in the sun.
With its integral interests in craft and design, from furnishings to products to environmental art, outdoors as well as indoors, and fashion, too, California's contribution to the American imagination at home is something so ubiquitous now as to seem commonplace. We call it lifestyle.
California, characterized by the pop culture it created in music and movies, insisted that design was pop culture too, there to be used by all, in its every aspect.
As Pasadena's current biennial makes clear, California as a force in design, relevant precisely because it is regional, is not a thing of the past. It is an endless summer. If globalization is now a fond idea for industry looking to design to increase sales, California designers and their output seem continuing proof of the potential of the local climate.
'If Columbus had discovered California, there wouldn't be an East Coast,' said Gere Kavanaugh, a designer in Los Angeles whose clients have included Nissan, Hallmark, Max Factor and PepsiCo, and who was included in 'California Design.' Ms. Kavanaugh shared a studio with Frank Gehry, now one of the state's favorite sons, in the 1960's and 70's. 'All the major car companies in the world have a design studio here, I mean every single one, whether Japanese or European,' said Dominic Symons, who founded Bluelounge. 'They do all the advance concepts out here, and you wonder why that is.' Bluelounge is currently at work on interface design for Panasonic DVD and DVR players.
Ms. Turk, the fashion designer, said, 'I think a lot of major trends that have happened over the past 30 years have come from California.' Ms. Turk mentioned the importance of denim, especially innovative denim, the current surf wear influence, and the gradual 'casualization' of fashion generally.
'A totally California thing,' she said, sitting in her office at a plywood desk designed by Charles Eames, a California designer.
'I think California is the center of the universe,' she said, laughing at her prejudice.
For anyone not familiar with the original 'California Design' exhibits or their catalogs, now highly collectible books, Ms. Moore's exhaustive project is an astounding treasure. For every recognizable name like Sam Maloof, the dean of studio furniture makers, or Harrison McIntosh, a pre-eminent potter, there is a wealth of influential unknowns: ceramists, weavers, industrial designers, glassblowers and jewelry makers.
But what is California design?
'I think it's fair to say the climate and culture and geography are a big influence,' said Michael Downes, a designer with Giant Bicycle Company in Newbury Park, whose 'Fashion Bikes,' a pair of women's sport bicycles that look more like flip-flops than machines with gears, are included in the Pasadena biennial. The bike's foot pedals are flower petals. 'If you imagine yourself riding these products, it's a perfectly beautiful day in California, as opposed to winter in Minnesota. It's an illusion, but California represents an ideal.'
But would Mr. Downes consider himself a California designer?
'It's an interesting question. Technically, I'm English and I work for a Taiwanese company,' he said. 'But, yeah.'
More broadly, as values that helped form designs, Ms. Moore and others characterized California's cultural climate and landscape as open and permissive, like stretches of blue sea or sky, explorative and adventurous, ripe with possibility and peopled by those who sought that out.
'Designers came here because they could do what they wanted to and not feel constrained by conventions,' said Bill Stern, director of the Museum of California Design, which organizes traveling exhibitions and education programs. 'In the postwar period, there was an enormous influx of people to California because of employment. In 1943, 640,000 people came to California in one year. All those people needed houses, and they needed things in their houses. Designers were coming from all over the country, because there was competition to have things that were new, fresh, that hadn't been seen before.'
Charles Hollis Jones, sometimes called the father of acrylic furniture, moved to Los Angeles from Indiana in 1963, at age 18, to pursue a career in design, because the excitement in materials and technology was there, something that still draws designers over 40 years later.
'They were making canopies for airplanes, casting sheets of acrylic four inches thick and curing them in the ground for 22 days,' Mr. Hollis Jones said of the aircraft industry in California. 'They weren't making canopies for airplanes in Bloomington, Indiana.' He used the techniques on furniture, developing an A-list clientele that included architects like John Lautner and Paul Williams, decorators like Billy Haines and Arthur Elrod and the local citizenry -- Hollywood stars.
'I did 40 tissue boxes and wastepaper baskets for Sinatra,' said Mr. Hollis Jones, who was included in Ms. Moore's 'California Design' in 1970 and 1976 and who is experimenting now with blowing acrylic by glassmaking techniques.
'What California design is for me, is the fact that it bends the rules and exaggerates everything,' he explained, as though the process were a sheet of plastic to work with. 'We're not afraid here. You can have a dream and you can make it come true.'
Lauren Saunders, who is included in the Pasadena biennial, quit an important job in the apparel business in 2001 and moved with her fiancé, Daniel Vehse, an industrial designer, from Los Angeles to Ventura, where they live and work in a small law office built in the 1950's, on a street that overlooks the ocean.
For Ms. Saunders, it was something of a political act, an element of design not unknown to California, where by the 1970's, and the end of Ms. Moore's series, designers were vociferously invoking craft as a reaction to mass production and corporate inflexibility.
Though her hand-loomed pillows show a range of local influences -- one collection, Cypress, was inspired by the colors and shapes of driftwood picked up beachcombing after a storm -- Ms. Saunders is also a California designer by intent.
'I wanted to lead a more satisfying life,' she said, sitting in her living room, her work stacked on the dining table. 'Create something that had value that I could be really proud of.'
Ms. Saunders, who designed apparel fabrics and described the business as 'a bunch of people running around like they're curing cancer,' talked last week of her interest in working with other small independent companies run by women, and the idea of employing women who could bring their children to work, with a rotating responsibility for child care.
A native of Michigan who studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, Ms. Saunders moved to Los Angeles reluctantly, to take a job in 1993.
'I didn't want to come out to California,' she said. 'It might as well have been the South.'
Now, Ms. Saunders speaks comfortably of being a California designer, in part because of the artistic individuality it implies, and in part because of what she calls her 'weird utopian desire' to do the right thing.
If you measure success by who succeeds you, Ms. Moore has every reason to be proud.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"New Art's Interior Motive
JAMES HYDE, an artist whose new paintings -- six- and nine-foot-square throw pillows -- are slumped against the walls at the Brent Sikkema gallery in Chelsea, quoted Matisse when asked about his interest in interior design.
'Art should be a soft armchair for the tired businessman,' Mr. Hyde said.
At Tom Sachs's studio on Centre Street, a red Knoll International trademark logo, meticulously painted by the artist, graces his new sculpture: a D.J.'s double turntable.
'You can have the best concept in the world,' said Mr. Sachs, who was wearing a black rubber-band bracelet that read, 'You are gifted in many ways.' 'But if it doesn't look good, what's the point?'
For years, design has wanted to be art, quoting every art source it can think of, appealing to collectors and showing up, a self-conscious guest, in galleries and museums. The best work was painterly or sculptural, but it still didn't get the respect.
While design has been worrying about its artfulness, a generation of artists working now and exhibiting widely are investigating design, from residential architecture to interior and furniture design to home renovation, envying its ability to reach the public and to be relevant.
'Artists are really seduced by the power that design has to insert itself into people's lives,' said Andrea Zittel, an artist represented with nine others in 'Against Design,' an exhibition opening tomorrow at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Installation pieces include Ikea shelving, carpeting, kitchenettes and lighting. Angela Bulloch's 'Bean Bag Set' is just that.
Ms. Zittel's signature 'A-Z Living Unit' is there: a fold-up kit of severely condensed living space, with a mattress, a dressing mirror and a hot plate. In creating an appliance that simplified life with elegant functionality, Ms. Zittel used design to make a social comment. 'I became interested in how design inverts values,' she said, 'like simplicity, which is associated with poverty. But design has made it glamorous.'
Steven Beyer, the exhibition's curator, said, 'It's a funny little generational moment.' The artists included in the group are largely in their mid- to late 30's. 'Most have been affected by the built environment -- more affected than by painting and sculpture in museums.'
He added: 'These artists are very savvy about the commercial world, that if you're going to survive, you have to have something to sell. This is closer to a designer's sensibility -- that kind of practicality.'
The show includes two queen-size beds, with matching nightstands and dressers, by Jorge Pardo, a California sculptor, whose clients live with and sleep on the pieces. Mr. Pardo lives in a hillside house in Los Angeles that he designed in 1998 as an installation piece, '4166 Sea View Lane,' commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art.
'I became interested in interior design and architecture living in L.A.,' said Mr. Pardo, who admires Richard Neutra and R. M. Schindler. 'The museum situation is limited. Some of the most interesting objects are houses.' Mr. Pardo is now working on houses for other people.
'I'm getting invitations that are pretty straightforward design,' he said of recent commissions. 'Design is a lot easier to understand. It's like collecting baseball cards.'
The right kind of design is also intensely influential right now. It has not escaped the notice of the art world. With the hybridization of interior decoration and fashion design by magazines like Wallpaper and by advertisers like Calvin Klein and Gucci and with the ubiquity of graphic design in music videos and on the Internet, a younger generation will crowd a party at the Gansevoort Gallery, which exhibits design, as quickly as it will the Gagosian Gallery, which shows art. The high-rolling collecting market for midcentury modern furniture has helped, too.
Mr. Hyde, the artist, said he believed that the emergence of Charles and Ray Eames, designers and artists who have become new American folk heroes because of the recent exhibition of their work, and the popularity of their chairs were responsible for much of the acceptance of design among artists.
'I'm sitting in one as we speak,' he said. 'The Eameses engaged their lives so much with their work. The truth is, how do you make significance in the cultural area? You can make an aesthetic statement with a chair as well as a painting. Good design has become something philosophic.'
Deborah Solomon, an art critic, thinks that the design citations are frequently evidence of disappointment in the failure of 20th-century art's utopian social agendas.
'The furniture is intended as a symbol for the failed dreams of modernism,' she said. 'Art can't save us. It's just something to sit on.'
The idea of placing domestic fixtures in unlikely contexts or embodying conceptual thinking in furniture is not new. Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades early in the last century and the work of sculptors like Scott Burton, who produced chairs in the 1970's, comprise a short history of it.
Rachel Whiteread's 'Untitled (One Hundred Spaces),' a room-size installation of resin casts of the spaces beneath chairs, which was included in the recent 'Sensation' exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, investigated the resonance of a simple habitation, like sitting. The blocks look like archaeological artifacts, brushed, cleaned and presented in a museum, from a people who can now only be conjectured: postwar Britain as Pompeii.
'Living in a time with so much demographic and technological change that is directly affecting domestic environments, artists and architects alike are aware that here is fundamental space -- domestic space -- that can't be taken for granted in its meaning,' said Joel Sanders, an architect.
Clay Ketter, included in the Philadelphia show, works strictly with what he knows. Mr. Ketter builds sculpture with shelving and kitchen cabinets that he buys at Ikea.
He agreed with Mr. Beyer that it is a generational issue. 'We were all born in the 1960's and 70's, when 'norms' and 'standards' were truly mass-produced, as design,' Mr. Ketter said. 'Rather than buck that, we embrace it. I walk into Ikea, and I'm a consumer. I buy a kitchen, but I make art out of it.'
Jim Isermann, whose color-field braided rugs, Orlon carpet canvases and atomic-age interior decor were the subject of a previous show, teaches himself his artistic techniques from home-hobbyist books.
For other artists, working with the domestic detail of being at home is working with what isn't known but what must be uncovered through autobiography.
Ms. Zittel questions the pleasures of solitude, designing trailers as art to travel in. 'I think about this all the time,' she said. 'I'm 34. I've lived alone most of my life. It's excruciating to try to share a house with even one other person. We all crave 'going home' and being alone and being safe, but I think it weakens us.'
Last year, Rirkrit Tiravanija, a New York artist, replicated his East Village apartment in plywood, with a working kitchen and bathroom, for Gavin Brown's Enterprise, an exhibition space on West 15th Street. When in residence, the artist cooked Thai curries for guests.
The recent collaborations between art and design have also created cooperation in both directions. Rem Koolhaas, the Dutch architect, has commissioned bathroom fixtures from Joep van Lieshout, a Dutch artist included in the Philadelphia show, who makes sculptures that are sinks and tubs.
For Mr. Sachs, the sculptor, the association between the two fields seems natural. Mr. Sachs studied architecture for two years in London, including an informal internship with Tom Dixon, a designer, and later worked with Frank Gehry on Mr. Gehry's bent-maple furniture collection for Knoll. In a recent visit, Mr. Sachs, 33, seemed comfortable with the fact that art and design's current cross-referencing was fashionable. Mr. Sachs trades on it, dropping names in his art, like Knoll or Hermes, like a restaurateur shaving truffles onto rice and then charging by the ounce.
In his last show at the Mary Boone Gallery in September, Mr. Sachs displayed 1,100 nine-millimeter cartridges in an Alvar Aalto Savoy vase, which opening-night guests were invited to take as favors, a move that provoked the police, who arrested Ms. Boone, more than critics. Mr. Sachs, who was GQ's Man of the Month in December, was not included in the Philadelphia show.
'It's work without any of the rigor or structure of anything in either the design or art worlds,' said Mr. Beyer, the curator.
Mr. Sachs, who has three assistants who were working on projects for five imminent shows, thinks his product is good. 'I approach it as a small business,' he said of his art, noting his admiration for Andy Warhol's factories and Keith Haring's Pop Shops. 'I would like to ultimately do things that more people can have, but right now we need to focus on establishing the brand.'
Mr. Sachs grew up in Westport, Conn., a neighbor of Martha Stewart's. He discovered the nexus of art and design when he was 19, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, 'seeing art like Richard Serra, then the design department on the fourth floor, which was real things,' Mr. Sachs said. He recognized Marcel Breuer's Wassily chair from 'the shrink's office.'
'Later I realized that there was no difference between Breuer and Serra, except Breuer's a better sculptor and Serra's a better architect,' he added.
Mr. Serra, an artist of a different generation, might dispute Mr. Sachs's generosity. An essay in the catalog for 'Against Design,' by Mark Robbins, the director of design at the National Endowment for the Arts, begins by quoting Mr. Serra: 'To deprive art of its uselessness is to make it other than art.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"In This Home, Dada Has a Nautical Spin
THE only sign of the house from the winding country road is a wooden post carved with a barely discernable anchor, the personal logo of the former sailor and sculptor H. C. Westermann. Up close, a visitor can see abstract animal heads jutting like gargoyles from the porch rafters.
Westermann envisioned the house here, just north of Danbury, as his landlocked harbor, a retreat from the art world and his own devastating wartime memories. Michael Rooks, an assistant curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, has called the house  Westermann's 'greatest work of art.'
'Westermann applied every discipline he practiced as an artist in the details of the house,' Mr. Rooks said. Like many of Westermann's sculptures, it is a sturdy box, built to withstand the knocks of a hostile world.
Born in Los Angeles in 1922, Horace Clifford Westermann, known as Cliff, blended Dadaism and American folk humor in an art form that was out of sync with the 1960's and 70's. His obsessive workmanship was nothing like the foundry-produced sculpture of many minimalists of his time. He had his admirers (Mies van der Rohe bought one of his first pieces, and Donald Judd was a fan), but not until last year, 20 years after his death, was Westermann described -- by the critic Robert Hughes -- as 'one of the great American talents.' Next Thursday, the first major show of Westermann's sculpture in two decades, along with prints and drawings, will move to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington. The exhibition had been at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
Westermann's sculpture is often seen as a link between the lyric boxes of Joseph Cornell and the menacing plush toys of Mike Kelley. His sensibilities were shaped to a large extent by his experiences as a gunner on aircraft carriers during World War II. In a letter home, he described a sister ship, the U.S.S. Franklin, after it was attacked by kamikaze pilots, 'engulfed in flames,  smoke, and explosions from stern to stern.' In all, 724 crewmen were killed. Weeks later, he wrote, the Franklin was 'still smoking & had a terrific list & the smell of death from her was horrible.' From these harrowing visions came his 'Death Ship' sculptures, ominous wooden hulls locked in glass cases in a sea dotted by shark fins.
Westermann studied under the G.I. Bill of Rights at the Art Institute of Chicago, supporting himself in part as a carpenter. In 1959 he married Joanna Beall, a painter, and 10 years later the couple inherited land and a caretaker's cottage here from her family. Westermann, wearing a battered straw hat and loose overalls, a cigar ever in his mouth, built much of the house himself.
Ms. Beall, who never changed a thing, lived here until her death in 1997. Two years ago, the couple next door, Dr. Ron Gaeta and Whitney Lowrey Gaeta, saw the inside of the house and immediately wanted to save it. They bought the place and now rent it to another couple.
Westermann's studio, attached by a breezeway and completed before the house was, is still packed with his obsessively arranged tools and the hardware he stashed in cigar boxes. Curls of shaved wood still dot the floor as if Westermann had just ducked out.
Dr. Gaeta, a veterinarian who once worked as a carpenter, likes to point out the trusses in the attic, which resembles the interior of a wooden ship hull, and the wooden door latches and exposed joints above the stairs. The walls are hand plastered, the mantel bricks hand shaped.
Westermann's sculpture influenced his construction efforts -- and vice versa. His 1971 'Battle to the Death in the Ice House' represents a wry comment on the difficulties of construction, said Mr. Rooks, a curator of the Chicago show. And a robotlike sculpture is titled 'Billy Penn,' after the brand name of the air ducts Westermann wrestled into place in his home. His last sculpture, 'Jack of Diamonds,' is a figure made of the mesh used in plasterwork.
Westermann acquired his craft while at sea and his sculpture descends from nautical arts like scrimshaw and ships in a bottle.  He made sea chests and strong boxes, mock tools (a hammer with two heads) and small houses of wood, metal or screen mesh.
Westermann was a connoisseur of exotic woods and often labeled the ones in his sculptures: ebony, mahogany, zebrawood. He did the same in the house: a beam is marked 'walnut,' a saw is carved on the top of one window, and a door top has an inlaid heart and arrow professing his love for his wife. Westermann inscribed his own name on a studio rafter.
Westermann worked on the house for a decade. But when he died, the house was not quite done. He never did live in it. 'Fate cheated him out of a safe haven' were the words of the art critic Robert Storr.
The timing of Westermann's death was the sort of dark joke he would have appreciated. But the hodgepodge of tools and materials in the studio makes a visitor wonder whether his refuge was not meant to be the house after all, but the building of it.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Barbecue Pits for Those With Money to Burn
SMOKE gets in their eyes -- and that's only part of the attraction. Once man cooked over an open fire in a cave. Some time later came the 1950's backyard grill, a mammoth creation etched on the landscape in brick or stone. In the 60's, more mobile chefs, or those without backyards, swore by their portable hibachis and Weber kettle grills. And then came the 80's and the portable gas-fired grills that turned summer cookery into something as romantic as, say, lighting the kitchen range.
And now? After two decades of growth, the American economy has brought a return to the backyard barbecue. Fire-hungry homeowners who want to keep up with the Dow Joneses are moving beyond rusty iron grills to a new generation of built-ins. They want fish baskets, wood-fired pizza and bread ovens, smokers and rotisseries. They may even want a designer fire pit.
That's because the experience of cooking over wood or charcoal is powerful. 'The mingling of the fragrances with the air, the unique quality of the smoke and the aroma of charcoal is very healing and purifying,' said Barrie Kavasch, a Native American food historian who maintains that fire is 'emotionally magnetic.'
Whether it's done in a primitive oven in a hole in the ground or in a rooted-in-stone artisanal outdoor command post of the sort that is becoming popular today, cooking over fire is in fact booming. Steven Raichlen, author of 'The Barbecue! Bible' (Workman, 1998), says he believes that the 'grill mania' sweeping the country is a reaction to the high-tech lives people are living. 'Grilling has a timelessness about it,' he said. 'It appeals to a primal yearning for fire-cooked food.'
In Hamilton, Mass., a seaside town north of Boston, a tall stone fireplace has a shiny stainless-steel grill and a fancy rotisserie. Its owner, Frank McClelland, a chef in Boston, lives in a new house, built a year ago, along with the outdoor hearth. 'I wanted to experience the great pleasure of cooking outside during the spring, summer and fall months,' Mr. McClelland said.
Frank Martin, the owner of Martin Grill and Oven Works, in Providence, R.I., recently made a fish basket for Mr. McClelland that attaches to the rotisserie. Mr. Martin said that the demand for expensive outdoor cooking areas is increasing and that outdoor ovens for the home have risen to 20 percent of his business, from 5 percent five years ago.
Alice Ross, a food historian who has taught courses in historical cookery in Smithtown, N.Y., for 20 years, noticed the change about two years ago. 'All of a sudden there was an interest specifically in building brick ovens and learning how to bake and cook in them,' Ms. Ross said. The demand was so great that she has added a course on the subject.
When Mr. McClelland and his family moved to Hamilton from an apartment above his Boston restaurant, L'Espalier, he hired Peter Giordano, who describes himself as a muratore. (The word is Italian for mason.) Mr. Giordano, born in Palermo, Sicily, has been building with stone since he was 14. Now 53, he and his son Peter Jr., 26, built a fireplace for Mr. McClelland that is an update of a traditional design.
The fireplace is made primarily of local field stone. The stone chimney and grill area are built on a brick base; counters and the grill are standard height, 36 inches. High-quality iron spot bricks, which cost $1.35 apiece as against 40 cents for standard bricks, was chosen. The top of the chimney is made of the same bluestone as the surrounding terrace, and a food preparation area is also made of bluestone.
Although the design is simple and timeless, it includes modern modifications, particularly inside the fireplace. For the walls, the masons used cement blocks rather than solid stone. 'If we would have built this using the ancient method, we would have had 12- to 16-inch solid walls on both sides,' Peter Giordano Sr. said. Instead they determined that stone veneer over cement blocks would be more efficient and less expensive. Yet, the cost for the fireplace still ran about $5,000, or $35 a square foot.
Worth it, Mr. McClelland said. 'When I cook at home, I love to let my hair down,' he said. 'The idea of coming out here when the weather is cool and roasting game or meat is fantastic.'
In Austin, Tex., June and Mark Chandler purchased a house four years ago and found a crumbling outdoor fireplace held together by little more than ivy. They hired Gardens, a local landscape design and construction concern, to recreate and embellish an outdoor cooking area where one had been built 70 years earlier.
Bill Bauer, an architectural designer at Gardens, was inspired by traditional Italian stone techniques to create a new oven, entertainment area, grill and terrace. He said his emphasis was on using stone the way it is supposed to be used. 'There is nothing fancy here,' he said. 'We used the simplest materials: limestone, galvanized metal and pea gravel. What this is really about it is how it is executed.'
Using blocks of white Texas limestone measuring 24 by 12 by 6 inches, Mr. Bauer made the walls of the oven tower 12 inches thick. 'Stone is meant to be heavy and big and support itself,' he said. 'In today's world, stone is often used as a veneer. In our construction, all of our stone becomes load-bearing walls.'
When the quarry stone arrived, it was in a rough rectangular shape; stonemasons reworked each block by hand to make certain the corners were crisp and straight.
The limestone blocks in the Chandlers' original terrace had been pushed up by tree roots. The masons were able to recycle the blocks for the new terrace; pea gravel was used to fill in where the roots were intruding.
The $2,500 wood-fired pizza oven the Chandlers selected came from Italy in terra-cotta sections. Although they fit together tightly, Mr. Bauer had stonemasons seal the oven entirely with a layer of cement.
The tower that houses the oven looks like a folly sitting in a Tuscan garden. It is 10 feet high with a standing-seam metal roof. Ivy climbs its walls, and the whole thing looks as if it had been on this spot for years.
The terrace is 30 feet square, including the area for the barbecue grill, storage cabinets and galvanized metal counter tops, which won't rust, set along a 19-foot-long limestone wall. Cabinet doors are made of teak and wire mesh. The total cost was about $38,000.
When Donald and Virginia Sohn were renovating a 60-foot-long terrace behind their home in Beverly Farms, Mass., 'it seemed to need a fireplace,' Mrs. Sohn said. What she had in mind was quite different from what her architect, John Pears, drew for her. Mr. Pears, who was born in South Africa, presented a hybrid of several different fireplaces he had seen in Africa.
'Particularly in Malawi, they don't do structures,' he said. 'They make a pit in the ground. Here the sunken terrace that already existed became like the pit.'
Stone walls surrounded the area, and would provide seating. It was the congeniality of a circle around a fire that inspired Mr. Pears. 'Everyone faces inward and looks at each other across this event, while people cook together,' he explained. In the end, he adapted an African concept to fit an American life style.
The fireplace consists of a 48-inch circular drum, built with bricks recycled from a chimney in a nearby carriage house. Firewood is stored on a bluestone cap above the drum. The firebox is a conical steel structure that contains the fire. Topping that is a 42-inch rotating steel grill. The grill gently spirals up and down, so food can be raised high when the fire is hot and lowered as it cools. Mr. Pears also designed a circular steel ledge, at counter height, to hold implements, plates and drinks.
Custom fabrication added to the costs.  With the architect's design fee, the tab for the Sohns' grill was nearly $15,000. But it was an instant success.
'The first party we had was in October, and the night was brisk,' Ms. Sohn said. 'As the evening drew on, the crowd sat on the walls around the fireplace.'
Whether a fire pit, a pizza oven or a fish basket added to a fireplace well anchored to the land, the new accouterments have attracted fans of entertaining outdoors. 'If you are cooking your very chic buffalo burgers on a very chic outdoor grill,' said Ms. Kavasch, the food historian, 'they do taste better.'
The Fire Bearers
AN outdoor oven is usually dome-shaped and gets as hot as 600 to 700 degrees. Wood is set inside and fired up, and afterward the coals are raked out. Baking is done directly on the oven floor.
'Correct dimensions when building an oven are critical,' said Frank Martin, owner of Martin Grill and Oven Works in Providence, R.I. 'The door height should be no more than 65 percent of the height to the top of the oven.'
Outdoor ovens begin at $5,000. Sources for them include Mr. Martin's company, at (401) 724-1491; Peter Giordano of Gloucester, Mass., (508) 283-2793, and Gardens in Austin, Tex., (512) 467-9934.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Honeycombs in Flight: Office of Tomorrow?
ANYONE who works in a cubicle knows that its shroudlike isolation bears no resemblance to real privacy. But it may come as a surprise that the people who design today's office systems agree that cubicles are long overdue for a makeover.
'When I think about having to go to a box every day and perform a job in one of those little spaces, it doesn't seem human,' said Ross Lovegrove, a British designer who was asked by the Herman Miller company -- which introduced the precursor to the cubicle concept in the 60's -- to help give new life to the spaces where roughly 60 percent of America's white-collar work force toils.
The system that the design team developed, which looks in part like a marauding raptor, might have been conceived for Sigourney Weaver's console in 'Aliens.' It is intended as an antidote to the piles of cables snaking around workers' feet.
Inspired by the computer mantra 'plug and play,' it consists of components that build up from the floor, rather than cantilevering from shoulder-height panels. A slick shell of translucent honeycombed plastic, it stands on silvery birdlike legs that attach directly to floor tiles, integrating the floor into the structure and masking cables for the computer, telephone and lights.
The approach was to think inside out. 'As we move further away from pencil and paper, the support technology needed to convey voice, power and data becomes massive,' Mr. Lovegrove said. 'The infrastructure of even 10 years ago can't handle it.' The goal was to transform the cubicle into a thing of 'lightness and grace,' he said. The system is also a lot easier to break down and reconfigure, a priority for office managers reared on notions of 'high churn' (turnover) and faced with good old downsizing.
The 'privacy' this system will provide is open to interpretation: an assortment of ethereal cotton-spandex screens that flex like wings can be snapped in place to offer some semblance of visual and audio separation. (They look great, but will they do the trick when a colleague is ranting on the phone at a spouse?) And then there are the file boxes: stacks of perforated plastic that bear an uncanny resemblance to the milk crates that another generation used to store LP's.
Still a prototype, the product -- known informally as Emma, after a grandmother of someone on the design team's staff -- is a collaboration between Interface Architectural Resources, a carpet manufacturer, and Herman Miller, the second largest manufacturer of office furniture in the country and no stranger to office innovation since it introduced the Action Office in 1964. Mr. Lovegrove's partner on the team was Stephen Peart, a designer who lives near San Francisco.
The system was previewed in June at Neocon, the trade show for the commercial furniture industry. 'Everyone was buzzing around saying, 'You've got to see it,' ' said Shashi Caan, a senior designer at Gensler, an architectural interiors firm. 'Functionally, it wasn't all that new. Conceptually, it was fascinating. By simplifying all the parts and pieces and letting them be the decorations themselves, it made a really strong statement.'
Others were most impressed by the Legolike components, which can be built up to accommodate a single worker or a team. 'It comes as close to real building blocks as I've ever seen,' said Roger Yee, editor of Contract Design, a trade magazine. 'All the parts are universal.'
'It doesn't presume how you're going to use it,' Mr. Yee said -- whether in a traditional office with freestanding furniture or in a cubicle arrangement. He said the system 'is honest enough to say it doesn't know the shape of the office of the future.'
But in a business bred on brown laminates, the translucent plastic -- inspired by 'the economy of such natural structures as honeycombs,' Mr. Lovegrove said -- raised the most eyebrows. Kent Gawart, a business development executive at Herman Miller, which hopes to introduce the system next year, said many people at Neocon thought the plastic 'went way beyond being viable.'
So it's back to the drawing board for a few more embellishments -- namely a nice mahogany desktop, the kind the boss always gets.  DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; At Armory Show, Shocks in the Rearview Mirror
RUFUS FOSHEE, a ceramics dealer from Camden, Me., was talking about his display of 18th-century mocha ware -- all butterscotch bands, ice-blue stripes and polychrome polka dots -- but his words could easily be the leitmotif of the Fall Antiques Show: 'What always impresses me is its infinite variety.'
There is much that is familiar at this year's 19th edition of the show, which opens today at the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue and 67th Street and runs through Sunday. Here, luscious creamware plates; there, fancy Hitchcock chairs. But as usual, beyond the bread-and-butter brigade lies a world of objects that will startle jaded eyes and cause jaws to drop -- and this time around, as much out of politically correct outrage as desire.
'We'll probably be stoned,' Virginia Cave said. She and Elle Shushan, the owners of Augustus Decorative Arts in Manhattan, bravely appointed their booth with a collectible guaranteed to provoke animal rights picketers: taxidermy. And not just any kind of stuffed animals, but the perversely anthropomorphic, mid-19th-century British variety.
In a shadow box carved like a castle's bay window, a pair of gentleman squirrels, one puffing a cheroot, sit at a table playing a game of cribbage. A stamp-size label declares the scene to be the work of a Birmingham professional of the 1860's, 'J. Lawrence, Taxidermist and Preservationist of Birds, Animals, Etc.' It is priced at $9,000. 'I like animals to have employment,' Ms. Shushan said. 'Otherwise, they're just dead and give me the creeps.'
Creeps are in the eye of the beholder, of course. Another of Ms. Shushan and Ms. Cave's offerings is a glass dome diorama, circa 1860, depicting two frogs in a duel ($4,000). The sword of one is thrust through the chest of its opponent, the wound accented with dribbles of painted blood.
Antismoking activists should proceed immediately to the booth of Linda and Howard Stein, where 68 smoking tables from the 1920's and 1930's are on display. A painted silhouette of a pop culture or kitsch icon -- from a life-size Airedale to turbaned Nubian boys to the battling cartoon couple Maggie and Jiggs -- holds aloft a shelf just large enough for an ashtray.
'It's a collection I helped put together and am now helping disperse,' Mrs. Stein said on Tuesday morning, as she arranged the tables in neat rows like a photographer readying a graduating class for its yearbook picture. Prices range from $450 to thousands of dollars.
In the category of beautifully bizarre is the 10 1/2-foot-long 'confidence decoy' being sold by Walters Benisek Art and Antiques. Don Walters jokingly called it the 'Trojan swan.' Priced at $38,500 and probably made in the Northeastern United States during the 1880's, it is a rowboat cunningly disguised as a giant white bird.
It is a gorgeous apparition, evoking other famous swan boats, from those floating on the Boston Common to the one Mad Ludwig of Bavaria used to ply the waters of his fantastical grottoes. But those have something innocent and Disneylandish about them; the Walters Benisek version, on the other hand, has a sinister practicality.
Ducks have learned to consider a swan a symbol of safety, Mr. Walters explained. Flying ducks would see the swan, come in for a landing and  lose their lives to the hunter camouflaged by leaves in the boat's belly.
Another bird in the show -- equally powerful visually but minus the undercurrent of gore -- is a majestic wirework eagle with a four-foot wingspan and talons tensed ($2,495). It is offered by Greg K. Kramer, a dealer in Robesonia, Penn.
Made in the 1920's or 30's, apparently as a ceiling ornament, the wirework is as intricate as re-embroidered lace. Its lengths of wire -- now satisfyingly rusted -- are bent into small hoops and then stacked atop one another to imitate feathers. The result is a semitransparent, three-dimensional bird that is basically calligraphy in the sky, though Mr. Kramer said it would look just as good closer to earth covered with ivy.
Another calligraphy-spare design is the late 19th-century New England rocking horse in the booth of Ricco/ Maresca. Made of painted bent wood, the toy ($35,000), unlike the classic, hyper-realistic rocking horses in many nurseries, is barely there. Curved, thread-like links of wood provide the merest sketch of a body, while the carved head sits atop as if fixed on a pike.
A user friendly attitude pervades the entire show, where everything seems made to be touched and enjoyed. Here, evocativeness, not perfection, is key. Purple ink stains of long ago have discolored the writing surface of Peter Tillou's prize, a circa-1760 secretary and bookcase on stand ($225,000). 'You can see that it was really used, not just looked at,' Mr. Tillou said.
User friendly appreciation is the driving force behind a gallery that is making its Fall Antiques Show debut: Hallam & Swope, a shop specializing in 18th-century and early 19th-century furniture, European objects and early photographs, all with a neo-classical bent.
The booth's formality of content might seem out of place here. The Fall Antiques Show is populated with oddment, after all, like an 1892 cast-iron lawn sprinkler (Richard and Eileen Dubrow, $3,500) to a collection of vintage plastic swizzle sticks arranged on plywood boards in radiant patterns recalling English country house armor exhibits (Ricco/ Maresca, $2,000). But Hallam & Swope fits with the funk just fine.
For instance, instead of propping the booth with looming allegorical paintings and overwrought painted glass, Jonathan Hallam and Tom Swope, who live and work in Ancram, N.Y., decided to accent with hiply off-kilter works, like a golden frame holding eight images of a Bonaparte princess, each the size of a playing card. The pudgy princess is captured in a variety of poses in a Paris photography studio of the 1860's, her hoop skirt boldly bordered with an oversize Greek-key motif.
This small, slightly comic group -- the princess looks stately but faintly bored, her prominent bosom wedged into an alarmingly tight bodice -- helps bring the furniture, all of it early 19th-century American and fairly bold in proportion, down a blessed peg. So does the booth's Gap-casual decor, which flies in the face of so many typical antiquarian displays with their elaborate wallpaper borders and expensive carpets: Hallam & Swope depends solely on pale yellow painted walls and wall-to-wall seagrass.
'It's so younger collectors, beginning collectors, don't get afraid,' Mr. Hallam, an Englishman with the cleft chin and steely eyes of a younger Tom Selleck.
Mr. Swope concurred. 'You don't have to get dressed up to enjoy antiques,' he said. 'Jeans are fine.'
The Fall Antiques Show, with 70 dealers, is open today and tomorrow from 11 A.M. to 8 P.M.; on Saturday to 7 P.M., and on Sunday to 6 P.M. Tickets are $10. For information, call (212) 777-5218.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"House at the End of the Line
THE modest compound where Saddam Hussein spent his last few hours of freedom offered a curious mixture of squalor, on the one hand, and on the other a selection of domestic items that had been carefully chosen, by Mr. Hussein or someone close to him, to support a life on the run.
American soldiers may have called the underground hiding place a rat's nest and a spider hole, but in the small house up above were countless, if chaotically arrayed, signs of civilization, even refinement. The books scattered about included Dostoyevsky's 'Crime and Punishment,' some poetry and a volume on the interpretation of dreams. The kitchen contained orange marmalade, tea, candied figs and baklava, along with shampoo that promised to keep the dictator's matted hair from drying out.
For Iraqis and others in the Arab world, the scene must have reeked of shame: it wasn't the lack of grandeur so much as the fact that Mr. Hussein was found by American soldiers in a hole in the ground and looked up to see their boots. (In a part of the world where to show someone the soles of your shoes is an insult, this was no small matter.)
And for a leader who was obsessed with architecture and who turned the iconography of his countless palaces into logos for his regime, the physical circumstances of his last days and his capture must have rankled. For many in the West, though, the images of that hut carried with them an entirely different set of associations. It suggested other infamous places of last resort, like Hitler's concrete bunker, the Unabomber's rustic cabin or the motel room that is a staple of movies about fugitives on the lam. Maybe it was reminiscent of the efforts by stoics, priests and others to seek out solitude and primitive conditions, in the desert or below ground, to test, reform or purify themselves. Or of Thoreau's one-room cabin on Walden Pond, built by the writer, for $28, as a place 'to front the essentials of life,' which Mr. Hussein surely found himself doing as well, if by necessity rather than choice.
Our judgment may be dulled by the romance of the compound's agrarian simplicity, by its collection of trees heavy with fruit and by its proximity to the Tigris River. Maybe we imagined how much it might be improved with a little work. Fix the roof, replace the plastic furniture with a couple of Eames chairs and plant a manicured lawn rolling down to the river's edge, and you would have yourself a pretty good approximation of a second home in the Hudson Valley -- or maybe somewhere with a more arid climate, like Arizona or San Diego -- ready for publication in the pages of a shelter magazine. You could probably get the place, sheep pen and all, for a song.
If that mental leap seems a bit much, consider the extent to which 'simple,' 'small' and 'rustic' have become terms of architectural endearment in America and Europe in recent years.
Even as they continue to celebrate 15-foot ceilings and industrial-strength kitchens capable of turning out meals for 60, the design media have fully endorsed modesty and the clarifying appeal of a reduced floor plan. Sometimes they seem ready to suggest that we all pack up and move to Lilliput.
House Beautiful now dedicates its January issue each year to the pleasures and challenges of decorating a cramped house or apartment. The stories carry headlines like 'Tiny Triumph' and 'Small on Space -- Big on Comfort.'
And there is now a shelf's worth of books on huts and cabins and other small residences, most of them published in the last five or six years. These include 'A Hut of One's Own,' by Ann Cline; Marisa Bartolucci's 'Living Large in Small Spaces'; and 'The Not So Big House,' by Sarah Susanka.
The modern roots of this phenomenon go back at least as far as 1753, when the Frenchman Marc-Antoine Laugier published a treatise that suggested a return to architectural first principles and included a now-famous illustration of a primitive hut fashioned from four tree trunks.
But it has always been felt most powerfully in the United States, where Americans lurch between two extremes: the urge to acquire (or supersize) and the nagging sense that it would be better to pull back and live in a more basic, perhaps even more honest, way.
We are now plagued by that conflict more acutely than ever. All one has to do to understand that is to see an S.U.V. parked next to a Mini Cooper, or a copy of Real Simple magazine sitting on the coffee table in a McMansion. Still, it doesn't hurt when a seemingly unrelated event in a country on the other side of the world explains the same lesson.
Along those lines, it must mean something that the word redoubt, which so many reporters trotted out to describe the defensive and temporary nature of Mr. Hussein's compound, is so closely related to the word reduce. Redoubt comes to us indirectly from the Latin 'reductus,' a concealed place, a form of the Latin verb reducere, to withdraw. Hiding out, in other words, means cutting back. And vice versa.
Of course, only in an exceptionally wealthy country do people have the luxury of dreaming of a stripped-down existence. In most parts of the world -- including, it seems safe to assume, among the farmhouses lining the Tigris -- the fantasies move in the other direction, from smaller to bigger, from dirt to marble.
Indeed, evidence of that is on view just a few miles away from the hut, in the village where Mr. Hussein was born. Though he often claimed Tikrit as his hometown, his birthplace was actually a small place called Awja. In the 1980's, he leveled the village's modest houses and replaced them with several hundred new residences for his relatives and others.
The new neighborhood, now encircled in barbed wire strung by American soldiers, formed the Iraqi equivalent of a gated community; it was symbolic of the peculiar kind of upward mobility available to those members of a totalitarian society lucky enough to possess a tie to the man in charge.
Forget tiny triumphs and the not-so-big house. What the houses in Awja suggest, in their approximation of the American dream, is that for the Iraqis favored by Mr. Hussein, the ultimate perk was the chance to live like the enemy.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; Living Askew in a Community of Tilted Terrains
IN a decision that has surprised the Japanese architectural establishment, the city of Tokyo recently awarded the New York artists-turned-architects Shusaku Arakawa and Madeline Gins a special award for their plan to develop a two-phase, $7 billion housing and commercial project on approximately 75 acres of landfill in Tokyo Bay.
The pair, who competed against several hundred design professionals in what was basically an idea contest, will now proceed to the feasibility and financing stage as technical details are developed and a consortium of developers is organized.
For many decades, crowded Tokyo has been looking to the sea for land, and starting with the eminent Japanese architect Kenzo Tange in the 1960's, architects have speculated about occupying Tokyo Bay with sweeping utopian visions. Most of the proposals involved heroic megastructures of many stories.
The apartment structures of Mr. Arakawa and Ms. Gins's Reversible Destiny City are five- to seven-story walk-ups that curve with the topo graphical contours of the landfill in tightly clustered neighborhoods that have the labyrinthine organization of souks and medieval towns. The artists plan to extend the topographic contours into the living units themselves -- all garden apartments -- where there will be level changes between rooms and even within the same room. 'No floors, only terrains,' Ms. Gins said.
When the design was exhibited at the downtown Guggenheim SoHo in 1997, Roberta Smith, art critic for The New York Times, wrote: 'The main weakness with the architectural works is simply that Arakawa and Ms. Gins give little indication of how their layered, artificial landscapes and fractured, convoluted buildings, which keep people in a state of constant disequilibrium and unbalance, would actually work on a day-to-day basis.'
Kei Minohara, a Tokyo planner who chaired the selection jury, explained that 'the municipal government has not committed to making this a reality because it's a very conceptual project so far that has to be made practicable, to conform to technical and legal standards.'
Mr. Minohara added: 'But it has a chance of being built, and I hope it is. The quality and depth of the project are unusual. The modernist city conceived by architects like Le Corbusier wasn't very popular, and some planners are returning to traditional cities, but this landscape scheme is a new prototype, that's for sure.'
The controversial proposal, which the designers said could mean approximately 6,000 units built in a five-year period, recalls such famous gardens of delight and quandary as the Italian Renaissance estate of Bomarzo (built with a leaning tower and a grotesque edifice with a gaping mouth). Scrolling atop a skein of roadways, streets and parking, which Mr. Arakawa says will be configured like a theater, the lush terrain is both naturalistic and eerily artificial -- very hilly, but layered, with tilted and sloped strata of walkways, building sites and outdoor spaces. Units in the middle- to high-income project may be rented.
Though unfamiliar with the details of the proposed project, Takashi Hashimoto, a financial analyst and real estate specialist in the Tokyo office of Salomon Smith Barney, said there was generally a demand for high-quality rental housing in Tokyo, and that such a substantial number of units could be absorbed by the market if built in stages.
Mr. Arakawa and Ms. Gins have dealt in environmental experiments for several decades, building gallery installations that address the perceptual issues of how the eye and body see and make sense of the world. An elliptically shaped sunken park, featuring a house based on contradictory curved and straight mazes, was completed in 1995 in the Japanese town of Yoro. The hiking shoes and helmets required for the topographically difficult terrain, and the occasional broken bone, seem not to have deterred the thousands of curiosity seekers each day who scramble across what amounts to a mountainous 'exploratorium' of curved and warped surfaces.
The designers said they wanted to provoke by breaking quotidian habits formed in a world of flat surfaces and right angles. Mr. Arakawa said, 'The design may become a way of studying how architecture determines our thought and behavior.'
Ms. Gins, his wife and artistic partner, added: 'We've learned from watching people at Yoro, and we don't have to make any points about disturbing people's equilibrium in the Tokyo project -- we don't want anybody to be wearing helmets in our housing. In the apartments, there will be different degrees of challenge so people can decide how reversible a destiny they want.'
Reversible destiny? She explained, 'We don't have to be passive to events; we can reverse the usual downhill course of things.'",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"For the National Pastime, a Clank Instead of a Crack
WITH spring comes the sound of bat on ball. The crack of a wooden bat is one of the great evocative American sounds. But today only the pros play with wooden bats. High-tech metal models dominate amateur ranks, lending the national pastime a strangely split personality.
As a symbol of the national game, wooden bats may represent the way Americans like to think of themselves, but the metal bat may be a more accurate reflection of the country now. On Saturday, as if to acknowledge how far baseball and baseball bats have both come, the American Museum of Natural History will open 'Baseball as America,' featuring several bats, including those used by Roger Maris and Mark McGwire to break home run records. Seeing a baseball bat in a museum places it in the same context as a chieftain's war club or a king's scepter.
The ping of metal is often accompanied by another all-American sound: marketing hyperbole. 'It's more than a bat, it's a launching pad,' boasts one advertisement for the DeMarini Ultimate Weapon Extreme model. Bat names include B-52 and Viper, and advertising copy about alloy types make bats sound like bombers and fighters. The images of layers and pressure capsules on Web sites and in catalogs are worthy of designers of nuclear bombs. And while wooden bats once bore only the stamped signature of a favorite slugger, metal bats buzz with graphics borrowed from skateboarding and BMX bicycles.
Unlike wooden bats, aluminum bats, which are hollow, have trampoline effects: their walls deflect and spring back when they strike the ball, imparting velocity to the ball like a racquet. For years, bat makers have tried to outdo one another with claims of better power and performance. 'Fiber metal wrapped over cryogenically treated form,' one advertisement insists. Another claims 'titanium inner core.' The ads refer to moment of inertia, coefficient of restitution, departure velocity. Perhaps the terms are a clever scheme to get student athletes to learn physics.
Today, titanium and carbon fiber have joined aluminum as bat-making materials. These high-tech bats have produced real changes in the game. Their larger sweet spot, and what baseball coaches call the more forgiving nature of the aluminum bat, can make average hitters great ones.
The exit speed, or velocity at which a ball flies off the bat, has increased as bat technology has advanced, leading to fears that aluminum bats are dangerous to fielders,  especially to pitchers. A major league hitter might hit a ball so effectively that it flies off a wooden bat at 95 miles an hour, giving the pitcher less than half a second to react. Balls struck by metal bats have been clocked at well over 120 m.p.h.
It was the cost of wooden bats, which increased as the ash forests of North America declined, that led to the introduction of relatively cheap aluminum bats in 1974. Aluminum bats, whose basic models run $100 or so, rarely break, while a college team would go through more than 350 wooden bats in a season. Some high-tech metal bats sell for as much as $500.
But the increasing power of metal bats led to criticism. After years of debate, this season begins with regulations at almost every level of baseball and softball. Controlling bat size and performance, the rules are in part a response to concerns about safety. Jack MacKay, of Mount Pleasant, Tex., who formerly designed metal bats for Hillerich & Bradsby, maker of the Louisville Slugger model, but is now a critic, said, 'I started to see kids getting hurt.' He cited injuries to pitchers struck by balls hit off aluminum bats. (A study published last year in The Physician and Sportsmedicine Journal concluded that bats were not a significant factor in Little League injuries.)
Some coaches are more worried about the threat metal bats pose to the balance of the game. A symbolic turning point came on June 6, 1998, when Southern California and Arizona State played a 21-14 game at the College World Series in Omaha, Neb. Since aluminum bats were adopted in 1974, batting averages in college baseball have risen from around .266 to just over .300. The bat makers' claims of extra power seem confirmed by a 54 percent increase in home runs since 1994.
The National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Federation of High School Coaches ban bats that produce exit speeds above 95 m.p.h. Other rules govern the so-called length-to-weight differential, which affects hitters seeking additional performance with a lighter bat.
Bat makers wield considerable power in college baseball because they supply teams with free bats and also have endorsement contracts with teams and coaches. The manufacturers are reshaping their design and marketing to deal with the new regulations. New shapes shift the center of balance so that the bat can be swung faster. New designs like triple-shelled bats provide extra power within the new rules. With metal bats evolving as fast as the rules governing them, wooden bats are now venerated relics, said Vince Malta, a San Francisco collector and bat expert who advises the Baseball Hall of Fame. 'Bats are the most collectible thing in baseball because they bring you close to the game,' Mr. Malta said. 'A bat says a lot about the player who used it and the places it was used.'
Mr. Malta owns a 1964 Mickey Mantle World Series bat that he can describe with forensic specificity: 'Mantle tarred his bat a certain way. The bat bears marks of the turquoise blue paint of Yankee Stadium's bat rack and the red of the bat rack of their opponents, the St. Louis Cardinals.'
The record price for a bat, $577,610, came this year for one that Shoeless Joe Jackson, a figure in the infamous Black Sox scandal,  used for most of his career, even after it warped into a banana shape.
One day metal bat makers will try to persuade the major leagues to give up wood. 'I wouldn't be in favor of it,' Mr. Malta said. 'Pitchers might be killed.'
Some coaches say the solution is to build a metal bat that works like a wooden one. But could it ever sound as sweet?
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"A Little Sands, A Lot of Sinatra
THERE are the Do It Yourself-ers in renovation stories, and then there are the I Did It My Way-ers. Vincent Sgarlato has kind of single-handedly created the second category.
Last year, Mr. Sgarlato opened the Summit, a lounge and restaurant at 308 East 49th Street. He worked with an architect, Glen Coben, and the design brief was brief.
Sinatra.
The Summit is an evocation of Frank Sinatra's life and times through his 'homes,' as Mr. Sgarlato explained it: his compound in Palm Springs, Calif.; Puccini's, his favorite restaurant in Hollywood; and the Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where Sinatra held his legendary Summit concerts with the Rat Pack.
Mr. Sgarlato, 44, became Sinatra-centric at age 10, growing up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. He saw Sinatra perform 17 or 18 times, by his count. He can reference any point of the entertainer's 60-year career as quickly as shooting a cuff.
'I became a student of Sinatra,' Mr. Sgarlato said academically.
Hit it.
'But, you . . . got . . . to . . . have . . . it . . . in you,' he added. 'I love it. I bleed it.'
Mr. Sgarlato, dressed in a fitted, striped dress shirt that his parents brought him from a trip to Italy, jeans and stylish tan shoes, was standing at the fieldstone bar at the Summit last week, opposite a living-room-like lounge with a fieldstone fireplace.
'Actual brick, no fake stuff,' he said. 'We brought in an old man from the Bronx to do it, piece by piece; it was a cement mess.' Mr. Sgarlato uses his hands in broad gestures, always keeping one close, as if it's got a mike in it. There is a warm, club singer's hoarseness to his voice.
A few ground rules in Mr. Sgarlato's establishment. Don't say Rat Pack.
'He never liked the name Rat Pack,' Mr. Sgarlato said, protective as a bodyguard. (You learn right away that 'he' is only ever one person when you talk to Mr. Sgarlato.) 'He never really used it. He changed it to the Summit, when they got together, in the early 60's. The Kennedys had their summit meetings, you know, so he'd say, 'They have their summit meetings, and we hold ours -- here, at the Sands.' '
Mr. Sgarlato's Summit, named for Sinatra's, has a street sign modeled after the Sands marquee. The entrance hall has an exposed trellis joistwork ceiling, painted blue between the beams.
'Joists were used typically by John Lautner and other Palm Springs architects,' said Mr. Coben, who recently completed Riingo, Marcus Samuelsson's restaurant on East 45th Street, and is currently working on the new Mario Batali restaurant, Il Posto. 'The blue replicates the beautiful blue Palm Springs sky.'
Also replicated, in the dining room at the back of the Summit, is a wraparound view of the San Jacinto Mountains, which would have been Sinatra's from his second Palm Springs house, on the 17th fairway at the Tamarisk Country Club. Mr. Coben found a photograph at Getty Images, and he had it developed by a wallpaper company into a mural -- SinatraScope.
The dining room ceiling has a lighted circular inset with a set of three George Nelson bubble lamps hanging above a circular table, similar to the setup of Sinatra's table at Puccini's. In the lounge and bar, ashlar, or rectangularly cut stone, also recalls the interior architecture of Palm Springs in its heyday in the 1940's, 50's and 60's, when Albert Frey and others designed and built there and celebrities like Sinatra and Bob Hope colonized it. Rather than using reproductions, Mr. Coben specified fabrics and furniture reminiscent of the midcentury modern period: low corner sofas, drum-shaped upholstered stools, an end table with a glazed-ceramic table lamp and a contemporary wall clock above the fireplace.
'It's a little bit of smoke and mirrors,' Mr. Coben said. 'It's about creating the illusion of the environments -- transporting someone in New York to a different place and time.'
Mr. Sgarlato, taking the phone and handling front door deliveries while he talked, put it in different words.
'I have a vision,' he said, looking beyond my shoulder. 'My vision was always the night-life era, the 60's. People come out, they get a table, they see a show, like the Copa.' (That is as in Copacabana, part of Mr. Sgarlato's shorthand for what is most excellent in human achievement.)
'So I says, 'How can I incorporate everything I like into one room?' Obviously, Sinatra's the focal point. Thus, you have. . . .' Mr. Sgarlato was off on another medley of orchestrated design details: the nailhead velvet dining chairs, the animal-print rugs, the cedar rec-room paneling, the wood strips that punctuate the mural so that you think you're in a sunroom, wearing a cardigan and a porkpie hat, looking out. The curved tilt-a-whirl banquette at one end of the dining room is what he called the Dean Martin touch.
'A very Vegasy booth; very much a Dean Martin-type booth,' Mr. Sgarlato said.
The Summit's other Frank is Lloyd Wright. The clock above the fireplace, an Umbra design that recalls George Nelson's clock designs, is a reference to the modernist house set in Hitchcock's 'North by Northwest.'
Mr. Sgarlato's only departure from Sinatra's scheme is the color orange.
'He was an orange freak,' he said. 'He loved orange -- his jet was orange, orange sweaters; he wore an orange handkerchief. So a lot of his house had a lot of orange.'
Like Barbara Marks, Sinatra's second wife, Mr. Sgarlato changed that.
'You know, she did things,' he said sheepishly.
Mr. Sgarlato is letting the domestic effect settle in and grow, as it would in a home. Photographs are going up in the entrance hall -- a gallery of Sinatra moments, and Summit moments. Mr. Sgarlato has his own fans, like Eugene Levy, the actor, and the 'Sopranos' cast, and players 'from the day,' from Tommy Dorsey band members who worked with Sinatra when he was new, to the radio D.J.s like Jim Lowe, who spun him through his late hits, like 'My Way' and 'New York, New York.' The Summit itself has shows: a singer at a piano in the lounge on Wednesdays through Saturdays, without a cover charge, and a schedule of larger acts in the dining room.
On Oct 13, 1974, 'I went really crazy crazy about Sinatra,' Mr. Sgarlato said. 'He did the 'Main Event' at Madison Square Garden, and my father and my mother got tickets that day. A friend of theirs knew someone at the Garden, so three couples went. My father says, 'I'm going to see Sinatra tonight. It's on TV -- watch it, Channel 7.' '
Mr. Sgarlato watched it.
A long wind-up from Howard Cosell, 'then Sinatra came on,' Mr. Sgarlato said, slapping his hands hard. 'In front of the Garden, just himself in, like, a ring. I could realize the power that he had, how he controlled like 20,000 people, up there in a tux, going at it. He was an individual -- he wasn't even like a group, like the Rolling Stones or whatever.'
The die was cast.
'He's controversial, he's powerful, he's moody, he's a little bit of everything,' Mr. Sgarlato said. 'It was a tremendous life. He's a figure that gives me a hell of a lot to work with. He was not a boring character.'
Yes, Mr. Sgarlato met Sinatra.
'Here's what I was afraid of,' he said, speaking softly. Mr. Sgarlato and his wife, Beth Mumm-Sgarlato, were dead-center in the front row for the Together Again tour in 1987.
'I was afraid that he'd be nasty to me,' Mr. Sgarlato said. 'He could be the greatest guy in the world, but I know he could be nasty.' (Sinatra's famous trespassing sign at Palm Springs read: 'Forget the dog. Beware of the owner.')
When Sinatra took applause and roses after his last number, Mr. Sgarlato made his move.
'I see him, I get up and put my hand out, he comes directly towards me, bent down, he says, 'Certainly, young fellow,' shakes my hand,' he said. 'I was all dread, and it was good! It was good for me.'
A.J. Azzarto, a musician and producer and Nancy Sinatra's daughter, has visited the Summit, and signed off, Mr. Sgarlato explained.
'I was sweating bullets the day she was in here,' he said. 'She said, 'It looks very much like my grandfather's home.' Phew. I was very happy about that.'
It could have been, 'Take it from the top.'
Design Notebook
Correction:  May 20, 2004, Thursday  An article last Thursday about the Summit, a Manhattan restaurant with décor based on the various homes of Frank Sinatra, referred incorrectly to one of his wives and misspelled the surname she used before their marriage. She was Barbara Marx (now Barbara Marx Sinatra), not Marks, and she was his fourth wife, not his second. (The first three were Nancy Barbato, Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow.)",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Whipping Up Martinis and Home Glamour
BLENDERS whirred all day in the Rowe Furniture showroom at the International Home Furnishings Market, which opened here on Oct. 15 and ran through last Friday. Behind an antique bar, young assistants in white jackets whipped up fresh fruit smoothies for the buyers shopping Rowe's line of mid-priced furniture. Come 5 P.M., however, a glowing neon olive in an oversize cocktail glass signaled that Rowe was shaking up martinis.
It was that kind of market: plenty of sensible high-fiber furniture, but with a surprise serving of swank, expressed in silver-plated drawer pulls at Henredon, fake-fur upholstery at Fendi and an Art Moderne-style coffee table in polished goatskin at Ralph Lauren. 'People are looking for better goods,' Rob Pitt, head buyer for Crate and Barrel, said. 'Or at least the perception of better goods.'
Throughout the eight-million-square-foot market, the world's largest furniture exposition, 'relaxed comfort' -- the mantra of recent years -- was dressed up and recast as self-indulgent luxury, inspired by everything from 1930's Hollywood to the new popularity of cashmere in apparel. 'It's the times,' the designer Larry Laslo said. 'Glamour makes you feel desirable, successful and on top of the world.' And with luck, cushioned against the economic storm clouds darkening other segments of the global economy.
But for now, furniture buyers and sellers had reason to feel on top of the world. Under nearly flawless autumn skies, the estimated 71,500 market visitors basked in what the trade newspaper Furniture Today calculated was the strongest business climate since the mid-80's, with furniture shipments 14 percent ahead of this time last year. With interest rates falling, housing starts and home sales strong, low unemployment, rising household income and a baby boom generation just coming into its inheritance, industry analysts were expecting the good times to roll well into 1999.
In fact, the new glamour looked a lot like the old cocoon, dressed in silkworm fantasies. Clubby leather chairs, recliners that didn't look like recliners and sleek Art Moderne armoires had a lot more to do with staying home than stepping out.
Glamour had its own practical logic. Mindful that an economic slowdown was only a matter of time, manufacturers sought to move furniture into the nearly recession-proof realm of luxury goods. 'Luxury goods manufacturers are doing fabulously well right now,' said Chris Plasman, president of Baker, who will bring out leather furniture in January licensed by Coach.
High-profile retailers like Crate and Barrel and Pottery Barn were also credited with accelerating the trend toward luxury goods, if only by reaction. Pushed by their success, many mid-priced furniture manufacturers have cleaned up their acts, adding Shaker-esque contemporary collections to their more traditional lineups. Even Sears is seeking to shed its dowdy image with contemporary leather upholstery from Natuzzi.
'Smooth and sleek isn't news anymore. People are beginning to look for a little more craftsmanship,' said Diane Granda, design director for John Widdicomb, which introduced a collection of high-style Georgian and Regency furniture inspired by British museum pieces.
Some exhibitors tried to stir up a little excitement by hitching their products to well-known names. Thomasville Furniture executives in neatly pressed safari jackets conducted tours around the 96-piece collection of licensed Ernest Hemingway furniture (the most unlikely entry: an armchair upholstered in fabric printed with manuscript pages of 'The Sun Also Rises'). Models flown in from Dallas vogued around the American Drew showroom, where the surprisingly sedate Bob Mackie collection of mid-priced rococo-style furniture was introduced.
But the real news was generated by some old market hands. Barbara Barry, whose first Art Deco-esque collection for Baker had its debut in 1996, added about 35 pieces, most prominently in a glossy off-white enamel finish. At John Widdicomb, Mr. Laslo added eight pieces to his Moderne Collection in mahogany, wenge and sycamore. Henredon, no stranger to excess, upped the glamour quotient with Circa 2000, a pastiche of Art Moderne and Hollywood fantasy in maple and silver leaf.
Manufacturers tried to distance themselves from the glitzy 80's opulence that Michael Delgaudio, vice president at Century, called 'swag and gag.' Quiet but tactile was the byword. Baker, for instance, showcased Ms. Barry's new pieces in a boudoir vignette, using a writing desk as a dressing table complete with silver tray, love note and Chanel No. 5.
Even Mitchell Gold, which has staked a solid claim in the middle of the market, introduced a new Platinum collection of plushy furniture cushioned in goose down and priced around $2,500 for an 88-inch sofa. 'Furniture has to compete against all those other luxury goods for the consumer's dollar,' said Bob Williams, Mitchell Gold's design director, 'and it better be luxurious.'
In upholstered furniture, luxury was widely interpreted as 'soft modern' -- tight upholstery, tailored slipcovers and exposed legs. At Mitchell Gold, the reigning prince of squashy comfort, oversize slipcovers were banished to the back of the showroom. In many showrooms, chairs and sofas broke out of the rectangle into polymorphic, organic shapes. Vladimir Kagan designed a three-level sofa, Dot.com, for American Leather. At Dellarobbia, an amoeba-shaped ottoman was upholstered in a fabric inspired by old Spirograph designs. Karel McKinney, national sales and marketing director for Dellarobbia, said: 'The Pottery Barn look? Been there, done that. Our customer wants more.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Leading Lights, Whose Destiny Was to Be Dimmed
PAUL RUDOLPH and Aldo Rossi, two giants of 20th-century architecture, died in 1997. Rudolph and Rossi belonged to different generations. They were of different nationalities. Esthetically, their work was poles apart.
But the careers of these two men traced a similar arc through time. Both endured a blazing moment of commanding influence. Then, the moment passed. For a time, in the 1960's, it was Rudolph, Rudolph, Rudolph. Ten years later, it was Rossi, Rossi, Rossi. After that, the void.
The ebbing of these two architects' public stature is a part of the legacy each left behind. The trajectories of their careers illuminate the ongoing crisis in evaluation that has enlivened and deformed architecture for the last half-century. Was their later work really so bad? Was their early work overvalued? Why do we sacrifice artists who reach for transcendence from within a material world? Or do they immolate themselves?
In the mid-1960's, Rudolph was the man to watch. Of all American architects living at that time, only Louis I. Kahn was held in higher esteem.  Born in 1918, Rudolph established his reputation with a series of small houses in Florida. The best of these, never built, he called the Open and Shut House. A variation on California's seminal Case Study dwellings of the postwar years, the Open and Shut house was one of the first designs to inject psychology into modern architecture's rigorously rational and objective state of mind. A three-dimensional frame fitted with shades, the house was a study in the relationship between voyeurism and exhibitionism. Who's looking? Who's showing off? It depends on your point of view.
In 1957, Rudolph became dean of Yale University's School of Art and Architecture, a position he held until 1965. In those years, Yale was the most advanced patron of architecture in the United States. The campus was studded with buildings by Kahn, Eero Saarinen, Gordon Bunshaft and Kevin Roche. Two of Rudolph's buildings enhanced the school's reputation. His Temple Street parking garage, a dynamic horizontal composition of concrete, was the first design since Frank Lloyd Wright's that sought to create a place of dignity for the car. Rudolph's Art and Architecture Building, also of concrete, was esteemed for the striking contrast between its aggressive, Brutalist exterior and the deftly modulated flow of its interiors.
Now, if you happened to be the best and brightest architect in the United States in the mid-1960's, then it went without saying that you were the greatest in the world. It was taken for granted in the postwar decades that the torch of creativity had passed from Europe to the United States. Progressive American architects illustrated this passage by freely cribbing from European precedent. Hence, Rudolph's parking garage owed a clear debt to the German Expressionist Erich Mendelsohn. His Art and Architecture Building was an almighty hallelujah to Le Corbusier.
But Rudolph borrowed something much weightier than European forms. He borrowed historicism, the 19th-century idea that each era should forge its own style of design. Then, while still a young man, he watched his reputation crumble beneath the collapse of that idea. Who says that a period has to have a style? Why must there be these rules? About function, about structure, about whatever. By 1968, the modern movement's statements had grown stale.  The future belonged to those who were asking those questions.
As the post-modern movement gathered momentum -- Yale was one of the movement's engines -- Rudolph gradually withdrew from the scene. He continued to build major projects, mostly in Southeast Asia, that attracted dwindling attention in the press. Yet, a few years ago, at a lecture at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, he drew a large audience of quite young architects who clearly esteemed his work as a principled way of building.
ROSSI, born in Milan in 1931, was modernism's most thoughtful questioner.  His first book, 'The Architecture of the City,' was published in 1966, the year Robert Venturi's 'Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture' also appeared. Rossi's book had less immediate impact. But it was by far the more poetic performance. In place of historicism, he proposed memory as architecture's guiding idea. Brilliant. Why hadn't anyone thought of that before? Forget about Rome, Paris, Athens, and Luxor. What matters, instead, are the images of these hallowed places that we hold within our minds.
Rossi personalized the past. He liked to say that he never invented forms. Rather, he remembered them. The city, in his view, was a theater, a playhouse for collective memory. One of Rossi's first major projects, the Cemetery of San Cataldo in Modena, Italy (1971-84), translated this deeply emotional idea into stark physical reality. As much a work of landscape and city planning as of architectural design, the cemetery's low perimeter buildings enclose a courtyard; near the entrance there rises the ossuary, a stark red cube studded with a grid of square, windowless openings that stare out like empty sockets, proclaiming that architecture's meaning lay not with the future, but with the past. It treated dead people and dead forms as sentient beings. They did not take history to their graves, but rather commanded time from their graves. It mocked progress, historicism's vulgar offshoot, with the grinning skull of death.
Then came the floating Teatro del Mondo, a feature of the 1980 Venice Biennale. A wooden octagon mounted on a barge, the theater became Rossi's signature work, an essay in severity and evanescence. The base of the tower was of natural wood, which appeared golden in the Venetian light. The top was painted sky blue and capped with a jaunty little finial. The theater was moored in the lagoon, a site described by Rossi as 'a place where architecture ended and the world of the imagination or even the irrational began.'
These early projects were visually austere, but not in the functionalist manner of modernism. Rather, he used a limited vocabulary of iconic forms -- the gable, the square Roman window, the staircase, the colonnade -- to create symbolically primitive shelters. The Marxist critics who dominated Italy's architectural discourse adored Rossi's esthetic asceticism. And he won the respect of others, like myself, who believed that classicism had not played itself out.
IN the mid-1980's, Rossi's work became increasingly ornate. His buildings adorned themselves with alarming polychromy. Their roof lines sprouted exaggerated cornices. Columns turned into kitsch colonnades. Rossi created some wonderful projects in this time: Centro Torri, his shopping center outside Milan, is one of the century's great works. Like Rudolph's parking garage, it embodies the belief that even stridently anti-urban ways of life are entitled to urban forms of dignity.
And then Rossi went deeper into his obsession with blue. Volare. Nel blu dipinto di blu. In renderings of his later work, buildings often came to seem like simple excuses for backgrounds of sky blue. It was as if, after dragging us down to the ashen underworld, Rossi wished to give us a taste of resurrection.
But Rossi also pumped out many cloddish designs. The UNY shopping center in Nagoya, Japan. The Disney office complex in Orlando, Florida. These and many other late projects got very cutesy-wutesy: primary colors, kindergarten block shapes. It seemed like a case of deliberate regression, to use the author Robert Harbison's phrase. Instead of the haunting quality of memory, Rossi's architecture now came coated in saccharine layers of nostalgia.
The Yale architectural historian Vincent Scully once wrote that Rudolph represented that side of the American consciousness that is always trying to find and to identify the self. Rossi represented something similar. Both men were basically introverts who managed to flourish in an extrovert's profession. Probably what counted most to both was constructing their own worlds, not occupying the center stage in ours. And they worked at a time when architecture was withdrawing from the modern goal of redesigning the world.
In the epigraph to his 'Scientific Autobiography,' published in 1981, Rossi writes appreciatively of 'the disorder of things, if limited and somehow honest.' But what then, he asks, could an architect, a maker of order, aspire to? 'Certainly to small things, having seen that the possibility of great ones was historically precluded.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Little by Little, a California Dream Materializes
BUILT in the 1920's, the cute-as-a-button bungalow was a portrait of modesty, hidden behind a thicket of ficus and a set of skyscraping palms. But Marianna Boctor and Jose Fontiveros, young architects at the Santa Monica firm of Sintesi, aspired to literature when they remodeled the house's tiny kitchen and living room.
'We were trying to see what magical realism might mean in a building,' said Mr. Fontiveros, a Venezuelan steeped in South America's version of Surrealism. 'We thought about superimposing two different worlds to build a new, slightly strange reality.'
The owners, Linnea Mielcarek, a clothing designer, and John Howley, an animation artist, wanted the architects to take freedoms within the otherwise prosaic commission of merging a kitchen and living room into a loftlike space open to a new backyard deck. 'We mentioned that we liked skewed angles, the warmth of wood, and industrial materials like galvanized sheet metal, steel and concrete,' Ms. Mielcarek said.
But the tight $30,000 budget risked tipping the job more toward realism than magic until the architects realized that Los Angeles's nonunionized, second economy of inexpensive immigrant craftsmen could be enlisted to keep the helium in their dream.
The architects began by designing with shadows. Recalling Modernist pergolas of the 1930's and 40's, which cast abstract zebra shadows on blank walls, they conceived light as a moving pattern projected through a skylight. The outline of the composite shadow would serve as a template for cutting out windows in the rear facade overlooking the backyard and in a ceiling opening over the kitchen.
'We wanted to materialize the shadows and light by cutting out their pattern in the flesh and bones of the house,' Ms. Boctor said.
In addition to using light and shadow as an angular pattern, the architects called for hard-edged materials and factory objects to add grit to the inside of the diminutive, 800-square-foot clapboard cottage. From an industrial catalog they bought a pivoting steel assembly-line stool for the kitchen; they powder-coated the gas heater a metallic auto-body gray. Exterior halogen floodlights among the joists light a roof structure normally hidden from view. The industrial elements create an altered reality in the domestic landscape.
But there was sticker shock when the bids came in. 'One was $46,000, and another $80,000,' Ms. Boctor said. 'We threw them in the garbage because we thought our clients would freak out.'
To realize the ideas in their blueprints, the architects became contractors, organizing a team of subcontractors from Los Angeles's labor pool of first-generation immigrants fresh from LAX. Bulgarian welders fabricated the canopy over the deck, a complex topography of planes. The architects persuaded a Salvadoran who had worked on concrete skyscrapers and had experience with smooth-trowel finish to direct work on the concrete forms for the kitchen counters.
'We had to watch that the wooden concrete forms wouldn't bulge under the weight of the concrete, leaving fattened shapes,' Mr. Fontiveros said.
The architects, recent graduates of the architecture school at the University of California at Los Angeles, were willing to act as contractors because of the opportunity to see one of their first designs built as a partnership. While the work was going on, the owners lived in a barnlike studio in back, barbecuing TV dinners on the lawn (without the TV), near a clump of 16-foot-tall papyrus.
The budget continued to be the mother of invention. The architects inherited sheets of transparent acrylic from a bank being renovated. After sandblasting them, they suspended the translucent planes from the ceiling, under lights, as shelves for glasses. 'I cut it with a jigsaw,' said Mr. Fontiveros, who shaped the pieces to echo the cutout skylights.
The budget didn't even allow for suitable cabinets from Ikea, so the designers adapted galvanized metal ducts. The six kitchen cabinets, all with plywood fronts, were fabricated for $1,500 in a sheet-metal shop specializing in air-conditioning ducts.
One cabinet, with a butcher-block top, travels around on rubber casters, serving as a small moving island and buffet table. Little by little, the architects layered natural woods and industrial materials atop each other, creating a new reality of unexpected bedfellows. 'The job ended up costing $41,000, but it was still a good deal given the custom nature of the work,' Ms. Boctor said.
At a certain point, out of the blue, absenteeism struck the construction site: the craftsmen disappeared as Los Angeles's diversity stopped the project. 'Everybody refused to work during the world soccer championships,' said Mr. Fontiveros, who got the building going again by applying cultural anthropology. 'They all showed up again when we brought in a television.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Trash Trades Up
THE world is a beautiful place, and it's never more beautiful than when you think you see an opportunity. Frank Yang saw one three years ago when he surveyed the lucrative universe of the residential kitchen and realized that there were a few holes in the sky.
The biggest was the garbage can. It lived under the sink, unloved, undesigned, plastic or worse. Even the celebrated few, like Garbino, designed by Karim Rashid for Umbra, were miserably cheap -- they usually hit a polypropylene ceiling of $10 or $15. The kitchen was the most remodeled room of the house: according to the 2000 census, an $8 billion paradise of improvement. You had your Viking range, your Sub-Zero refrigerator, your Miele dishwasher, your Boffis and your Bosches.
But the culmination of the Epicurean experience was an ugly dead end, a throwaway. The garbage can. An open pit of unactualized, unprofitized desire.
Mr. Yang, 32, is the founder and chief operating officer of Simplehuman, a 17-month-old company based in Los Angeles.
Simplehuman's principal products, stainless steel kitchen garbage cans, cost $39.99 to $179.99 and have 5- to 10-year warranties. Simplehuman's designs have won awards, including the Industrial Designers Society of America's silver and bronze awards. They are sold next to the $1,999 coffee makers and $299.95 toasters by retailers like Williams-Sonoma, which will feature Simplehuman's garbage cans in a two-page display, with an editorial paean to the company, in the fall catalog.
In short, they are receptacles for cash as well as trash. With sales of $33 million last year, Simplehuman is projecting sales of $55 million for 2004.
Mr. Yang is not alone. Two European companies, Leifheit and Brabantia, make versions of what the housewares industry now calls 'upscale trash cans.' OXO International, the Good Grips kitchen utensil company, introduced a trash can in March, to arrive in stores in September.
'It's a new challenge, a moment of truth for this type of product,' said Ravi Sawhney, the founder of RKS Design in Thousand Oaks, Calif., and the head juror for the 2004 Industrial Designers Society of America awards. 'I have mixed feelings about it. How rich can you make the experience of putting trash in a receptacle?'
Mr. Sawhney explained that consumers appreciative of design were now appreciably cynical about its much-heralded pervasiveness.
'Imagine going in for surgery,' he said. 'And the surgery room is highly designed -- Philippe Starck -- beautiful. I would never in a million years allow them to do surgery on me. I would be so skeptical about a lack of substance, from all those highly designed knickknacks in my kitchen.'
Mr. Yang, speaking from Hong Kong, where he was attending a brother's wedding, said that he walked the aisles at stores like Bed Bath & Beyond, where his garbage cans now reign supreme, comparing the large shelf-space allotment with the lack of exciting designs.
'There was an opportunity for innovation,' he said. 'It's easier to get people excited about the latest cellphone. But everyone needs a trash can.'
Mr. Yang has revived the fashion for step cans, garbage cans with foot pedals that raise the lids. Simplehuman's lids occasionally do fancy things like open in the middle in a double-winged butterfly motion instead of the classic lopsided pop-up -- the stand-up routine of the kitchen.
In other words, you can drive the cans for pleasure. No pedestrian thump and dump, but zero to trash in one Italian-moccasined second. The lids have dampers on the springs so they close slowly and softly, like an expensive car door. You can buy gloves, Simplehuman's microfiber sponge mitt, to polish the cans ($4.99), and special garbage bags ($3.99 to $6.99 for a roll of 20). The cans do not accommodate standard bags without an 'overhang' out the top. (Your new can's instructions include a kind of napkin-folding lesson on how to avoid the overhang; the instructions were probably the first thing you used the new can to discard.)
Rubbermaid, which estimates that there are $15 million to $20 million worth of plastic step cans sold every year, at $15 to $20 apiece, is investigating the 'stainless option,' said Doug Thompson, senior product manager, because of the current trend.
Alex Lee, president of OXO International, explained of his move into trash: 'We look for pet peeves in existing products. Most cans are geared to the way they look -- beautiful stainless steel and a plastic bag sticking out the side.' Asked whether OXO appeared to be reinventing the wheel three years after Simplehuman reinvented it, Mr. Lee replied, 'I don't think they've addressed all the problems.'
But with an aggressive brand-awareness campaign that includes development with companies like Williams-Sonoma, Simplehuman has its patented foot pedal pushed to the floor.
'They've been very successful from a market penetration standpoint,' said Perry Reynolds, the vice president for marketing and trade development for the International Housewares Association, a trade organization in Rosemont, Ill.
Mr. Yang's family is in the housewares business and owns factories in Taiwan and mainland China that manufacture Simplehuman products. Mr. Yang, a political science student at the University of California, Los Angeles, who graduated in 1994, dated a design major and took a design class, which led to an interest in designing housewares. He started CanWorks, his first garbage can company, in 2001.
With the help of NameLab Inc., a San Francisco-based communications specialist that names products and companies (including Acura and Compaq), CanWorks became Simplehuman in 2002, because of Mr. Yang's conviction that the accuracy of a brand's identity could corner a particular market -- in Simplehuman's case, the kitchen renovators and cooking enthusiasts who were the design-driven demographic behind other houseware successes like Williams-Sonoma.
Michael Barr, president of NameLab, said of the decision to make 'Simplehuman' a single word, 'It's taking two natural language words and making them a 'thing' -- making the brand name itself a design object.'
Mr. Yang also worked with design firms and freelance designers to brainstorm about the silhouette, mechanics and social message of the cans.
'It used to be that a company designed a product and then hired Ogilvy & Mather to come up with an advertising campaign and the marketing,' said Mr. Reynolds of the housewares association. 'Now the whole branding thing starts with the look of the product.'
Mr. Yang concurred.
'Branding is part of the design,' he said of the Simplehuman line, whose supporting sales motto, with a similar genetic-sounding perfection, is 'Tools for Efficient Living.' (Simplehuman also uses a lowercase 's' in its logo, to advertise an appealing modesty in its own achievement.)
Sally Geller, senior buyer for Williams-Sonoma's catalogs and Internet site, where Mr. Yang's garbage cans are sold, explained that the brand, as well as the garbage can, was what made Simplehuman appropriate for her customers.
'If they had been CanWorks, we probably wouldn't have tagged it,' she said, referring to identifying the products by name in the catalog. 'If they had been called 'Porsche Trash Cans' we would have been suspect too -- more hype than function.'
Ms. Geller described their 'core customer' as someone with an income of $150,000 who likes to entertain and who has multiple homes.
'That's the kind of person who's going to invest in a can like this,' she said. 'They spend for their kitchens.'
And, as Mr. Yang, the would-be king of disposable income, observed, 'If you're spending $1,000 on a stove, what's $179 for a trash can?'
Phillip Spinelli, a waiter shopping for a trash can on Wednesday at Bed Bath & Beyond on Sixth Avenue in New York, was unmoved. Mr. Spinelli, who chose a plastic $16.99 step can, said of the towering wall of Simplehuman products next to him: 'They're out of my price range. And you have to polish them. And you have to buy the other stuff, the bags -- it's all strategized.'
Mr. Spinelli is buying a step can because he has mice.
'We're not talking about Trump Tower here,' he said of his kitchen.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Turnpike Stops Worth the Trip
THE scenery along the Ohio Turnpike -- an east-west melding of Interstates 80, 90 and 76 -- will never be confused with that along, say, the Pacific Coast Highway or the Blue Ridge Parkway. But weary travelers this summer are encountering something that may compensate: a new generation of service plazas, providing the amenities of home or at least those of a decent airport terminal.
In Ohio, the buckle on the Rust Belt, the turnpike commission has decreed a new family of pleasure domes. Little colonies of comfort just off the exit ramps, the buildings are set in pairs, one on either side of the roadway. They catch the eye immediately, suggesting the town hall of a midsize Swedish municipality or perhaps an American high school designed by Eliel Saarinen.
Long, with low domes, eaves of white limestone and supports of Roman brick, they replace drab and dingy facilities dating from 1954 and 1955, the first years the highway was open. Their arcades curve to embrace the parking lots; covered walks reach out, topped by an iconic minitower that is part sail, part steeple -- a faintly Art Deco element that could have been borrowed from the 1934 Chicago World's Fair.
At about $10 million each, the plazas may seem steeply priced. But the two pairs already open (the Erie Islands and Commodore Perry stops, at one exit, and the Towpath and Great Lakes centers, at another) have become a hit with their offerings of Sbarro, Starbucks, Jody Maroni's & Cinnabon, Burger King and Max & Erma's restaurants. All 16 stops are due to be finished by 2005 or 2006.
The designs were part of a larger plan to improve and widen the turnpike, a plan initiated in 1994, when the commission promised a fresh new vision: 'Rather than rehash the old concept of service plaza, the commission has instead redefined the concept for the 21st century,' a legend on the turnpike map boasts.
Under Umberto Fedeli, a former chairman of the commission, the project began in 1995 as part of the wider refurbishment. To pay for a whole package of improvements, including redoing toll plazas, rebuilding bridges and adding interchanges and an extra lane, tolls have been raised about 10 percent a year since 1995, leading to widespread grumbling.
'They said we were building Turnpike Taj Mahals,' Enrico Zamporelli, the commission's executive director, said. 'But now people love them.'
The new service plazas have surely helped improve drivers' perceptions of Ohio. The impressions left by a major highway can shape the image of an entire state -- consider how often New Jersey is associated with the oil refineries along just a couple of miles of the New Jersey Turnpike.
'We wanted to enhance the image of the state of Ohio,' Mr. Zamporelli said.
The architect of the new centers is Celso Gilberti, whose firm, Gilberti Spittler International of Cleveland, was chosen from three finalists in an architectural competition. Mr. Gilberti, who was born in Brazil, examined other 'transportation nodes' -- bus and train stations and airports -- and chose as his model what he calls 'the better shopping airports,' like Pittsburgh's, with a variety of stores and types of food.
The look of the buildings is inspired by Prairie style, he said. 'My buildings have a strong sense of eaves,' he said. 'You get a very nice horizontal line, anchored with the dome at one end.' Those eves and the long Roman bricks in the supporting structures pick up the horizontal line of the road -- the line of the journey.
Too often, Mr. Gilberti said, travel becomes monotonous: 'You lose the excitement you had when you set out, of going from one place to another. I wanted to recapture some of that excitement of the journey.'
IN each lobby, an attendant stands watch at a horseshoe-shaped information desk. Inside are shops, a business center with a fax and e-mail kiosk, a truckers' lounge and various dining options.
A display shows a side of Ohio that is changing. To such attractions as the Benjamin Harrison historical site have been added the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the National Inventors Hall of Fame and the roller coasters at the Cedar Point amusement park, top-rated by connoisseurs.
A chart lists hotels and motels along the turnpike, with a green light for vacancy, or a red light if fully occupied. Truckers, who enter separately, have their own television lounge with smoking and no-smoking halves, several showers and a coin laundry room.
Beneath the dome four or five restaurants line one wall, and tables are scattered among upright lamps that feel like streetlights. The patio, with more tables, is popular as well. At the Towpath center, the restaurants include Panera Bread, known for sourdough bagels; the Coffee Beanery; Wendy's; and Pizza Hut. As is the policy at many airports these days, the facilities promise to restrain prices for 'captive travelers' to roughly the level of those in surrounding areas.
Turnpike travelers across the country have come a long way from the dark 1970's, when they faced decaying facilities on toll roads. Long-term contracts during those inflationary years left the vendors with little incentive to improve.
The pattern for toll road services was set by the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the nation's first, which opened in 1940. In the 1950's, variety in food on the turnpike meant 28 flavors of ice cream to follow the wrinkled frankfurters in paperboard trays. Howard Johnson raised turnpike food service to an art, before grudging service, indifferent maintenance and minimal choice became the rule of the toll road in the 1970's.
Moreover, tastes have changed. Travelers want bagels and yogurt, Arizona iced tea and French roast coffee. (The Starbucks at the Commodore Perry service area, Mr. Zamporelli said, is one of the busiest in the country.) And they want their electronic services: modems, faxes and places to recharge their cell phones. Even truckers file their road logs by fax or e-mail.
Representatives of other turnpikes have visited Ohio, Mr. Zamporelli said. The New York State Thruway has added larger plazas with more services and varied food in recent years. Several states offer outdoor farmers' markets in the summer.
Mr. Gilberti stops by the plazas frequently to read comments in the guest books. On his way in, he always glances up at the towers at the entrance. 'These I call the Portals of Ohio,' he said.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; Havana's Aged Chariots of Chrome
IN the exotic-car sweepstakes, even the bulletproof, see-through Pope mobile will have competition when the Pontiff visits Cuba on Jan. 21. No country, not even a state of mind like Los Angeles, has a more nostalgic collection of post-World War II American cars than the Caribbean nation, to judge by the two- and three-tone specimens that time and history have left behind and running on the dilapidated streets of Havana.
Cuba was effectively one of the states in 1959, when Fidel Castro swept down from the hills into the pulsating capital. Detroit's days of glory coincided with Havana's nights of glamour, when men smoked status cigars and sported cars with major-league fins.
Those muscular American cars now strut their whitewalls against the peeling backdrop of the once rich and handsome capital. These trophy autos are stranded in a threadbare city, the talismans of one culture thriving conspicuously in another. The men who own these private cars (and in Cuba, they are almost exclusively a man's thing) dote on their chromed prizes; yet, Havana itself is architecturally exhausted, the signs of deep, sustained economic crisis and an ambivalence about property written on nearly every facade. The cars are preserved; the buildings are crumbling.
During the long prime of the Spanish Main, Cuba was the geopolitical omphalos of the empire. Havana, tollbooth for booty being shipped back to Spain, acquired a rich architectural patrimony, its stone pediments and cornices crisp in the Caribbean light. With a Latin flare for architecture, 20th-century Havana fostered bold strokes of modernism in the heart of the city, and in the new suburbs spawned by the car. Architects shared with Detroit an optimism about progress through design, and with carports and double garages they made conspicuous room in their futuristic structures for aerodynamically suave automobiles. Detroit's cars had worthy buildings to cruise up to: car and house returned each other's compliments.
If the city is still largely intact, rather than bulldozed by developers, it is because President Castro, channeling his resources elsewhere, has simply pursued a policy of benign neglect in Havana -- though after nearly 40 years, the neglect shows. Even after some 11th-hour rescue efforts by historic preservationists (the stone forts are secure, and so are some convents and newly renovated hotels and restaurants), the cars seem like exotic tropical fauna sadly in need of flora.
The architectural backdrop that made these cars part of an urban ecosystem has suffered from the double whammy of Communism and poverty. A visitor's eye splits its time between the sadly deteriorated facades and the chrome barges -- Technicolor cars, driving around in a black-and-white movie.
Hunky '55 Buicks, with chrome grilles set like the locked teeth of a grinning piranha, were popular then, and now, as well as sinuously streamlined Chevys from the mid-50's. 'Cars of Cuba' by Cristina Garcia, Joshua Greene and D. D. Allen (Harry N. Abrams, 1995) counts 5,413 registered Chevys in Cuba.
Then there are the monumental Cadillacs from the stylish decade when that pert and classy upright fin came attached, like a dollar sign, to a long series of subtly refined designs that conquered the known world. A Cadillac was a Cadillac was a Cadillac, but some sophisticates preferred the period's great boats, the Lincoln Continental four-door.
Beyond the obvious trophies that Lucy and Desi might have driven on the arcaded Malecon (the oceanside promenade, which today is nearly shopless), there are recherche specimens, like the Hudson Hornets of the mid-50's, or the even rarer Kaiser, with widow's peaks over the windshields, and hood and fenders stretched tight like an overenthusiastic face lift. Occasionally, one of the low-slung, snarky Raymond Loewy Studebakers -- too much ahead of its time to be successful -- rounds a corner, and once in a long vacation, the Avanti, Loewy's last Studebaker, makes a cameo appearance. As if to drive gringos mad, 'woodies' (wood-paneled station wagons) are occasionally seen plying the northern coastal roads.
American cars no longer made it directly to Cuba after, as Cubans say, the 'triumph of the revolution.' Cars still rumbling around on Havana streets date back to the late 30's and cover two epochal moments in Darwinian car evolution -- when sloped-back cars of the late 40's developed boxlike passenger cabins, and when wraparound windshields replaced flat sheets of glass held by window mullions. The notion of speed written so visibly in body silhouettes and chrome details had its architectural equivalent in the horizontal streamlining of Havana's Moderne buildings. (Until the 1959 revolution, Cuban architecture followed American, only on a smaller scale.) Nothing in the current crop of outsize beach-side tourist hotels expresses anything like that dynamism.
For Americans the cars may seem like collectibles, but for Cubans they are transportation. Many of these gas-guzzling geezers earn their keep as taxis, wedding-day chariots and tourist toys. Their owners keep them going by cannibalizing parts from other cars, including Russian jeeps. Hemingway's old woodie from the 40's and his red Chrysler convertible, circa 1956, have long since vanished from his villa, Finca Vigia, outside Havana, but there is little doubt that their body parts have been recycled into cacharros (a term of endearment, loosely translated as jalopies). The front grille or a hood ornament from one car may be grafted onto another, creating an implausible hybrid. And some cars are further decked with shiny stars bolted to their flanks or chrome visors added to the windows and windshields.
The tender loving paint jobs, however, make it clear that sometimes a car is not just a car. The Yves Klein blue on a '55 Mercury is a color of love. Occasionally, the car is painted to match the house, out of the same bucket of paint. Look closely, and you often see brush strokes.
The value of these rare cars on the globalized market is both a moot question and a sore point. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cuban Government mined them as an asset and requisitioned the best for export. Parking lots near the docks became surreal holding tanks. One former owner of a sports car told of driving his impeccable '59 Porsche, the last to be imported into the country, down to the docks with tears in his eyes. The Government, he said, had made a deal, and the car was off to Genoa. In exchange, he said, he received a new Russian-made Lada, a car that is little more than a refrigerator on wheels.
By Cuban standards and rates of exchange, owners of these cars are driving a near fortune, but a Cuban cannot sell a car directly to a foreigner for export. If an owner wants to liquidate the car, he has to trade it in to the Government for another. There is a market for these oldies in Mexico (and other countries), where they are restored and sold. Some are eventually repatriated to the United States as antiques. In any case, the Cuban Government makes the deals.
The Ladas, like the dour Soviet-era buildings erected in the country, are an ideology once or twice removed from the American dreamboats. In the 1950's, the American car was designed for a society based on individuality and conceived for cowboys of the open road. The faceless anonymity of Russian cars, on the other hand, was intended for members of a proletariat whose individual identities were fused into the collective -- no distinctive fins, faces or rear ends for the vehicles of mass uniformity. Through the American cars in Cuba, the script for rugged individualism keeps rolling through the socialist mind-set, even as the bourgeois building facades dissolve. Exuberant fins remain the most visible reminders of the urge to stand out and of a political system that is tantalizingly close, at least geographically.
Had the rights of man been penned after the advent of the car, surely Pontiacs and De Sotos would have been itemized. The survival rate of these automobiles against the odds of time and government is testimony to their treasured status. Owners in Havana hold on to their cacharros, among the last great pieces of industrial design accessible to Cubans.
Correction:  January 12, 1998, Monday  A picture caption in the House & Home section on Thursday with an article about Cubans' upkeep of American cars of the post-World War II era misstated the make of a car. It was a composite of 1948 and 1949 Oldsmobiles with Buick chrome strips on the front fender, not a late 1940's Pontiac.",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"A Marriage of Pond and Pavilion in Idyllic Sacramento
WHAT could be more pleasant than relaxing in a sleek, glass-walled pavilion with views onto a rural backdrop of pond and meandering river, where the only disturbance is the croaking of frogs and the quacking of ducks? That picturesque conceit has been realized in this unlikely city, the politically active but architecturally dull state capital of California. Here, the homeowners, a businessman and his art-collecting wife, commissioned a contemporary house extension -- studio, gallery, office and living room -- that cantilevers over an artificial but pastoral pond on the banks of the Sacramento River.
Designed by the architect Mark Dziewulski, with the garden and pond by Haag Landscape Architecture, the clean, simple-looking marriage of water, concrete and glass was a complicated undertaking that belies the extension's setting. Tucked away behind hedges, bushes and trees are suburban backyards and bungalows.
The client's wife, who grew up in Hawaii, has long loved water and tropical plants. In  1970, the couple bought a house in a residential neighborhood on the banks of the meandering Sacramento River, the city's natural preserve. They commissioned Ed Haag, a landscape architect, to build a koi pond in the courtyard.
Two years ago, the couple bought a neighboring parcel and began planning a large garden that, Mr. Haag said, would extend into water. Thus was born the idea of creating another, bigger pond. But the existing house -- a mid-60's ranch house with three wings flanking a courtyard that opened onto the river -- had no view onto the new parcel. Mr. Dziewulski presented two schemes, one an extension in the style of the existing house, the other much more striking -- an open pavilion shooting out from the house and up from the pond, over the water and toward the river.
The clients took the plunge and went with the second option, giving the architect the latitude to create a modern sculptural form. They were captivated, the wife said, by its 'wow factor.'
In the manner of Cubist-inspired buildings like Rietveld's Schroeder House and Le Corbusier's chapel at Ronchamp that feature visually distinct interlocking vertical and horizontal planes, Mr. Dziewulski's design consists of seemingly discreet elements -- the soaring roof, the west wall with irregular fenestration, the south- and east-facing wall of glass -- interconnected by what he calls the proscenium arch of supporting concrete piers and a steel I-beam.
It looks effortless but, as Mr. Dziewulski said, 'making things look simple is so hard.' Building the pavilion 'was as complex as building the space shuttle.' The stucco-covered steel-framed roof, designed for maximum lightness, does not just stretch upward, but also widens and curves as it extends over the water. And it tapers near the tip to appear lighter.
Meanwhile, the 1,200-square-foot extension blends with the existing 10,000-square-foot house. Sand-colored limestone flooring flows from the old to the new space. And the new roof swoops up from the downward slope of the house's Cliff May-style wide-pitched roof. Mr. Dziewulski said, 'There are just enough elements like the big overhang of the sweeping ranch-style roofs' -- echoed in the soaring pavilion roof -- 'to make the visual connection.'
Facing east toward the river, the glass wall is folded into translucent, clear glass panels, allowing a view of the river while providing a backdrop for contemporary, New Guinea and African sculptures. Panes had to be delicately inserted into stainless steel channels that would allow for movement due to wind loads, heating and cooling. Such a feat of construction involved coordination with the glass manufacturer (Commercial Window Systems), contractor and structural engineer, Mr. Dziewulski said. Intense cooperation between the architect and the landscape architect was also key to the integration of pond and pavilion.
A whopping 6,000 square feet, and eight feet deep in parts, the pond was built like a swimming pool with six-inch thick Gunite walls. To meet stringent codes, the footings for the studio were built first, then the pond shell was poured. To clean the pond, which laps innocently at the soft edges of the surrounding garden, requires a concealed pump that recycles water 24 hours a day.
The project was unusual because of the generous proportions of the garden and pond, which fill an entire lot. These days, Mr. Haag said, gardens are getting smaller and buildings are getting larger. Most gardens, he added, are not as lavish as this one, which is a veritable Monet's garden with lilies, irises, lotuses and plump goldfish.
Ponds, Mr. Haag said, are costly to maintain, use a lot of water and have no function. Aside from cooling the air, they simply provide delight. This pond is in fact shamelessly, hedonistically, contemplative.
But what delight! At night, frogs burst into song; ducks and deer have wandered from the river; blue herons have homed in and, true to their natures, tried to stab the goldfish. Moreover, the water dapples the inside of the pavilion and mirrors the lights of the building. The landscaping in and around the pond offers color and texture for every season. In spring, a Western redbud tree offers a lush cerise contrast to the stark gray-green limestone of the pavilion.
Mr. Dziewulski's clients were so delighted with their extension that they have virtually moved into it. They entertain, watch television and eat dinner there. The wife, who is active in the arts community, also works there at a desk that extends into the middle of the room from a wall of neatly crafted shelves, drawers and filing cabinets. The extension beckons with light and views and tranquillity, so much so that the original house now feels like the add-on.
Mr. Dziewulski trained at Cambridge University and has worked for Michael Graves, for the corporate modernists Skidmore Owings & Merrill and the English firm Ahrends, Burton & Koralek. Three of his recent projects -- this pavilion, a Virgin Megastore  in Sacramento and Davis Commons, a nearby retail center -- won American Institute of Architecture awards last year.
In this pavilion, Mr. Dziewulski wanted to build an exuberant jewel in the landscape, a radical, architectonic form, in contrast to its pastoral setting. While some see the spirit of dynamic 50's modernism (in the manner of Le Corbusier or Oscar Niemeyer) in his pavilion, he is not a diehard modernist. The seeming simplicity of the style suited this project, he said, but each commission demands something different. 'Each one makes you reinvent yourself,' he said.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Fireworks Can Now Do Wheelies, And More
AT this time of the year, fireworks sell as briskly as barbecue sauce and paper plates.
In 41 states, it is legal for adult consumers to buy certain fireworks at least during the weeks leading up to the Fourth of July, and in some cases, year-round. In nine states, including New York and New Jersey, it is not. In places like South Carolina, where fireworks have been legal for a long time, they are peddled not only at seasonal roadside stands but also at fireworks superstores, some strategically positioned along the Interstate.
Sales have doubled within the last 10 years, according to the American Pyrotechnics Association in Bethesda, Md., and with the growth has come increasingly playful and sophisticated designs, earning new respect for fireworks. Many retailers nationwide hang out signs for Black Cat, a trademark of Li & Fung Ltd. of Hong Kong, whose hand-painted, 1950's-era logo -- an expression sometimes glowering, sometimes smiling -- is so well known that it has become the Golden Arches of backyard pyrotechnics.
Designed by a long-forgotten graphics artist, the logo is a charming anachronism in a rapidly changing field. Dozens of companies, most of them based in Asia, compete for shares of the American market, which last year swelled to $610 million. At prices that run from $2 to $200, some fireworks are no more elaborate than sparklers and Roman candles. Others aim to deliver miniature versions of the public shows sponsored by professionals, with effects like palms, willows and crowns.
Along with their backlists of firecrackers and bottle rockets, manufacturers are adding colorful novelty pieces shaped like vehicles and animals, ready to spin through the air or across the ground. Even in the box they are a visual treat, tightly wrapped bundles of tissue in festive colors with exotic lettering and imagery, mingling the flavors of Asia with those of the circus. In states like Tennessee, South Carolina and Missouri, fireworks superstores use vibrant displays to attract impulse buyers passing through. They often stock variety packs shrink-wrapped like Hickory Farm gift cheeses.
Black Cat has the Mammoth Fountain (a cylinder that spews a cascade of light) and Lightning Storm (several seconds of airborne dazzle). Its Tortoise model lays blazing red, green and blue eggs as it moves on the ground. There are alligator-shaped fireworks and a Cat Copter (design patent No. 361367), which sails through the air surrounded by whistling missiles, said Ralph J. Apel, 52, president of Golden Gate Fireworks in San Francisco, a marketing and development company for Black Cat. He is also Golden Gate's de facto chief designer.
Mr. Apel's most popular introduction this summer coincidentally plays off the film 'Pearl Harbor.' It is a fireworks model of an aircraft carrier, which sails across the ground, its bridge glowing red and six helicopters lifting off the deck.
Mr. Apel comes up with many of the concepts, some of which are foreign to Black Cat factory workers in China and Indonesia. (Black Cat fireworks are also made in the United States by a company in Clinton, Mo.) To realize a design based on dragster race cars, he said he took many pictures with him on one of his periodic trips to China, adding, 'It took four tries to get one that would do a real wheelie.'
The rival Brothers Pyrotechnics firm produces a spinning piggy bank with a glowing red nose. It also makes high-concept displays like Blond Joke, which is advertised as 'an attention-grabbing show' of alternating red crackling stars and green and blue clusters with crackling tails.
Despite their new feats, fireworks -- the legal variety, that is -- are safer today than they were 10 years, according to the American Pyrotechnics Association. In a report to be released today, the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission said injuries rose last year but attributed it to a large increase in fireworks use surrounding millennial celebrations and the Fourth of July. The commission confirmed that from 1994 through 1999, injuries dropped by a third. The commission nonetheless urged consumers to leave the fireworks to the professionals and in no event to use M-80's, cherry bombs or quarter sticks, which have been banned by federal law since 1966.
For those who prefer not to do the igniting, there are fireworks-related collectibles. Colorful labels, banners and boxes typically sell on the Internet for $30 or less (www.fireworksland.com is one site), and Black Cat markets T-shirts, mugs and other souvenirs at the same places that sell its fireworks. (Don't look for fireworks in  Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Delaware, Vermont, Georgia, Arizona and Minnesota, in addition to New York and New Jersey. For a guide to fireworks laws of states,  www.americanpyro.com.)
Two recent books are devoted to the dazzling variety of fireworks designs: 'Firecrackers -- The Art and History' by Warren Dotz, Jack Mingo and George Moyer (Ten Speed Press) and 'Cock: Indian Firework Art' by Luigi Giannuzzi and Gavin Aldred (Trafalgar Square).
Susan Orlean, the author of 'The Orchid Thief' and other books, has a Black Cat poster hanging in her New York apartment. 'It's such a cool cat and so enthusiastically menacing,' she said. 'I also love the Maoist color scheme.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Oh, to Be on the Boulevard With a Calling Card and You
BLUES in the night. A purple heart for the lovelorn. Peter Eisenman's new design for a Parisian telephone kiosk is oddly poignant, coming from an architect noted for such cold-blooded formal explorations as the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and that city's convention center, with its metal roof that undulates like a bed of snakes.
Here, Mr. Eisenman seems inspired by the prospect of creating a pavilion for two in the capital city of romance. (April in Paris.) But the two callers that the kiosk can accommodate could be strangers. They could be getting busy signals. (April, the cruelest month.) Or a bad connection. (Allo? Allo?) Here's an alfresco setting for the Poulenc-Cocteau opera 'La Voix Humaine.'
Commissioned by J. C. Decaux, the French firm best known for deluxe sidewalk pay toilets, the kiosk is a prototype being considered for placement throughout the city. Designs are also being submitted by Norman Foster, Jean Nouvel, Charles Gwathmey, Robert A. M. Stern, James Stewart Polshek, and Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. A decision is expected in about six weeks, and eventually Decaux plans to distribute 5,000 kiosks, perhaps in a mix of designs.
Mr. Eisenman proposes to use a carbon-reinforced plastic fabric, similar to that used for bulletproof vests. Designed on a computer, the enclosure -- made from a single swirling, folded plane -- would be anchored to a metal column that supports two phones and a panel for illuminated advertising. Seating would be provided for one caller, or two close pals. The kiosk's skin would vary in opacity from open mesh to solid canopy, the latter acting as a rain shield.
This is not the first time that Mr. Eisenman has toyed with the conventions of coupledom. In 1972, his experimental House VI, in Cornwall, Conn., had a slot in the floor of the master bedroom that divided the bed in two. Philosophically, Mr. Eisenman is often drawn to the idea of collapsing dualisms (inside and outside; site and surroundings) into a fuzzy state of in-between. That bent is translated here into a form in which seating blossoms into roof, and enclosure dissolves into the perfume of the blue hour.
What a sensual beauty-freak Mr. Eisenman is turning out to be. In his most recent work, he has given up his reliance on the Cartesian grid in favor of softer contours that billow, swell and undulate. With the kiosk, this new approach has produced an object almost floral in effect, perhaps a newly bred lavender rose that tapers on one side to a sharp, thorny point -- a reminder that pain is one of love's glories.
Like many theoretically inclined architects, Mr. Eisenman has been reluctant to acknowledge the link between formalism and beauty, but his work is starting to do it for him. He calls himself a critical architect, an antagonist to convention. But beauty has always offered the most powerful critique of the difference between life as it is and as it should be.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"And Freedom for All
THE irony is rich. That's what makes the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum of the Smithsonian Institution different from other arty museums in the United States.
In 1976, the dark and pompous Andrew Carnegie mansion was turned into a bright public showplace for the usable arts of daily life. Here were exhibitions that talked straight, with a voice that was gutsy and sharp, yet highly refined. (In a current show, sketches of Disneyland are framed like Palladios.)
But not all irony is nice. One of the Cooper-Hewitt's crueler facts of life is that its director, Dianne H. Pilgrim, who has multiple sclerosis, could not enter the front door of the museum she had run for 10 years. Her wheelchair was not designed for steep palace staircases.
This year Ms. Pilgrim solved that problem -- for herself and for thousands of others who had trouble climbing those granite steps and heaving open massive glass-and-bronze doors once opened by butlers. As part of a $20 million, four-year renovation and expansion, the museum has installed a new ramp and has shrunk many barriers that kept it from serving its purpose: showing the biggest possible audience that utility, done well, can move the soul.
Or at least brighten your day. Perfectly timed with that reopening is a major exhibition, 'Unlimited by Design,' which is all about taking the needless barriers and discomforts out of everyone's daily routine -- not just in museum mansions, but in ordinary places like the home office, bathroom, kitchen and garden.
To that end the museum has transformed a room into a playground and set up a modern workplace with talking-and-listening computers, a streamlined bathroom and, most remarkably, two futuristic yet buildable kitchens.
There are 150 services and products featured. Some are on sale in the museum store, like the responsive 'Wiggly Giggly' balls that help vision-impaired children. Others, like the pop-up mini-dishwashers and pasta-cooking stations, are waiting for manufacturers to propel them into the marketplace.
'This is something I've wanted to do since I became director,' Ms. Pilgrim said. The show promotes  universal design, a term coined in the 1970's by the late Ronald L. Mace, an architect who championed  a new perspective: that making the world easier for the disabled actually makes life easier for everyone.
Over the last 20 years, Mr. Mace and others worked to make universal design as acceptable as public safety. What was required was common sense and the infiltration of the comfy world of smug young people, where fear and denial about aging and infirmity are strong. When making a sidewalk, for example, why not cut the curb down for mothers wheeling strollers, for travelers with baggage, for anyone using wheelchairs? In 1990, the Americans With Disabilities Act made curb cuts mandatory.
Although the message about accessibility has traveled widely over the last five years, the Cooper-Hewitt claims that it is the first museum to hold such a show. 'Unlimited by Design' had as its curators Bruce Hannah and George A. Covington, the authors of 'Access by Design' (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1997). Mr. Hannah is an industrial designer who teaches at Pratt Institute; Mr. Covington, who is legally blind, is a writer and lawyer known as an advocate for universal design.
Mr. Covington said, 'It's not a 'crip' show,' meaning a show only for people with disabilities.
The guest curators were aided by  manufacturers and teams of researchers. For example, the Rhode Island School of Design spent five years on its universal kitchen project, under the direction of Jane Langmuir, an architect. Two kitchens shaped by that research are  making their debut here.
The problem in presenting these universal designs is thorny, however. How do you tell an engaging, hands-on story about a serious mission? (In fact, many hands-on features of the universal kitchens had to be 'utilities off,' for insurance reasons: no water, no gas.)
A limitation of the 'Unlimited' show is that the inventions are too numerous to label and often too subtle to see. The Metaform bathroom, for example, is packed with solutions designers have sought for decades. One ingenious prototype is from Gianfranco Zaccai of Design Continuum, which erases the shower threshold, a detail vexing to those in wheelchairs. Only a contractor could discern the hidden invention: a plastic perforated floor is placed over the drain. The Metaform streamlined plastic toilet flips up to save space; when closed, it cleans itself.
'I wanted this to be a beautiful design show,' said the exhibition's  director, Donald Albrecht.
In that, he has succeeded, perhaps too well. The irony lies in the etiquette of it all. By taking great pains to prove that accessible design can be beautiful, the show has collected lots of beautiful design, presented it beautifully and made it look, well, sort of inaccessible.
But all this ends up being compatible with the politely provocative tradition of the Cooper-Hewitt. What 'Unlimited by Design' shows is the highly romanticized relationship most designers have with design. Few of them like confronting the messiness of daily life -- and the  unesthetic needs of actual people. It is easier to serve an ideal than to wrestle with all the permutations of  body types and biological functions. Globally, most 'good design' is lovely to look at and delightful to touch but conceived for an idealized client who chucks utility for style.
Beauty is thin stuff. And inner beauty (that is, functions that spur  better patterns of living) is not always pretty. Photogenically, the two universal kitchens in the exhibition would be shelter magazine rejects. The beauty they create is in the reorganized, retooled, refreshed life of the person using them.
Although Ms. Langmuir doesn't brag about it, the RISD crew did what designers seldom dare. They blew up preconceptions about what a kitchen should be -- stacks of costly steel and wood boxes -- and started from scratch.
Eventually, they poured their ideas into two kitchens -- each a universe of its own. The Maxi is for families and those who entertain; the Mini suits the cooking-for-one style of dorms, studios and hotels.
The students and researchers cooked together, videotaped the chaos, did time-and-motion studies, sketched and,  best of all, asked thrillingly mundane questions: if everyone eats pasta, they said, isn't there an easier way to cook it?
For the Maxi kitchen, they designed a pasta basket that looks like a deep-fryer, then fitted that into a basin that fills with water. The contraption makes it possible to cook the pasta and drain it without moving it. That way, there's no dumping heavy pots of scalding water.
And pasta-making was just the beginning. The kitchen's main event is a 'wet island' -- with interchangeable functions that can be customized and combined in many ways. The island contains a long work surface that lets you wash, chop, discard, cook, clean and juggle dishes in a series of continuous motions. Behind the narrow ribbon of work surface are three dishwashers (one for glasses, one for dishes, one for pots), which pop up for easy loading or sink out of view to create extra work surfaces. 'The idea is to clean as you cook,' Ms. Langmuir said.
The sink is not the usual giant tub but a shallow basin equipped with a pull sprayer and lined with ribbons of water activated by infrared sensors.  Cantilevered from the island is a wooden counter that recognizes the way American families actually dine and snack: on the run.
This weekend, Ms. Langmuir showed a small visitor, a 9-year-old budding chef thwarted by grown-up kitchen counters, how the universal kitchen can change shape to suit the people using it. 'You press this button and an electric motor moves the counter down to 28 inches, or up to 40,' Ms. Langmuir said. The little girl, an ebullient cook who struggles at 38-inch-high counters at home, watched the counter sink slowly. When it stopped, she beamed an empowered grin, the kind Girl Scout leaders live for. All it took was a few inches of change and suddenly the girl's aspirations meshed with a reachable world, like an elevator  opening onto a penthouse panorama.
How do you unlock somebody's aspirations? Sometimes, all you need is a gnarled little electric motor. It's not pretty, but it moves things along in a meaningful way.
Now that's beautiful.
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street; (212) 849-8300. 'Unlimited by Design' runs through March 21.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Living at Cool, Not Just Visiting
BOND. Forty Bond. That's the address of the latest downtown luxury condominium being whipped into shape by Ian Schrager in league with the high-brow Swiss architectural team of Herzog & de Meuron. The name brings to mind the spy who never came in from the Cool.
And it had better. At upward of $2,800 a square foot, the condo on Bond Street needs to offer an experience beyond ho-hum workaday living.
But in the crowded field of luxury condos by celebrated architects, it is getting harder every day to be noticed. The ranks are heavy with A-listers -- Richard Meier, Santiago Calatrava, Jean Nouvel, Charles Gwathmey and even Philip Johnson from the beyond -- all vying to reinvent lavish living for those few, those happy few who never have to take out the trash or cook for the children.
'I'm interested in rethinking the genre,' said Mr. Schrager, who is also reinventing the Gramercy Park Hotel with condos by John Pawson and hotel rooms by Julian Schnabel. 'I'm making something really special for that person in the know who wants the unique living experience. It's the same person who went to my nightclubs and stayed at my hotels. Maybe now they're a little richer, a little older, but they still want to be part of the zeitgeist. I don't need many of them.'
In other words, prospective seekers of smaller comforts, go home someplace else.
Enter Herzog & de Meuron, which is best known for the Tate Modern in London and, more recently, the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Forty Bond will be its first building in New York and its first condo in the United States. When the firm has taken on residential work, Jacques Herzog said in a phone conversation this week, it has more often been low-income housing. 'We don't see ourselves in luxury,' he said. 'Our work is about experiment.'
At 40 Bond -- now a grim hole in the ground in always trending, never trendy NoHo -- Herzog & de Meuron has done its radical best, envisioning an 11-story facade made entirely of cast glass with a greenish Coke-bottle hue.
Along the street, a cast-aluminum fence intended as a bold update on 19th-century cast-iron gates will look something like spray-foam squiggles, a nostalgic reference to the graffiti that once defaced many city surfaces. The graffiti pattern recurs throughout the project, most noticeably in the lobby, where it is etched on towering walls of wavy white Corian.
The condo consists of 27 units, including five 'town houses' or triplex apartments entered at ground level with their own backyards and tiny forecourts facing Bond Street. Above the town houses are 22 loftlike dwellings ranging from 1,269 square feet for a one-bedroom to 3,288 for a four-bedroom.
Ceiling heights are a glorious 11 feet; bathrooms have smoked oak walls and milk-white Corian counters ('Corian is more expensive than marble,' Mr. Schrager explained). Are there wood floors? Yes, indeed. The entire space is covered in wide planks of oak imported from Austria, including the kitchens.
When it comes to stardust du jour, nobody sells it better than Mr. Schrager, nightclub act turned swank hotelier, now swashbuckling developer. But it may take more than flashy lures to get prospective buyers to take the hook. Anyone driving up the West Side Highway can see that many of the original 'starchitect' condos by Richard Meier built four years ago are still uninhabited.
Mr. Schrager adamantly, albeit predictably, dismisses any mention of a real estate bubble at bursting point. 'There's always room for something special,' he said. Even so, there are plenty of potential wrenches that could jam the works on the current luxury condo merry-go-round. For starters, construction costs are rising fast as China swallows up raw materials for its own building boom. Closer to home, high-end residential contractors with the requisite skill are flush with work and can afford to be very picky, and costly.
And then there's the most delicate concept of all: expiration date. Adding architectural gems to the skyline is a great thing, said Jon McMillan, a director of planning at the Rockrose Development Corporation, but as a marketing tactic, 'it has a shelf life of about 15 minutes -- now that everyone's doing it, it's played out.'
Until now, Mr. Schrager has shrouded the prospectus of 40 Bond in the highest-level secrecy. And secrecy has worked like a nightclub's velvet rope, fueling rabid interest. When a blog posted a rendering of the building facade (labeled Project No. 253 and bootlegged from a class taught by Mr. Herzog at the Harvard Graduate School of Design), Mr. Schrager said he had it removed. The real estate blogs went ballistic. Mission accomplished: 7 of the 27 units have been sold at prices ranging from $3.5 million for a one-bedroom to $10 million for a triplex.
With only the Richard Meier and Gwathmey Siegel luxury condos completed, it is too soon to tell how ripe the market for luxury condos costing close to $3,000 a square foot will remain. Certainly, Mr. Schrager himself is one of the most sensitive barometers in town. When does he move on to the next thing? 'Once something goes mainstream, it's over for me,' Mr. Schrager said. 'Violating the status quo is what gets me up in the morning.'
For most homeowners, however, it probably just takes a strong cup of coffee in a comfortable kitchen.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Glass That Reveals and Conceals
PEOPLE who live in glass houses are few and far between.
Although dazzling in photographs, the first glass houses by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson have been remarkably tricky to emulate. In reality, they were hidden from prying eyes on secluded country estates, like precious glass gems. That was 50 years ago. Recently, the privacy problem was campily dramatized at a glass house on a busy Tokyo corner. There, the owners hung full-length draperies all around -- on the outside.
Surely, there must be some middle ground.
Lorcan O'Herlihy, an architect who practices in the Culver City section of Los Angeles, has successfully found a way to build glass houses that city dwellers can live in.
Mr. O'Herlihy's solution is stunningly simple. He uses clear glass in those places where you want to see out, and translucent glass in places where you don't. This way, he captures the unfettered joys of a glass house -- the luminous interior spaces, desirable views and inside-outside connections -- while magically dissolving the neighbors behind a beautiful blur.
Why has it taken so long to make glass houses ready for their close-ups? The missing link, it turns out, has been a German-made architectural glass called channel glass. It caught Mr. O'Herlihy's eye in the mid-1980's, when he was fresh from school and working with Steven Holl in New York City. He could see that the ribbed, green-tinted translucent glass had a lot going for it.
'The diaphanous pale green tinge lent a nice hint of color,' he said. 'And its terrific luminescence would warm up the coolest modern design. I'm a practical guy, and I liked the structural possibilities, too.'
The problem was, it wasn't easy to get in the United States. 'The glass was not too expensive, but freight was exorbitant,' Mr. O'Herlihy said
Stronger than ordinary plate glass, channel glass supports its own weight. Long, tall exterior walls can go up without mullions, where regular glass would bow out or break. Cast in bracket-shaped panels, channel glass is easy to install. The bracket ends lock together, like links in a chain, within a peripheral aluminum frame. Installed in double rows, back to back with an air sandwich in between, the glass becomes an excellent insulator. It is light, color, texture and structure rolled into one.
Mort Kline's house in Malibu became one of Mr. O'Herlihy's first channel glass experiments. Its hillside site, up against neighbors on either side, overlooks a spectacular Pacific Ocean cove the architect calls 'the secret enclave of surfing.'
Mr. O'Herlihy multiplied the ocean views with a multilevel, hill-hugging design. Clear glass windows across the front showcase the ocean. Mr. Kline, a surfer, says you can stand inside and feel the waves cresting right toward you.
To veil the views, side walls are channel glass. Instead of looking at neighbors, Mr. Kline encounters glass walls dreamily illuminated by the golden sun, with deep-green bamboo shadows showing through. The whole interior glows with surreal, soft-focus light. The glass's distinctive vertical ribs, at 10-inch intervals, superimpose a satisfying rhythmic pattern on this gauzy scene.
The views-versus-privacy problem vexed Marta and Dan Kelly, whose Marina del Rey penthouse overlooks the Pacific. Here again, Mr. O'Herlihy's judicious combination of clear glass in front and channel glass on the sides proved a winner. A highlight of this recent project is the channel-glass-walled library on the apartment's rooftop terrace -- a one-room crystal palace in the air.
Mr. O'Herlihy no longer considers channel glass an experiment. His efforts helped get it distributed in the United States by Westcrowns Inc. of Sunset Beach, N.C. (910-579-4441; www.westcrowns.com) and stocked in 36 locations. Mr. Holl and Ann Fougeron are other architects propelling it into the mainstream.
Mr. O'Herlihy explained: 'Channel glass is not the cheapest material, but the advantages certainly make it worthwhile. Since you don't need window coverings for privacy, the extra cost may be offset somewhat.' Channel glass runs about 20 percent more than traditional wall materials. A double-sided installation costs about $40 a square foot. In the Kline house, a 12-by-20-foot dining room wall cost about $12,000.
Apartment dwellers or suburban homeowners can replace existing windows or walls with channel glass, as long as the depth measures at least two inches. Mr. O'Herlihy said that 'with proper framing, channel glass can also be used indoors,' as in a living room/dining room divider. At 8 feet high and 12 feet long, the wall would cost $4,000 -- comparable with using a decorative screen. It is also a striking replacement for the old sliding door to the backyard or terrace.
Mr. O'Herlihy is poised to design a house for himself and his wife, Cornelia, in Venice, Calif. With channel glass? 'Absolutely.' But he added: 'It won't be a one-note performance. You have to use this stuff selectively. As great as it is, you have to know where to stop. It's about finding a balance -- like life -- and I like that.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"In Milan, Four-Star Inspiration
THE last several days have been tense ones throughout Italy. Over Easter weekend, major cities geared up, with a kind of morbid expectation, for a terror attack similar to the one that hit Spain last month. Then came the news that four Italians had been taken hostage in Iraq.
So was it any wonder that visitors to the Salone Internazionale del Mobile looked to the yearly weeklong furniture fair for a bit of lighthearted distraction? In preview events on Tuesday, designers, critics and buyers alike seemed all too glad to linger within the fair's candy-colored glow.
Those previews offered an appetizer for the huge meal to come on Wednesday -- when the fair opened officially -- and the days following. This year, appropriately enough, that appetizer was all about food, a subject the design world is becoming bolder about claiming as its bailiwick.
In one pavilion on the fair's sprawling fairground, the New York architect Adam D. Tihany, known for his restaurant design in New York, including Per Se in the new Time Warner Center, has organized 'Dining Design,' a mixture of work by young and established figures. Its centerpiece is an indoor street lined with restaurants created by students and faculty members from 10 design schools around the world. Meanwhile, on Tuesday two other food-related exhibitions welcomed the press in La Triennale, a separate event near Milan's old castle, including a show of high-end outdoor food stalls by Future Systems, a London-based architecture firm, and others.
'Every architect I know now wants to design a restaurant,' Mr. Tihany said on Tuesday. Standing near the entrance to the exhibition, his jacket and violet tie glowed in the reflected light of a huge video installation of raw and cooked food by the New York-based food stylist and artist Nir Adar.
Mr. Tihany added: 'Every business traveler today, if you open their luggage, you will be hard-pressed to find a guide to the monuments of Rome. But you will find the restaurant guide right on top.' Nearby stood Mr. Adar, who has provided the artwork for several restaurants designed by Mr. Tihany, including the Aleph hotel in Rome. With his shaved head, dark suit and formidable frame, Mr. Adar looked like a cross between a maître d'hôtel and a bouncer as he checked out his six-minute video.
As a major theme for a fair devoted to furniture design, food may be a stretch. Still, the show makes an energetic case that restaurants are now the place where the public can sample a wide variety of aesthetic disciplines in a single spot, from architecture to furniture to flatware to gastronomy.
Just past Mr. Adar's video is a full-blown restaurant interior where meals will be served to select visitors by Rosita Missoni. The upholstery, carpet and tabletop designs are a good deal less busy than what might be expected from the company that bears her name. The interior will be pulled up in a couple of days, at which point a design by another fashion designer, Paul Smith, will take its place.
The lightest touch of all was provided by Mr. Tihany himself, who designed a glowing white plastic chair, lighted from within, and then placed it inside a bar where hot chocolate will be poured this week to ward off Milan's sometimes clammy April weather. He has also designed a V.I.P. lounge nearby, with an orange bar area, blood-red walls, and huge plastic lampshades by Fontana Arte hanging over a collection of wide white chairs by Poltrona Frau.
The heart of 'Dining Design,' though, is the student work. Each school team was asked to create a design for a restaurant free of its national context: a pizzeria in Kyoto, or a sushi bar in Lausanne. The students and their faculty advisers came up with plans, some of them detailed down to the utensils, that were produced in full scale by Kartell, Magis and other Italian manufacturers.
A Japanese restaurant for Helsinki, designed by nine students at the University of Art and Design there, had a minimalist charisma to go with an all-white palette. Carnivora, a steakhouse for Sydney, featured a more muscular look, with a front facade made from rows of hanging stools.
A high point by all accounts was 'Partingline,' a French haute cuisine restaurant meant for Tel Aviv and designed by three students and as many advisers from the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem. It takes its name, the catalog explains, 'from a technological term that describes the meeting or separation line between parts of an object.'
Practically, that meant that the design was all about the lines dividing one space or culture from another and the gaps between them. It's hard to think of more potent themes for students from Israel. A bar running along the wall, zooming from hip to shoulder height and back again, managed to split and unify the restaurant at the same time. All the smaller items designed for the space, from nesting soup bowls to wine and water glasses that nestle against one another, each leaning on another to keep from toppling, extended the theme.
Even the chairs, said Ezri Tarazi, head of the school's industrial design department, were meant to suggest both division and unification. Their backs were split, but the act of sitting down wedged them together.
'It comes together in a click,' he said of one chair. He grabbed two others to demonstrate. 'See, all of these are clicking.'
Then he went back to get more wine. It was a red -- from the Golan Heights. Like the Italians, he was finding a bit of uplift where he could, even in a bottle whose label practically advertised conflict.
Next week, another report from the Milan furniture fair.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Hiding It All In High Style
BUILT-INS capture the essence of the modern spirit. Sixty years ago, a sleek bookshelf-banquette combo or a new hi-fi cabinet integrated into a sofa stood for efficiency, ingenuity and a tidy liberation from the past.
Broadly defined, built-ins are furniture that you can't take with you. Early Modernists, from Le Corbusier to Russel Wright, saw them as the antidote to stifling Victorian clutter and a way to streamline interiors for a life without hired help. The machine for living would be powered by built-ins. 'Clutter was a disease that modern architecture was going to cure,' said Donald Albrecht, a curator at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
The enthusiasm for built-ins lasted through the 1960's, but they then fell out of favor. They looked too clinical, and their immovability made it difficult to redecorate a room. Young couples on the move preferred bean bags and plastic chairs. Built-ins had lost their sense of mission. The postmodern era further reduced built-ins to all-purpose cabinetry made to match the period style of the moment.
But needs have changed. While there is still plenty of clutter to combat, a new generation of architects is reviving built-in furniture not only to contain the chaos but, even more important, to provide custom-tailoring for the home. Once meant to make interiors more universal, built-ins have become personalized. From a chaise carved into a balcony overlooking a living room to an herb garden integrated into a kitchen counter, today's built-ins are as much about embellishing space as serving practical needs.
'In our work lives, we're all sitting at computers in the same way no matter what we do, but at home, people are looking for a more unique experience,' said Robert D. Henry, an architect in Manhattan who has recently installed some 68 linear feet of built-ins into his 740-square-foot Upper West Side apartment for about $90,000. 'They don't believe in a one-size-fits-all aesthetic anymore.'
Mr. Henry and his wife, Nancy S. Wu, also an architect, engineered their home with an eye to luxury as well as efficiency. Their studio loft is only 14-feet wide, but it has 20-foot ceilings with a bedroom loft overlooking the living room.
'We could afford to waste space going up,' Ms. Wu said. And so they installed a 21-inch-high platform on the lower floor that allowed for a room-wide window seat, a built-in planter and a low tea table. The small pit created as leg room beneath the Japanese-style tea table doubles as a playpen and toy storage area for their 22-month-old son, Bo Alexander, who enjoys playing hide-and-seek under the hinged tabletop that folds back into the wall when not in use.
The well for the tea table -- the couple call it 'the baby dungeon' -- is lined on four sides with drawers, with two of them deep enough for a set of skis. When guests appear, all the toys, Ms. Wu said, 'can be bulldozed out of sight in a minute.'
'This way,' she added, 'we can still feel like we're streamlined and living a sports-car lifestyle.'
Although the room is unusually narrow, one entire wall is largely given over to cabinets, most of which conceal bookcases. 'At one point, we decided that we just don't want to see our books anymore,' Mr. Henry said. 'They're not great editions, and we don't need to show off our intelligence, so we shut them off.'
The teak veneer cabinets give way at one end to a coat closet and an enclosed work niche for Ms. Wu. Only five feet in height, her tiny office is no larger than a human cubbyhole containing a desk surface for a computer, a shelf and a chair. Its cabinet doors swing open to form an improvised wall for privacy.
But the most inspired built-in is the balcony chaise carved into the parapet wall of the bedroom loft. It provides an efficiency that the early Modernists never anticipated: the need to schedule relaxation time.
'The general inclination when people come up to spaces like this is to look over the railing and say, 'That's nice -- now where do I go?' ' Ms. Wu said of the bedroom large enough for little more than the bed (which Mr. Henry designed himself and which has a built-in candlestick) and a lamp. In fact, Ms. Wu never spent any time there herself until her husband suggested the chaise.
Made of carefully aged -- rusted -- steel, the chaise is bent to fit the exact dimensions of Ms. Wu in repose. ('We kept cutting out cardboard models and making her sit in them until it fit,' Mr. Henry said.) It is softened with a cotton pad; a mink bolster supports her neck. 'It gives me a reason to stay in one place for a while,' Ms. Wu said, adding that her perch allows her both to read and to keep an eye on Bo playing below.
While they save space, the new built-ins can also enrich the home in unexpected ways. 'I belong to a generation that grew up in 2,500-to-3,000-square-foot homes,' said Anna Simone of Cecconi Simone, an architectural firm in Toronto. For many city dwellers, that kind of room to grow in is now unattainable, and they are forced to settle for less. 'But people still want the same feeling despite the smaller size,' she added.
Ms. Simone has found that built-ins afford a new dimension for smaller spaces -- adding shelves that are beyond everyday reach. 'I tell clients to think in cubic footage, not square footage, when buying something,' she said. 'Figuring out how to translate vertical space into usable space is more critical than ever. I put a ladder in one project, and after that everyone started asking for one.'
The new approach to built-ins is not confined to cabinetry. Ms. Simone uses them for their extra space -- and to introduce a welcome taste of nature. 'People always gravitate to what's missing in their environment,' the designer said. To that end, she has installed herb gardens into kitchen counters equipped with plant-friendly lighting. 'Healthy cooking should be easier than it is,' Ms. Simone said.
And for homes without fireplaces, she has designed a free-standing mantle inset with candles. 'Modern life tends to zap all our energy,' she said. 'What designers really need to do when it comes to built-ins is build in whatever they can to replenish and inspire.'
The revival of built-ins comes at a time when the interiors of single family homes are actually getting larger; there has been an increase of 4.1 percent since 1997, to an average of 2,055 square feet last year. Once essential for stashing surplus, built-ins now also serve to help organize hectic lives. (Mr. Henry took special care to provide a handy shelf dedicated to keeping the daily mail out of sight, not out of mind.)
Myrna Kaye, the author of 'There's a Bed in the Piano: The Inside Story of the American Home' (Bulfinch, 1998), dismissed the notion of built-ins as primarily providing storage. 'The more important drive is the need to organize time, so that we can fit four lifetimes into one,' she said.
Joseph D. Tanney, a New York architect, would agree. His small firm, based in Manhattan, weaves furniture and storage into an ornate piece of architecture that serves the same purpose as walls: to divide rooms. 'Clients think of it as handling a need to store stuff,' Mr. Tanney said. 'We like to say it's not just accommodating but defining space.'
His own loft in Brooklyn, though hardly cramped at 11,000 square feet, is designed to be as trim as a yacht. 'It's not so much about building in furniture as carving the wall itself,' Mr. Tanney said. He added that built-ins are custom work that can range widely in price. In his projects, which use Baltic birch, the cost ranges from $250 to $1,200 a linear foot, depending on the job.
And so an open bookcase wraps every wall surface and floats over a door, then turns a corner to shape an office. In one corner, bookcases morph into a bunk bed for the children. (The lower bunk is twice as wide as the upper so that the parent reading bedtime stories doesn't fall out.)
In the kitchen, a serving island neatly turns into a table, where his family settles to eat meals, work on the computer and do homework. 'It's where we spend most of our time together,' Mr. Tanney said.
Determined that this protean built-in piece works precisely, the architect called his wife late at night while drafting the design to make sure that the shelves were sized exactly to fit her favorite brand of olive oil on one shelf, his seltzer bottles on another, and that the shelves supporting one end of the table would be wide enough for stacking discarded newspaper sections.
The real value of today's built-ins is building in peace of mind. 'I found that when there's a place for everything,' Mr. Tanney said, 'and when everything is in its place, things are a lot more tranquil.'
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"That Fickle Lover In Design Affairs
SOME houses are built around a view, some around a hearth, some around the kitchen. But rare is the home predicated on celestial events. In architectural history, the buildings that channel sunlight are usually religious structures that materialize light, as though the finger of God were making a divine point by marking space at a designated time.
At Josephine Withers's house in this forested area across the Potomac River from Mount Vernon, the star of the show, for the six months starting in September and ending in March, is the sun, which peers in through the long, high clerestory windows on the south side of her two-story living room and strikes coated glass and mirrored metals suspended from the ceiling. The work, by Janet Saad-Cook, sends back a 'light painting' across the south wall.
In early September, the angle of the sun makes the painting merely flicker. By now, the painting is in full stride, fluttering as the remaining leaves filter the sunlight. At the winter solstice, with the leaves completely gone and the sun at its nadir, the chromatic apparitions achieve full bloom. Then over the following months, the show fades and gradually expires.
When Ms. Withers asked McInturff Architects of Bethesda, Md., to design a modest, 1,500-square-foot house on a rural site in Maryland, she spelled out her many requirements in a letter. She wanted the house to follow feng shui principles; it should face and frame the forest out back, with its oak, beech and holly, and it should have a horizontal ity to complement the contours of the land.
She stipulated its character -- informal, calm and serene -- without specifying any architectural style. In addition, she asked the architects to collaborate with Ms. Saad-Cook, who works in Arlington, Va., to create a wall that would serve as a canvas for a projected light piece.
The two women have been friends for many years, and Ms. Withers has seen Ms. Saad-Cook's work evolve from 1970's sculptures composed of gauze, bamboo reeds and sisal (earthy materials that interact with direct sunlight) to work that uses light, itself. Ms. Saad-Cook uses optical instruments to reflect, refract, split, shape and throw light onto nearby surfaces in moving washes of color.
Though the tradition of using natural light to interact with a space is ancient, Ms. Withers, an associate professor of art history at the University of Maryland at College Park, places her friend's work in a Modernist tradition. (Other contemporary light artists include Robert Irwin, James Turrell and Doug Wheeler.)
Ms. Saad-Cook's shifting color fields set off chromatic events that have a life of their own, the colors mixing unpredictably in intensities that depend on the weather, time of day and angle. One of Ms. Saad-Cook's pieces is at the Haystack Observatory outside Boston.
'We are always thinking about light in architecture -- that's fundamental to our work,' said Mark McInturff, the principal in McInturff Architects. 'But we'd never worked with a light artist.'
Stephen Lawlor, the project architect, said that he and Mr. McInturff first met Ms. Saad-Cook in her loft, where she bends metal or glass reflectors and coats them with chemicals to absorb or reflect light.
'Her whole studio was devoted to tracking the movement of the sun, with chalked notations traced all over the floor,' he said. 'We were blown away. It looked like something out of Copernicus.'
Ms. Saad-Cook has visited the great 18th-century observatories in Jaipur and Delhi, India; the pyramids of Mexico; and the kivas of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, to ponder their solar mysteries. In India, she recalls being in a dark astronomical tower and seeing an intense beam of light slipping off a curved table and shattering on the floor. 'An unforgettable experience, right up there with childbirth,' said Ms. Saad-Cook, the mother of three.
She added: 'Light, it's like a fickle lover. He's not there when you need him; he's all over the place when it doesn't matter.'
The sun drove decisions at Ms. Withers's bucolic 11-acre site. 'The sun told us approximately where the house wanted to be located, because there was a clearing, and we needed southern light,' Mr. Lawlor said.
The architects sited the house in a clearing on a saddle sloping down to two ravines and a stream, and worked with an astronomer, Peter Boyce Sr., Ms. Saad-Cook's mentor. Mr. Boyce made a printout showing architectural sections of the building and windows, and he worked up a chart following the path of the sun to show what months the sun would be active with respect to the proposed light piece.
'He and Janet are really able to hash out anything,' Mr. Lawlor said. 'I remember a whole discussion about how a special gimbel mount would maximize the amount of sun. He had one opinion, she had the opposite, and it was a battle between art and science right there.'
Ms. Withers's most demanding requirement was the cost. 'I definitely had a budget,' she said. The result was architectural simplicity -- a two-story gabled structure as rudimentary as a Monopoly-board house but split into halves spanned by a covered bridging structure. The flat-roofed bridge is glazed on the north side facing the forest, and is clad in corrugated metal on the south side, where Ms. Saad-Cook's light piece is projected.
'The budget encouraged us to keep the square footage down and to minimize foundations, which led us to think of spanning from one side of the house to the other,' Mr. Lawlor said. The cost for the house worked out to $100 a square foot, or $150,000, without road and septic work.
'We called it a 'case study house in inexpensive construction' on the drawings that we gave out to the contractors for bids,' Mr. McInturff said.
The architects cut costs by deploying generic details and materials, like asphalt shingle siding, Ikea cabinets and $8 exterior light fixtures used throughout the interiors. The rudimentary nature of the down-home house might have inspired Edward Hopper, except for the radical cut down its middle. The house is simultaneously a traditional building and an architectural abstraction.
Inside, the two-story volume looks like a loft and acts like a plaza between the two bookend structures, where two bedrooms and a study are located. An interior bridge, whose rails act as a truss, connects the two halves of the upper story. The architects designed the two metal struts suspended from the ceiling, which hold up the reflective instruments.
'The simplicity of the interior is disciplining me,' said Ms. Withers, who moved into the house last year  after living in a Victorian environment where clutter looked good. 'It did cross my mind to move paintings onto the south wall during the other half of the year, but now that I'm here, I like it plain.'
The house has had a profound effect on her consciousness. 'It's been cleansing to get rid of stuff,' she said. 'It lightens me up. I could cram it full of books, but I don't do that, because this house demands a cleanness. The house is speaking to me, and I'm willing to submit to that discipline.'
Besides becoming more aware of the light, Ms. Withers says she notices the forested setting because of the way the windows frame the trees. 'Those are the gifts of the house,' she said.
The house has also made itself a gift to the neighbors, for whom the sun drawing has become a local landmark: on sunny days during the darker and colder months, they bring friends over to see the south wall.
Ms. Withers was surprised by the first glimmerings of the sun drawing in early September. 'I wasn't waiting for it,' she said. 'It's ephemeral. You can't nail it on the wall, and yet it returns tomorrow, it returns next year.' Next September, she said, she will be waiting.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Save That Legend! Preservationists To the Rescue
AT a $1,000-a-plate benefit on Oct. 1 with the actor Brad Pitt as host, this city will toast the restoration of the Robert R. Blacker House, a national treasure and one of the celebrated Ultimate Bungalows designed at the turn of the century by the Arts and Crafts architects Greene & Greene.
The force of nature drawing movie-industry executives here from Paramount Pictures, Universal, Walt Disney and the Creative Artists Agency is the rebirth of a wooden house. Since the 20-room heavy-timbered mansion, with its covered terraces and sleeping porches, was built in 1907, deferred maintenance had taken its toll. But what seemed to be irreparable damage -- what Pasadena's preservationists call 'the rape of the Blacker house' -- occurred in 1985, when the stately home was stripped of approximately 60 custom-designed light fixtures, stained-glass doors and window transoms, many of which were sold on the art market as body parts.
Often, historic buildings are done in by the rising value of their land. The Blacker house was sabotaged from within, by its irresistible lamps and lanterns. Barton English, a collector from Texas, bought the house from its owner, Marjorie Hill, for about $1 million and within weeks of its purchase had dispersed the lamps, some for his private collection and some for sale.
Mrs. Hill said that at the time she couldn't understand why Mr. English kept counting the fixtures. Speaking by phone from Fredericksburg, Tex., Mr. English said he was basically acting on a comment made by Randall Makinson, who at the time was the director of the Gamble House (another Greene & Greene masterpiece in Pasadena), which was relayed to him: 'Randy Makinson mentioned at a party in Pasadena that the house was for sale and that anyone who bought it could make a killing on it.'
Some of the lamps fetched $100,000 each, and at least one of the more imposing chandeliers sold for about a quarter of a million dollars. A handful of fixtures was sufficient to cover the price of the house. (Mr. English declined to give figures.)
Pasadena citizens, including Mr. Makinson, loudly declared their outrage, and with the support of Pasadena Heritage, a preservation group, the city passed an emergency ordinance that slowed further removal of the pieces. Citizens guarded the house in cars parked out front.
Mr. English sold the Blacker House in 1988, never having lived in it. The removal of the fixtures had violated the integrity of Greene & Greene's design. The brothers had created interiors that were symphonies of carefully orchestrated parts, and suddenly the first violin section was missing in every room. One of the finest works of American architecture had been desecrated.
Its saviors were Harvey and Ellen Knell, who had kept loose tabs on the house since 1981. 'We drove by and stopped, and I didn't care what it looked like inside,' Mr. Knell, 54, recalled. 'I loved the house. I wanted to buy it.' Even though the couple were in escrow on another Greene & Greene house, they leaped at the chance to buy the Blacker house when they learned it was being sold in 1994.
The Knells, working with Mr. Makinson, now a restoration architect with a specialty in Greene & Greene, and James Ipekjian, a master craftsman, have restored the shell of the building inside and out. The last of the 60 lamps replicated by Mr. Ipekjian was installed on Sept. 30.
'I was granted an audience with a couple of originals in New York,' Mr. Ipekjian said.
Mr. Knell, an investor whose family once owned a chain of building supply stores, said, 'We didn't do anything we didn't need to do, but we needed to do much more than we thought.'
The Blacker house was predicated on grandiloquent understatement: Charles and Henry Greene had developed a democratic style popular among social liberals with progressive ideas about women's suffrage, national parks, healthy living environments and the development of an American architectural style independent of Europe's aristocratic architectural attitudes. Living simply amounted to a virtue, and a crafted house represented moral integrity.
Pasadena itself lies at the foothills of the majestic San Gabriel Mountains, and the Greenes landscaped the original five-acre site with a quarter-acre lily pond and a timber pergola stretching toward the view of the San Gabriel Valley. They conceived the house as a pavilion in the garden.
Appropriately, Mr. and Mrs. Knell start relating their saga while on the covered terrace off the living room, which delivers the epiphany of the house: on a brilliant Saturday afternoon, with the close-up view of the mountains and gentle breezes touching the skin and rustling the leaves, there is little reason to think that heaven could be any better.
The genius of the Greenes was their ability to visualize and idealize this nature architecturally, through materials, forms and metaphor. The open timber framework allows breezes and views through the house.
This newly re-established state of grace was the result of four years of planning and hard work. The Knells completely rewired the house and redid the plumbing, upgraded its structure to withstand earthquakes and threaded ventilation ducts through the framework. They removed every shingle, stripped the timbers back to the grain and replaced nearly all the tail rafters cantilevering beyond the roof line.
In one of the early architectural efforts to bring the outside in, the Greenes detailed the major rooms to resemble the timbered porches. Inside, the terrace's wood columns and trusses are suggested with appliques of mahogany and teak, so that the rooms evoke the open-air spaces protected by parasols of wood.
In the living room, the frieze ringing the top of the wall is a shimmering gold-leafed version of the lily pads that once floated in the pond. Baskets of stained-glass flowers are suspended from ceiling beams that seem an indoor arbor -- like the wisteria dripping from the heavy beams of the pergola in the yard. The blossoms of light in the living room cast light up onto the mahogany beams. 'The lamps are more important for the effects they produce than for their presence as separate objects,' Mrs. Knell said.
For public tours, which begin on Oct. 2, and for the benefit tonight and for another one on Saturday for Pasadena Heritage, museums and private collectors have lent furniture that might have been used in the house, including some Blacker originals designed by the Greenes. Otherwise, the Knells are living like Bedouins. With the restoration of the house's shell, they have just started to furnish the rooms: they have only bought Oriental carpets. The Knells and the youngest of their three sons, Lorin, are using the expansive mansion as a two-bedroom house, with a family room in the old billiard room in the basement.
The teak-paneled entry, with a massive stairway and beamed ceiling, is one of the most dazzling domestic visions ever built in the United States: the Greenes structured the staircase and upstairs landing with heavy brackets, corbeled beams and a woven wood handrail. Stained-glass doors on either side of the front door open for breezes that cross the space to the wall of doors at the far side facing the garden.
At the corner landing, where the staircase turns, a bay window of stained-glass grape vines emphasizes California's beneficent climate, as do the Japanese-inspired lamps hanging from the beams of the entry way: the Greenes are again suggesting that the inside is really an outside space. One of the most brilliant touches is the redwood frieze on the second-floor landing, wire-brushed so that grain patterns recall skies striated with clouds.
Painstaking chromatic archeology revealed that a dusty green in several shades was the original color of the plaster walls. 'The dark color gives life to the wood,' Mrs. Knell said. 'The white we found when we bought the house made the wood look dark and dull.'
Poking about in basement cavities, the restoration team found small slivers of the original shingle, retaining remnants of color. They located the paint company that originally produced the transparent oil stain -- again, a dusty green. Each shingle was hand dipped in the stain (reformulated and now sold by the company) and today the facade is a lively but gentle chromatic mix: green on the shingles, brown on the structural beams and natural blond on the frame holding the screens.
'It's the first time in 50 years we've seen the exterior of a Greene & Greene house the way it should be,' said Mr. Makinson, author of a new book, 'Greene & Greene: The Passion and the Legacy.'
The recovery of the colors encourages the interpretation of the house as a garden pergola that happens to have plaster walls. The house is not a wall building, like the many Spanish colonials in the neighborhood. It reads instead like a skeletal frame structure with panels that can be imagined away to allow views of the nature that infuses the design and makes the house thoroughly and innovatively American.
Public tours ($30 a person; $25 for those 65 and older and students) are available Oct. 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 16, 17 and 18. Proceeds will largely be used to restore the exterior of the Gamble House. Information: (213) 740-8687.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"After the Menu, a Quiz
TALK about chewing  scenery.
Pop, which opened last month on Fourth Avenue near 12th Street, is much more than just a deafeningly hot eatery with no sign in front. Read the menu. Not the entrees and appetizers, but a page at the back titled 'About Pop.' It's a mouthful.
'Pop is based on the post-war social idealism and trust in technological innovation, mass production and prefabrication. While it resonates with this mid-century American dream, Pop has been realized with end-of-the-century means.'
The author is Ali Tayar, the architect who conceived Pop, a 2,500-square-foot temple of neo-retro chic. The banquettes are blondly Scandinavian, like many of the models occupying them, and backlighted with slivers of primary color. The ceiling is a matrix of cherry-red steel. The jumpsuited wait staff look like gas station attendants styled by Helmut Lang. But Mr. Tayar's 200-word manifesto, which could have been written for an installation at the Whitney Biennial, has left some diners scratching their heads.
'It's just so over the top,' said David Swail, a Canadian newspaper executive, who had dinner there a couple of weeks ago. 'If they could have told me half as much about the food, we would have been better off.'
Citing influences like Eero Saarinen's T.W.A. terminal at Kennedy International Airport and 'the trailers of 'Dr. No' and 'Contempt,' ' the text goes on to explain that the 'Mondrianesque colors' also pay tribute to that same 'homaged era' -- the 60's.
In short, it's a mod, mod, mod, mod restaurant. It also signifies the convergence of two ineluctable restaurant trends.
Trend No. 1: The anti-Balthazars. Ripped from the pages of Wallpaper magazine, they are the antidote to the fake French bistro: Cafeteria, the space-age luncheonette on Seventh Avenue, across from Loehmann's; Lot 61, the industrial gallery/ meet market in West Chelsea, and Waterloo, also Mr. Tayar's handiwork, a garage-like eatery in Greenwich Village.
Trend No. 2: High design is now as important as haute cuisine.
Menus used to rhapsodize about the chef's vision and the provenance of arcane vegetables. Pop's doesn't even mention the guy in the kitchen, Brian Young, a former chef de cuisine at Le Bernardin. At Michael Jordan's: The Steakhouse, a sticker has been added to the bill of fare: 'Winner of Interiors 1998 Best Designed Restaurant in the Country.'
Drew Nieporent, the restaurateur, won't make a move without David Rockwell, the designer. Their most recent collaboration is the Berkeley Bar and Grill in the Sony Building. Adam Tihany, the architect, is as famous as many of his clients. On the menu at Artos, a Greek restaurant on the East Side, his name appears before the chef's. The Zagat Survey's populist point system gives equal weight to decor, food and service.
These architects -- a profession about as well known for modesty as the chef trade -- acknowledged the increased prominence but professed horror at the idea of putting their names on menus.
'People do get carried away with their egos,' said Mr. Tihany, who identified himself as 'one of the original people that created the profession of restaurant design.' The designer and owner of Remi, in midtown, he has been at it for 16 years. His credits include Le Cirque 2000, Jean Georges and the Las Vegas outpost of Aureole, where a wine steward in harness flies up and down a 42-foot-tall glass wine tower to fetch bottles for high rollers.
Told that Artos was advertising his name so prominently, Mr. Tihany professed ignorance of the plug and dismissed it. 'It's a marketing ploy,' he said. 'Good design is a marketable commodity for restaurant owners and operators, especially if they can associate themselves with big-name designers.'
Mr. Rockwell, probably the field's closest thing to a household name, also said he was unaware of any restaurants touting his work on the menu. But few reviews of Rockwell-designed establishments -- from Nobu's Zen minimalism to the overstimulating maximalism of Ruby Foo's -- fail to mention his theatrical, conceptual environments.
'It's about a collaborative process,' Mr. Rockwell said. 'We try to create another reason for people to go in.' Mr. Tihany and Mr. Rockwell insisted that they serve the chef-operator, not the other way around. 'You don't want to come out of a show singing the sets,' Mr. Rockwell said. 'And you don't want to come out of a restaurant singing the design.'
Mr. Tihany says he thinks of himself as a portrait artist, adding, 'My restaurants are portraits of my clients.' The 40-foot wine tower is Charlie Palmer, Aureole's owner, he said, just as the plush carnival playroom of Le Cirque 2000 is Sirio Maccioni. 'People ask, 'What drugs were you taking?' ' he said. 'But what you see is who they are.'
Architects used to dream about designing one great chair, Mr. Tihany said. Now, it's one great restaurant.
Mr. Tayar, 39, sounded somewhat embarrassed at having his design prospectus, originally written for Pop's press kit, included in the five-page menu, right after the desserts.
'I didn't want it to go in there,' he said. 'But Roy thought that's where it should go.'
Roy is Roy Liebenthal, Pop's owner. After opening Cafe Tabac and Lemon, Mr. Liebenthal has become a specialist in catering to the young, the beautiful and the people who want to eat near them.
'Roy has an incredible obsession with design,' Mr. Tayar said. Mr. Liebenthal readily admitted to it. 'The design speaks about the soul of the place,' he said. 'I've heard a lot of people say the place looks very Wallpaper. I take that as a compliment.'
Other people have said they found Mr. Tayar's elaborate mission statement 'a bit pompous,' Mr. Liebenthal conceded. The dropped ceiling is described as 'a riff on standard acoustical tile systems,' although its most notable acoustic feature is that it puts the din in dinner. The ceiling, Mr. Tayar writes, also contains the 'HVAC' -- a technical abbreviation for heating, ventilation and air-conditioning.
Mr. Liebenthal's spin is that it's supposed to be pompous. 'I don't even understand it,' he said. 'I thought it played into the whole futuristic karma of the restaurant.'
Mr. Tayar, who designed airplane hangars before he got into restaurants and now sells a line of furniture through ICF, has a sense of irony about his exaltation by Mr. Liebenthal. 'I kept thinking, as soon as someone has to wait too long for the food, the first thing they're going to pick on is the text,' Mr. Tayar said. 'They're either going to agree, disagree or make fun of it.'
Check.  DESIGN NOTEBOOK",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"In Milan, Form Follows Fashion
LAST week, at the 40th annual International Milan Furniture Fair, the world's premier modern furniture exhibition, design and fashion paired off in a flamboyant tango. The trends flew like so many sparks from clicking heels -- passion shades of pink on orange, glossy metals and lean curves. Worn by a supermodel or by a divan -- it no longer matters.
'Designers and architects have a lot to learn from fashion,' said John Pawson, the London architect, who is designing a new Calvin Klein shop in Paris. 'They shouldn't be so blinkered. Haven't they cottoned on that things have changed? It isn't just about making designs to last a thousand years.'
Nowhere was fashion's pumped-up energy more evident than at an architecture exhibition by Prada, showing off projects in the works by Rem Koolhaas and Herzog & de Meuron. Visitors milled around architectural models and tables as long as Olympic pools piled with unusually treated building materials like latticed resin walls and foam shelving. Meanwhile, house music throbbed and videos of Prada's shoe collection flashed above a concrete catwalk.
'This is the year fashion swallowed design whole,' said Deyan Sudjic, editor of Domus, the Italian design magazine. 'And after wanting fashion's attention for ages, design is already starting to regret it.'
Even as design and fashion cozied up, the spectacle of Pucci-clad swivel chairs, rhinestone sofas and ceramic vases zippered in leather left some wondering whether the pair made a good match at all. 'It's a total disaster from an intellectual point of view,' said Vico Magistretti, a patriarch of Italian design. 'In the 60's, we tried to design concepts because they did something that needed to be done. Now it's all styling.'
The style spree has apparently not been stalled by looming economic setbacks. Financial worries were not in evidence at the six-day fair, which ended on Monday and was attended by 175,000 people, 6 percent more than last year. And Americans seem more entranced than ever with Italian contemporary design: Italian furniture imports to the United States rose 21.9 percent in 2000, with Americans spending more than $920 million, second only to Germany.
Milan saw more flash than form-making. The mood was giddy and more preoccupied than ever with the next big thing, even if it was a no-show.
But while slick surface decorations and stylized silhouettes grabbed the public's eye, the designers themselves were trying to decide how best to harness new technologies and unconventional materials like polyester films that shift between transparency and opacity, according to the angle of view, and quartz surfaces in intensely luminous colors.
One season of fabulousness will probably be the shelf life of some fashion-sensitive offerings. Pink and orange stretch plaids and blowsy pink and red roses dressed up last year's prim low-backed sofas from Edra. Massimo Morozzi, Edra's art director and blithe spirit, said the prints, new from the Op Art fabric master Ken Scott, express a 'desire for ecstasy and optical illusions in order to compensate for the emotional poverty of minimalist design.' Splash your living room in Edra's pinks -- just don't put them next to Cappellini's mod armchairs in vintage Emilio Pucci floral psychedelics. Suggested attire? Sunglasses.
Practicality dashed off with flair was the hallmark of furnishings by the newcomers. Jeffrey Bernett, a New York-based designer, introduced an orange felt chaise as spare as a semaphore. A white leather pillow with an inner magnet attaches to its backrest at any angle ($3,200 at B&B Italia). At the exhibition hall devoted to emerging talent looking for the big break, Tron Design of Germany adapted car seat technology to a two-person rocking cocoon equipped with a computer on a steel extension arm.
At Milan's sprawling fairgrounds, some 1,650 exhibitors showed off their latest works. But breakthroughs are usually found at the 200-odd impromptu furniture showcases scattered among palace courtyards, garages and former steelworks around the city. This year, however, that traffic-jamming citywide happening failed to produce much in the way of truly provocative design.
If the year belonged to anyone, it was Cappellini. The company, known for tapping new trends and far-flung talents, outdid itself with some 40 introductions, including sofas, kitchen sinks, shelving and light fixtures displayed in an industrial hangar far from the gold-plated shopping district along the Via Monte Napoleone. It was a tutti-frutti affair, with minimalism offered up alongside pop fashion, computer tech and amoebic forms.
The Cappellini collection included works by Erwan and Ronan Bouroullec, brothers from Brittany, who recently designed a new shop for Issey Miyake in Paris. As with their tree-house bedroom last year, the Bouroullecs are still experimenting with ideas about poetic practicality. 'We don't want to make only functional pieces,' said Erwan Bouroullec, pointing to a table sprouting a bowl molded from a single piece of heat-welded Corian. 'This is not just a table, and we don't want to tell anyone whether it functions as sculpture in the middle of a room or as a place to toss your keys by the front door. Put it anywhere and use it your own way.'
In the show's most pronounced case of fashion cross-over, Fabien Baron, a former art director of Harper's Bazaar, eagerly presented his first collection of furniture, rugs and limited-edition cast-acrylic block sculptures commissioned by Cappellini.
Graphically severe, with legs as skinny as a Vogue intern and done up in optional gray-flecked felt and anthracite leather, these furnishings would appeal to the image-conscious. Paola Antonelli, a design curator at the Museum of Modern Art, summed up the general reaction when she called the collection boring but said, 'It will probably sell like hot cakes.'
Buyers, manufacturers and journalists combed the city in vain for the next hot designer and must-have chair. The real stunners were raw materials up for adoption from other fields, most of which have not yet reached the production line. The Prada Foundation, a vast, vaulted space, contained, among other curiosities, a two-story section of the diamond-shape glass and steel facade bound for Herzog & de Meuron's Prada store in Tokyo. On the wall, a map outlined Prada's plans to dominate the world with boutiques.
Prada wasn't the only advocate of a new design aesthetic based on textures and transparencies. The display by Material Connexion, a New York-based clearinghouse for experimental products, was thronged with people taking notes and squeezing the gel samples. Two glass manufacturers from Barcelona, Spain, shook their heads in dismay as they read a label describing a stack of gem-toned acrylic sheets as 50 percent lighter than glass, with three times the impact resistance of safety glass. Caressing the satiny two-toned green sheets, Erika Zangger, a restaurant designer from Austria, said, 'These are ideal room dividers, better than glass in every way.'
There was a surprising lack of technological derring-do in the furniture design, however. (With one exception: Ron Arad's long-awaited prototype of a dining chair that folds and slides like a drawer into a table. Sheer engineering bravado, though it remains to be seen if Cassina can figure out how to produce it.)
Instead, there was a renewed appreciation for the artistry of craft, even the machine-made variety. Fernando and Humberto Campana, an architect and a lawyer from Brazil who are now designers, chose to hand-weave industrial trash -- in this case, garden-hose tubing in fluorescent pinks and purples wrapped around an O-shaped steel frame, for Edra. 'I work with my hands to learn the limits of the material,' said Humberto Campana, 'but the shapes themselves come from my dreams.'
In a bit of riveting theater, at a 16th-century church, 19 well-known designers were invited to create machine-made designs on the spot with an acrylic extruder, normally used to mix color combinations for plastics. The event was conceived by Domus and Tom Dixon, the design director at Habitat, who sees a future in instant crafts. 'People love to watch other people making things,' Mr. Dixon said. 'It's like taking a Polaroid of the maker's ideas about design.'
It was even suspenseful as Karim Rashid, a New York designer, tried to control the dribble of hot-pink acrylic noodles looping over a cardboard and wood chair mold. He also cast his own custom-made Puma sneaker, as a memorial to one stolen (or collected by a rabid fan) at a party the night before.
Even if there were no star turns, there was no shortage of creative potential. Sputnik -- a casual consortium of designers from the Americas, Japan, the Netherlands and England -- struck the pitch-perfect note when it showed prototypes not for chairs but for what the designers call 'verbs about sitting.' One was a large rattan floor piece resembling a lima bean with a dent. People lined up to test its gentle rock, and one bystander suggested its ideal function: to allow one to hold the lotus position while reading fashion magazines.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK: FURNITURE FAIR",1
Top/Features/Home and Garden/Columns/Design Notebook,"Design Notebook; What Price Preservation?
THERE were no suntanned, silver-haired corporate angels on hand on July 14, when Hillary Rodham Clinton visited the Dutch Reformed Church here to talk about historic preservation. Her backdrop was the derelict Greek revival temple by Alexander Jackson Davis, completed in 1835, once an uplifting symbol of the city's material progress and now an evocative, camera-ready testament to urban decay.
'What does it mean to save a building?' Mrs. Clinton mused before a large crowd assembled in the sweltering heat. 'When a town like Newburgh is able to revitalize its history, you become a beacon of economic development and tourism.'
By saving landmarks and living with them daily, 'you begin to tell yourselves and your children the story of Newburgh,' she observed. 'That makes America more real.'
The day before, the President and the First Lady shared the dais at the National Museum of American History with Ralph Lauren, announcing with much hoopla the designer's $10 million rescue of the flag that inspired 'The Star-Spangled Banner,' (presumably this flag is off-limits for Mr. Lauren as a style phenomenon).
The dueling images -- Mr. Lauren as patriotic savior and a vacant city church without a patron -- underscored the paradox of Mrs. Clinton's 'Save America's Treasures' tour: For every million-dollar pledge by a Ralph Lauren or G.E. to rescue a star, there were humbler places like the Dutch Reformed Church or the Colonial Theater in Pittsfield, Mass., waiting for deliverance. Who should pay to preserve them?
The First Lady made a pledge herself, donating royalties from a coming book of letters to the First Pets to the National Park Foundation. (The nonprofit foundation announced this week that the Coca-Cola Foundation was donating $1.5 million to pay for hands-on discovery centers at nine national parks.)
In an interview, Mrs. Clinton said that government -- Federal, state and local -- should bear a large part of the financial burden for historical preservation, supplemented by public-private partnerships. 'Government has the primary obligation,' she said. 'But there are also many people with resources who might not have thought about the contribution they could make.'
Although state and local governments made forays into preservation at least as early as 1816, when Independence Hall in Philadelphia was purchased and restored, ever since the Mount Vernon Ladies Association rescued George Washington's mansion and grounds, preservation in the United States has relied on contributions and philanthropy.
The most notable Federal exception, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, created the National Register of Historic Places, which now has nearly 80,000 entries, and a program of matching grants for their preservation.
But practically from the beginning, preservationists have had to be skillful quilters, piecing together funds from public and private sources. The private role in public monuments was perhaps most strikingly illustrated by Lee Iacocca's successful campaign to restore the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, which raised more than $400 million.
A leader in public preservation has been the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which has received money from Congress since 1966, but will lose its financing next year. Three years ago, after Congress threatened to pull the plug, the National Trust negotiated a three-year $7 million phase-out and has since been building a war chest to privatize itself. 'We're comfortable with it,' its president, Richard Moe, said. 'The funding fight became a preoccupying thing that distracted us from the issues. We want to be more effective and entrepreneurial.'
At the national parks, the repair backlog for historic buildings is more than $1 billion. Three years ago, an experimental program began that returned park entrance fees to the parks; it will generate about $400 million in the next several years, said Edward Norton, vice president for law and public policy for the preservation trust.
The House Appropriations Committee is considering a bill to increase funds for rehabilitating historic buildings in the national parks and to stabilize the deteriorating south side of Ellis Island.
'We're definitely making progress,' Mr. Norton said.
But in places like Newburgh, when the tour bus pulls out and the bunting is folded, financing  will probably depend, as it always has, on the grit of a determined few. 'Preservation is the most underrated catalyst for urban rebirth nationwide,' said Roberta Brandes Gratz, author of 'Cities Back From the Edge: New Life for Downtown' (John Wiley & Sons, 1998). 'The most desirable neighborhoods from Atlanta to Seattle are historic districts. But preservation hasn't gained the star status that big stadium and casino projects have because it happens in small increments.'
The Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, for example, a model of creative financing, has spent three and a half decades cobbling together reinvestment in formerly low-income, redlined historic districts, neighborhoods that Jane Jacobs once compared to 'a working man's Georgetown.'
The Pittsburgh foundation, said its president, Arthur P. Ziegler Jr., has set up a partnership with 11 local banks to provide low-interest loans to community-development corporations for low- and moderate-income housing and small businesses in the historic district. The foundation also provides architectural assistance. It  set up a $25 million endowment by developing (and then selling) Station Square, a historic railroad station, now housing a hotel, restaurants and other businesses. The project, developed over 20 years, began with seed money from the Allegheny Foundation, heirs to the Mellon fortune.
On a smaller scale, Newburgh is beginning to use the same financing tools. On Lander Street, a block long plagued by drugs and abandonment and which Mrs. Clinton visited, Arnold Moss, a New York developer, is rebuilding 33 vacated 1850's row houses. Working with the Enterprise Foundation and Rural Opportunities, a nonprofit organization that manages affordable housing, he is knitting together private financing (about 80 percent of the $9.5 million needed), state, city and Federal funds and Federal tax credits for low-income housing and historic buildings.
The row houses are being designed as two-family duplexes, which will rent for $500 to $750 a month. The sight of old buildings beginning to look new gladdens Margie Peacock, who has lived on the block for 15 years. 'It's not a bad place to live,' she said, sitting on her porch, where a sign that says SANTA  IS  ALWAYS  WELCOME  HERE  hangs on her doorknob. 'I love to see it kept up.'
T HE monumental Dutch Reformed Church, modeled on an Acropolis temple and considered one of the finest Greek revival churches in America, may have a tougher go.  Davis, the 19th-century architect, wrote that the design, with its giant Ionic columns and 30-foot-high entrance door, was meant to be 'indicative of the refined taste, discrimination and sense of classical beauty of the inhabitants of Newburgh.' But the church lost its congregation in 1964 and has been vacant since. 'It is one of the noblest buildings in the city,' said J. Winthrop Aldrich, New York's Deputy Commissioner for historic preservation. 'But it looks so derelict today, it's hard to imagine what it was or might be.'
The preservation of religious properties is 'one of the most difficult issues we face,' said Peg Breen, president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, a nonprofit organization based in Manhattan,  which has provided grants and loans to about 500 religious properties statewide. 'Cities seldom know what to do with them or how to raise money for them,' she added. 'Churches don't just affect the people who go there. They are the truest sense of landmarks: they mark the land, anchor the community.'
Right now, the church, which is owned by the city, is in limbo, Mayor Audrey Carey said. Volunteers from the Newburgh Center for the Arts have replaced the roof and tend the grounds. 'We'd like to see it become an arts center, or something compatible with community use,' Mayor Carey said.
While this church awaits salvation, Target Stores recently bought a six-page insert in Time magazine, proudly hailing its role in helping  restore the Washington Monument. (Target gave $2.5 million.) Some preservationists worry about the possible next step: corporate ads a la the Olympics, and logos flying from national landmarks.
On this potentially slippery slope, 'it's a question of maintaining a balance,' said Tony Wood, a New York City preservationist and founder of the New York Preservation Archives, a nonprofit group. 'Our goal is to keep what's been here for 100 years standing,' he said. 'If you have to choose between corporate sponsorship and losing history, you'd be a fool not to take the check.'",1
Top/News/New York and Region,"Corrections
A brief report in the Footlights column of The Arts on Wednesday about an interview with Tony Randall misstated his roles in the television show 'Mr. Peepers' and the film 'Pillow Talk.' He had supporting roles; he did not star.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Actor's Inspiration Is Retarded Son
LEAD: DANA PARKER has been doing odd jobs at the Boston Post Road Stage Company - sorting nuts and bolts, cleaning up and ushering - since the theater started five years ago.
DANA PARKER has been doing odd jobs at the Boston Post Road Stage Company - sorting nuts and bolts, cleaning up and ushering - since the theater started five years ago.
For the 19-year-old, who has Down's syndrome, the theater in Fairfield is a second home, said his parents, Ken and Nancy Parker, who are on the board of the theater.
Now, Dana is becoming a role model for his father. Ken Parker is playing Arnold, one of four mentally disabled men in Tom Griffin's 'Boys Next Door,' which opened on Friday and runs through Nov. 19.
Mr. Parker described his character as borderline, saying, 'Arnold is the highest functioning of the four, but 'his deck has no face cards,' as the playwright puts it.' he said.
The 'boys next door' live in a group home for the mentally handicapped, under the supervision of a social worker. But they participate, by varying degrees, in the outside world. Arnold has a maintenance job in a movie theater.  Characteristics and Gestures
Before a recent rehearsal, Mr. Parker talked about how observing his son had sharpened his performance. 'I picked up his little characteristics and his repetitions,' the father said. 'Arnold keeps saying, 'I repeat.' And absorbing Dana's physical gestures helped.
'When Dana runs into a problem, he'll put his head down and he won't talk. There's a physical retreat, a compression, a defense mechanism that I adapted for the role. Until he connects and reaches out and asks, 'Do you like me?' or, 'Are you still mad at me?' And then he says, 'Hug me.' Even Arnold, at the end, admits that he needs help. Dana has helped me realize that with the proper guidance, people can function in the world, and that's what the play is saying. It isn't sugar-coated; it's honest.'
On how the Parkers have dealt with Dana's disability, Mrs. Parker said: 'When he was born, we knew right away. Sometimes parents sense something's wrong, but they don't know what. It helps to know what you're facing, but we also knew he was part of our family and we would not let this interfere with our life styles. Dana is treated the same as the others not as someone different, and he's not aware that he's different.'
Mrs. Parker is the theater's administrative coordinator, a job she described as 'house managing and jack-of-all-trades.'
The couple has three sons. Lloyd, 26, a mechanical engineer, is a resident of Newtown, and Chris, 23, a customer service man for a wiring company, lives with them.
About the importance of theater in Dana's life, Mrs. Parker said: 'He was brought up as a theater brat, dragged all over the country when Ken was playing in regional theaters in Seattle and in Chicago, and he feels that the theater belongs to him.'
'He loves to come on Strike Night,' Mrs. Parker continued, referring to the ritual of 'striking the set' at the end of a play's run. 'He likes to take things apart. And when the members of the drop-in center, which is an after-school recreation program for the mentally and physically disabled, came to a recent show here, Dana was the host and said, 'Welcome to my theater.' '
For the Parkers, the Fairfield theater is a family affair. 'Lloyd and Chris have helped build sets and hang lights. They were once told that if they didn't work at the theater, I wouldn't feed them,' said Mrs. Parker, whose mother, Lois Mellor, 87 years old, assists in the payroll department and collects ticket stubs.
Although 'The Boys Next Door' takes place in the present time - it had its premiere in regional theaters in 1986 and moved to off Broadway the following year - the characters range in age from their late 20's to the 40's. 'They didn't have the advantages of Dana's generation - of early intervention to help them with speech and muscle control, so they don't function as well,' Mr. Parker explained.
Dana, now in his fourth year in alearning program at Fairfield High School, is expected to continue there until he reaches 21, his father said. In the range of retardation, from mild to severe, Dana is clssiified as moderate, his father said. His I.Q. score is 50 and he reads on a third-grade level. For the past six years, he has been wearing a hearing aid.
'There are plateaus in Dana's level of progress, but he keeps reaching new stages of maturity and independence,' Mrs. Parker said. 'And he takes logical steps. Eventually, when we get old, we'll have to institute procedures for him to be in a group home. Fairfield has four of them, and there's an eight-year wait to get in.'
Among their daytime activities, Mrs. Parker, who taught elementary school in Bridgeport for seven years, is currently a substitute teacher in the Fairfield elementary schools. Mr. Parker, who is a graduate of the Yale Drama School, teaches theater courses at the University of Bridgeport.
On the connection between the Parker family and 'The Boys Next Door,' the play's director and the theater's artistic director, Douglas Moser, said: 'In choosing this play, it would have been hard not to have had the Parkers in mind. They're a welcoming family. It's in their nature. And I pick up Dana after school. He's like my brother.'
Today's 7 P.M. performance is a benefit for the Kennedy Center, a vocational rehabilitation facility in Bridgeport. Tickets for this performance cost $35 and can be reserved by calling 576-0211.
THEATER",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Entrepreneur Plans to Donate About $25 Million to N.Y.U.
LEAD: Leonard N. Stern, chairman of the Hartz Group, plans to give more than $25 million to New York University this fall to strengthen its schools of business, which would be named after him and consolidated in a large new building on the Washington Square campus.
Leonard N. Stern, chairman of the Hartz Group, plans to give more than $25 million to New York University this fall to strengthen its schools of business, which would be named after him and consolidated in a large new building on the Washington Square campus.
It would be the largest donation ever made to the 157-year-old university, the nation's largest private school, which has undergone a fiscal and academic renaissance in recent years under the presidency of John Brademas.
Mr. Stern, who built a $1 billion fortune in pet products, real estate and publishing, graduated from the university's old school of commerce in 1957 and from its graduate school of business in 1959. A trustee of the university since 1976, he gave the school a $3 million gift in 1986.
Details of the gift - its exact size and specific plans for its use - are under discussion between Mr. Stern and university officials, and a formal announcement is not expected for another month, a spokesman for Mr. Stern, Howard J. Rubenstein, said yesterday. Discussing Plans for the Gift
Asked about a report on the gift in today's edition of Crain's New York Business, a weekly newspaper, Mr. Rubenstein said: 'New York University and Leonard Stern have been in discussions over the course of many months. The discussions have not been completed. However, there undoubtedly will be a major donation to N.Y.U. from Mr. Stern.'
University officials could not be reached by telephone for comment on the proposed gift yesterday, and Mr. Rubenstein said the university intended to make no details public until plans for the donation and its uses were completed, probably in October.
But he confirmed that there had been discussions with members of the faculty of the university's School of Business and Public Administration and the Graduate School of Business Administration, as well as with community leaders in Greenwich Village, where the school's main campus is located.
Crain's said the university would use part of the gift to build a 200,000-square-foot building on West Fourth Street, a block east of Washington Square Park, to consolidate business school activities now concentrated at 100 Trinity Place in Lower Manhattan and at sites around Wall Street and on the Washington Square campus. Preliminary plans for the new building have already been shown to a local community board, Crain's said.
Besides the Hartz Mountain pet products business, Mr. Stern, a 50-year-old entrepreneur who developed the Meadowlands of New Jersey, has real-estate holdings in New York and New Jersey and owns The Village Voice and the recently begun Manhattan weekly, 7 Days. The largest previous gift - $15 million to establish a center for Hellenic studies - was made to the university last year by a foundation created by Aristotle S. Onassis.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Panel Tells Dinkins It Can't Find a Hospitals Chief
A committee named by Mayor David N. Dinkins to search for a new president for the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation has been unable to choose a candidate, Deputy Mayor Cesar A. Perales said yesterday.
At a meeting with the Mayor on Wednesday, Mr. Perales said, the leaders of the committee ""indicated that they had not been able to meet their mandate to find a slate of candidates, that they felt a long time had elapsed and that they felt obliged to report to the Mayor.""
The co-chairwomen of the committee, June Jackson Christmas and Isaura Santiago-Santiago, could not be reached for comment. Dr. James R. Dumpson, the chairman of the Health and Hospitals Corporation, who has been serving as acting president and also as a member of the search committee, said, ""It is now in the Mayor's hands and I can't talk about it.""
The committee was set up after Dr. J. Emilio Carrillo resigned under fire in October. Its failure to find new candidates was first reported yesterday in The New York Post.  Salary Is 'Clear Obstacle'
""The committee described their search,"" Mr. Perales said of the meeting with the Mayor, which he attended. ""They said they had received more than 100 applications and that they had held interviews with a much smaller number -- around 10 -- and they continued to come back to the point that they did not have the minimum of three names they had been requested to provide.""
Mr. Perales, who is Deputy Mayor for Health and Social Services, said one ""clear obstacle"" the committee cited was the salary of $129,000 being offered for the post. ""They indicated that good hospital administrators in major institutions were earning two or three times that amount,"" he said, ""while H.H.C. has 11 acute-care facilites, four nursing facilities and several clinics to run.""
Mr. Perales declined to name any potential candidates the committee had interviewed, or whom the Mayor might now ask to take the job. He said one committee member had asked whether Mr. Dinkins wanted them to continue to search, ""and he said, basically, that he would let them know.""
Dr. Carrillo, in effect, resigned twice. His first resignation, on Oct. 21, came amid investigations into the finances and care at the municipal hospitals as well as into Dr. Carrillo's own financial affairs, particularly reports that he had accepted loans from officials at private hospitals that had financial relationships with the city corporation. Under that resignation agreement, Dr. Carrillo would have continued to receive his $129,000-a-year salary for four months, while yielding control of the agency.
But 10 days later, after he angered the Mayor by claiming he was the victim of a ""targeted assassination,"" Dr. Carrillo was ordered to resign immediately or be dismissed.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"You Get Maid Service, Meals and Quirkiness
The Hotel Olcott on West 72d Street in Manhattan is the kind of place where, in one room, a patient will confide to his analyst how bleak his life is, while, from an aspiring singer's room down the hall, will come wafting the cheery rhythms of ""Everything's Coming Up Roses.""
Tiny Tim lives there with his ukelele, as does the still regal Madame Nina Youshkevitch, with her late 1930's photographs of herself as a 16-year-old ballerina with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The actor Martin Balsam is also in residence, with the Oscar he won for ""A Thousand Clowns,"" one of the great valentines to New York City eccentrics.
The Olcott is a distinctly New York eccentric; it could exist almost nowhere else. It is not really a hotel that you can check into for the night.  Many of its 240 residents checked in 30 years ago and never repacked their suitcases. It is a residential hotel, an apartment house mostly for lazy people who do not want to make beds, cook dinner or buy furniture. People pay by the month -- $500 to $3,000 for suites of up to four rooms -- yet they can get maid service.
Its 16 floors are also honeycombed with shrinks. Analysts at the nearby William Alanson White Institute call the hotel the Annex. And also hidden within its mongrel confines are a bridge club, an electrolysis salon and the headquarters of actualism, which describes itself as ""the way of holistic enlightened awareness.""
The only tenant who has something grander than a hot plate to cook on is William Boot, whose hotel-based mail-order business ships cookbooks with his mother Harriet's zucchini recipes, all tested in his wardrobe-sized kitchenette.
In his spare time, Mr. Boot, a burly, bearded man who navigates his apartment like a logger trapped in a closet, has been working for seven years on the definitive book on the Great Pyramid at Giza. The measurements of the pyramid's rooms, he claims, are a numerical code that can be deciphered to predict the entire story of the Bible, written thousands of years later.
""It's the Bible in stone,"" Mr. Boot contends.
Mary Ann Malkin moved into the Olcott in 1980 after her husband, Sol, began using a wheelchair. She liked the Mitteleuropean atmosphere lent by aging refugees from Hitler, some of whom had chosen the hotel because they had grown accustomed to servants.
""The people here were just good to us,"" Mrs. Malkin said of the hotel's staff. ""I could take the wheelchair right up. They really were like a family hotel.""
In his last years, Sol, who lived a zestful life as the editor of a rare books magazine, savored the neighborhood beyond the Olcott's doors.
""Sol had a good time here,"" recalled Mrs. Malkin, as she sat in her snug living room filled with the dance books she collects. ""That was when Columbus Avenue was just burgeoning and he'd go out and he'd thought he'd seen the world.""
The psychotherapy patients waiting patiently at the elevator bench have never bothered her. ""They're not what you call sick people,"" she said. ""They have little problems that are big to them.""
Madame Youshkevitch raised her son, Robert, in the Olcott. She felt secure about his coming home from school and fortunate that he had Lincoln Center within a short walk. She even found the hot plate adequate for the steak and vegetables they ate.
""We made big dinners on that stove,"" she said.
Elderly people like the hotel because they can come down to the gently frayed lobby anytime and, pretending to get their mail, schmooze with Redmond Ward and Linda Montes at the front desk or with Lee Rosen, the manager. For lonely people, it is an artificial family, but better than one they could invent in a more anonymous apartment building.
Ralph Mittler is a tall, angular retiree of 87. He moved to the Olcott because he didn't want his wife cooking any longer. ""We did enough,"" he says.
Then four months ago, after 60 years of marriage, she died. ""It's like a void in here,"" he said. He used to talk periodically with Mr. Zinn across the hall, then Mr. Zinn also died, so he fills the time now taking walks and checking on his investments.
""Off the record,"" he confides, ""I invested all my money in tax-exempt bonds. My rent here is high, but I don't pay it. The Government pays it, because of the tax exempts.""
As he sits in his living room of antique mahogany, the phone rings, and Mr. Mittler guesses it is his nephew, who checks on him every day to make sure he is still alive. It turns out to be his nephew's son and Mr. Mittler relates the big news of the day: ""They shampooed my rug.""
""I'm happy here,"" Mr. Mittler says of the Olcott. ""You go out here every day, all these young people, they have their dresses up to their pupik,"" using the Yiddish for bellybutton. ""I'm not after anybody. I promised my wife.  Off the record, there are women here who are after me. I pretend I'm deaf.  Who wants women at my age?""
Mr. Mittler knows that the hotel staff will look after his well-being.
""Most of the older people we check on every day,"" said Mr. Rosen, the manager. ""In an apartment building who's going to come and see you?""  ABOUT NEW YORK",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Man Working on Car Is Killed
A Brooklyn man checking the oil in his car yesterday was fatally struck by a driver who had lost control of his Jeep, the police and witnesses said.
The man, John Arnett, 57, was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center, where he died, his companion said. The driver, Jawara Stennett, 24, was arrested for driving with a suspended license, and was taken to Kings County Hospital Center with minor injuries, the police said.
At the scene, near Fulton Street and Stuyvesant Avenue in Brooklyn, the witnesses said that Mr. Arnett was working on his car, which was parked on the westbound side of Fulton Street, shortly before 1 p.m.
About that time, Kenneth Ohanuka, who had parked his car behind Mr. Arnett's car, said that he saw a Jeep, which was heading east on Fulton Street, lose control and swerve into oncoming traffic.
Mr. Arnett was thrown several feet from the car, the witnesses said, and his legs 'were mashed,' according to Letiesha Goins, 18, a witness.
Mr. Stennett, a handyman, had been on his way to pick up supplies at Home Depot, according to Donald Grey, who said that he worked with Mr. Stennett. Mr. Grey said that Mr. Stennett called him after the accident and told him that the steering wheel of his Jeep had locked up.
Mr. Arnett, a retired truck driver, had been preparing to help a friend move, said his companion of 37 years, Lorraine Gibson. They had three children together, and he had nine grandchildren, she said.
'He shouldn't have been on the road,' she said of Mr. Stennett. 'He took a good man.'",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"BOLDFACE NAMES
Don't Shoot! That's Aretha's Hair!
Fabulous and fabled though CLIVE DAVIS'S pre-Grammy party may be, KURT VONNEGUT, arriving with JILL KREMENTZ, had the look of a fellow who did not want to be there one bit. The scowl on his gnarled and craggy face gave him the look of an angry tree stump in a Disney movie.
'I'm here because Jill wants to be here,' Mr. Vonnegut said.
Would he like to tell us about music he loves?
'No, I don't like your newspaper.'
Why?
'You don't like me,' he said, walking away.
Oh. Mr. Conductor, segue please.
The Davis Party, which is to the Grammys as the Vanity Fair party is to the Oscars, only Mr. Davis, doing it since 1974, did it first. This year it was a sit-down dinner for 800 at the Regent Wall Street Hotel on Saturday night. Pink roses, Corinthian columns, a guest list that included MARISA BERENSON, FAYE DUNAWAY, MARTHA STEWART, SEAN COMBS, LES MOONVES, AHMET ERTEGUN, MICHELLE BRANCH and DENISE RICH.
HOWARD STERN, wearing shades, walked the red carpet, with his girlfriend, BETH OSTROSKY, a tall, blond model so striking that she may have put his performance anxieties to rest. Then again, as many celebs came in through a side entrance, maybe not. LANCE BASS, wearing a pin in memory of the crew of the Columbia, said he still hoped to travel in space. EVANDER HOLYFIELD, who lost part of his right ear to MIKE TYSON in that nasty incident a few years back, said his foray into the record business, with Real Deal Records, had not gone well.
'The only way I can go from this point is up,' said Mr. Holyfield, who was standing in such a way that the famed ear could not be seen. In order to do so, as he is such a big man, one would have to walk around him -- the earth, you might say, to his sun.
We find ourselves wanting to stare at your ear, Mr. Holyfield, we finally said. Does that happen a lot?
'Yeah,' Mr. Holyfield said, turning his head to reveal an ear with a snack-size indentation.
It's actually kind of cute, kind of like Mr. Spock.
'I don't mind people bringing it up,' Mr. Holyfield said, 'because every time somebody reminds me of it, it reminds me I got $35 million off the guy who bit off a piece of it, and it's not that bad.'
Mr. Davis, during dinner, shared his table with ALICIA KEYS, CARLY SIMON, ARETHA FRANKLIN and DANIELLE STEELE --'my divas,' he said happily. The legendary Ms. Franklin is now quite stout. Her hair, pulled high on her head, looked like the fronds of a palm tree, so that were she to star on a survival show on a desert island, she could provide her own shade.
SHARON OSBOURNE sat with her son, JACK, and daughter KELLY, who was wearing a deep-cut bodice that clung to her with the elegance of a rubberized garment. Ms. Osbourne, who has colon cancer, had her last chemotherapy treatment last week. She looked healthy and said she had lost only a small amount of hair. 'I had an ugly wig, but the doggies ate it,' she said.
Mr. Davis, wearing an enthusiastically striped vest with his tux, took the stage to present the acts, happy and excited as a kid starting out, though he is a kid of 68. JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE sang his hit 'Cry Me a River.' ROD STEWART, wearing white tie and tails, sang a standard or two before loosening his tie and teaming up with LOU REED and singing 'Havin' A Party,' which seemed to make him much happier.
Mr. Vonnegut left as Ms. Franklin was on stage, belting, 'It's My Turn.'
He was still scowling.
Aretha, Can Whoopi Borrow That Dress?
While the Grammy Awards were being telecast Sunday night, WHOOPI GOLDBERG was doing a commentary on the events downstairs at the Theater at Madison Square Garden, at a benefit for Save the Music, which supports music education in schools.
Billed as the Blue Grammy Viewing Party, it was sponsored by the American Express Blue Card, and no doubt in homage, much of Ms. Goldberg's material was blue.
We will substitute the word 'bleep' for the naughty words. For example, Ms. Goldberg's response, or so she told the crowd, when asked to appear on the show:
'Bleep no,' Ms. Goldberg said, 'I'd rather be here than upstairs. The other reason I didn't do the Grammys is because I got fat. It's just for skinny girls.'
Ms. Goldberg, who is starring in 'Ma Rainey's Black Bottom,' was outfitted in forgiving velvet duster over loose white shirt and black trousers. She invoked Aretha Franklin: 'She's big. We like that. She's about 18 of these skinny girls. What have I got to talk about? Look at my behind.'
She hooted when early in the show DUSTIN HOFFMAN called BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN 'Bruce Springstreet.'
'How can you mess up Springsteen's name? I'm menopausal and I can say the man's name.'
During commercial breaks, she took questions from the audience.
'Where's Frank?', a woman called out, speaking of Ms. Goldberg's one-time beau, FRANK LANGELLA.
'She's talking about a man from 10 years ago,' Ms. Goldberg said, adding a remark about her romantic life, which, sadly, we have found necessary to bleep in its entirety. On the bright side, for a fat girl, her romantic life is pretty good.
After the Grammys, there were live performances by PETE YORN and the Grammy-winning band Coldplay. CHRIS MARTIN, the front man for Coldplay, is dating GWYNETH PALTROW. She came in, as the lights went down, with a few girlfriends. She was wearing a flowered, sheer blouse and casual slacks. Mr. Martin, introducing a number, said, 'It's a song about falling head over heels in love.' Ms. Paltrow seemed lost in the music. Then a handler told Ms. Paltrow they had to leave, in order to beat the crowds, and she did.
Boldface Names",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"NEWS SUMMARY
LEAD:  INTERNATIONAL/3-19
INTERNATIONAL/3-19
Afghan guerrilla attacks on Kabul and on troops of the Soviet-backed Government within 10 miles of the capital have accelerated sharply. Rockets and mortar fire struck the city's international airport. Page 1
Poland's leader attacked Government policy and called for a 'courageous turnaround' to pull Poland out of crisis. It was the first speech by Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski since strikes broke out 12 days ago. 1
Brazil's role in the world drug trade is increasing at a pace that alarms the police. Brazil has become a producer of coca leaf, a refiner of cocaine and faces problems with drug addiction and organized crime. 1
Moscow is expanding a base in Syria to build a new home for its warships in the Mediterranean, Reagan Administration officials said, citing new construction at the Soviet installation in Tartus. 1
Talk of peace between Iran and Iraq has clouded the future for smaller groups involved in the conflict. Groups like Iranian-backed Kurds and Iranian forces back by Iraq may become bargaining chips. 15
An American accused of spying, Clyde Lee Conrad, is remembered as quiet, determined and a war hero in Sebring, Ohio, his hometown. The West German charges of espionage have upset his relatives. 1
English words are entering Russian as the Soviet courtship of Western contacts and ideas increases. The onslaught has been greatest in business and technology. Purists worry that Russian is being corrupted. 1
Opposition to Burma's Government can only be blamed on the Government itself, which appears to have lost control, diplomats said. The population's discontent appears to have surprised the leadership. 1
A settlement in southern Africa has been a goal of Chester Crocker, the State Department's highest-ranking official on Africa, for eight years. While a settlement is close, experts say it is far from certain. 14
A hostage-taking in West Germany ended in the deaths of two hostages in part because of errors by the authorities, politicians have acknowledged. The 54-hour episode began with a bank robbery. 17
A magazine shut by the Sandinistas because it published pictures of semi-nude women with satirical captions has been reopened following a debate over the role of sexual humor in Nicaraguan society. 18
NATIONAL/20-29, 42-47
Marchers in Washington 25 years after Martin Luther King Jr. spoke from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial about his dream for racial brotherhood were urged to work to end poverty and expand opportunity. 20
Blacks met in Chicago and determined that they would support a single black candidate in a special election for mayor. Blacks and whites criticized the decision to allow only blacks to attend the meeting. 20
The District of Columbia's jails and prisons are among the most overcrowded in the nation. The city must move prisoners constantly to prevent the facilities from exceeding court-ordered population limits. 20
More soldiers will help fight fires in Washington, Montana and Wyoming. Civilian crews are stretched so thin that a 5,000-acre fire in Washington burned out of control because there was no one to fight it. 28
A report on new B-1 bombers said they are being grounded on a daily basis because of a shortage of spare parts. The Defense Department disagrees with some of the findings in the Congressional report. 29
Shaker village in Maine bouyed by new blood
43
Politics/24-25
Dan Quayle said he has confidence in himself and has never given any thought to dropping off the Republican ticket. After a tough week on the campaign trail, he said he felt good about himself. 24
Coverage of Dan Quayle's past by the news media has been unfair, according to 55 percent of the voters interviewed in a new survey of 1,000 registered voters. Sixty-nine percent said it was excessive. 24
Vice President Bush will continue contrasting policy differences with Michael Dukakis, a strategy Mr. Bush's aides say is working. Mr. Bush spoke to supporters at rallies in Dallas and Houston. 24
Michael Dukakis used the imagery of Martin Luther King Jr. as he urged supporters in a speech marking the 25th anniversary of Dr. King's march on Washington to 'march on' for racial and economic justice. 25
REGIONAL/30-40, 45-48
Housing prices will increase little in the New York region for the rest of the 1980's, economists and real estate professionals say. The increase in prices in the last year has roughly equaled the inflation rate. 1
A new organization in Yonkers is calling for the city to comply with a housing desegregation order. The organization represents 20 groups, including labor unions, political action groups, teachers and homeowners. 30
Jurors in a racketeering trial of 20 defendants accused of making up the Lucchese crime family had decided to vote for acquittal before deliberations began, a woman who served on the panel said.  30
A New Jersey state association that provides automobile insurance for more than 2 million drivers blamed some of its financial problems on 'profiteering' by doctors, lawyers, bodyshops and policy holders. 39
A female police officer testified about being hit by the first shot fired in the confrontation with Larry Davis nearly two years ago in the Bronx. Sgt. Mary Buckley was one of six officers wounded. 40
A court jail goes empty, while two are crowded
35",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Metro Briefing | New York: Brooklyn: Woman Dies After Stabbing
A woman who authorities said was stabbed repeatedly by her son died Saturday after being taken in critical condition to Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center, the police said. The son, Kevon Stewart, 21, was arrested shortly after the attack, which occurred on Friday morning, and charged with assault and weapons possession. A spokesman for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, said yesterday that the assault charge was likely to be upgraded to homicide or murder. Neighbors said that the woman, Yvonne Stewart, 46, had given up her job to take care of Mr. Stewart and a younger son, who were mentally retarded, and that she had frequently called the police because of problems with Mr. Stewart.
Shaila K. Dewan (NYT)",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Quotation of the Day
LEAD: 'He can't take it away; it's all over the place. There's so much money in it. It's worth even more than pornography.'  - Rebecca Guzman, a prostitute in the Bronx who smokes crack every day.  [ A1:3. ]
'He can't take it away; it's all over the place. There's so much money in it. It's worth even more than pornography.'  - Rebecca Guzman, a prostitute in the Bronx who smokes crack every day.  [ A1:3. ]",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"John Gardner, 90, Boat Curator At Mystic Seaport Museum, Dies
John Gardner, who kept century-old boat-building skills alive as the associate curator of small craft at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut, died yesterday at his daughter's home in Haverhill, Mass. He was 90 and retired  two months ago.
Mr. Gardner, as founder and longtime director of the boat-building classes at the museum, taught thousands of people to build small wood boats with 19th-century methods. A venerated figure, he was known to his colleagues for his encyclopedic knowledge of world history and his extensive vocabulary. But for all his erudition, nothing Mr. Gardner learned from school or from his voluminous reading made as much impression as the simple lessons of coastal craftsmanship he learned as a boy in Calais, Me.
Like generations of New Englanders before them, his father and grandfather made boats for their personal use, cutting the wood for their construction at the same time that they cut firewood for the winter.
By the time he went to college, to the Maine Normal School, Mr. Gardner had acquired the skills that he would pass on.
For all that, it took a while for Mr. Gardner to return to his life's calling. Initially intending a career as a teacher, he received a master's from  Teachers College at Columbia University in 1932, but was almost immediately distracted by the Depression, his populist leanings and the experience of hobnobbing with radical socialists in Greenwich Village coffeehouses.
He spent the rest of the 30's as a full-time radical, participating in a march on Washington, picketing the White House and working as a labor organizer  for the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
He took a job as a professional boat builder in Marblehead, Mass., in 1940 and later worked in a boatyard in Quincy, Mass., turning out picket boats and other craft for World War II.
He found his first major platform for popularizing small boats when he joined The Maine Coast Fisherman magazine, now called National Fisherman, in 1940 as technical editor. He held that position for the rest of his life.
By 1969, when he joined the Mystic museum, he had a large and devoted following. When he began his boat-building classes the next year, they were an almost instant success, drawing afficionados who drove three hours or more to learn how to use rudimentary tools, like wooden planes, spokeshaves, drawknives, the adz and the broadax to build peapods, Swampscott dories, Rushtons and Whitehalls.
An expert in the history of small boats, Mr. Gardner built a copy of the racing boat given Lafayette on a tour of the United States in the 1820's.
Mr. Gardner, who wrote books on boat building, also believed that museums should not be static repositories. Under his prodding, Mystic started a livery where visitors can rent historic boats and copies.
But for all his devotion to boat building, Mr. Gardner's interest in boats ended at the water's edge. When a colleague once asked him out for a sail, Mr. Gardner told him that he had not been on the water in 25 years and had no intention of going again.
Besides his daughter, Jean, he is survived by two sisters, Sally Oppedisano and Mary Richards, both of Portland, Me. Mr. Gardner's wife, Beatrice, died in 1990.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Sir Laurence Kirwan, 91; Helped Plan Ascent of Everest
Sir Laurence Kirwan, an archeologist and the former director of the British Royal Geographical Society, and a man for whom harsh and forbidding deserts, mountaintops and polar ice caps were irresistible attractions, died April 16 in a hospice in London. He was 91.
Sir Laurence was noted for excavating royal tombs in the Sudanese desert dating from the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., for promoting the exploration of Antarctica, and for helping to plan and finance the first successful ascent of Mount Everest.
For the three decades after World War II, he was the director and secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, a privately supported institution that many Britons look upon as a remnant of lost empire. In that role, he was involved in the planning and financing of three great expeditions.
The most widely known was the Mount Everest expedition of 1953, which ended in triumph when Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay became the first people to stand at the summit.
Also widely admired was the Norwegian-British-Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1949-52, which was the first international expedition to Antarctica and the first to explore the possibility that global warming might be a cause of the reduction of the polar ice cover.
The third project was the Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1955-57, led by Vivian Fuchs. In previous years, aircraft had flown across the polar ice cap, but this was the first land crossing, with the explorers riding in huge tanklike 'snow cats.' Several of these cumbersome vehicles tumbled into 'a maze of deep, concealed crevasses of unparalleled extent,' Sir Laurence wrote in his 1959 book 'The White Road,' after interviewing the explorers. But the caravan eventually completed the crossing 'with almost military precision within a day of the planned date.'
Robin Hanbury-Tenison, the British explorer, recalled, 'He spurred you to greater things by making you want to please him.'
But Mr. Hanbury-Tenison recalled an exception. 'When I told him Richard Mason and I wanted to drive across Latin America at its widest point, from Recife, Brazil, to Lima, Peru, he said there were good and sufficient reasons why it hadn't been done before and that we'd never make it. After we did make it in 1958, he said, 'Well done, chaps,' recommended us for a minor award, and then wrote the preface for the book I wrote about our journey in which he apologized for the fact that he hadn't thought much of our project when we started out.'
Archibald Laurence Patrick Kirwan was born in 1907 in Cregg, County Galway, Ireland, and was educated at the Wimbledon School and Merton College, Oxford. From 1929 to 1934, he was the assistant director of an archeological survey of Nubia. In 1935 he was the co-author of 'Excavations and Survey Between Wadi-es-Sebua and Adindan,' in which he discussed the excavations of some of the earliest settlements in that region of the Sudan.
For the next three years, he carried out further excavations as the field director of Sudanese expeditions conducted by Oxford. It was during this period that he directed excavations of the royal tombs at Ballana and Qustal, publishing his discoveries in 1938.
During World War II, he served at the Ministry of Defense and was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1943.  Immediately after the war, he was named the director and secretary of the Royal Geographical Society. He was knighted in 1972, and continued as the director and secretary until 1975. After his retirement, he continued as the editor of The Geographical Journal for three years.
The picture of an aristocratic archeologist, Sir Laurence stood 6 feet 6 inches tall. He was known as a gentle but painstaking professor when he taught at Edinburgh, London and Cairo universities.
He was married twice. His second wife, Stella, died in 1997. He is survived by a daughter, Jennifer Preston of London.
Sir Laurence's involvement in two Antarctic expeditions excited his interest in what he called 'the cold deserts' and led to his 1959 book,  which was published in the United States a year later under the title 'A History of Polar Exploration.'
His contribution to polar exploration is acknowledged in such place names as the Kirwan Escarpment, in Queen Maud Land in Antarctica, and the Kirwan Inlet on Alexander Island off the Antarctic Peninsula.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Corrections
A dance listing in the Arts & Leisure Guide last Sunday referred incorrectly to the group performing at the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts this Sunday at 2 p.m. It is the Stars of the Royal Danish Ballet, not the full company.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"From Red Hook to Cypress Hills: When and Where the Community Boards Meet
DISTRICT 1 -- Greenpoint, Williamsburg; meetings usually held on second Tuesday of month, but the next meeting is Dec. 1, 7 P.M.; 211 Ainslee Street, corner of Manhattan Avenue, Williamsburg. Board chairman: Vincent V. Abate; District manager: Gerald Esposito; (718) 389-0009. Agenda: To be announced.
DISTRICT 2 -- Fort Greene, Downtown Brooklyn, Brooklyn Heights, Clinton Hill, Boerum Hill, Vinegar Hill, Farragut; meetings usually held on second Wednesday of month, but the next meeting is this Wednesday, 6 P.M.; Brooklyn Borough Hall, 209 Joralemon Street between Court and Adams Streets. Board chairwoman: Verdell Bivins; District manager: Evelyn Williams; (718) 596-5410. Agenda: Voting for the Washington Street rezoning.
DISTRICT 3 -- Bedford-Stuyvesant; first Monday of month; next meeting Dec. 7, 7 P.M., 1368 Fulton Street, near Verona Place (community room). Board chairman: Hardy Joe Long; District manager: Lewis A. Watkins; (718) 622-6601. Agenda: To be announced.
DISTRICT 4 -- Bushwick; third Wednesday of month; next meeting Wednesday, 6 P.M., St. Thomas Episcopal Church, 1405 Bushwick Avenue at Cooper Street. Board chairwoman: Anna Gonzalez; District manager: Nadine Whitted LeBron; (718) 628-8400. Agenda: Two committee reports and possible closing of pediatric clinic at 1420 Bushwick Avenue.
DISTRICT 5 -- East New York; meetings usually held on fourth Wednesday of month, but next meeting is this Wednesday, 7:30 P.M., P.S. 13, 557 Pennsylvania Avenue, near Riverdale Avenue. Agenda: A public hearing on the status of a building at 950 Glenmore Avenue.
DISTRICT 6 -- Columbia Terrace, Gowanus, Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Red Hook; second Wednesday of month; next meeting Dec. 9, 6:30 P.M., Old First Reformed Church at Carroll Street and Seventh Avenue, Park Slope. Board chairwoman: Pauline Blake; District manager: Craig R. Hammerman; (718) 643-3027. Agenda: To be announced.
DISTRICT 7 -- Sunset Park, Windsor Terrace and Greenwood; third Wednesday of month; next meeting Wednesday, 6 P.M., Community Board 7 building, 4201 Fourth Avenue, corner of 43d Street, Sunset Park. Board chairwoman: Beatrice DeSapio; District manager: Eugene Moore; (718) 854-0003. Agenda: Nominations for new officers; presentation by Heartshare Human Services of New York, a foster agency, presentation on a new ball field at Third Avenue and 41st Street.
DISTRICT 8 -- North Crown Heights, Prospect Heights; second Thursday of month; next meeting Dec. 10, 7:30 P.M.; Berean Baptist Church at 1641 Bergen Street at Rochester Avenue, North Crown Heights. Board chairman: Robert Mathews; District manager: Doris Alexander; (718) 467-5574. Agenda: To be announced.
DISTRICT 9 -- Crown Heights, Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Wingate; fourth Tuesday of month; next meeting Nov. 24, 7 P.M.; Atwell J.H.S., 400 Empire Boulevard, near Clove Road, Crown Heights. Board chairman: Rabbi Jacob Goldstein; District manager: Pearl Miles; (718) 778-9279. Agenda: Presentations on illegal dumping and a job center that recently opened at 210 Livingston Street.
DISTRICT 10 -- Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Fort Hamilton; third Monday of month; next meeting tomorrow, 7:30 P.M., Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Church, 8502 Ridge Boulevard, Bay Ridge. Board chairman: Kirk Tzanides; District manager: Denise Virga; (718) 745-6827. Agenda: Report on illegal parking and a presentation on the Bridge Line Program by Allison Nidetz, director of Lutheran Medical Center's Services for Older Adults.
DISTRICT 11 -- Bensonhurst, Bath Beach, Gravesend; second Thursday of month; next meeting Dec. 10, 7:30  P.M., Haym Salomon Home, 2300 Cropsey Avenue, corner of 23d Avenue, Bensonhurst. Board chairman: William Guarinello; District manager: Howard Feuer; (718) 266-8800. Agenda: To be announced.
DISTRICT 12 -- Borough Park, Midwood, Kensington/Dahill; fourth Tuesday of month; next meeting Nov. 24, 7:30 P.M., P.S. 192, 4715 18th Avenue, corner of 47th Street, Borough Park. Board chairman: Alan J. Dubrow; District manager: Priscilla Celano; (718) 851-0800. Agenda: To be announced.
DISTRICT 13 -- Coney Island, Brighton Beach, Gravesend; usually fourth Wednesday of month, but next meeting is this Wednesday, 7:30 P.M., Coney Island Hospital (auditorium), 2601 Ocean Parkway, corner of Avenue Z. Board chairman: Martin Levine; District manager: Chuck Reichenthal; (718) 266-3001. Agenda: Report from the chairman and district manager, committee reports.
DISTRICT 14 -- Flatbush, Midwood; usually second Monday of month, but the next meeting is Dec. 7, 7:30 P.M., Edward R. Murrow High School, Avenue L and East 17th Street, Midwood. Board chairman: Alvin M. Berk; District manager: Terry Rodie (718) 859-6357. Agenda: To be announced.
DISTRICT 15 -- Manhattan Beach, Sheepshead Bay, Gravesend; last Tuesday of month; next meeting is Nov. 24, 7 P.M., Kingsborough Community College, at Oriental Boulevard, Room U220, Sheepshead Bay. Board chairman: John E. Nikas; District manager: Paula Lupka; (718) 332-3008. Agenda: Committee reports.
DISTRICT 16 -- Brownsville, Ocean Hill; fourth Tuesday of month; next meeting is Nov. 24, 7 P.M., 444 Thomas S. Boyland Street between East New York and Pitkin Avenues, Brownsville. Board chairman: Charles T. Hamilton; District manager: Viola D. Graine; (718) 385-0323. Agenda: Guest speakers from New York Medicaid Choice and the Horticultural Society of New York and several committee reports.
DISTRICT 17 -- East Flatbush; third Wednesday of month; next meeting Wednesday, 7 P.M., St. Paul's United Methodist Church, 3714 Avenue D between East 37th and East 38th Streets. Board chairman: Albert Payne; District manager: Willie Scott; (718) 467-3536. Agenda: Several committee reports.
DISTRICT 18 -- Canarsie, Mill Basin, Marine Park, Bergen Beach, Flatlands, Georgetown, Fraiser; third Wednesday of month; next meeting Wednesday, 8 P.M., Kings Plaza Community Room, Flatbush Avenue and Avenue V. Board chairman: Frank Seddio; District manager: Dorothy Turano; (718) 241-0422. Agenda: To be announced.
NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: BROOKLYN UP CLOSE",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"NEWS SUMMARY
INTERNATIONAL
A3-11
Japanese Prime Minister Hospitalized After Stroke  Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi of Japan suffered a stroke and was hospitalized in intensive care, according to the senior cabinet minister, Mikio Aoki, who was appointed the acting prime minister. Mr. Aoki said it was not likely that Mr. Obuchi would be able to resume his duties soon.
A1
Britain Shuns Asylum Seekers  A sweeping law taking effect in Britain today aims to make the country far less attractive to asylum seekers. It is the latest effort by a West European government to stem the tide of immigrants, many of them from war-ravaged, post-Communist Eastern Europe.
A1
Worsening conditions for Gypsies throughout Eastern Europe have led thousands to try to emigrate, quickly wearing out any welcome from the West. The Gypsies in Slovakia say the government treats them with disrespect.
A10
Party Rattles Zimbabwe  The Movement for Democratic Change, a new opposition party, is shaking Zimbabwe's political establishment. It recently helped deliver a defeat to President Robert Mugabe by rallying voters to reject a draft constitution. And although violence has marred recent political events, the party is setting its sights on the parliamentary elections in May.
A1
Insight from Cult Survivor  A young Ugandan man who appears to be the only survivor of the recent cult killings says leaders of the cult believed that members were becoming mutinous after leaders' doomsday predictions turned out to be wrong.
A3
Confusion in Russian Military  Marshal Igor D. Sergeyev, Russia's defense minister, said confusion within the Russian military command led to a deadly ambush last week that killed at least 43 Russian soldiers and policemen.
A9
No Party for Beleaguered Kohl  Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany celebrates his 70th birthday today with every last glimmer of a festivity extinguished as a result of his admission of financial wrongdoing.
A11
NATIONAL
A12-19
Rise in Identity Theft Is Linked to the Internet  Law enforcement authorities are increasingly worried about a sudden, sharp rise in identity theft, the pilfering of people's personal information for use in obtaining credit cards, loans and other goods. Officials say the Internet is making identity theft one of the signature crimes of the digital era.
A1
Salamander Versus Farmers  The government's emergency listing of the California tiger salamander as an endangered species has set off the latest battle over development in northern Santa Barbara County. The government has not yet identified the precise location or range of the species, but many farmers, who face jail time and fines for harming the salamander, fear any continuation of their normal activities.
A1
Enforcing New Gun Laws  The Massachusetts attorney general says he will begin carrying out the state's new handgun safety laws today. They are the strictest and most comprehensive in the nation.
A12
South Carolinians Protest Flag  More than 600 residents began a five-day protest march to the state capital, Columbia, to press legislators to remove the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse dome.
A12
Opportunities for Ex-Cons  With the economy thriving and unemployment rates at near-record lows, former convicts are finding it easier to find work. Even in Detroit, a city that was the 1980's symbol of industrial decline and double-digit unemployment rates, they are getting job offers.
A12
Uproar Over Badge Plan  The Energy Department, heeding the objections of scientists, has dropped part of a plan to make foreign nationals at its laboratories wear badges stating the countries they are from.
A18
Study on Abducted Children  Americans have little chance of regaining custody of children abducted by one parent and taken to a foreign country, a new government study says.
A16
New Offer on Cuban Boy  President Fidel Castro of Cuba said Elian Gonzalez's father was willing to travel alone to the United States today if officials promised to turn over the boy and let the two return to Cuba right away.
A16
NEW YORK/REGION
B1-7
M.T.A.'s Spending Plan Is Unsound, Analysts Say  Government and private analysts agree that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's $16.5 billion capital improvement plan is a disaster-in-waiting that would force a major fare increase. And the consensus is putting significant pressure on Gov. George E. Pataki, who controls the authority, to do something.
A1
Democratic Rivalry Emerges  Negotiations behind a landmark gun control deal exposed the rivalry between two New York Democrats: Eliot L. Spitzer, the state's attorney general, and Andrew M. Cuomo, the federal housing secretary.
B1
ARTS
E1-8
TV Series Win Peabodies  'The West Wing' and 'The Sopranos' are among this year's winners of the George Foster Peabody Awards.
E6
SPORTSMONDAY
D1-12
Huskies Are Victorious  The Connecticut Huskies overwhelmed Tennessee, 71-52, to win the women's N.C.A.A. title.
D1
OBITUARIES
B8
Wayne McAllister  A West Coast architect who some critics say elevated the drive-in restaurant and the theme resort to art forms, he was 92.
B8
EDUCATION
Schools Chancellor Criticized  Harold O. Levy, New York City's interim schools chancellor, has begun intervening in the appointment of district superintendents, leading some district board members to accuse him of usurping their power.
B1
New Jewish Center at Columbia  The $11.5 million Robert K. Kraft Family Center for Jewish Student Life, named for the owner of the New England Patriots, is dedicated at Columbia University.
B3
BUSINESS DAY
C1-18
Outlook Glum for Microsoft  With the collapse of settlement talks in its federal antitrust case, Microsoft faces a harsh legal road ahead, with the threat of emboldened private litigants, a depressed stock price and eroded influence in computing, industry analysts say.
A1
As the settlement talks foundered, so, apparently, did the relationship between the Department of Justice and the 19 state attorneys general who together filed antitrust suits against Microsoft almost two years ago. But now, they must cooperate to come up with a single proposal for a legal remedy.
A18
European Bank Merger  HSBC Holdings, one of the world's biggest banking groups, said it would acquire one of the most profitable midsize French banks, Credit Commercial de France, in a transaction worth $10.6 billion.
C2
Tune-Up for Computer Chips  I.B.M. is to announce today that it has refined a new manufacturing process for producing semiconductor chips and increasing their performance by up to 30 percent.
C1
Business Digest
C1
EDITORIAL
A20-21
Editorials: Unfinished nuclear agenda; retaliating against Smith & Wesson; justice for the Khmer Rouge; deceptive home loan practices.  Columns: William Safire, Bob Herbert.
Bridge
E8  Public Lives
A12  Crossword
E8  TV Listings
E7  Metro Diary
B2  Weather
D11",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Packs of Rival Dog Walkers Circle One Another and Growl
On a recent Sunday at the Hillside Dog Park in Brooklyn Heights, a Dane, a pit bull and half a dozen other dogs skirmished harmoniously on the fenced-in, sloping, three-acre expanse as their walkers looked on.
The playful and serene scene, on a site sandwiched between the Jehovah's Witnesses Watchtower and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, disguises the bitter rivalries among the local self-employed dog walkers.
'Superficially, everyone gets along,' said Jessica Johnson, a professional dog walker, as she watched over a Great Dane. 'But there are concealed animosities.'
Indeed, dog walking in the vicinity of the popular dog run, which attracts dog lovers from throughout the city, has become a cutthroat business in which walkers can earn from $600 a week up to more than $100,000 a year. In this weak economy, dog walkers are watching both their charges and their backs. At Hillside, back-stabbing and bickering has sullied what was not long ago a vocation for slackers.
'It got too competitive and too nasty,' said Ms. Johnson, who is quitting after two years to attend pharmacy school. 'One person went around saying that one walker's dogs were biting other dogs on the dog run. It hurt the walker's feeling, and it hurt her reputation.'
One dog walker, Jennifer Bauch, fought back. When she learned that a rival was disparaging her, she confronted the offender in a tight elevator.
'I told her that I was going to get a restraining order and that she was not going to able to work in my building,' recalled Ms. Bauch, who became well known in Brooklyn Heights after she organized a memorial service for a deceased dog lover three years ago.
Nor have all the tiffs been behind closed doors. One walker aired her grievance at a local movie house. 'It was loud enough to be embarrassing,' Ms. Bauch said. 'This walker said, 'Thanks for stealing my pooch.' '
Ms. Bauch, a lawyer, epitomizes the new breed of walker: an ambitious, animal-loving entrepreneur. She turned to her current occupation after her dot-com employer went out of business two years ago.
'People think it's a paper route, but I take it very seriously,' said Ms. Bauch, a Marisa Tomei look-alike who works as many as 16 hours a day. When she's not singing out greetings to everyone from Montague Street panhandlers to Muffet Jones, president of the Hillside dog run, she is passing out business cards to anyone who, as she puts it, 'even glances at a can of dog food in the supermarket.'
Upon request, she serenades her clients with operatic arias. Last Christmas, she presented them with framed pictures of their precious pets. While others struggle, Ms. Bauch picks and chooses her clients.
'She dumped me,' Elizabeth Lippman said. 'I was horrified.' Ms. Lippman is a freelance photographer whose irregular schedule did not jibe with Ms. Bauch's. Ms. Bauch often refers clients to her protégé, a part-time bouncer, but she acknowledges that her competitive juices are still flowing. 'When I see someone walking a new poodle,' she said, 'I'm hit with tinges of jealousy.'
JON HART
NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: BROOKLYN HEIGHTS  Correction:  November 17, 2002, Sunday  An article in the Neighborhood Report pages last Sunday about dog walkers in Brooklyn Heights misstated the new career of Jessica Johnson, who is giving up that occupation. She is studying to become an emergency medical technician, not a pharmacist.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"NEWS SUMMARY      INTERNATIONAL    SQN#
KENNY-Rev. Michael J. The Diocese of Brooklyn announces the death of the former chaplain of Holy Family Hospital on April 11. Funeral Mass Wednesday, April 14, at Blessed Virgin Mary Help of Christians Church, 70-31 48th Avenue, Woodside, at 10:30 A.M. All priests are invited to concelebrate. He was a member of the Priests' Purgatorial Society. Most Rev. Thomas V. Daily Bishop of Brooklyn",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Corrections
An article last Monday about Randall Terry, a Republican candidate for Congress and the founder of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, misstated his wife's given name. It is Cindy, not Alice.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"New Language, and a New Life, for Avenue U
When the Rev. Paul Tseng moved the Brooklyn Chinese Christian Church from Flatbush into an old American Legion hall in Sheepshead Bay seven years ago, about 30 worshipers went to his weekly Baptist services. These days more than 200 attend.
""The community changed,"" Mr. Tseng said last week in his church, on East 15th Street and Gravesend Neck Road. ""More Chinese came to buy houses and settle. We have the D and Q train here, which goes to Chinatown. We have stores and restaurants on Avenue U. And we have the church.""
A growing Chinese population is slowly transforming Sheepshead Bay. Markets selling star fruits, bok choy, won ton skins and fresh fish are cropping up around Avenue U's old Italian salumerias and bagel stores. Video stores rent the latest Hong Kong thrillers. And the Ocean Palace Pavilion -- a marble-fronted, two-story, 300-seat restaurant serving seafood and Hong Kong cuisine -- opened in July to become one of the avenue's largest restaurants.
The area's Chinese population has grown from 2,706 in 1980 to about 10,000 now, according to census figures. And Frank Vardy, a senior demographer with the City Planning Department, said the actual number could be significantly higher. He said many Chinese families are moving to Sheepshead Bay from Chinatown, mirroring the migration of Italians and Jews who moved there from the Lower East Side half a century ago. ""It's a pattern,"" he said.
Many were attracted to Sheepshead Bay by its abundance of one- and two-family houses and its proximity to Chinatown via the D train.  Once the first waves came,more followed to join the growing community.
Many of the new Chinese businesses -- along with a growing number of Russian stores -- are being credited with revitalizing the commercial stretch along Avenue U, which suffered economically after the Kings Plaza Mall began drawing shoppers away.
""It's the mom-and-pop types of things that you cannot get at the mall,"" said John Nikas, the chairman of Community Board 15. ""Now you've got specialty shops selling foods and clothes that the mall cannot match.""
Brenda Tong, a real estate broker at Century 21, said the influx has helped keep the housing market steady while other neighborhoods have declined. Like many other businesses in Sheepshead Bay, Century 21 has Cyrillic, Chinese and Latin lettering on its awning.
Ms. Tong, who has lived in the area for 24 years, was pleased when stores like the V & H Supermarket opened on Avenue U and East 13th Street to sell everything from snails, live crabs, snow pea tips and oyster sauce to green tea, woks and rice cookers.
""I used to go to Chinatown once a week to go shopping,"" she said. ""Now I go here. They have everything.""
There have been tensions. In the late 1980's, a series of racist fliers charged that the Chinese were ""smiling at us behind our backs and planning to take over the whole neighborhood."" And there have been problems with the gangs that prey on Chinese people all over the city: two years ago the police rescued nine hostages from a Bedford Avenue house after they had been kidnapped by members of the Fuk Ching gang.
But Mr. Tseng, of the church, said that relations have improved and that officers from the 61st Precinct have been helpful. Now Mr. Tseng -- whose church comprises two buildings and a basketball court marked by a sign proclaiming ""Jesus Is Lord"" in English and Chinese -- is thinking about expanding. His summer day camp has grown so large that he now rents space from Public School 254, on East 18th Street.  MICHAEL COOPER  NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: SHEEPSHEAD BAY",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Corrections
An article on the Media Business page yesterday about Robert L. Bartley, the editor of The Wall Street Journal, misidentified a senior news editor of that paper in some editions. The editor, Alan Murray, is The Journal's deputy Washington bureau chief, not the bureau chief.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Metro Briefing | New York: Brooklyn: Body Identified As Missing Defendant
A body found last week in the trunk of a car parked at a New Jersey diner has been identified as a Genovese crime family figure who disappeared during his federal criminal trial, several officials said yesterday. The man, Lawrence Ricci, 60, was shot twice in the back of the head and once in the back, the officials said. Mr. Ricci, who disappeared on Oct. 7 during his trial in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, was identified through dental records on Friday, one official said. The car had been in the parking lot of the Huck Finn Diner on Morris Avenue in Union, N.J., for at least six weeks, investigators said. 'I think they're going through their mourning all over again,' Mr. Ricci's lawyer, Martin L. Schmukler, said of the family.
William K. Rashbaum (NYT)",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"John Levitow, 55, Airman Honored for Bravery, Dies
John L. Levitow, the only Air Force enlisted man to be awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War, died Nov. 8 at his home in Rocky Hill, Conn. He was 55.
The cause was cancer, his family said.
On the night of Feb. 24, 1969, Airman First Class Levitow was serving as loadmaster of an AC-47 gunship circling over the besieged United States Army base at Long Binh. The plane was firing thousands of rounds of ammunition at enemy forces and dropping magnesium flares to illuminate their positions for the American ground troops.
Airman Levitow, on his 181st combat sortie, was responsible for removing the flares from a rack, setting their controls and passing them to a gunner who would pull the safety pins, then throw the flares out a cargo door. The flares, attached to parachutes, ignited in midair 20 seconds later.
In the fifth hour of the mission, a Vietcong mortar hit the plane's right wing and exploded, opening a hole two feet in diameter and sending shrapnel through the aircraft's skin.
Airman Levitow was hit by 40 pieces of shrapnel in his back and legs and was stunned from the blast's concussion. 'It felt like a large piece of wood struck my side,' he would recall.
The other four crewmen in the cargo compartment were also wounded as the pilot struggled to keep the plane under control.
The gunner, Airman Ellis Owen, was about to toss a flare out the cargo door when he was wounded. The flare, fully armed and capable of burning through the plane's metal skin if it ignited, fell from his grasp.
As Airman Levitow was moving another wounded crewman away from the open cargo door, he saw the smoking flare rolling wildly from side to side among thousands of rounds of ammunition. An explosion seemed imminent.
Airman Levitow reached three times for three-foot-long, 27-pound metal tube holding the flare, but it slipped from his grasp each time. Finally, he threw himself on it, hugged it to his body and dragged it to the open door, trailing blood from his wounds and having lost partial feeling in his right leg.
He heaved the flare outside the door. A second or so later it ignited, but it was clear of the aircraft.
The pilot, Maj. Kenneth Carpenter, made a safe landing at the Bien Hoa air base with more than 3,500 shrapnel holes in the fuselage.
'I had the aircraft in a 30-degree bank, and how Levitow ever managed to get to the flare and throw it out, I'll never know,' Major Carpenter said.
After being treated for his injuries, Airman Levitow flew an additional 20 combat missions. He was discharged from the Air Force in August 1969 as a sergeant and received the Medal of Honor from President Richard M. Nixon at the White House on May 14, 1970. The citation stated that he 'saved the aircraft and its entire crew from certain death and destruction.'
John Lee Levitow, a native of Hartford, worked for federal and state veterans' agencies for more than two decades after leaving the Air Force. He was the legislative liaison and director of planning for the Connecticut Department of Veterans Affairs at the time of his death.
He is survived by a son, John Jr., of Charlotte, N.C.; a daughter, Corrie Wilson, of Cromwell, Conn.; his mother, Marion Levitow, of South Windsor, Conn.; a sister, Mary-Lee Constatino, of East Hartford, Conn., and a grandson.
Long after receiving the nation's highest award for valor, Mr. Levitow was honored again.
In January 1998, in a ceremony at Long Beach, Calif., the Air Force named a C-17 Globemaster plane for him. The legend on the fuselage read: 'The Spirit of Sgt. John L. Levitow.'",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Campus Life: Boston College; Theater Course Offers Insights Into Soviet Union
The ""Teatralnaya Masterskaya"" a Soviet theater course being offered to Boston College students for the first time, does more than teach run-of-the-mill ""Russian Theater 101.""
The course, conducted entirely in Russian, is intended to imbue the art of Soviet theater with music, dance, poetry and improvisation. It also explores the Soviet tolerance, or intolerance, of waiting in line for goods and services.
The one-credit class, co-sponsored by the Boston College Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages and the Slavic Club, is held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8 A.M.
The class begins with dance in order to invigorate and motivate the students, said the instructor of the class, Marina Chernyak, a graduate of the Leningrad Institute of Theater, Music and Cinema, who has directed a number of youth theater programs in the Soviet Union.
Waiting in Line
The mood is set by background music, and poetry is used as a fundamental element in learning about Russian culture. For example, the class may recite Boris Pasternak's translation of ""Hamlet"" before engaging in a theme from Mikhail Bulgakov's play, ""Zoya's Apartment.""
At any point, the play may be interrupted to add an improvisational pushing and shoving scene that reflects the idea of waiting in line for long periods of time. The aspect of waiting in line is also incorporated into the class itself because the pieces for study are especially selected by the instructor to portray the frustrating and aggravating conditions prevailing in the Soviet Union.
""Constantly speaking the language is extremely important in order for students to become fully immersed in the Soviet culture and to actually begin thinking like Russians,"" said John Gavin, a senior member of the class from Norwood, Mass., and president of the Slavic Club. ""You pick up things much faster than in a regular classroom environment.""
Vicki Stoy, a senior from Otego, N.Y., who is also a Russian major, agreed, ""It's great practice for my Russian conversational skills. The more Russian you know, the larger roles in the play you are given.""  'Our Teacher Is Incredible'
""You learn more about the language through stage direction,"" said Christopher Kubala, a freshman from Orlando, Fla., with a double major in Russian and economics. Mr. Kubala spent a month in the Soviet Union this summer studying Russian.
""Our teacher is incredible,"" Mr. Kubala said. ""Every day she comes in extremely energetic and excited to teach us new aspects of Russian theater.""
For her part, Ms. Chernyak sees the class as unusual because ""it's a combination of the Russian culture, art, theater and language,"" bringing the students face to face with diverse Soviet personalities.
Ultimately, Ms. Chernyak said, the class will perform several small dramatic pieces from the Russian and Soviet repertories, including a production of ""Zoya's Apartment"" open to the public during final exams in December.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Rancor Over Newark Schools
After 18 months of operating New Jersey's largest school district, Dr. Beverly Hall, the state-appointed superintendent, and her advisory board are viewed by some parents and teachers as an occupying army whose promises of liberating the Newark district from two decades of mismanagement, corruption and unresponsiveness have turned sour.
Many of the most vocal opponents were die-hard critics of the state takeover of the district in the first place. But even some of those who welcomed the takeover are now disappointed. $(Page A1.$)
NEW JERSEY DAILY BRIEFING",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Pop Goes the New Year
Ciliegia Amabile, nonvintage. (About $14.)
Cream Ridge Winery, in western Monmouth County, specializes in fruit wines. Tom Amabile, its gifted padrone and winemaker, puns in naming his Montmorency-cherry wine Ciliegia Amabile (pronounced Chee-lee-AY-gee-uh Ah-MAH-bee- lay): 'sweet cherry,' in Italian.
Barely sweet -- just enough sugar is added to temper the piquant acidity -- this rose-colored wine is dry enough to serve as an aperitif. Mr. Amabile pairs it with vermicelli or capellini and homemade tomato sauce that itself is barely sweet.
He exquisitely captures the quintessential scent and flavor of the cherries, grown in Mount Laurel. The wine, he says accurately, 'tastes like grandma's cherry pie' -- that is, it features the tart-cherry flavor that many Americans have adored from childhood.
Consume the wine immediately (a light chill adds oomph).
Although the wine is sold only at the tasting room, Mr. Amabile ships it inside New Jersey (by United Parcel Service) and will send a single bottle.
Cream Ridge Winery, 145 Route 539, Post Office Box 98, Cream Ridge, N.J., 08514; (609) 259-9797. Hours: Mondays to Saturdays, 11 A.M. to 6 P.M.; Sundays, 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. Credit cards accepted.
HOWARD G. GOLDBERG
N.J. VINES",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Peter Riccio, 92, Dies; Professor of Languages
LEAD: Peter M. Riccio, a professor of Italian who taught at Columbia University for 45 years and who was director emeritus of the university's Casa Italiana, died on Friday at the Pine Brook Nursing Home in Venice, Fla., He was 92 years old and lived in Venice and Hope Valley, R.I.
Peter M. Riccio, a professor of Italian who taught at Columbia University for 45 years and who was director emeritus of the university's Casa Italiana, died on Friday at the Pine Brook Nursing Home in Venice, Fla., He was 92 years old and lived in Venice and Hope Valley, R.I.
Professor Riccio began teaching at Columbia after graduating from there in 1921. Over the years he taught Italian, French, Spanish, comparative literature and the humanities. He became a full professor and director of Casa Italiana in 1957.
One of five children born in East Harlem to immigrants from Naples who had met and married in New York, he went to work as a shoeshine boy and a lamplighter to help his father, a butcher, support a family of seven.
Working his way through Columbia, he became president of Circolo Italiano, a students' society, in his junior year and began seeking to establish an Italian library at Columbia. A fund-raising committee was formed among prominent Italian-Americans and on Columbus Day, 1927, Casa Italiana, a seven-story building on Amsterdam Avenue at 117th Street, was dedicated by Guglielmo Marconi, representing the Italian Government.
Professor Riccio was decorated by Italy for his contributions to Italian studies in the United States.
He is survived by a son, Robert, of Springfield, Va.; a daughter, Nancy Mazzone of Deep River, Conn., and five grandchildren.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Rake, Clip, Mow, Repair, Neaten and Mulch
THE outdoor gardening season is pretty much history, but don't be too eager to put a lock on the tool shed. There still are some important things to do and  laggards, as most of us are, may just need a little prodding to get on with it.
Some deeds can be put off until the end of next month. But some can't. The first thing on everyone's minds is leaves. They are magnificent while shrouding the fall landscape. But as soon as they start to fall on the lawn, the charm fades.
Crews with leaf blowers are everywhere these days. Some machines are hand held, some are back packs, while those behemoths that clean large properties are engined and wheeled. A few homeowners still use the old-fashioned rake. Whatever is used, the lawn looks pristine, but only until the next windstorm.
One way to get rid of the piles is to haul them to the streets for municipal  pickup. Better is to haul at least a portion of the leaves to a compost pile. In a year or less, this splendid free organic matter will shrink down to that grand soil additive often referred to as black gold.
When sieved to screen out heavy clods and twigs, compost is a superb additive to potting mixtures. In fact, it is a big plus when planting anything, improving the soil as it is dug into the planting hole.
Once the last of the leaves has fallen and the trees have that wintery bare look, it is time to mow once more. The last mow should be a short cut -- one to  two inches is about right. The reason for this is to get rid of tall blades so that come spring, there will be less grass top for the new growth to push up through and the greening will have an easier time.
After the last mow, clean the mower properly. If blades need sharpening or the motor servicing, beat the spring rush and take the machine in for repairs during the winter months. When all is shipshape, cover the mower snugly to protect it during the cold weather.
Bulbs? In the ground. Better to plant even at this late date then to leave them to wither away in the back of the garage. The soil will not really chill down for another month or so and there is plenty of time for the bulbs to initiate root growth before the soil gets too cold.
There have been many stories told of forgotten bulbs being discovered in the  back of the garage sometime in January. During the usual thaw in late January or early February, delinquent gardeners have rushed out, shoved the neglected bulbs in the ground and hoped for the best. Much to their surprise, these bulbs have bloomed. Maybe not quite on schedule, perhaps several weeks late, in fact, but bloom they did.
This is a possibility, but it is still much better for the bulbs to be in the ground when their schedules call for it.
Planting of woody plants can also continue well into the next month; in fact  it can go on as long as the soil can be dug and worked. But it is iffy because the roots may not have sufficient time to settle in properly before a really heavy frost sets in.
Meanwhile, during whatever pleasant days may still lie ahead, a good old-fashioned garden cleanup is in order. Cut down the blackened stalks of perennials, pull out weeds and remove any diseased foliage that the frost may expose. This type of cleanup is a form of garden sanitation that prevents insects and disease spores from surviving over the winter months.
Empty those clay patio tubs, too, and haul them into a garage for safe keeping. Winter's freeze will often crack them. Containers made of rigid polyethylene materials can be left outside provided the soil is left in them to  help retain their rigidity.
Several projects should be delayed until the end of next month. The first of  these is mulching. A mulch blanket should not be put down until the ground is frozen. Its job is to keep the ground frozen, protecting it from cracking open and exposing roots.
Last of all to consider are the anti-desiccant sprays. These sprays are often recommended by landscapers to protect evergreens during the winter months. There are several products on the market, but they should not be applied until well into the cold season.
The anti-desiccant spray is a waxy coating that protects leaves from transpiring, or losing moisture. When the ground is frozen, it is difficult for  roots to replace moisture lost through the leaves, so the sprays help out until  the roots are back in action.
These are the same spray materials recommended for use during the Christmas season to help cut trees retain leaf moisture.
Most of the anti-desiccant spray directions suggest that the product be re-applied in February just to be sure the plants are well protected.
The sprays are especially useful for certain evergreens that may be of questionable hardiness or durability as is the case with some holly cultivars and rhododendrons.
GARDENING",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Filming the Family
HALFWAY into 'Chocolate Chip Cookie,' a documentary by Erica Jorgensen about her parents' interracial marriage, there is a passage that captures the conflicting feelings some people harbor about mixed marriages.
On screen, in stark black and white, is Harriette Knight, one of Ms. Jorgensen's African-American relatives from Gary, Ind. She is discussing what her response would be if her own daughter announced she was going to marry a white man. 'I would say, O.K., I still love you,' Ms. Knight tells the camera. 'And I'm going to be nice to him. And of course I'm going to love your children. But it's not something that it's, 'Yippee! Yay!''
Her comments, which serve as sort of a centerpiece for the film, were among favorites of the 18-year-old Ms. Jorgensen. 'I love that interview because she was so honest,' she said. 'What she said was the way a lot of people felt. They just maybe weren't willing to admit it.'
With an innate sense for the revealing moment and a deftness for handling issues that even adults often fumble, Ms. Jorgensen recently won a national 'Student Emmy' for her 10-minute film, which she produced for a broadcast journalism course at her school, the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Greenwich. She received her award on June 3 from the National Television Academy Foundation during a ceremony in Los Angeles.
All 16 judges voted her film the best in the arts and entertainment/documentary category.
'She got the highest scores of anybody in any of the categories,' said Av Westin, executive director of the foundation. 'It really was spectacular.'
The Jorgensen family lives in a rambling, converted hunting lodge, on a winding, hilly road in Redding. Life mostly swirls around the many activities of Erica and her sisters, 12-year-old Natalie and 8-year-old Grace.
Peggy Jorgensen, an elementary school teacher, and husband, Donald, a carpenter, started dating in 1974. Peggy Jorgensen, now 49, was a student at Concordia College in Bronxville, N.Y., and Mr. Jorgensen, 50, was pumping fuel and towing planes at Westchester County Airport when they met through mutual friends.
She was black. He was white. They fell in love. Their friends raised no questions about the couple's racial differences. Nor did their families make a big deal about it There were some looks from strangers, however, and an occasional crude remark.
'If we were in a restaurant and people turned their heads, I always thought they were thinking, 'What a beautiful couple,'' Ms. Jorgensen said. 'If they had a problem, it was their problem. It just wasn't their business. This was our relationship.'
They married in 1980. Erica was born six years later. Even as a small child, said her parents, she had a bottomless reservoir of questions and a forthright personality.
Mr. Jorgensen tells of a family vacation in the Virgin Islands when his daughter was 4 years old. They were on the beach and the girl kept demanding that her parents move her blanket, then do this, then do that. 'And here are two adults running around like crazy doing everything she says,' he said. 'A woman watched this for awhile. Then she turns around and says, 'That one's a little general, isn't she?''
Ms. Jorgensen was introduced to video production in junior high, where she was involved in the making of her school's CD-ROM yearbook.
Come ninth grade, she applied for admission to Sacred Heart's new broadcast journalism course, was accepted and began to hone her skills. She remained with the program four years, longer than any of her classmates.
Often, she made videos when projects were called for in other classes. One summer, Manhattanville College hired her to make a short promotional film about a children's theater program.
Toward the end of her sophomore year, encouraged by her broadcast journalism teacher and her mother, Ms. Jorgensen began to consider a documentary about her family.
Introduced to racism when a childhood friend taunted her with vulgar remarks about her mother and her parents' marriage, Ms. Jorgensen grew curious about the experiences of her parents and how relatives responded to the relationship.
In the summer of 2002, during a visit to her maternal grandmother and other relatives in the Midwest, Erica began taping interviews, first in Gary, Ind., then in Minneapolis. Over the next year, she interviewed about 20 people on all sides of the family.
Last fall, in between applying to colleges, she began weeding through eight hours of footage, and figuring out how best to tell the story.
She wanted her subjects to speak for themselves, so she limited her narration to a brief introduction and closing. Laying in bed one night, the opening lines simply came to her: 'I am a chocolate chip cookie. I'm the product of two very different ingredients. My father is white. My mother is black.'
The bulk of the film is a series of interview segments, following her parents' early relationship, their marriage and her birth. Among the more moving anecdotes, her grandmother remembers Peggy Jorgensen dismissing those who might make life difficult for an interracial couple, insisting, 'Nobody is going to interfere with my happiness.'
Mr. Jorgensen's mother, meanwhile, tells of holding newborn Erica while another mother who shared Peggy's hospital room craned her neck to see what a biracial baby looked like.
Set to the music of folk-rocker Ben Harper, with a montage of photos from her parents' life together, the film's message is positive. Her family is happy, Ms. Jorgensen said; be happy for us.
After a screening for about 250 students at Sacred Heart's Upper School this winter, Ms. Jorgensen's classmates and teachers gave her a standing ovation. Then dozens gathered around, to hug and congratulate her. 'People were crying,' she said. 'I was sobbing. I didn't expect that reaction.'
The film connected on many levels. Beyond her regional and national Student Emmys, 'Chocolate Chip Cookie' won best documentary in the Westport Youth Film Festival last month. Requests have come in for the film at libraries and schools.
Ms. Jorgensen, meanwhile, has been accepted to George Washington University for the fall and is on the waiting list at Brown. She is also pondering a longer documentary that would explore not only interracial relationships but interfaith couples as well.
When she was recognized during the nationally televised Daytime Emmy Awards, a clip of her film ran and Ms. Jorgensen and her parents were shown in the audience.
Out in Minneapolis, Erica's maternal grandmother, Clorasteen S. Wilson, called every relative she could think of and told them to watch. Some were disappointed, she said, that the girl wasn't invited up on stage.
Just be patient, said Ms. Wilson, 'I think this is not the end of hearing from Erica.'",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, an obituary of the biographer William Manchester on Wednesday misstated the name of the Baltimore newspaper for which he reported. It was The Evening Sun, not The Sun.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Corrections
A brief report in the Footlights column of The Arts on Thursday about a gala at the Music Festival of the Hamptons celebrating the 80th birthday of Lukas Foss misstated the day. It is today, not tomorrow.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Corrections
An article in Weekend yesterday about recordings of Rameau's music included a singer incorrectly among those in the New York City Opera production of his 'Platee,' which opens on Tuesday. The mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson is in Mozart's 'Clemenza di Tito' at the City Opera, not in 'Platee.'",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"But Sometimes, Commuting Is Not the Solution
WHAT do you do when you have a long commute to New Jersey, but the the house of your dreams is in New York, Pennsylvania or some other state?
Lewis and Donna Jean Grant had to resolve that question when Mr. Grant got a job in Newark as vice president for an aluminum pole company in November 1999 and had to travel more than a hundred miles each way from a house they had built near Hazelton, Pa.
'It's a beautiful home and we couldn't replace that home here,' Ms. Grant, who today is controller for the R&J Group, a public relations and advertising company, said in a telephone interview from her office in Parsippany. 'It would cost us two and a half times more.'
At first, Mr. Grant stayed in a hotel and returned home on weekends, which kept them apart. The answer: Keep the home in Pennsylvania but rent an apartment in New Jersey to live in during the week, and have Ms. Grant get a job in New Jersey.
In January 2000 they found an apartment in Morristown, and several months later Ms. Grant left her accounting job at a chemical company in Pennsylvania and began working for an advertising agency in Millburn. Last December, she took the job at R&J.
Now the couple usually returns to New Jersey from Pennsylvania on Sunday night to avoid the Monday morning crunch on Interstate 80, which Ms. Grant said could be  a nightmare, especially in winter.
'A little ice and a little snow and a little fender-bender and you're backed up forever,' she said. 'We've left at 5 a.m. on a Monday thinking we could be here at 7, and there was an accident, and we didn't get here until 10. So an hour-and-40-minute drive turns into five hours.'
Her drive to work from the apartment, however, is 8 minutes -- or 25 minutes at worst -- and for her husband it is a half-hour. Another benefit: They are closer now to their daughter, who is a sophomore at New York University, and still close enough to their son, who is a senior at Cabrini University in Philadelphia.
'We have the best of both worlds,' Ms. Grant said. 'Some weekends we stay here, and we really enjoy the area. We love to go into the city on the train. But we also love the quiet of Pennsylvania and the beauty I was brought up in. I can leave the window open and hear the animals and birds, whereas here you hear the whiz of the traffic going by.'
George James",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"The Making Of a Mogul
To the Editor:
To say that Marcus Loew 'created the movie palace,' as you do in the headline, is like saying that Henry Ford invented the automobile.
Many people were involved in the movie palace, but if you had to single out the individual mostly responsible, it would be Samuel L. Rothafel, known as Roxy. He ended up building or managing a dozen or more of New York's greatest movie theaters, including Radio City Music Hall and the even larger Roxy, at Broadway and 50th Street.
DAVID A. WEISS  Brooklyn Heights",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"News Summary
International
3-11
AIDS POTION DIVIDES KENYA
A Kenyan pharmacologist claims he has devised a drug that can stop the AIDS virus from reproducing. Although many of his colleagues say the drug is just a modern version of snake-oil, the Government is helping to sell it.
1
DISSATISFIED EX-DISSIDENTS
While many ex-dissidents of East Germany still celebrate the end of tyranny, some complain that the country they helped create is too materialistic and that  easterners do not have a fair share of power.
3
MORE VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL AFRICA
One week after an army mutiny in the Central African Republic, the deployment of hundreds of additional French troops showed no signs of ending the violence.
6
A FEARFUL RUSSIAN MINORITY
There are few more emotional issues in the Russian presidential campaign than the often dismal fate of the 25 million ethnic Russians now living as unloved minorities in former Soviet republics.
3
ISRAEL'S KEY POWER BROKERS
The clerical leaders of Israel's rigorously Orthodox parties are likely to play  a crucial role in shaping the Government that will emerge in Wednesday's elections.
8
National
12-26
LIFE OF THE UNABOM SUSPECT
Special Report: Theodore John Kaczynski had been a brilliant mathematician at the University of California at Berkeley long ago. But he quit in a tailspin of  disillusionment with mathematics -- the sole passion of his life, suddenly dead.
1
SUSPECT'S BROTHER SPEAKS
Special Report: Breaking his public silence, David Kaczynski described in an interview how he had reluctantly come to the ""horrible"" realization that his older brother, Theodore, could be the Unabomber.
1
TURNAROUND ON HEALTH PLANS
A proposal to help small businesses band together and buy health insurance for their employees at reduced rates, initially greeted with acclaim, is now drawing criticism from state officials and Democratic members of Congress.
1
FIGHTING WITHIN THE G.O.P.
A fight between former United States Senator Rudy Boschwitz and his conservative opponents within Minnesota's Republican Party is one instance of sweeping ferment within the party over issues like abortion or the party's image.
1
DISCOUNT OUTLETS BOOM
Discount outlet centers have become so popular with foreign and American tourists that they are now bigger attractions than the Liberty Bell, the Jefferson Memorial, the Alamo and many other traditional tourist treasures.
1
FOLLOWING THE TORCH
The Olympic torch, making a 15,000-mile journey across the United States, draws  a big crowd everywhere, but the excitement seems most keen in modest, little, off-the-beaten-track places.
12
Metro
27-33 HONOR SOCIETY'S IMAGE PROBLEM
Today's top college students are turning down Phi Beta Kappa in record numbers.  Some have never heard of the organization, while others are confused about various honor societies or see them as anachronistic.
1
YOU ARE WHERE YOU SUMMER
The beaches and mountains of the Eastern seaboard will be spotted with summer colonies of New Yorkers, who on weekdays make up very diverse groups but who on  vacation retreat among their own.
27
AN OFFICER IS MOURNED
Mourning police officers filled a red-brick church, and thousands more spilled into the streets to honorVincent Guidice, a New York police officer who died Wednesday after falling on shards of a broken mirror as he responded to a domestic dispute.
27
Fresh Air Fund
32 Obituaries
33-34",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Wood Chipper Murder Case Ends in Mistrial
LEAD: With a juror refusing to deliberate and to return to the courtroom after 17 days of deliberations, a judge today declared a mistrial in the case of an airline pilot accused of murdering his wife and putting her body through a wood chipper.
With a juror refusing to deliberate and to return to the courtroom after 17 days of deliberations, a judge today declared a mistrial in the case of an airline pilot accused of murdering his wife and putting her body through a wood chipper.
The mistrial was declared at 9:13 P.M. by Judge Barry Schaller of Superior Court after a juror, Warren Maskell of Norwich, refused to go back into deliberations or to heed the judge's order to reappear in the courtroom so the case could be recessed until Saturday.
Under the mistrial finding, the state can retry the defendant, Richard Crafts, without a claim of double jeopardy.
The jury had declared itself deadlocked about 4:35 P.M. today, but Judge Schaller ordered jurors to continue deliberating.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Corrections
A picure caption yesterday about the civil war in Angola referred incorrectly to an examination being performed on a crying child. He was being weighed and measured as part of a nutritional analysis, not measured for a coffin.
The Gamma Liaison agency, which provided the picture and the description, said the erroneous account originated with an ""overzealous editor"" at a British newspaper that published the picture earlier this year, and was inadvertently attached to a print in Gamma's files.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"A Friendship That Ended The Clutter
Imagine being entrusted with another's cherished heirlooms, only to discover that they are a pair of seven-foot naked dolls, male and female, and 'anatomically correct,' as they say. Imagine having to drag them down Lexington Avenue to be cleaned, as passers-by stare at the spectacle. And after a nearly 20-block trip to the New York Doll Hospital, imagine having to drag them back when it turns out to be too expensive to bother.
Now that's friendship, wouldn't you say?
Well, yes and no.
'That's my business, after all,' said Linda Rothschild, a professional organizer who helps people take charge of their disordered lives and possessions. 'And I've had to deal with stranger things in people's homes, like teeth that I've found lying around, or even kidney stones.'
Luckily, there were no kidney stones at the Upper East Side home of Kay Unger, a fashion designer who called Ms. Rothschild a few years ago in a moment of crisis. She and her family had to move on short notice from a large apartment to a smaller one and needed to sort out their things before they did.
'The first thing I said when I called Linda was that I needed a wife,' said Ms. Unger, whose professional life left little time for the practicalities of the move. 'Besides, I am more of a visual person than a list person. I'd rather sit and sketch.'
So Ms. Rothschild listed, packed and supervised . . . and dragged those dolls, which had belonged to Ms. Unger's mother. And the two women became friends, too.
'She has become part of my life,' said Ms. Unger, as Ms. Rothschild nodded. 'We like each other.'
Perhaps that's because they are almost polar opposites. 'Kay's idea of a list and mine are very different,' Ms. Rothschild said. 'Hers are outdated, dogeared and duplicated.'
Ms. Unger smiled. 'It's true,' she confessed. 'I panic when I see a stack of papers. And I call Linda.'
Ms. Rothschild has done a lot for Ms. Unger since that first move. She has bought gifts for Ms. Unger's friends and her children's friends ('that Bar Mitzvah year,' Ms. Unger said of the time her son had a party nearly every weekend). She has presided as telephone systems have been installed, and she once even inventoried every appliance in a new apartment and ordered the service manuals for them. Nowadays, actions like these are sometimes favors, although there are times when they are still strictly business. Like when Ms. Unger and her husband recently separated.
'Linda was the one we called first, before the lawyers,' said Ms. Unger, whose friend promptly went to work for her estranged spouse.
Did that interfere with their friendship? No, both women replied.  Ms. Rothschild explained that she also knew Ms. Unger's husband, who had become comfortable with her. Besides, she said, she kept her work for him -- moving him to a hotel and then to a new home -- completely professional and impartial.
'I didn't decide who got what,' she said. 'I just kept track of it.'
BERNARD STAMLER
NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: UPPER EAST SIDE -- RELATIONS",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Editors' Note; Editors' Note
A front-page article on Aug. 16 and one on Aug. 17 reported on divisions among Republicans over President Bush's high-profile planning for a possible war with Iraq. The articles cited comments by former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and by Brent Scowcroft, the first President Bush's national security adviser, among others.
The Aug. 16 article described Mr. Kissinger's expressed concerns about the need for building an international coalition before waging war and his doubts about the Bush administration's plan to make 'regime change' the center pole of its policy. But it should have made a clearer distinction between his views and those of Mr. Scowcroft and other Republicans with more categorical objections to a military attack. The second article listed Mr. Kissinger incorrectly among Republicans who were warning outright against a war.
Republicans are in fact divided, both over the way Mr. Bush is preparing for the possibility of war and over whether the United States should attack Iraq. Mr. Scowcroft wrote in a recent opinion article that he opposes an attack because it could undermine or destroy a global antiterror campaign and might also set off attacks by Iraq against Israel or lead to a wider regional war.
The Times's Aug. 16 article was based in part on a syndicated opinion article published by Mr. Kissinger on Aug. 12 in The Washington Post and other newspapers. In it, he said that a war was justifiable. But he said that Mr. Bush must first do more diplomatic consultation and political preparation for military action, and that before ordering an attack the administration should try to force an inspection routine on Iraq.
Most centrally, Mr. Kissinger said that removing Mr. Hussein from power -- Mr. Bush's justification for war -- was not an appropriate goal. He said an attack on Iraq should be directed toward a more limited aim, eradicating weapons of mass destruction.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Parade on Monday
LEAD: The Halloween parade will begin at 7 P.M. Monday on West Street between Houston and Christopher Streets, travel east on Houston Street to the Avenue of the Americas, north to 14th Street and east to Union Square.
The Halloween parade will begin at 7 P.M. Monday on West Street between Houston and Christopher Streets, travel east on Houston Street to the Avenue of the Americas, north to 14th Street and east to Union Square.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"STATE RUSHES PLAN TO EXPAND PRISONS
LEAD: CONNECTICUT'S crowded prison system is undergoing a major expansion, which is intended to keep pace with a steadily rising population of inmates - an increase that shows no signs of abating.
CONNECTICUT'S crowded prison system is undergoing a major expansion, which is intended to keep pace with a steadily rising population of inmates - an increase that shows no signs of abating.
Although the state has added 1,500 prison beds since 1981, it is trying to speed the construction of prisons at three new locations - still to be chosen - to accommodate another 1,700 inmates.
But those new prisons are not likely to be ready until at least 1991 or 1992, state officials said. And in the interim, 300 to 400 new beds will have to be found each year at existing prisons or at other state-owned locations -'just to keep our head above water,' said William H. Carbone, chairman of the State Commission on Prison and Jail Overcrowding.
In a report to the General Assembly last month, the commission said, 'The prison overcrowding problem has clearly worsened.' Unless prompt action is taken, the report added, 'large numbers of inmates will assuredly be released.'
State officials attribute the squeeze to two factors - a relentless increase in the number of people being sent to prison and a 1984 state law that will trigger the emergency release of inmates if the number of inmates exceeds specified limits at the state prisons for 30 consecutive days.
No one has yet been released under the measure, but state officials said the critical period will be between 1988 and 1991 when the proposed new prisons begin to open.
In an interim step to deal with the prison shortage, the State Bond Commission on March 27 approved the sale of nearly $7 million in state bonds.
The commission approved $2.7 million to build a 100-bed, minimum-security dormitory at the Hartford Correctional Center; $3.5 million for a 100-bed minimum-security dormitory at the women's prison in Niantic; $500,000 for maintenance at several corrections facilities, and $50,000 to begin designing additions of 200 beds each at the state's medium-security prison at Cheshire and the state's only maximum-security prison, which is in Somers.
Among other possibilities being considered by state officials is converting the lockup at the recently opened State Superior Court building into a jail for 100 inmates. Another possibility would be to acquire a portion of the National Guard's Camp Hartell in Windsor Locks to house 150 people serving short sentences for drunken driving.
As a longer-term solution, state officials are beginning to look for sites to build three major medium-security prisons - one of 800 beds in central Connecticut within 30 miles of the existing prisons at Somers and Enfield, one of 400 beds in western Connecticut in the vicinity of Waterbury and one of 500 beds in an unspecified area of eastern Connecticut.
State officials have not put an overall cost on the prison expansion program, but costs have been estimated at $85 million for the central Connecticut facility and $34.5 million for the western Connecticut prison. These would be financed by the sale of state bonds, which would have to be authorized by the Legislature.
The search for places in which to put the prisons already has stirred opposition in some areas.
Last month, after the state sought bids to buy a privately-owned site for the 800-bed prison, only one proposal was received, for a 125-acre site in Windsor that abuts the northern end of Hartford and 120 acres of land the state already owns.
Community leaders in Windsor and neighboring Hartford and Bloomfield have opposed putting a prison there. State officials said they will look for other possible sites on state-owned property before finally selecting a site in the late spring.
'I think every place has to be looked at, and certainly all people have to be listened to,' Governor O'Neill said recently. 'The last thing in the world I think anyone in the State of Connecticut wants is to have people released out on the streets. That would have to take place if we do not have additional facilities to house criminals in the State of Connecticut.'
The average number of inmates in the state prisons is projected to reach 7,040 this year, compared with 3,110 in 1977, and is not expected to begin tapering off until the late 1990's. As of last week, Mr. Carbone said, the number of male inmates was within 50 of the population limit specified in the 1984 emergency release law.
State officials said the rising inmate population reflected, in part, more stringent sentences imposed by the legislature in recent years, such as mandatory prison sentences for some crimes.
Within the last year, according to state figures, the number of the most serious felony cases disposed of by the state courts increased by 17 percent. Drug arrests increased by 72 percent betwen 1981 and 1985, and the number of people sentenced to prison for driving while intoxicated jumped to 1,864 last year from 460 in 1984.
With the aid of a $24,000 Federal grant, the State Judicial Department last month created a task force to consider a variety of sentencing alternatives that would provide judges with options other than incarceration.
Under existing law, the state already allows intensive probation and supervised home release instead of prison sentences for some offenders. State officials said these alternative sentences have saved more than 2,000 prison beds per day since 1981.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Day Care for Alzheimer's Cases Spreads
For three years Eva Woody, 87, has lived with her brother and his family in Port Jefferson.
When Mrs. Woody, whose Alzheimer's disease was diagnosed several years ago, was no longer able to care for herself, her brother George Patterson hired an attendant.
Last month after an adult day-care center, the Community Program Center, opened in Port Jefferson, Mr. Patterson decided to take his sister there two days a week to see how she would like it.
""I've seen such a remarkable difference in her that it's almost hard to believe,"" he said. ""Since she's been going to day care she's begun to eat better, to pay more attention to things and to ask questions that she hadn't asked in a long time. For someone who had been feeling so alone the center has brought her back some dignity, and she's begun to feel again that she's somebody worthwhile.""
The Community Program Center in Port Jefferson is one of 30 adult day-care centers on Long Island. They aim to help families with elderly members, including those suffering from dementia, the loss of intellectual functioning that affects memory, thinking and judgment, most often caused by Alzheimer's disease.
The growth in day care is an important change in the care of Alzheimer's, said Chris Morris, executive director of the Long Island Alzheimer's Foundation, a support and referral agency.
""These individuals tend to stay well physically,"" Ms. Morris said, ""but need 24-hour care. With more working adults on the Island who want to keep a loved one at home, day-care centers have become a viable alternative to getting the individual with Alzheimer's out of the house and into an accepting environment.""
A growing elderly population on Long Island has gone hand in hand with a rising number of diagnoses of dementia. In Nassau County more than 180,000 people older than 65 have the disease, and more than 140,000 in Suffolk have it, according to Dr. Lory Bright-Long, director of the Long Island Alzheimer's Disease Assistance Center in Stony Brook.
The center is one of eight centers throughout the state that provide diagnosis, management, education, information and support for Alzheimer's patients and their families. Of the counties in the state, Nassau has the highest aging population, and Suffolk ranks third, Dr. Bright-Long said. Minimum of 40,000 Patients
People over 85 are the fastest-growing segment of the aged population, she said, adding, ""By most reports 15 percent of the population over 65 and 47 percent of those over 85 have dementia.""
There are no exact figures on the number of Alzheimer's cases on the Island, but experts offer estimatesfrom 40,000 to 60,000. The disease affects not only the individuals, but also an average of four other family members, Ms. Morris said.
""It's a family disease,"" she said. ""Some people must stop working to take care of a family member with Alzheimer's. When calculating figures family caregivers must be counted in the numbers impacted by this disease.""
Alzheimer's is a progressive degeneration disease of the brain, causing confusion, memory loss, personality and behavior changes, impaired judgment and difficulty in finding words, finishing thoughts or following directions. Its cause and cure are not known.
Four million Americans have Alzheimer's. Its only absolute diagnosis is examination of brain tissue in autopsy. But clinical tests to exclude other conditions like stroke, depression, drug reactions, metabolic changes and nutritional deficiencies have improved the diagnoses over the last few years to 80 percent, Ms. Morris said.
People with Alzheimer's usually live an average of 7 to 12 years after its onset, Ms. Morris said, adding that plans for long-term care have to be a priority for such families. Experts say more than half nursing-home patients are victims of Alzheimer's or related disorders.
Five residential nursing homes in Nassau and five in Suffolk have dementia units.
Seventy percent of the Alzheimer's cases are cared for at home, said Jarie Stedman, director of the Nassau-Suffolk Alzheimer's Association.  ""And that's if they're lucky,"" Ms. Stedman said. ""Many Alzheimer's patients are isolated and don't have the family support that they need.""
Dr. Bright-Long said day-care centers did not include medical services, but focused on socialization.
Nassau has 13 centers and Suffolk 11.
The Community Program Centers in Deer Park and Port Jefferson offer the aged a chance to socialize with peers while reinforcing eating habits through communal dining and strengthening social skills through social interaction, said the director, Toby Wiles.
The centers provide exercise, discussion groups and games oriented to the participants' ability, she said, adding that to accommodate working families they are open from 7:30 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. Taxi companies provide transportation. A third center is to open in Ronkonkoma next year.
Dr. Bright-Long said it was difficult to measure the success of the programs because they did not arrest the disease. But, she added, ""anecdotally we have nothing but positive reports, both for the Alzheimer's patients and for the family caregivers.""
Ms. Wiles said families had found that when their relatives were physically and mentally stimulated in the day, they were more alert at night, had better appetites, slept better and looked forward to the activities at the center the next day.
""Especially for older caregivers, there's still a stigma attached to having someone in the family with a mental problem,"" Ms. Morris said. ""But the generation of sons and daughters whose parents have Alzheimer's are more receptive to reaching out for necessary support.""
The 79-year-old mother of Anthony Grosso of Deer Park has been going to the Port Jefferson center three times a week for a month, he said, and she has grown more energetic and more talkative. For two years, since Mrs. Grosso's dementia was diagnosed, her daughter has cared for her.
Mr. Grosso said the center had eased the burden on his sister and made a big difference for their mother.  Chatty and Cheerful Patient
""She may not remember if they gave her lunch,"" he said, ""but she's very chatty and cheerful. When I recently went to the center and peeked through the open door she had a smile on her face while she was busy talking to someone next to her, and she seemed more relaxed than I'd seen her in a long time.""
The fee center is $29 a day, plus $30 a week for transportation, expenses that Mr. Grosso and his sister share, he said.
The burden of financing care often falls on the patients and their families. The costs for day care range from social-model programs, which average $30 to $40 a day, to more than $100 a day for medical-model day-care programs, of which Long Island has six.
For those at home the cost for an aide averages $20,000 annually, with families' covering most of the expense. The annual cost for patient care in a nursing home may range from $36,000 to $60,000.
A patient with Medicaid can qualify for long-term home care and receive some financial reimbursement for an aide or for day care if the center contracts with a home agency. But, Dr. Bright-Long said, for most middle-class families, the money has to be paid out of pocket. Recent Breakthrough
In September the Food and Drug Administration approved tacrine, better known by its brand name, Cognex. It is the first drug certified for treating patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's.
Dr. Fredrick T. Sherman, a geriatrician and internist in Huntington, was approved by the F.D.A. to use Cognex experimentally, basis, and he has prescribed it for 50 patients in 18 months. Of the patients who had no severe side effects and continued using the drug, 70 percent showed improvement in cognitive functioning, memory and language, Dr. Sherman said.
""It's the first time that we can partially reverse the effects of Alzheimer's disease,"" he said. ""Before the approval of Cognex we could only treat behavioral symptoms by management of the environment.""
Dr. Sherman cautioned that Cognex had not been approved for dementia from strokes or for severe Alzheimer's patients. Patients with mild or moderate Alzheimer's have to be carefully screened before using the medication, he said. Mild Alzheimer's, he explained, is defined by impairment of work and social activities, but still having the capacity for independent living. In moderate Alzheimer's independent living is hazardous, and some supervision is necessary.
""There is a tendency to be skeptical about the use of new drugs in old people,"" Dr. Sherman said, ""especially since Alzheimer's was always thought to be untreatable. But with increased knowledge we're starting to see changes in attitude. Today the greatest fear among older adults is no longer cancer, but Alzheimer's disease.""",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Car Phones Tied to Accidents
Are cellular phones and cars a dangerous combination? A study by the Rochester Institute of Technology found that the accident rate for drivers with  car phones was 34 percent higher than the rate for drivers without phones.
State Senator Byron M. Baer, Democrat of Englewood, said yesterday that he had introduced a bill calling for the State Department of Insurance and the Division of Highway Safety to determine if people with telephones in their cars  should be charged higher insurance rates.
TERRY PRISTIN
NEW JERSEY DAILY BRIEFING",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"More Worries Along Hudson Street
To the Editor:
Not only has it been a major assault on the senses (""That Mess on Hudson Street,"" Jan. 30), but the ""complicated, attenuated and obstreperous reconstruction of Hudson Street"" is also having an affect on the buildings adjacent to it. When large trucks and buses roll through the street now, there are major rumblings and vibrations through my building as there never were before.
Granted, my building is not the newest on the block, but there's no doubt that its integrity is being compromised by the constant traffic over the craterlike surface. Who knows what permanent damage will be done to older buildings up and down the entire stretch of Hudson Street long after the backhoes have gone for good? EDMUND DE SANTIS Manhattan",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Nursing Shortage? Or Smart Government?
To the Editor:
In response to your article about Suffolk County's public health nursing staff ('On the East End, a Nursing Shortage Is Felt Most Deeply,' Jan. 22), equal time needs to be provided regarding the marvelous job that the Department of Health nurses have done to both enhance quality health care and save cost to the taxpayers.
For instance, the new prenatal mobile units that County Executive Steve Levy implemented last year resulted in more pregnant women's receiving medical care, especially in our previously underserved areas. Additionally, during this past year, there was only one infant malpractice lawsuit brought against the County compared to an average of 6 to 10 such suits brought in previous years.
Moreover, while the article suggested that there is a large dropoff in the number of public health nurses, there are no fewer nurses this year than when the new administration came into office. Yet an increase in the provision of health care can be quantifiably measured. That is what smart government is all about.
Brian L. Harper, M.D.  Commissioner, Suffolk County  Department of Health Services  Hauppauge",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"INSIDE
The Past Troubles Hungary
Hungary is having trouble deciding how to compensate the victims of Communist persecution and judge the guilty. Page 3. Moderation in Haiti
In Haiti, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's surprising moderation has pleased some skeptics while disappointing some supporters. Page 16. Connecticut's Budget Quest
With another shutdown of state offices threatened for Monday, any legislative action was left until today, when both houses meet. Page 39.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Metro Briefing | New York: White Plains: Prison For Bird Smuggler
Thomas Cullen, a well-known expert on birds, was sentenced yesterday in federal District Court to four months in prison for importing birds in violation of the Wild Bird Conservation Act, said Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney. Mr. Cullen, 54, was convicted in 2005 of importing two Black Sparrowhawks, which are native to Africa, a spokeswoman for the United States attorney said.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"NEWS SUMMARY
International A3-9  MENEM LEADS IN ARGENTINA
President Carlos Saul Menem appeared to win a second term in Argentina's elections, according to voter surveys.  A1  THE OTHER CASUALTIES IN RWANDA
Thousands of women raped during ethnic warfare last year in Rwanda are finding themselves, and their children born of unwanted pregnancies, ostracized by their families and communities.  A1  KASHMIR INQUIRY
The Indian Government sent two Cabinet ministers to Kashmir to assess the turmoil that has followed the destruction of the region's most revered Muslim shrine.  A3  ISRAEL AFFIRMS LAND SEIZURES
Israel affirmed its decision to confiscate land in largely Palestinian areas of Jerusalem.  A3  A Palestinian Authority court sentenced a senior Hamas figure.  A3  BEHIND THE SCENES IN BEIJING
Of the half-dozen men likely to remain as revolutionary elders of China after Deng Xiaoping dies, few have the political and military connections of Yang Shangkun.  A6  NOW, A NUCLEAR TEST BAN
With the treaty limiting the spread of nuclear weapons now a permanent fixture in international relations, the Clinton Administration is ready to press a worldwide ban on atomic testing.  A7  CUBAN DISSIDENT ON TRIAL
The trial of a prominent human rights leader in Cuba is generating new tensions in relations between Havana and Washington.  A8  DISPUTE IN CHILE
Both sides in an appeal by two military officers convicted in the assassination of a Chilean opposition leader, Orlando Letelier, in 1976, have accused the other of trying to influence the outcome.  A9  A Tibetan boy was designated the reincarnated Panchen Lama.  A6  Abidjan Journal: Ivory Coast tries executions to fight crime.  A4  National A10-15  REPUBLICANS DUEL OVER TAX CUT
As the House and Senate prepare to debate separate proposals from their Republican majorities to balance the Federal budget by 2002, the major remaining difference was whether the final bill should include a major tax cut.  A1  BATTLE OVER PROPERTY RIGHTS
A movement to expand property rights that has led to measures in Congress to require taxpayers to compensate owners of property when Government action reduces its value has led to the banding together of widely disparate groups who oppose it.  A1  TRYING TO SPREAD RISKS
Terrified that a monster earthquake or hurricane in a major urban area could drive some of them out of business, property insurers are casting about for ways to spread the risk.  A1  NEW SPLITS ON WATER LAWS
Wayne Gilchrist knows the tidal marshes around the juncture of the Sassafras River and Chesapeake Bay and thinks of them as a vital part of his Congressional district, leading him to join a group of moderates who oppose fellow Republicans who want to relax water pollution controls.  A12  SHADES OF WOODSTOCK IN ARMS . . .
A Michigan festival, Gunstock '95, brought out about 2,500 people whose tastes ran more to Patrick Henry and pistols than to Arlo Guthrie and music.  A10  . . . AS TRUE BELIEVERS RALLY
In New Hampshire, a scenic town attracts a rally of the Patriots, a group that says the nation's political process has broken down and Federal agents are a major threat to individual liberties.  A10  OFFICER DISMISSED FROM ARMY
A panel of five officers who had convicted a captain of four charges on Saturday, sentenced him to be dismissed from the service rather than sending him to prison, as the prosecutor had requested.A10  CANDIDATES IN WAITING
The Republican Presidential field seems to strike many people, not least among them Senator Bob Dole and his staff, as Mr. Dole and eight other guys whose names are difficult to recall.  A13  ATTENTION TO WACO CRITICIZED
The White House chief of staff, Leon E. Panetta, charged that Republicans who want to focus on the deadly raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex., are blocking passage of legislation needed to fight domestic terrorism.  A13  N.A.A.C.P. CHAIRWOMAN SWORN IN
Saying she hoped the group would find healing and a way out of recent travails, Myrlie Evers-Williams was sworn in as the new head of the National Organization for the Advancement of Colored People.  A14  KEVORKIAN FACES NEW THREAT
On Friday as Dr. Jack Kevorkian assisted in his second suicide in five days, a three-judge state court panel upheld an injunction ordering him not to assist in any more, raising the possibility of his being cited for contempt of court.  A14  Metro Digest B1  VIOLENCE BEHIND BARS
Just as last fall's prediction of an uprising at Rikers Island was overstated, this season's calm masks the daily drumbeat of violence on Rikers. The same volatile ingredients that nearly boiled over six months ago still exist.  A1  LONG ISLAND, BUT SHORT WAVES
In what was billed as the first professional surfing contest around New York, dozens of surfers came to Lido Beach, L.I., to compete for $5,000 in prize money. But the waves didn't follow.  A1  Business Digest D1  Arts/Entertainment C13-18  Vietnamese view of the war.  C13  ""A Little Princess"" and its cinematic rivals.  C13  Theater: ""Police Boys."" C13  ""The Last Girl Singer."" C14  Music: Amy Beach program.  C15  Dance: Alicia Alonso.  C15  Books: ""When Elephants Weep,"" on animals' emotional lives.  C18  TV: ""Demon City Shinjuku."" C16  Letterman in London.  C18  Sports C1-11  Baseball: Howe's bad pitch.C11  Mets must cut.  C11  Basketball: Knicks home with backs to wall.  C1  Bulls knot series.  C6  Columns: Anderson on hockey.  C2  Araton on Jordan.  C6  Hockey: Quebec stays alive against Rangers.  C1  20-year-old goalie stars.  C2  Obituaries B7  Dr. Roger G. Gerry, oral surgeon and community preservationist.
Editorials/Op-Ed A16-17  Editorials  Trouble for teaching hospitals.  A Republican rush on Jerusalem.  New Zealand's cup.  A challenge at the Javits Center.  Letters  William Safire: The G.O.P. delivers.  Anthony Lewis: Make haste slowly.  Kevin Kelly: The gene in the machine.  Bridge C15  Chronicle B8  Crossword C18",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"K. S. Halpern, 51, Who Helped Design South Street Seaport
Kenneth S. Halpern, a force for planning in New York City who helped design the South Street Seaport, died yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 51.
Mr. Halpern, an architect who was the first director of the Manhattan Office  of the Department of City Planning, died of complications from AIDS, said Sylvia Lester, a friend.
He loved Manhattan,"" Ms. Lester said. ""He was an avid New Yorker and loved  giving walking tours through the city's neighborhoods.""
In 1980, Mayor Edward I. Koch named Mr. Halpern to the Manhattan planning job, soon after the merging of several city planning offices, including the Mayor's Office of Midtown Planning and Development, where Mr. Halpern had served as director for two years.
During the early 1980's, Mr. Halpern was a prime advocate behind a failed movement to convert Times Square into a mall. Besides the South Street Seaport,  he created design plans for the Lower East Side, Central Harlem, Spanish Harlem  and Manhattan Valley, as well as zoning guidelines for midtown Manhattan, the Upper West Side and the East Side.
As a practicing architect in New York, Mr. Halpern designed homes as well as  office buildings. The design of his summer home in Pantelleria, Italy, was acclaimed. His book, ""Downtown U.S.A.: Urban Design in Nine American Cities,"" published in 1978, is an industry staple.
Mr. Halpern was born in Chicago. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Minnesota and a Master of Architecture degree in Urban Design from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design in 1970. In 1976, he was a Fulbright Professor of Urban Design at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogota, Colombia. He later taught at Columbia University in Manhattan and the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
Mr. Halpern is survived by his father, Fred, and a sister, Sandra Stein, both of Hollywood, Fla.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"A Lesson in Politics
South Hunterdon Regional High School students were pulled into the 12th District Congressional race yesterday after a candidate, Mike Pappas, missed a debate that had been scheduled for weeks.
The school issued a news release noting that Mr. Pappas, the Republican candidate, withdrew from the debate after students had spent 'hundreds of hours' planning the event and decorating the gymnasium with a huge flag.
A student, Jake Allan Walker, 17, issued his own news release saying he now planned to work 'every day until the election' campaigning for Mr. Pappas's Democratic opponent, David M. Del Vecchio.
An aide said that Mr. Pappas, a Somerset County freeholder, had to attend a meeting on Federal disaster aid that conflicted with the debate.
TERRY PRISTIN
NEW JERSEY DAILY BRIEFING",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"NEWS SUMMARY
INTERNATIONAL A3-17
News analysis: The Soviet Union is divided over President Gorbachev's vision of a new union treaty. The republics are dissatisfied with the division of wealth and suspicious of the powers he would gain. Page A1
Polish rulers in exile to return seals to Warsaw A10
A showdown is looming in Punjab. As Sikh militants escalate a campaign of violence, the Government has replaced the civilian governor with a former army chief. Punjabis fear they will be caught in the middle. A3
A Chinese students fails to free his jailed friend A9
The coalition aligned against Iraq would not fall apart if Baghdad attacks Israel to exploit the enmity between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the White House said. A16
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said that most of the 200,000 American reinforcements being sent to the Persian Gulf should be in place by the middle of January, but would not necessarily be combat-ready. A16
News analysis: A ""nightmare scenario"" -- finessed by Iraq A16
Jordan is preparing for a new flood of refugees from Kuwait and Iraq fleeing a war. The nation is already reeling from the influx of nearly a million people when the crisis began. A17 Fighter pilots' lifeline: a filling station in the air A16
Pretoria will not give in to pressure from the African National Congress, President de Klerk said in a televised speech. He accused the A.N.C. of reverting to outdated polemics. A6
Starvation is imminent in the Sudan. A famine and the Islamic Government's opposition to Western aid have made it ""all but certain"" that hundreds of thousands of people will die, an American official said. A17
Infant mortality rates are falling in much of the developing world, pointing to a reduction in the poverty caused by rapid population growth, a United Nations report said. A8
New York City's Haitians celebrated the victory of the Rev. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the priest who was elected President of Haiti in the country's first democratic elections. A12
Man in the News: The Rev. Jean- Bertrand Aristide A12
A leader of the Medellin drug ring surrendered to the authorities in Colombia, just one day after the Government offered drug traffickers incentives to turn themselves in. A13
Mexico City Journal: A Russian seeks Trotsky's legacy A4 NATIONAL A18-23, D20
The economy is in recession, the Federal Reserve acknowledged, reducing the discount rate that it charges for loans to commercial banks to 6.5 percent from 7 percent. A1
Citicorp will cut its stock dividend and lay off 4,400 more workers because of problems with bad loans. The bank said it would lose $300 million to $400 million this quarter. A1
F.D.I.C. asks Congress to make weaker banks pay more D1
Judge recommends that Neil Bush be disciplined D1
A reduction in the capital gains tax, which the White House believes is essential to economic recovery, may not be possible next year because of budget constraints, President Bush said. A1
The Commissioner of Social Security said the money provided in the recent budget agreement was not enough to run the agency the remaining nine months of the fiscal year. She said she would ask for more funds. A22
Medical care is being disrupted at civilian hospitals and Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers as the Pentagon has redeployed military doctors, nurses and other personnel because of the gulf crisis. A1
The Medgar Evers case was revived 27 years after the civil rights leader was assassinated. A self-professed white supremacist, Byron de la Beck- with, has been charged for the third time with his murder. A18
Attorney General says Boston police violated youths' rights A20
M.I.T.'s futuristic media laboratory will be replicated by Japanese scientists under an aggreement with the university. Critics say the $10 million deal could undermine American competitiveness. A1
Soviet press agency says contest for a space trip is a hoax A22
Testing children for cholesterol, a routine part of pediatric care, may be useless in predicting which children are at high risk for heart disease, a new study has shown. D20
U.S. will begin regulation of breast implants in 1991 A18
Tests show that few airline employees are drug users A22 REGIONAL B1-5
New York teen-agers live in fear as indiscriminate attacks and killings over coats have become commonplace. Six young people have been shot in coat robberies so far this month. Three of them died. A1
Hasidic community tries to understand girl's killing B3
New York State's highest court struck down a state regulation that would have prohibited insurers from using HIV tests to reject health insurance applicants. B1
A judge's refusal to allow the filming of scenes from ""The Bonfire of the Vanities"" in the Essex County Courthouse violated First Amendment guarantees of free speech, a Federal judge ruled. B1 A prominent divorce lawyer has quit his job at a Manhattan law firm amid allegations that he bilked matrimonial lawyers around the country of millions of dollars in various investment schemes. B1
Random drug test of worker is debated in New Jersey court B2
A dancer's case against the city is in the hands of a jury B2
The Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center has -- almost by default -- become an economic, social and educational anchor for an area of the South Bronx where the median income is well below the poverty line. B1
Five Long Island towns fail to meet the deadline on landfills B3
Neediest Cases B4 BUSINESS DIGEST D1 Education Pages
A Department of Education decision to ban scholarships designated solely for minorities has been partly reversed. The new policy allows minority scholarships funded by private donations. A1
For 345, poverty is key to door of private school B6
Chicago parents' suit adds new twist to voucher issue B7 The Living Section
The spirit of Christmas past lives on in traditional cookies C1
One egg over easy, hold the small talk C1
The perfect gift? It's in the cart C1 Arts/Entertainment
Christie's announces layoffs C19
Theater: ""Love Diatribe"" C15
Dispute over Mass Moca's future C15
Film: ""The Russia House"" C15
""Hamlet"" C15
Word and Image: New Yorker essays by E. B. White C22 Sports
Baseball: Expansion candidates cut to 6 B9
Basketball: Lakers edge Knicks B9
Football: Manuel is waived B9
Simms placed on injured reserve B9
Boxing: Notebook B12 Obituaries
Thomas LeVal Moore, interior and architectural designer D20
Anne Revere, blacklisted actress D21
Francis Wood, medical educator and researcher D21 Editorials/Letters/Op-Ed
Editorials A24
Israel and Iraq, unlinked
White House distinctions
Needed: a timely Cuomo veto
Brent Staples: Not unsung
Letters A24
Flora Lewis: Oil is the trouble A25
Tom Wicker: Who's in charge?  A25
Melor Sturua: Say goodnight, Gorby A25
Jim Sasser: Is Uncle Sam getting stiffed?  A25",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"PARALEGALS AID POOR IN DIVORCE CASES
LEAD: As a paid paralegal for the law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, Kenneth Kersch's work mainly involves researching corporate mergers.
As a paid paralegal for the law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, Kenneth Kersch's work mainly involves researching corporate mergers.
As a volunteer for a free divorce service run by the Community Law Offices, Mr. Kersch is helping a woman find the husband she has not seen since he abandoned her in 1958, after a month of marriage.
'There's a lot of satisfaction in working with the program, but it's tempered with a lot of frustration,' Mr. Kersch said. Checks with departments of motor vehicles, voter registration rolls and military records have all proved fruitless in the search for the missing husband, he said.
The Community Law Offices, a division of the Legal Aid Society, has always relied on volunteers to handle the clients who come to it for legal assistance in uncontested divorce cases. But while the stream of clients seeking help has never abated, volunteers' interest comes and goes. A Sharp Upturn
The last year or so, however, has seen a marked revival of enthusiasm by the paralegals who form a major part of the office's volunteer corps. Some volunteers attribute that to renewed interest by the senior lawyers at their firms who encourage the paralegals to participate; others say it is a sign that the apathy that engulfed the 1970's and 1980's may finally be cracking, at least when it comes to lawyers.
Whatever the reason, according to Elyse A. Adrian, a paralegal at Davis, Polk & Wardwell, 'there's more interest at the firm now than I've ever seen for the program.'
At the 106th Street offices, the Wednesday night sessions bustle with clients, volunteers and their harried supervisor, Paulette J. Williams, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society. On one recent evening, Ms. Williams answered questions from an unending stream of volunteers while she simultaneously doubled as the office's receptionist and attended to an anxious process server.
About 25 other volunteers work one night a week to counsel clients and file the voluminous paperwork even uncontested New York divorces entail. Most volunteers, like Mr. Kersch and Ms. Adrian, are paralegals, many of them working for a year or two between college and law school. Some also come from the Junior League, a women's organization that supplies volunteers to a number of projects. Pulling Lives Together
While the volunteers handle the cases, a lawyer must sign all the official documents. And the lawyers on the staff of the Legal Aid Society handle any contested divorces.
'We're helping people pull our clients' lives together, in a sense empowering them to move on to another stage in their lives,' said Ms. Williams. Most of the program's clients are women, and most are suing for divorce because they have been either abandoned or abused.
In one case the program is handling, Ms. Williams said, a woman is seeking a divorce from the husband she married at age 14 and has not seen for decades. The woman never needed to formalize the separation with a divorce, but she now wants to adopt a child and cannot do so without a divorce.
That woman, like almost all the program's clients, is receiving public assistance. No client who can afford the $109 court fee without the society's assistance can be admitted to the free program, Ms. Williams said. 'You're Really Helping Somebody'
Without the free matrimonial service, 'she just couldn't afford the legal fees for a divorce so she couldn't afford to adopt the foster child - it's that simple,' Ms. Williams said.
Despite the strict limits on qualifying income, demand for the service booms, often stretching the resources of the Community Law Office. At any one time, the program has about 100 cases pending.
An average divorce takes one of the volunteers about a year to complete, but some of the cases can stretch out over two or three years, Ms. Williams said.
That can test the patience of some of the volunteers, but several said their incentive comes from the chance to practice law on a personal level that their daytime jobs do not allow. 'Here you really get a chance to meet with a client,' Ms. Adrian said. 'You're really helping somebody with her life.'
And for many, it offers an early, sometimes bittersweet taste of the legal life. Scott Joyce, a paralegal at Davis, Polk said the experience has convinced him that what interests him as a volunteer may not hold him for a lifetime.
'I think my personality may be better suited to research,' Mr. Joyce said. 'You have to be able to get along with people awfully well to enjoy this kind of legal work.'",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Uncovering the Mystery of a Childhood Treasure
THIS is a story about a small boy (me) who dredged a mysterious treasure from the Bronx River some years ago, and, as he gradually discovered what it was and how it came there, heard the river speak.
The story begins when the boy was 10, growing up in Bronxville. His life back then revolved around the Bronx River -- that sluggish stream which bisects lower Westchester County before it blows a watery kiss to Manhattan and ripples into the East River near Hunts Point.
In those days, the boy and his friends -- they could have passed for Huck and Tom -- were frequently down by the river, barefoot, with pants legs rolled up and bamboo fishing poles in hand. They cruised the river and fought mock naval battles on homemade rafts. They caught sunfish and catfish, turtles of several varieties and sharp-toothed crayfish.
The small boy's biggest catch was the smooth, round object he happened to step on when wading in the river. It was about two feet deep right there, and so he couldn't see what lay below. Inquisitively, he wriggled his foot against the thing. It seemed about the size of a bowling ball, half buried in the sandy bottom.
Within minutes, he was rolling it to shore. By then, he had no doubt what it was. He'd seen pyramids of these bleakly glowering things at war memorial monuments. Unlike some, this cannonball was hollow and with a fuse hole almost two inches in diameter.
Even when drained of water and mud, it was too heavy to lift. It took the small boy better than an hour to roll it to his house a mile away.
Once it was installed in a corner of his bedroom, and the small boy was tucked under his covers, scenes of derring-do danced in his head.
The boy had learned in a social studies class that the Revolutionary War had chewed its way through Westchester in the fall of 1776, and so he imagined that the cannonball had figured in that conflict. But then he recalled that the nearest scene of fighting was the Battle of White Plains -- about eight miles north of where he'd found the cannonball.
How could it have traveled so far? he wondered.
The boy dreamed up an answer. Since he had found the cannonball at the foot of a cliff almost 80 feet high, he guessed that as Washington's men trudged along the river bank from New York City to White Plains, the cannonball had accidentally rolled off an ammunition cart, plunged over the cliff and disappeared in the river.
That explanation satisfied the boy for several years until, as a young adult, he tried to write a school paper on the subject. He consulted the classic 'Battles of the American Revolution,' published in 1877 by Henry B. Carrington, a professor of military science at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind.
Carrington's book was especially useful because it reproduced historical documents and included vintage topographical battle maps, including a map of the Battle of White Plains.
Carrington told how General Washington, in full retreat from Harlem Heights, set a lethal trap for Sir William Howe, George III's commander in America, who was in hot pursuit.
Washington reached White Plains first and fortified the nearby Chatterton Hill. He then lured Howe to the river's edge. Howe let loose with an artillery barrage -- mainly ineffective -- and then drove his men to ford the river and struggle up the hill while being showered with musketry and artillery.
The redcoats lost 230 killed or wounded that day.
That was almost twice the number lost by the Colonists, according to Carrington.
It was one of the first clashes to demonstrate that the Colonial Army was led by a general well versed in strategy.
At first, Carrington's chapter on White Plains seemed to confirm the young man's theory about the cannonball, but soon it compelled him to reconsider.
Whereas Carrington wrote that Washington had marched 'along the west bank of the Bronx,' the cannonball had been discovered on the east side of the river.
Well, then, the young man thought, perhaps the cannonball was British and toppled off a British ammunition cart on the east side of the river.
But Carrington foreclosed that possibility, too. Howe's forces, he wrote, pursued Washington on a course 'parallel with the River Bronx' but never within several miles of it until they approached White Plains.
The young man tore up the paper he was writing.
As the young man grew older, the cannonball cropped up in his thoughts from time to time.
In 1981, it occurred to him that the iron ball itself might harbor the secret of its origin, so he sent photographs to the director of the West Point Museum, seeking help.
The response was prompt. The cannonball is a 10-inch mortar projectile and 'probably dates to the period of the American Civil War,' came the reply.
The distinguishing characteristics of a Revolutionary War cannonball, the director explained, were the 'ears' that stood out on either side of the fuse hole. These extensions were helpful in gripping the cannonball and lifting it into the bore of the gun.
In contrast to ears, the young man's cannonball had indentations so that it could be grasped and lifted with pointed tongs.
Discouraged by this news, the young man dropped the matter a second time.
Years went by until he (now the father of three) happened to take his family to the Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania. The weapons on display reminded him of the old cannonball. And so, just a few weeks ago, he called Harry Hunter, curator for ordnance at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
'Sure, it could be from the Revolution!' Mr. Hunter sang out in answer to the query. 'They used both types -- with ears and without ears. They weren't so particular back then.'
And then, at last, the river spoke -- through Rhodes Fairbridge, a Columbia University emeritus professor of geology.
'Yes, definitely,' Professor Fairbridge told his interviwer (whose hair has now turned gray).
'A cannonball could be moved eight miles by the action of the river in the course of two centuries. The way the current works is that it scours sand or mud at the downstream edge of the object and causes it to roll. It's like a surfboard rider as he skims a wave. He's always on a slope. Quite large boulders are rolled in this way, even when the river descends at a relatively low angle.'
As good as those explanations were, they may not be the end of it. These mysteries lie uneasily in their graves.
Yet what seems plausible at present is that when Howe bombarded Chatterton Hill, one earless round fell short and went hissing in the river.
Then, as the years went by, the cannonball waddled down the river's course to where the small boy found it. No, it had not been carelessly discarded. No, indeed. It had been dragged to the battlefront and grimly fired at the Colonists. But the river put its fire out. And so, Washington and his men escaped its wrath and lived to carry on at Trenton and Yorktown.
And thus, the river told its tale.
Other Vestiges of the Battle of White Plains
IT wasn't a stroke of military genius like the victory at Trenton, nor as decisive as the Battle of Yorktown, but Washington out-led his British opponent at the Battle of White Plains in October 1776.
Washington's strategy included fortifying a hilltop near White Plains, and then tempting Sir William Howe to drive his redcoat army across a river, and then up the hill while Washington's men rained musketry and artillery on them.
The redcoats took the hill, but only after suffering almost twice the number of casualties as the Colonists. When the smoke of battle cleared, it was evident that the Colonists' rag-tag army was a far more effective fighting force than the British had supposed.
Vestiges of the battle may still be seen where it was fought.
WILLIAM H. HONAN",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"'Then, Thenceforward, and Forever Free'
To write the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln scrounged four sheets of paper. Unaided by speechwriters or spelling checkers, he wrote his own sentences and (literally) cut and pasted blocks of text. Then he gave away the document.
Yesterday those four pages of secular scripture -- morally fraught, politically hedged, tactically drafted -- were delivered to the New-York Historical Society in Manhattan. The proclamation will be on display beginning tomorrow and continuing through Oct. 16. After that, a facsimile will be shown with the museum's exhibit 'Slavery in New York,' which runs through March 5.
So posterity gets just a glimpse of the real thing.
Lincoln wrote the proclamation by hand during the summer of 1862, then issued it on Sept. 22, 1862, after the fierce, bloody draw at Antietam. His prose style, normally soaring and resonant, became guarded, bunkered language drawn to survive legal and political challenge. He sliced two printed paragraphs from martial powers legislation, and with paste from a pot, fixed them between his own words. 'Clumsily,' noted Van Judd of the New York State Education Department, custodian of the document.
The proclamation emancipated no one immediately, but changed everything eventually. End the rebellion within 100 days, and the government would compensate the slaveholders for freeing their slaves, Lincoln said. Otherwise the slaves 'shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free,' he wrote. They would be shipped to a colony. The proclamation did not apply to slave states that remained in the Union.
Was he trying to free the slaves or win a stalemated war? 'How many hours do you have?' said Eric Foner, a historian at Columbia University. 'He concluded this was a necessary step to ending the war.' The final proclamation -- in January 1863, after the promised 100 days -- dropped the notion of a colony and said slaves could join the Union military forces. (That document was destroyed by fire.)
After issuing the proclamation, Lincoln told friends that he realized emancipation was the absent purpose in his life that he had hoped to discover when he contemplated suicide in the 1840's, according to 'Lincoln's Melancholy,' by Joshua Wolf Shenk (Houghton Mifflin, 2005).
Lincoln donated the preliminary proclamation to an Albany war relief raffle. The State Legislature bought it and gave it to the state library. It sat in an envelope until the 1950's, when the pages were fitted into a steel frame embedded within another frame, protected by glass that limits radiation. Nitrogen has been pumped into the case to reduce humidity.
Now the proclamation can be exposed to light only eight hours a day, 10 days a year. Its display vault counts the hours the doors are open.
'You'll have two head marks and four hand prints -- they lean against the plexiglass,' Mr. Judd advised. 'They want to get close to it. Particularly the kids.'
INK",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Entry-Level Tawny Port
Few dessert wines equal wood-aged tawny port in inducing feelings of well-being. The mellow nutty-caramel bouquet and flavor, satiny texture and delicate afterburn need only a languidly puffed H. Upmann cigar to pacify the id.
An entry-level inkling of the sublime tonic of pricey 20-, 30- and 40-year-old tawnies is offered by the simple, light-bodied, moderately sweet Dow's Boardroom tawny, a blend. Serve it lightly chilled in a white-wine glass.
Widely available in stores and restaurants, a bottle costs $18 at Wine Mart Liquors, 118-20 Queens Boulevard, Forest Hills.
For possible (risky) bargains, you can monitor auction catalogues, like the one for Sherry-Lehmann With Sotheby's sale this Saturday at Sotheby's, 1334 York Avenue (72d Street).
Lower-priced lots might sell within their estimates if the 2 P.M. session is sleepy. Check Lot 1053, 28 regular bottles plus 6 half bottles of mixed red Burgundy (estimated at $400 to $550); Lot 1055, 24 bottles of mixed white Burgundy ($250-$350) and Lot 1059, 13 regular bottles and 6 half bottles of mixed Champagne and dessert wines ($275-$375). Buyers' fees and taxes are separate.
HOWARD G. GOLDBERG
WINE UNDER $20",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Donations to Neediest Fund Made in Lieu of Holiday Gifts
For half a century, Irene S. Knabel and her husband, Harry, dutifully fired off a burst of holiday cards when the weather turned chilly and the Santas took to the streets. But 10 years ago they looked at their address list and said: ""Enough!"" After living for so long in New York City and traveling extensively in Europe, the list had swollen to more than 200 names and it was no small feat to inscribe the cards, label the envelopes and lick the stamps.
So the Knabels decided to give the money that they would have spent on cards and postage to The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. And then they spread the word that they were contributing to charity in honor of their relatives and friends instead of mailing them season's greetings.
""When you've been married over 60 years and kept on sending them and sending them, you finally realize that this is a better way,"" said Mrs. Knabel, a 90-year-old retired social worker whose husband died a few years ago. She lives in Long Island City, Queens, and sent $25 to the fund.
Instead of buying that umpteenth sweater or tie, many people make contributions to the Neediest Cases in lieu of holiday gifts and cards. In letters to the fund, they say relatives and friends value this kind of Christmas or Hanukkah present because they know that it is used to help New Yorkers who lack shelter, food, clothing and health care. A Gift With Meaning
Seven-year-old Adam Koplewicz of Manhattan recently asked his mother to send $25 to the fund as one of his Hanukkah gifts. Adam wanted to ""share his good fortune with others,"" wrote his mother, Linda Sirow Koplewicz. ""He is concerned with homeless people, particularly children.""
Carole T. Woods, a secretary in Larchmont, N.Y., said she had never before donated to a charity in lieu of gifts. But she said she gave $25 to the fund in honor of two close friends because she no longer wanted to buy presents for people who seemed to have everything.
""I think the money is put to much better use than buying a gift for somebody who might not need it,"" she said. ""The idea of a gift at Christmastime is the thought behind it, not the actual article. My contribution was small, but I guess all of the small ones add up.""
The New York Times pays for the overhead of the Neediest Cases campaign, so all contributions are given directly to seven charities. This year's appeal ends on Feb. 28. An Offering, and a Legacy
The fund was born in 1911 after Adolph S. Ochs, the publisher of The Times, gave a beggar a few dollars so he could find a place to sleep on Christmas night. Ochs decided that if his readers knew about the suffering around them, they would be eager to help.
The next year, The Times published an article with the headline: ""Santa Claus, Please Take Notice! Here are New York's 100 Neediest Cases."" Within a few months, 117 contributors gave $3,630.88.
The spirit that moved those people still thrives. It is reflected in donations from New Yorkers like Deborah Halperin, a 28-year-old jewelry designer who sent $50 as a Christmas gift for her mother, Martha Halperin.
""In my family, you say to the person, 'What do you want?' and you end up getting the things you asked for anyway,"" Deborah Halperin said. ""It seems pointless and stupid and the money could be better spent. Who really needs another pair of gloves?"" Previously recorded . . . $1,712,101.13 Recorded yesterday . . . $21,000.00 Total . . . $1,733,101.13",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Quotation of the Day
""In the American vernacular, Gorbachev is Wall Street, Yeltsin is Main Street. Gorbachev is Georgetown drawing room, Yeltsin is Newark factory gate."" -- Richard M. Nixon.  [ A4:3. ]",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"INSIDE
F.Y.I.
2
MAKING IT WORK
3  Unrest at N.Y.U.'s journalism department as it ponders its direction.
NEW YORKERS & CO.
4  For a year, an author plays fly on the wall for the entrepreneurs in a square block of Chelsea.
MOVIE CLOCK
11  What's showing at the local movie houses, today through Thursday.
PLAYING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
14  Artists with Bronx ties that bind; in play, lives are measured out in coffee shops.
GOOD EATING
14  A world tour around the Village: Authentic French bistro fare at Le Zoo; Middle Eastern 'pitzas' at Moustache.
SOAPBOX
15
Why shredders are hot. And letters.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"The Neverending Story: A Scaffold Returns
Scaffoldings are the toadstools of the city, but the one that stood for more than five years at 1563 York Avenue at 83rd Street drove neighbors into a rare fury. Thanks to relentless pressure, the landlord, David Eshaghian, removed it in January.
Residents rejoiced. The eyesore was gone. Business on the street could pick up again. Homeless people would not sleep there anymore.
And then it rained. Almost on cue, the facade of the building began to plummet. Last month, the Department of Buildings ordered the scaffolding back up. And there it is. When one local woman saw it, she screamed.
The scaffolding originally went up so the building could be renovated. But residents and merchants nearby said little work had been done.
'The facade is made of a special limestone that deteriorates all the time,' Mr. Eshaghian said. 'When we put it up, we did some repairs and they told us it would be an ongoing problem, so we kept it on for safety. But you know how Upper East Side people are, so we decided to take it down.'
The Department of Buildings has fined Mr. Eshaghian $17,500 for code violations and for lacking a permit for the scaffolding. His permit expired in November 1999.
Mr. Eshaghian said he would fight the fine in court. He also said the department had refused to renew his permit.
Meanwhile, the fate of the scaffolding will be sealed by next winter, Mr. Eshaghian said. By then, he plans either to peel off the facade, like a slice of cheese, and replace it, or demolish the building and be done with it.
ANDREW FRIEDMAN
NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: UPPER EAST SIDE -- UPDATE",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"NEWS SUMMARY
INTERNATIONAL
A3-10
Turkey a Real Contender For Full E.U. Membership  The European Union said Turkey could join its ranks as soon as 10 years from now, but warned it must overcome opposition to a Muslim country entering the union. Turkey's prime minister accepted the offer, but only after he rebuffed behind-the-scene demands for Turkey formally to recognize Cyprus.
A1
Sharon's Deal With Labor Party  Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel struck a deal with the opposition Labor Party to join his Likud government. The deal is likely to ensure that Mr. Sharon can carry out his plan to dismantle all Israeli settlements in Gaza and four small ones in the West Bank.
A9
At least eight Palestinians were killed and 24 wounded in an Israeli Army raid in the Gaza Strip intended to end days of mortar and rocket attacks from the town on Israeli troops and nearby settlements.
A9
4 Killed in Mosul  Gunmen attacked a car in Mosul, killing three armed men who appeared to be foreigners and their Iraqi driver. Also, an Iraqi militant group, the Islamic Jihad Brigades, claimed responsibility for the killing of two American construction contractors near Baghdad last week.
A8
Attempted Kabul Prison Break  At least eight people were killed when prisoners from Al Qaeda tried to break out of Kabul's main prison.
A8
Steps Toward New Russian Law  Russia's lower house of Parliament overwhelmingly voted to give preliminary approval to counterterrorism legislation that would hand the Kremlin broad powers in cases of threats or attacks.
A10
China's Anti-Secession Move  The Communist Party-controlled legislature in China has indicated that it is preparing to enact a law against secession, possibly mandating military action if Taiwan were to declare independence.
A8
NATIONAL
A12-16
New Death Row Planned For California's Inmates  So many people in California have been sentenced to death that the state is about to spend $220 million to build a bigger death row next to the current one on a spectacular bayside bluff in San Quentin.
A1
Debate Over A.C.L.U. Tactic  The American Civil Liberties Union's use of 'data mining' technology to collect a wide range of information about its members and donors in a fund-raising effort has ignited a bitter debate over its leaders' commitment to privacy rights.
A1
Baby Linked to Killing Found  A baby girl believed to be the one cut out of the abdomen of a pregnant woman who had been strangled in Missouri was found alive. A Kansas woman was charged in the crime, police said.
A12
Pollution Standards Unmet  About a third of all Americans live in counties that do not meet standards for microscopic particles of pollution that cause thousands of premature deaths a year, the Environmental Protection Agency said.
A12
Sex Workers Seek to Organize  In a new wave of activism, many prostitutes are organizing, staging events and coming out publicly to give a louder voice to a business that has thrived in silence.
A12
More Votes for Governor  New ballots were found during the second recount in the race for Washington State governor even as a judge prevented their inclusion in the recount.
A15
SCIENCE/HEALTH
Chief Named to Stem Cell Board  Amid criticism, the developer who helped to write and finance a ballot initiative to create a California stem cell institute was elected chairman of the enterprise.
A13
NEW YORK/REGION
B1-6
More Review Required Before Taking Children  The city has settled a class-action lawsuit by victims of domestic violence, essentially conceding that children could not be placed in foster care just because their mothers have been abused.
B1
Medic Suspected of Murders  More than twenty years after two women's dismembered bodies were discovered, and a third woman disappeared, police swooped in on a New Jersey man who 32 years earlier had killed his parents, arresting him on a charge of weapons possession and questioning him in the unsolved cases.
B1
Pilot Ignored Dire Warning  An Air National Guard investigation has concluded that a pilot ignored a warning that could have prevented the accidental strafing of the Little Egg Harbor Intermediate School on Nov. 3.
B5
Beliefs
B6
Neediest Cases
B4
OBITUARIES
A17
SPORTSSATURDAY
D1-8
Nets Trade for Vince Carter  The New Jersey Nets have acquired Vince Carter, the Toronto Raptors' slumping superstar guard. The Nets did have to give up a top player in the exchange.
D1
ARTS
B9-26
String Collection Deceit  Officials at the New Jersey Symphony, driven by a fear of sabotaging a deal to purchase a rare string collection for its players, deceived their board and the public over the instruments' value, according to an internal report.
B9
BUSINESS DAY
C1-12
Questions About a Painkiller  Celebrex, a painkiller sold by Pfizer, more than tripled the risk of heart attacks, strokes and death among those taking high doses in a national trial, the company said.
A1
Three major drug companies each disclosed serious problems with important medicines, throwing a spotlight on the fact that $500 billion drug industry is failing in its core business of finding new medicines.
A1
Possible Utility Merger  Exelon, the owner of utilities in northern Illinois and eastern Pennsylvania, is in advanced talks to acquire New Jersey's largest utility, PSE&G, for about $12 billion, executives involved in the talks said.
C1
Lazard Files for Offering  Lazard, the financial advisory boutique, filed for an initial public offering, becoming the last of the old-line Wall Street partnerships to sell its shares to the public.
C1
Business Digest
C1
EDITORIAL
A18-19
Editorials: New doubts about Celebrex; interest rates and deficits; timely help for the Palestinians; Eleanor Randolph on Gogol and the chicken inspector.
Column: Nicholas D. Kristof.
Bridge
B22  Crossword
B22  TV Listings
B25  Weather
A14",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"No Headline
""These apartheid statues, they all must go. In a revolution, you have won when you have taken the capital. And that is what we are doing."" PETER MOKOBA, a member of Parliament who represents the African National Congress.  [ 19:1. ]",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Metropolitan Diary
DEAR DIARY:
File under D for dogs and ducks, or perhaps C for Central Park and Cheyenne, the wayward Australian shepherd mix who captivated crowds at Turtle Pond one steamy weekend.
The incident began at 8:15 a.m., well within the park's 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. window for dogs to romp off leash. Heading down the path from Belvedere Castle with her guardian and two canine siblings, Cheyenne suddenly broke away and bounded into Turtle Pond, home of snapping turtles, ducks and loons.
An astute mother mallard directed her ducklings toward the tall grass to the north, and proceeded to quack and flap her wings wildly. Cheyenne began a hot pursuit and although her clunky paddle was no match for the duck's easy glide, she was not deterred. Pleas from her agitated owner, a tennis ball thrown in her path and the gathering crowd failed to distract her from the task at hand. Cheyenne was no ordinary dog.
Forty-five minutes later, the police and park staff arrived. Someone suggested the owner herself be sent into the pond to catch the dog. The owner, at wit's end, shed her sandals and made her way into the snapping-turtle-infested waters. Thus we saw a duck followed by a dog followed by a wild-haired woman wearing a life preserver provided by the Park Conservancy.
It became clear that the woman had no more chance of catching the dog than the dog did of catching the duck. Finally two police officers took off on the pond in a rowboat. The capture was swift. The last thing we saw was the owner standing over Cheyenne, shaking her head and shouting, 'Cheyenne, how many times have I told you not to chase ducks!'
LAURA MORRISON
Ralph Holzwarth's friend, Debra Sweezey of Stone Mountain, Ga., was preparing Jessica, her 4-year-old daughter, for her first trip to Manhattan. Mrs. Sweezey mentioned some of the sights they would see and that they would ride the subway, 'a train that runs under the ground.' Wide-eyed, Jessica asked: 'But how do we get down to the train? Do we have to dig?'
THE IMAGE
Perhaps you have seen me -- strolling in front of the Plaza or exercising in Central Park.
I was born beautiful! How many times have I heard it! Life is never easy when an image must be preserved. As we grow older, it gets harder. If you really look closely, there are some signs of change. I still look good -- from a distance?
My hair was always my best feature. Now it takes twice as long to get it the way it used to look. The daily manicure is a nuisance. Borderline starvation is the only way to keep my slimness. If that goes, I'm finished. I've always prided myself on my figure.
How I envy you average-looking females, gaining weight, letting yourself go. Rollers, old bathrobes, you are still loved. No hours in the beauty salon for you listening to boring females.
I still love the attention. I never tire of being admired. I am superior. But the price is getting too high.
Soon I'll say goodbye to it all, let my hair go, keep late hours, gorge myself until I'm sick, run around my backyard, roll in the leaves and mud. I'll be free. Free to be myself, just another Yorkie.
R. WINIFRED BYRNE
Dear Diary:
The Internet has introduced so many new words, like e-mail and e-commerce that I wonder if we'll have to redefine some of our current vocabulary. Can we look forward to:
e-go -- to start a Net search.
e-on -- synonym for 'online.'
e-motion -- Web-surfing.
e-mission-- a commitment to Internet research.
e-quip -- a clever remark in a chat room.
e-gret -- an electronic sympathy card.
e-bullience -- lying about yourself online.
e-cology-- getting an online B.A.
e-clipse -- on-line movie scenes.
CLARE HIGGINS
SUMMER LAMENT
Now is the time to climb a Rocky
Back a Saratoga jockey
Now is the time to roam the nation
So why did I take a winter vacation?
BERNARD DILBERT
Dear Diary:
Like many, I am annoyed by people's supposed needs to have phone conversations wherever they are. Recently, my perspective shifted.
I was taken by ambulance, in the middle of the night, to Beth Israel Hospital North with severe abdominal pains. In the morning, I began to worry about my outside appointments for that day and the next. I had no money with me, but I soon discovered that Beth Israel provides a cellular phone in the emergency room for patients. I called my neighbor, who has my keys, told her whom to call in my address book and got that worry off my mind. Later in the day, another cell phone came to my rescue as my neighbor took hers into my apartment and I directed her from room to room, telling her where to find things I needed.
RETTA BLANEY
While on the subject of cell phones: Judith Nochimson Stein was on a Wall Street-bound subway on a weekday when it stopped for almost an hour because of a fire in the station ahead. After 45 minutes, as the passengers sat frustrated and restless, fretting about missed appointments and irate employers, a lone entrepreneur made his way through the cars yelling, ballpark style: 'Call your offices, call your families. One dollar a minute on my cell phone.' He wasn't discouraged when Mrs. Stein's car produced smiles but no takers. He just went on to the next.
R. Michael Wirin parked on 36th Street recently, and when he returned a few hours later, his one-touch 'keyless' keyholder wouldn't open his car. After thinking of paying a streetwise kid to break into the car, or throwing himself on the mercy of a police officer, he hailed a nearby parking attendant, hoping the man wouldn't hold it against him that he hadn't entrusted his car to the lot. The attendant took the clicker in hand and said, 'Empire State Building.' Mr. Wirin explained that he wasn't a tourist looking for that skyscraper. The attendant scrambled under the car and voila, the locks magically opened as he reappeared and said again, 'Empire State Building.' At this point, Mr. Wirin asked him to explain. It was common knowledge, the man said, that the huge transmitter atop King Kong's perch often disables electronic devices in the neighborhood.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Metro Briefing | Connecticut: Rocky Hill: Anti-Threat Law Sought
Prompted by an outbreak of anthrax hoaxes, Chief State's Attorney John M. Bailey is proposing a law that would make hoaxes that inconvenience or harm the public punishable by up to five years in prison. Current law punishing false bomb threats and false fire alarms by up to one year in prison is too lenient for today's attacks, Mr. Bailey said. No law addresses chemical and biological threats. The proposed law would also require restitution for wasted resources, like public-health testing or police overtime.
Hope Reeves (NYT)",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"How Many Callers Give Up on 311?
To the Editor:
Re 'Smallville' (March 7), about the first year of the 311 system: While this system has helped New York residents communicate with city agencies more effectively, there is still much room for improvement.
Start with better training: 311 employees should know that Flatbush Avenue is an avenue, not a street. If a caller identifies a broken street light in Brooklyn, he should not be asked three times, 'And what borough?'
And you can spend several torturous minutes (which, to a New Yorker in a hurry, feel like several hours) giving all the details about a problem, including your own contact information, only to be told that you are being switched to a 'specialist,' at which point you have to give the same information all over again.
You wonder how many problems are never fully reported because callers hang up in frustration.
PAUL SHERIDAN  Prospect Heights, Brooklyn",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Tax Break Program Is Not a Giveaway
To the Editor:
'Getting a Tax Break Right' (editorial, Dec. 3) acknowledges that 'every inch of the city is crying for more housing that the working poor and middle class can afford,' yet the Bloomberg administration proposes to eliminate the incentive program for new three-family homes. This change will make housing less affordable for the middle class.
For instance, an otherwise debt-free family earning $65,000 a year can qualify for a mortgage on a three-family home today, but if the 421-a abatement is eliminated, that same family will need to earn $80,000 a year to qualify. Similarly, requiring new mid-rise buildings in the boroughs to include low-rent units will chill development just when the city needs it most.
The 421-a program isn't a giveaway. It offsets New York's unique costs of construction, including inefficient bureaucracy, high labor rates, outdated building codes and corruption. New York's resurgence is not so sustainable as to allow for this misguided initiative.
Kenneth K. Fisher  Brooklyn Heights
The writer was a city councilman from 1991 to 2001.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"CHRONICLE
WILLIAM C. WARREN, 87, had a significant impact on Columbia Law School during his tenure as its dean from 1952 to 1970 following six years on the faculty, but he will leave a legacy beyond his lectures or writing.  Ground is to be broken today on an eight-story building at Amsterdam Avenue and 115th Street to be named the William and June Warren Hall, for Mr. Warren and his wife. Mr. Warren gave $12 million for the building, which will be occupied by the law and business schools.
'I was the dean there for 18 years so if I have a little money, I think this is a good thing to give to,' he said.
As for his wife of 52 years, he noted, 'She spent a lot of time with alumni and students when I was dean, and I want her to be recognized for that.'
The building will be the second to bear his name at the law school. The William C. Warren Hall on West 116th Street houses the law review and the legal services department.
NADINE BROZAN
CHRONICLE",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"School Board Puts Off Action on Chancellor
LEAD: The New York City Board of Education did not reach agreement yesterday on what action to take in the aftermath of the death of Chancellor Richard R. Green last week. The board is expected to decide by the end of the week on how to proceed, the board president, Robert F. Wagner Jr., said.
The New York City Board of Education did not reach agreement yesterday on what action to take in the aftermath of the death of Chancellor Richard R. Green last week. The board is expected to decide by the end of the week on how to proceed, the board president, Robert F. Wagner Jr., said.
The seven-member board deliberated more than three hours in its second lengthy meeting this week. It is considering a proposal to name Bernard Mecklowitz as chancellor for a term of nine months or a year while undertaking a nationwide search to find a black or Hispanic educator. Mr. Mecklowitz, who is white, was Dr. Green's deputy for the last three months. He has been named Acting Chancellor.
There is a strong consensus on the board that it would be highly desirable to have a black or Hispanic educator run the system, in which fewer than 20 percent of the students are white.
Most board members are believed to agree on the proposal for the interim contract.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Before the Wreckers Come, Lilies and Hymns of Hope; Overflowing One of Harlem's Largest
On Christianity's holiest day, Gwyned Simpson managed to keep her patience while waiting 45 minutes on the sidewalk for a seat in the church she has attended all her life. The church, after all, was Abyssinian Baptist, one of the biggest and most influential in Harlem, and the one renowned worldwide for its gospel music.
'We have always been big,' said Ms. Simpson, surrounded by her four daughters, all in their Easter Sunday best. 'We have always been famous. We were prepared.'
Every Sunday brings tourists from all over the world, but yesterday's 11 A.M. service drew hundreds more than usual to the church, where they pleaded and wheedled in German, Russian and French with the 30 ushers on duty for a precious seat.
'Easter, you have the annuals,' said Willie Williams, a church usher, referring to members who attend church only on holidays. 'You have the regulars. And you have the tourists. It's chaos.'
Drawn by Abyssinian Baptist's choir, cited in guidebooks around the world, as well as the grandeur of the Easter service, thousands milled around the length of the entire block.
One of the ushers, Jerome Wright, had to muster his high school French to turn away a group of eager tourists. 'C'est tout,' he said. 'Ne pas possible. Regular members only.'
Even with its three balconies and room for about 2,800, many of the regular members were turned away from the 9 A.M. service because tourists had already taken the seats.
'They were frustrated and angry,' said Roger Feggins Jr., an usher. 'A lot of them were loyal members who come consistently and help build up the church.'
But the later service was reserved for church members. Tourists were directed by the ushers to two nearby churches, Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion and St. Mark's United Methodist. While those churches may not be listed in guidebooks, most of the tourists emerged satisfied with the experience.
The preachers at those churches had made a point of welcoming them, and the congregants had given them rounds of applause.
'It was not the lively gospel we were expecting,' said Joey Mitchell, an accountant from Montreal. 'But it was uplifting. They made us stand up while they clapped. They were very, very warm -- very inviting.'",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Oscar the Grouch, Wicked Wit and All
THE poet W.H. Auden wasn't far off. Commenting on Oscar Wilde's plays, all written in the three years before the playwright's sensational trials and imprisonment for the crime of 'gross indecency' in his affair with young Lord Alfred Douglas, he wrote that Wilde had created 'a verbal universe in which the characters are determined by the kind of things they say, and the plot is nothing but a succession of opportunities to say them.'
That stated, 'The Importance of Being Earnest,' Wilde's masterpiece on stage at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey here, is about as witty and cheeky a work as you can find. A superb cast, under Tamara Harvey's beautifully paced, detailed direction, revels in language that sparkles and in audacious comic predicaments that produce guffaws. Add Cameron Anderson's eye-catching scenic design -- a visual riff on William Morris and the English Arts and Crafts Movement -- and Michael McAleer's lavish costumes evoking the foppish couture of upper-crust English society, and you have the makings of an enchanting production.
Ms. Harvey doesn't miss a chance to bring her sophisticated comic intellect to bear. Take the opening, when the sound of a piano in the adjoining room produces strains of that old warhorse 'Für Elise,' played as if it had been transcribed, in super-romantic fashion, by none less than Liszt.
Algernon Moncrieff, the owner of the house and a dedicated dandy, sweeps in insisting that accuracy at the piano is not his forte. 'Anyone can play accurately,' he says, 'but I play with wonderful expression.'
Wilde may have written the rib-tickling text, but the choice of music is nothing less than inspired.
While being earnest is of absolutely no importance to any of Wilde's self-impressed characters, appearing earnest is the name of the game. And appearances are highly suspect in this rowdy romp in which fictional characters jostle with their real-life counterparts for center stage.
The plot involves Jack Worthing (Gareth Saxe), abandoned as an infant only to be adopted by Thomas Cardew. With the old man's demise, Jack has gained, as his ward, the luscious Cecily Cardew (Elena Shaddow ), granddaughter of the deceased Mr. Cardew. Ever in search of a compelling reason to escape country life, Jack invents a wicked city brother named Earnest whose indiscretions demand Jack's intermittent supervision.
In town lives Algernon, a rogue played to comic perfection by Steve Wilson. Algernon's main job is keeping his rich and formidable aunt, Lady Augusta Bracknell (Jane Altman) at bay while he seeks amorous adventures.
Algernon decides to check out Cecily after overhearing Jack mention his country address as he established credentials with Augusta as a first step to a possible engagement with Gwendolen, her willful daughter (Caralyn Kozlowski). Assuming the persona of the errant Earnest, Algernon falls madly in love with Cecily, guarded zealously by her governess Miss Prism (Susan Greenhill). To his surprise, the young woman admits that, three months earlier, without ever having met her Uncle Jack's missing sibling but simply at hearing his wonderful name, Earnest, she had declared them engaged.
Two blushing brides-to-be, both engaged to fictional men named Earnest -- a name they each cherish, a name to which neither suitor has a legitimate claim.
'The Importance of Being Earnest,' Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Madison, through Oct. 2. Information: (973)408-5600 or at www.shakespearenj.org.
THEATER REVIEW",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"State Tightening Its Rules For Farmland Tax Status
LEAD: DEVELOPERS, gentlemen farmers and other owners of woodlands who qualify for farmland tax breaks must begin working their acreage in earnest this year if they want to retain their special farmland status.
DEVELOPERS, gentlemen farmers and other owners of woodlands who qualify for farmland tax breaks must begin working their acreage in earnest this year if they want to retain their special farmland status.
The change is a result of an amendment to the Farmland Assessment Act of 1964, which had loosely defined farmland to include almost any parcel where token farming or forestry took place and had granted it special tax status.
Over the years, local tax assessors and full-time professional crop farmers and foresters complained that land speculators, developers and other nonfarmers were exploiting the law, which, they said, gave farmland tax status to wealthy landowners who grew a few acres of produce on 50-acre wooded estates or sold a few cords of firewood each year.
'Farmland assessment has been abused by developers and speculators holding land for future development and by others doing the bare minimum to qualify for the assesment,' said Mark C. Vodak, a horticulture and forestry specialist at Rutgers University's Cook College in New Brunswick.
Mr. Vodak and other state agricultural and forestry officials said that wooded farmland was taxed at a rate of about $25 to $30 an acre under farmland assessment, compared with $2,000 to $3,000 for nonfarmland.
The amendment to the assessment act gives developers and other woodland owners the option of keeping their tax status if they present a plan to manage the woodlands productively, so it is unlikely they will immediately develop the woodlands or clear-cut their acreage to circumvent the amendment, state officials said.
The amendment requires that all woodland owners with farmland assessment status report for the first time the size of their holdings and how they are used.
The amendment was one of several measures passed by the Legislature to halt the ever-quickening pace of residential and commercial development and the concomitant loss of farmland.
The State Agricultural Statistics Service, a joint state-Federal agency, said that from 1980 to 1985, on average, New Jersey lost 20,000 acres of farmland and 200 to 300 farms a year; in 1986, 40,000 acres and 500 farms were lost. Last year, said Chris Cadwallader, the service's deputy statistician, 50,000 acres and 600 farms were lost.
An earlier measure, the Farmland Preservation Act of 1981, called for the state and local governments to each pay half the cost of buying and preserving farmland, with the state's $50 million Farmland Preservation Bond as the main source of funds.
In return for accepting fair-market value for his land, a farmer would agree to include a deed restricting the land from being sold for anything but farming.
'I hate to say it's been a losing battle because I am mostly an optimist,' said Michele S. Byers, project director for the New Jersey PU JP SALE Conservation Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Morristown that buys and holds land until a buyer willing to preserve it can be found.
Ms. Byers said that the state's Department of Agriculture and the farming community had a goal in 1970 of preserving 900,000 acres of farmland. That goal had to be revised last year to 500,000 acres, she said, because of the losses of the last 10 years.
Mr. Cadwallader said that there were now less than 850,000 acres of farmland and 7,600 farms in the state, and that a survey to be completed in August would probably show even lower numbers.
Olin D. White Jr., a forester and assistant director of the Department of Environmental Protection's Division of Parks and Forestry, said that New Jersey had had an aggregate annual loss of 7,000 to 8,000 acres of trees so far this decade.
According to Mr. White, there are 'no guarantees' in the Farmland Assessment Act amendment that woodland owners will not sell their acreage when faced with the requirements of paying $600 or so for the required management plans and seriously working their land.
It also is possible, he said, that an owner could simply clear-cut his tract or sell the timber, the land or both, rather than submit to the new state regulations.
On the other hand, Mr. White said, it is 'by far to an owner's economic benefit to have a management plan to comply with the amendment because of the vast difference between what he would be making from the woodlands, compared to the small cost of the management plan.'
Ms. Byers said that one shortcoming of the 1981 Farmland Preservation Act was that its provisions were 'voluntary' for each county. Counties, she said, have the option of creating Agricultural Development Boards to identify potential farm tracts to buy and preserve before they are sold to developers.
However, she said, counties have been slow in setting up the boards and are generally not aggressive in identifying potential acquisitions and negotiating and consumating a fair-market sale.
Only 1 to 2 percent of New Jersey's farmland has been preserved in this way since 1981, Ms. Byers said. But an amendment to the Farmland Preservation Act, which took effect Jan. 1, now lets the state contribute up to 80 percent of the price of a farmland preservation purchase.
Ms. Byers said this should encourage county Agricultural Development Boards 'to be more aggressive, to get out there and bang on the doors of the farm owners before the developers do.'
The 1986 amendment to the Farmland Assessment Act was sponsored by Assemblyman John T. Hendrickson Jr., Republican of Manahawkin. Its final regulations take effect Aug. 1, when owners of farmland-assessed woodlands, including full-time farmers and foresters, must present either forest-management plans, or proof that they are exempt from the amendment, to the state's Bureau of Forest Management.
Cranberry farmers are exempt, as are farmers whose wooded acres are equal to less than 50 percent of their crop or pasturelands and are already being professionally managed.
Such businesses as timbering companies and nurseries generally already operate with management plans, forestry officials said.
Walter Ellis, a crop farmer from Crosswicks and president of the New Jersey Farm Bureau, the state's farm lobby, said that, of the 7,600 or so farmers in the state, only 3,000 were professional full-time farmers earning $50,000 a year or more from farming alone.
Of these, he said, most own or lease nonwooded cropland or pasture land consisting of less than 50 percent woodlands, the threshold for being required to file woodland management plans under the Farmland Assessment Act amendment. Thus, only about 2 percent of the 3,000 farmers will have to come up with the plans, he said.
The new assessment amendment, Mr. Ellis said, is directed at the woodlands owned by the 4,600 other farmers. It is intended to determine whether these farmers are properly maintaining the lands if they have farmland assessment status.
'There's an awful lot of nonfarming ownership of farmlands in the state and a lot of farmers leasing land from these nonfarmers,' said Peter J. Furey, administrator of the Farm Bureau.
'There is no doubt that someone who grows holly or Christmas trees for a living is a farmer,' said Peter R. Probasco, the forestry agent for Salem County. 'But if you have 100 acres of woods and only sell a bit of firewood from it each year, that's a little questionable.'
Harris J. Adams, a spokesman for the state's Division of Taxation, said that before the amendment 'municipal tax officials could easily understand a farmland assessment if they saw corn coming up or apples growing, but they wondered about woods when there was virtually no activity on it at all for years.'
Under the 1964 law, Mr. Vodak said, a farmer was anyone who maintained some horticultural or agricultural land that produced an income of $500 a year for its first five acres and 50 cents a year for each additional acre.
The new regulations require that the wooded acreage be 'supportive of and subordinate to' the farmland. Otherwise, the rules say, the land must be managed as a 'renewable resource' in the same manner as a forestry business. This would include regeneration of trees and regular cutting and pruning.
Helen H. Hendrich of Madison, a landscape architect and geographer who coordinates the Farm Bureau's woodland management program, said that to qualify for farmland assessment a wooded parcel must now be 'part of a farm and enhance the productivity of the cropland or pastureland.'
Mr. Probasco said that landowners who had objected to the regulations were generally owners of 100 percent wooded parcels or those who lived on the wooded land.
'They felt that their woods were better left in the natural state,' he said.
If a full-time professional farmer has more than the allowable 50 percent in woodlands, Mr. Vodak said, the excess can still come under farmland assessment 'if it provides a buffer from a development zone, shade for animals that use the woods as a run or is used for public recreation or soil conservation.'
Mrs. Hendrich said there were 2,781 new or renewed applications for farmland assessments approved in 1986. They comprised 114,706 acres of 100 percent wooded parcels, she said.
However, she and Mr. Adams said they would not know how many of those acres would lose their farmland assessment, or what the accrued tax benefits would be to local governments, until after Oct. 31, when the Bureau of Forest Management would receive the management plans from landowners.
Mr. Vodak and others said it would be a year or two before the state could determine whether the intended results of the amendment -better woodland conservation and more-equitable taxation - had indeed taken place.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Corrections
Two picture credits in Circuits on Thursday, with an article about young computer entrepreneurs, were reversed. The photograph of Sam Roberts, 12, with Todd Strasser, an author, was by Craig Wallace Dale for The New York Times. The one of Dan Finley, 18, was by Walt Weis for The New York Times.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Mother Is Held in Shootings
LEAD: A mother shot her two daughters early yesterday as they slept in their home in the Kensington Park section of Brooklyn, the police said. The girls, Josette Booker, 13 years old, and Alicea, 18, were listed in critical condition at Kings County Hospital. Their mother, Marjorie Booker, 43, was arrested and charged with attempted murder, the police said.
A mother shot her two daughters early yesterday as they slept in their home in the Kensington Park section of Brooklyn, the police said. The girls, Josette Booker, 13 years old, and Alicea, 18, were listed in critical condition at Kings County Hospital. Their mother, Marjorie Booker, 43, was arrested and charged with attempted murder, the police said.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Louis (Moondog) Hardin, 83, Musician, Dies
The gaunt, blind musician known as Moondog, who was celebrated among New Yorkers for two decades as a mysterious and extravagantly garbed street performer but who went on to win acclaim in Europe as an avant-garde composer, conducting orchestras before royalty, died Wednesday in a hospital in Munster, Germany. He was 83.
The cause was heart failure, said a friend, Ilona Sommer.
Day in and day out, the man who was originally named Louis T. Hardin was as taciturn and unchanging a landmark of the midtown Manhattan streetscape as the George M. Cohan statue in Duffy Square. From the late 1940's until the early 1970's, Mr. Hardin stood at attention like a sentinel on Avenue of the Americas around 54th Street.
No matter the weather, he invariably dressed in a homemade robe, sandals, a flowing cape and a horned Viking helmet, the tangible expression of what he referred to as his 'Nordic philosophy.' At his side he clutched a long spear of his own manufacture.
Most of the passers-by who dismissed him as 'the Viking of Sixth Avenue,' offering him contributions and buying copies of his music and poetry, were unaware that he had recorded his music on the CBS, Prestige, Epic, Angel and Mars labels. Mr. Hardin's jazz-accented compositions, generally scored for small wind and percussion ensembles, often achieved a flowing, tonal symphonic style.
One of his songs, 'All Is Loneliness,' became a hit when recorded by Janis Joplin. He wrote music for radio and television commercials, and one of his compositions was used on the soundtrack for the 1972 movie 'Drive, He Said,' with Jack Nicholson.
Along the way, Mr. Hardin wrote Bohemian broadsides against government regimentation, the world monetary system and organized religion. He was celebrated by Beat Generation poets and late-1960's flower children. His passionate unconventionality drew praise from some critics and led to interviews on many television shows, including both 'Today' and 'The Tonight Show.'
Although many New Yorkers assumed that he had died after he vanished from his customary post in 1974, Mr. Hardin had actually been invited to perform his music in West Germany and decided to stay.
'He led an extraordinary life for a blind man who came to New York with no contacts and a month's rent, and who lived on the streets of New York for 30 years,' said Dr. Robert Scotto, a professor of English at Baruch College of the City University of New York. 'Without question, he was the most famous street person of his time, a hero to a generation of hippies and flower children.' Dr. Scotto has just completed a biography of Mr. Hardin, 'Moondog: The Viking of Sixth Avenue,' which has not been published.
After his performances in Hamburg, Mr. Hardin again earned a living as a street performer, this time in Europe. He soon met Mrs. Sommer, whose father insisted on taking him into their home and supported Mr. Hardin in his later years. He composed in Braille, and she transcribed his music and acted as his publisher and business manager. According to Dr. Scotto, they had an intimate working relationship, but neither of them ever described it as more than that.
In his later years, Mr. Hardin produced at least five albums in Europe, including a 'sound saga' titled 'The Creation,' and regularly performed his compositions with chamber and symphony orchestras before glittering audiences in Paris, Stockholm and cities in Germany.
Mr. Harding adopted the Moondog name in 1947, identifying himself, he said, with a former pet who howled at the moon.
He was born in Maryville, Kan., on May 26, 1916, the son of an Episcopal minister. He was blinded at the age of 16 when a dynamite blasting cap exploded in his hands. A year later, after studying stringed instruments, organ and harmony at the Iowa School for the Blind, he became obsessed with becoming a composer.
When he arrived in Manhattan in 1943, he established an outpost outside the stage entrance of Carnegie Hall and met some of the New York Philharmonic's musicians. They arranged a meeting with their conductor, Artur Rodzinski. Mr. Rodzinski was taken with Mr. Hardin and not only extended an open invitation to attend the orchestra's rehearsals, but also promised he would conduct an orchestral work if Mr. Hardin ever wrote one.
But because he was blind, he needed help in writing out the score. Mr. Hardin could not afford such assistance, so he made his living as a street musician, training himself to be a master of percussion improvisation. He was unable to compose a symphony until after Mr. Rodzinski left the Philharmonic in 1947.
In the mid-1950's, one of his 78-r.p.m. recordings, 'Moondog Symphony,' was regularly played by Alan Freed, the pioneering rock-and-roll disk jockey. But it wasn't until the 1960's that Mr. Hardin had regular access to an orchestra and was able to make his first longer album for CBS, 'Moondog.'
In 1989, Mr. Hardin, acclaimed in Europe, was invited back to the United States to conduct the Brooklyn Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra.
Allan Kozinn, a critic for The New York Times, described Mr. Hardin's conducting style as unusual, explaining that he was 'uncomfortable with being an authority figure, so he sits to the side of the orchestra and provides the beat on a bass drum or tympani.'
Dr. Scotto said that Mr. Hardin told him that he married in 1943 and subsequently divorced. A second marriage, to Sazuko Whiteing, a musician, in the 1950's, ended in divorce in the early 1960's, Dr. Scotto said.
Dr. Scotto and Mrs. Sommer said they thought Mr. Hardin was survived by a younger brother, Creighton Hardin, of Kansas City; a daughter, June Hardin, and another daughter, whose name and whereabouts they did not know.
In the end, Mr. Hardin finally yielded to Mrs. Sommer's coaxing and gave up his Viking outfits. He had refused to alter his dress code even when, as an aspiring composer, it provoked his eviction from the Philharmonic rehearsals.
'But I still love horned helmets and swords and spears,' he said in a 1989 interview. 'I like to feel that I'm loyal to my past. I wouldn't want to be on the street anymore. But you know, that led to a lot of things.'",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Nuclear Plants' Files Overwhelm Library
LEAD: WHEN the Waterford Public Library agreed to be the repository of documents for the Millstone I nuclear energy plant 18 years ago, it was a matter of storing just a few file boxes in a closet. But with the torrent of paper that followed stricter Government regulations and the construction of two more nuclear plants on the Millstone site, the documents, which also include a microfiche collection and a reading machine, now fill 50 shelves in the library.
WHEN the Waterford Public Library agreed to be the repository of documents for the Millstone I nuclear energy plant 18 years ago, it was a matter of storing just a few file boxes in a closet. But with the torrent of paper that followed stricter Government regulations and the construction of two more nuclear plants on the Millstone site, the documents, which also include a microfiche collection and a reading machine, now fill 50 shelves in the library. And the library is saying, Enough!
New information is constantly arriving at a rate of thousands of pages a month - enough paper each year to create a stack 10 to 15 feet high.
The data is so extensive it has been divided into 25 categories, from A (application and construction stage documentation) to Y (analyses of dry-cask independent spent-fuel storage). Some of the information is contained in green plastic binders, but most is loose or simply stapled together and put into folders.
It is also one of the least-used collections in the library. The most recent quarterly report filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that the collection in Waterford had been consulted just once from April through June.  More Than Most Can Deal With
'It's almost like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has given the public too much,' said the library's director, Vincent Juliano. 'The information, the detail and the way it is presented is more than most people can deal with.'
It is more than the library can deal with, as well. The board of directors has asked the commission to clear out its collection. Wednesday is the deadline for other libraries or institutions willing to store it to make an offer.
The chairman of the board of directors, Bonnie Allison, said that while the board has asked the materials to be moved, 'we're not going to throw it out until they do.' The relationship has always been good between the library and the commission, Mrs. Allison said, and the library is not about to ruin it by demanding the space back on short notice.
But a commission official said a lengthy search has yet to yield any interest in the public document room.
'We've called just about every library in the area, and so far no one has agreed to provide the space,' said Karl Abraham, a spokesman for the commission in King of Prussia, Pa. 'So at this point, I don't know how it's going to end up.'  No Interest From Neighbors
E. Clifford Hill, a spokesman for Northeast Utilities, which owns and operates the three plants in Waterford, said that when the library was running out of space years ago, before the mezzanine where the files are now kept was constructed, the utility suggested the files be kept at the Coast Guard Academy or at Connecticut College in neighboring New London, but neither was interested.
'The whole purpose of the Public Document Room is to house all the correspondence between us and the N.R.C. and make it available to the general public,' Mr. Hill said. 'The closer it is, obviously, the more easily accessible it is to the public.'
One of the few institutions interested in housing the collection is the Russell Library in Middletown, repository of the public documents for Northeast's other nuclear plant, Connecticut Yankee in Haddam Neck.
'It just happens their need comes at a time when we're considering rearranging and reorganizing the space within our building,' the director of the Russell Library, Stuart T. Porter Jr., said. 'We think we're going to be able to do it.'
With Wesleyan University nearby, there has been some interest in the information in the collection. But even Mr. Porter acknowledges that his Public Document Room is not one of the key attractions of the library.  Not Heavily Used
'It's not what we would call heavily used, compared with any of the other services and collections we have,' Mr. Porter said. 'It's probably used a couple of times a week.'
Public document rooms are a collection of general nuclear regulatory publications and all correspondence between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the operator of a nuclear plant, including safety reports, explanation of shutdowns and equipment malfunctions and other documentation.
While it does not have to be in a library, the commission specifies it must be in an institution with a history of impartially serving the information needs of the public, and within 50 miles of the plant.
Mr. Abraham said his agency generally does not ask the operator of the plant to be a repository of public documents because years ago, under such an arrangement, the collection was poorly maintained. There is also the possibility of public perception that an operator might withhold or conceal documents that cast its operation in a bad light, Mr. Abraham said.
'We don't believe for a minute Northeast Utilities would take unfair advantage,' Mr. Abraham said, but to avoid that perception, such an arrangement would not be approved.  Expanding Millstone
When the Waterford library agreed to host the public document room, there were only a few file boxes that had to be kept in the basement, but at that point only Millstone I, a 660-megawatt plant that began commercial operation in 1970, was in existance. Millstone II, an 870-megawatt power plant, began operation in 1975, and Millstone III, a 1,150-megawatt plant, began operation in 1986.
As the larger plants have come into operation, and as accidents like the one at Three-Mile Island in Pennsylvania have heightened concern about safe operation of nuclear plants, there has been an increasing amount of documentation filed in the rooms.
Originally, Mr. Juliano said, the collection was housed in a large closet, but it outgrew that space and had to be moved to the basement. When it became too large for those quarters, it was moved into a newly constructed mezzanine. Today, it takes up about 150 feet of shelf space.
Generally, the library receives enough documentation over the course of a year to fill four or five shelves, and it takes a member of the staff three to four hours a week to maintain the collection, Mr. Juliano said.
'About 1980 they said they were going to convert their records to microfiche, and that sounded real good, except it never happened,' he said.
The library receives about $6,000 a year from the commission to house and maintain the collection but, Mr. Juliano said, there are other considerations.
'It's never been a money issue for us,' he said. 'For many years the library did it for nothing.'
'If the collection had remained stable, we probably would be able to keep it here,' he said. 'But it's growing, and we don't want to give them the false impression that we can do this forever.'
If any other collection of the library logged the use that the public document room sees, he said, it would also be replaced. While one person in three months is low, Mr. Juliano said over the 10 years he has worked in the library the average use has been about one person per month.
'The record of operation here is probably a factor in that, because they do have a pretty good reputation for safety,' Mr. Juliano said.
But part of the problem is also that the collection is so daunting. Each month hundreds of pages of documents, some of them so technical only engineers could decipher them, arrive for the collection.
'People don't want all this information,' Mr. Juliano said. 'What they want is simple information on a few specific items.'",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"PLAYING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
LOWER EAST SIDE Something for Everyone At an Expanded Festival
From noon to 5 today, Grand Street and Essex Street will be a place for entertainment, falafel and awards to current and former neighborhood residents at the Lower East Side Festival.
The event, this year called ""Gateway to the American Dream,"" is an expansion of what was long known as the Lower East Side Jewish Festival, now expanded to include many other groups.
This year the festival, sponsored by the South Manhattan Development Corporation, will cover six blocks. There will be more than 150 vendors along Essex and Grand Streets and also a petting zoo, exhibits by the Lower East Side  tenement museum, Henry Street Settlement and the United Jewish Council and entertainment on two stages -- one on Essex and Grand Streets and another on Grand and Clinton Streets.
The Lower East Side Festival; today, noon to 5 P.M.; runs along Grand Street  from Clinton Street to Essex Street, then along Essex Street from Grand to East  Houston Street; (212) 643-1623, ext. 7.
WASHINGTON HEIGHTS Big-Band Evening And Home-Grown Classical
""When the music gets going, people in the neighborhood start dancing in the park,"" Lisa Hansen, a classical flutist who is executive director of the Northern Manhattan Community Artists, said of her outdoor concert series.
Ms. Hansen and her neighborhood group for five years have sponsored the Summer Serenade Series in Bennett Park at 184th Street and Fort Washington Avenue.
The outdoor concerts bring neighborhood musicians as well as big bands to play everything from swing to jazz to chamber music.
This Wednesday, Loren Schoenberg and his 18-piece big band will perform the music of Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman.
The following Wednesday, the Hudson Sinfonietta, northern Manhattan's resident chamber orchestra, pictured at left, will perform music of Bach, Mozart, Villa-Lobos and others.
For the concerts, There are benches to sit on, but people are encouraged to bring their own blankets.
Summer Serenade Series, Bennett Park at 184th Street and Fort Washington Avenue; Wednesdays, June 19th and June 26th, 7 P.M.; free; rain location: Collegiate Church, 729 West 181st Street at Fort Washington Avenue; (212) 795-8967. UPPER WEST SIDE A Master Will Teach An Ancient Chinese Art
For 47 years, Wang Yen-nien has practiced the ancient Chinese martial art T'ai Chi Ch'uan and this week he is coming from Taiwan to teach and lecture in New York for nine days.
He will offer a lecture on this art -- which integrates mind, body and breathing -- at the West Side YMCA on Friday. He will start by discussing the history behind the tradition and then go into its place in modern society. The lecture starts at 7 P.M. in the Little Theater and costs $15.
On each of the next two days he will conduct a six-hour workshop, teaching what is known as long form T'ai Chi, including basic exercises. The cost for the two days is $150.
""The Chinese do it out in their parks,"" George Vlachos, a student of T'ai Chi Ch'uan, said of the martial art. ""It's very slow and very good for your body.""
T'ai Chi Ch'uan Lectures and Workshops; Friday, 7 P.M. and Saturday and Sunday, June 22 and 23 at the West Side YMCA, 5 West 63d Street; For more information call Gretchen MacLane, (212) 787-5940.
ALSO AROUND TOWN
DISHES OF ZAMBIA -- A food tasting sponsored by the New York Chapter of the African Travel Association; Thursday, 5:30 P.M. to 9:30 P.M.; Phelps Stokes Fund, 10 East 87th Street; $30 and a ""Love Box for the Children of Africa"" (a shoe box filled with T-shirts, clothing, books and stationery). Items will be sent to orphanages in Zambia; (718) 832-2370.
THE LATIN JAZZ COALITION -- Performing Afro-Cuban, Brazilian and American jazz at Windmuller Park, 52d Street & 39th Drive, Woodside, Queens; Thursday, 7 P.M.; free; (718) 476-8449.
GAMES PEOPLE PLAY -- The Parks Department invites anyone to play chess, checkers, jacks, hopscotch, Foosball, Ping-Pong, Scrabble, Othello and Monopoly  at the Arsenal in Central Park at Fifth Avenue and 64th Street; Historic photographs of games like marbles and stickball will be exhibited; Saturday, noon to 3 P.M.; free; (212) 360-1349.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Corrections
A picture caption with the Choice Tables column on Page 6 of the Travel section today, about San Juan, P.R., reverses identities, in some copies, for the foods shown and misidentifies a chef. Lamb chops at La Mesón de Melquiades are at the left and cod fritters at Casita Blanca at the right. The chef is Jesús Pérez, not José Álvarez Toledo.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Judge Is Reassigned
A Westchester County Family Court judge who was criticized by women's groups for her decision in a domestic-violence case last summer has been reassigned to oversee civil trials. But Judge Francis A. Nicolai, the judge in charge of reassignments, said Judge Adrienne Hofmann Scancarelli's new responsibilities have nothing to do with her controversial decision.
On July 19, Judge Scancarelli, a former supervising judge of family court, refused an order of protection sought by Hilda Uguna, 19, of Sleepy Hollow, against her husband, Luis. Five days later, Mr. Uguna fatally stabbed his wife and leaped to his death from the family's fourth-floor apartment.
At the time, Judge Scancarelli said she refused Mrs. Uguna's application to Family Court in White Plains because it did not meet the precise legal criteria for an emergency order.
Judge Nicolai, the new administrative judge for the Ninth Judicial District, which includes Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Dutchess and Orange Counties, said he ordered the move to ease a shortage of civil trial judges in Westchester. 'I would not call it a demotion,' he said.
Judge Nicolai said Westchester's shortage of civil trial judges was created earlier this month when he was promoted to Administrative Judge and Justice Peter P. Rosato, of the Ninth Judicial District Court,  was named supervising judge of the Criminal Courts. The changes also resulted from a reshuffling of assignments after Judge Joan O. Cooney of Family Court in New Rochelle was named Supervising Judge of the Family Courts, a post Judge Scancarelli held for 14 years.
IN BRIEF",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"West Side's Little Liberty Is Relocating to Brooklyn
She will lift her lamp beside the Eastern Parkway.
A small-scale Statue of Liberty that served for a century as a gateway to the Upper West Side -- at least for those eagle-eyed enough to spot her atop the Liberty Warehouse at 43 West 64th Street -- has been given to the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
'The statue, which is very beautiful, can be enjoyed by a lot more people in a museum setting,' said Louis M. Dubin, president of the Athena Group, which is converting the eight-story warehouse into a 12-story apartment house, depriving little Liberty of her rooftop perch.
The Athena Group, Athena Liberty Lofts and Brickman Associates are donating the statue in honor of the city's police officers, firefighters and emergency workers. Mr. Dubin said he could not put a dollar value on the statue. (Comparables are hard to come by.)
'We are thrilled,' said Marc Mayer, a deputy director of the museum.
Under scrutiny for the first time in decades, the statue revealed some long-held secrets. Mr. Dubin said it was made of steel alloy cast in many sections that were welded together. It will be removed later this month in one piece, he said, because no one is sure it can be so artfully reassembled.
The statue will require conservation and may go on a national tour. But for a couple of weeks, at least, it should be visible in an outdoor storage area behind the museum. 'People will be able to see it,' Mr. Mayer said. 'You can't miss a 30-foot sculpture.'",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"PLAYING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
CITYWIDE  Veteran Performers Still Going Strong
For the last five years, Circuit Productions has taken free music and dance into libraries and museums around New York. And this summer's series continues on Tuesday with a show at the Brooklyn Heights Library. Circuit features performers from 60 to 80 years old. This summer's shows will include flamenco, tap dancing, jazz and Brazilian music, and klezmer music from Eastern Europe.
'Jazzing Women,' Tuesday, 7 P.M., Brooklyn Heights Library, 280 Cadman Plaza, (718) 722-3367; Howard Leshaw Klezmer Ensemble,  Wednesday through Friday, 11 A.M., call (718) 327-7867 for locations; 'Swinging Sisters,' Wednesday, 3:30 P.M. and 6:30 P.M., Macon and Williamsburg Libraries, (718) 453-3333 or (718) 782-4600; Nick Herman and Quimbombo, Saturday, 1:30 P.M., New Lots Library, 665 New Lots Avenue, Brooklyn, (718) 649-3700; Charles Moore Percussion Ensemble, Saturday, 2 P.M., Arverne Library, 312 Beach 54th Street, Queens, (718) 634-4784; Ruth Brisbane's Harlem Renaissance, next Sunday. 2 to 4 P.M., 110th Street between Fifth and Lenox Avenues; (718) 638-4878. All concerts free.
FLUSHING  Learning About Science While Having Fun
The scientific principles of motion, balance, sound and sight will become the stuff of fun and games as the science playground at the New York Hall of Science officially opens for the summer on Wednesday.
Two dozen hands-on science exhibits, spread over 30,000 square feet of playground, offer the answer to many scientific questions. The theory of momentum can be explored through rides on a standing spinner, or the effects of action and reaction experienced on a giant spider web. The nature of balance can be negotiated on the wobbly bridge (shown at left), and water moved uphill (with a 13-foot Archimedes screw).
Science Playground, New York Hall of Science, 47-01 111th Street, Flushing Meadows Corona Park; Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday 9:30 A.M. to 2 P.M., Thursday through Sunday 9:30 A.M. to 5 P.M. Beginning July 1, Tuesday and Wednesday hours are 9:30 A.M. to 5 P.M.; museum admission $6 for adults, $4 for children; science playground: $2 extra; (718) 699-0005.
LOWER EAST SIDE  'The Jungle Book' With a Difference
When his parents are killed by a fierce tiger in Rudyard Kipling's 'Jungle Book,' Mowgli is rescued by a mother wolf named Raksha, who raises him as one of her own. 'Raksha's Child,' now playing at the Henry Street Settlement, is a musical adaptation of the section of the tale dealing with the child's dawning realization that he is human, and not a wolf.
More than 30 children between 10 and 20, most of them in high school, are in this Urban Youth Theater production. The show has a strong emphasis on martial arts, and the director says the style is kung fu extravaganza. One cast member, Luis Quintero, is pictured below.
'Rashka's Child,' Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement, 466 Grand Street, at Pitt Street; today, 2 P.M., Thursday and Friday , 7 P.M., Saturday 2 and 7 P.M., Sunday, 2 P.M.; adults $6, children $4; (212) 598-0400.
ALSO AROUND TOWN
ALL ABOUT ROSES
Over lunch you can learn about the finer details of rose history and literature from an  expert, Dr. Ed Fiorelli; Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences; Wednesday 1:30 P.M.; 75 Stuyvesant Place, at Wall Street, St. George; $15 for members, $20 for nonmembers, without lunch $5 for members, $10 for nonmembers; advance registration required; (718) 727-1135, ext. 15.
OUTDOOR JAZZ
In the series of Centennial Garden Parties for New York City's 100th birthday, the New York Botanical Garden is the site of a free outdoor jazz concert featuring the Bronx Arts Ensemble today at 3 P.M. Also today is a guided tour of the garden's historic forest, 11 A.M.; 200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard; free; (718) 817-8700.
NORDIC ACCORDION
Scandinavian culture will be celebrated with accordion music by two Swedish-Americans, Jeanne and Randy Widman, who will perform songs and dances of Sweden and Norway; Wednesday, 6 P.M.; free; (718) 230-2100.
VICTORIA YOUNG",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Hello, Mr. Hurley
When Adrian Wojnarowski started following the basketball team at St. Anthony High School in Jersey City in the fall of 2003, it wasn't a sure thing that the school, let alone the team, would survive for another year. Severe debt had saddled St. Anthony, and each year since 1991, the school has had to raise at least $500,000 on its own to keep up operations because its parish has declared it an independent school that it will no longer finance.
Yet every year, Bob Hurley returns to St. Anthony for a few thousand dollars, and coaches boys out of poverty and into the spotlight. Mr. Wojnarowski's new book, 'The Miracle of St. Anthony' (Gotham), chronicles a couple dozen of Mr. Hurley's on-court victories but, more important, some of the many off-court victories he has had with students and athletes at the inner-city school.
While the St. Anthony team won the New Jersey state championship the year Mr. Wojnarowski, a sportswriter for The Record in Hackensack, followed it, the story he wishes to impart is less basketball than real life. The book plows much of the ground broken by 'Hoop Dreams' and 'Friday Night Lights,' but Mr. Wojnarowski handles the material deftly.
Mr. Hurley's 800-plus basketball victories, the five first-round N.B.A. picks he has coached and the eight state championships he has won are important facets of the book. It probably would not have been written if Mr. Hurley were a good person and a mediocre coach. So it is all the more inspiring to see Mr. Hurley also goad his players to academic and social success.
That Mr. Hurley himself has stayed put in Jersey City is also instructive. He has had enough success and publicity to have moved up to more lucrative coaching jobs, but has clearly found it more satisfying to keep his fame circumscribed to his chosen realm. This seems to be Mr. Wojnarowski's only lament, that Mr. Hurley's miracles should be replicated elsewhere, but aren't.
Robert Strauss
BY THE WAY",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"JERSEY FOOTLIGHTS
Money for the Arts
The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation has announced that it will give more than $5.2 million in grants this year to 95 organizations, including museums, galleries, community groups, theater companies, dance troupes and orchestras. All but 11 recipients are in New Jersey; those 11 run programs supporting New Jersey arts. The awards benefit groups in 20 of the state's 21 counties.
The foundation, which is based in Morristown, has been giving money to the arts since the 1970's.
Ten organizations are receiving awards for the first time: Algonquin Arts in Manasquan; Friends of Cape May Jazz and the Center for Community Arts, both in Cape May; the Theater Project at Union County College in Cranford; Westfield Young Artists Cooperative Theater; the New Jersey programs of New York City's Meet the Composer; Trenton Downtown Association; and three dance companies, Connections Dance Theater in Lawrenceville, LKB Dance in New Brunswick and Terra Firma Dance Theater in Highland Park.
As part of a $1 million grant announced last year, the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey received $350,000, the foundation's largest arts grant for 2003.
Under the Sea
Using an underwater metal detector, Nelson Jecas of Bernardsville has been diving for lost treasure off the Jersey shore for 12 years. He uses historical data on hurricanes and shipwrecks to improve his chances of making discoveries and then has experts evaluate his findings.
Mr. Jecas began treasure hunting on land -- at dumps, on beaches and behind old houses. 'In the old days, people used to bury their garbage in their backyards,' he explained.
He has found buried silverware, medicine bottles and stamp seals. Since he took to the water, he has found 17th-century coins from Spain, a 13th-century bronze cross from Africa and an 18th-century Spanish bracelet, among other items.
A selection from Mr. Jecas's trove can be seen at the Morristown and Morris Township Library, One Miller Road in Morristown, through Sept. 5. On Sept. 4 at 7 p.m., he will give a talk at the library on diving in shipwrecks.
'There were pirates in Sandy Hook, and there are still people living there who are descended from them,' he said.
Information: (973)538-6161.
Fresh Air Theater
Princeton Rep Shakespeare Festival's version of 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' moves the action of the play from Windsor, England, to two towns in New Jersey -- West Windsor and Princeton. Performances are on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays at 8 p.m. through Aug. 17 at the Pettoranello Gardens Amphitheater in Community Park North, Route 206 and Mountain Avenue in Princeton. On Saturday, there is a performance at 2 p.m. on the Green at Palmer Square in Princeton.
All performances are free, although a donation is suggested. Information: (609)921-3682 or www.princetonrep.org.
Laughing Through the Music
David Buskin of Montclair is one-third of Modern Man, a musical group that bills itself as 'bridging the gap between the three tenors and the three Stooges.' He and his collaborators, Rob Carlson and George Wurzbach, were performing their comedic folk music at an outdoor festival in 2001 in Kerrville, Tex., when Mr. Buskin had a revelation for a new song.
'It's a three-week festival, and there are people who camp out for all or most of it,' he said. 'It's held in the late spring, which means it's 140 degrees. It just came to me that this is not my idea of a good time.'
The new song was 'Jews Don't Camp.'
'A lot of people come up to me and say, 'I'm Jewish and I camp,'' Mr. Buskin said. 'I say: 'Who cares? Get out.''
On Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Modern Man will appear at Grounds for Sculpture at 18 Fairgrounds Road in Hamilton with the singing quartet The Lascivious Biddies. Information: (609)586-0616.
A Japanese Way of Silkscreening
Heard of a gocco? According to a Web site devoted to the gocco, you surely would if you lived in Japan, where a third of all households own one.
A gocco is a miniature silkscreen and printing press invented in Japan. Using it, an artist can silkscreen multiple colors at the same time onto virtually any surface, said Penny Dell of Haworth, who on Friday will teach a one-day workshop, 'Printing With Gocco,' at the Old Church Cultural Center School of Art, 561 Piermont Road in Demarest.
'They're little workhorses,' Ms. Dell said of the gocco. She recalled that an inventive former student bypassed the traditional stationery and book-making projects to create Jethro Tull underwear for her son.
Information on the course: (201)767-7160.
Michelle Falkenstein",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Fresh Looks at Prints and a Town
'An Inner Vision'  Old Point Schoolhouse, Oysterponds Historical Society, Village Lane, Orient. Through Sept. 27.  323-2480.
Spanning the two decades after World War II, this collection of abstract prints is a selective but highly rewarding survey of the technical and esthetic experimentation that transformed the graphic arts during that period. In fact, as a microcosm of the era's diverse approaches to printmaking, it could hardly be bettered.
The prints belong to Charles Dean, who has homes in Orient and New York City. Without aiming for comprehensiveness, Mr. Dean has assembled a collection notable for its range and depth. It includes examples by well-known printmakers like Gabor Peterdi, Peter Grippe and Stanley William Hayter, whose Atelier 17 was a hotbed of graphic innovation in the 1940's, and pieces by artists better known as painters or sculptors, among them Franz Kline, Louise Nevelson, Grace Hartigan, Adja Yunkers and Hans Hofmann.
The selection of 36 prints also features fine examples by relatively obscure artists who pushed printmaking's traditional boundaries to their limits and beyond. Bernard Childs used power tools to attack the surface of intaglio plates, creating a spidery calligraphy that fairly sizzles with energy. Boris Margo invented a method of dissolving imagery into a celluloid matrix to produce otherworldly forms.
Abstract Expressionism's spontaneous gestures and emotional content are translated into graphic terms by Jacob Kainen, Dennis Beall, Walt Kuhlman and Hugh Mesibov, who adapted various print media to achieve unorthodox results.  Mr. Beall's richly textured lithographs and Mr. Kuhlman's mysterious, atmospheric etching are outstanding examples, but the show is filled with many more such surprises and delights.
'Color Light'  Yellow House Works of Art, 422 First Street, Greenport. Through Sept. 20. 477-8673.
This show by three artists is dominated -- or, forgive the pun, stolen -- by Russell Connor's large canvas 'The Kidnapping of Modern Art by the New Yorkers,' an art-historical pastiche uniting Rubens and Picasso to lampoon the notion that New York stole modernism from Europe.
To appreciate the humor fully, one must know something of its references: the Rubens abduction of virtuous maidens, Picasso's less-than-virtuous demoiselles going along for the ride, and the title freely adapted from Serge Guilbaut's screed against America's Cold War hegemony.
Indeed, all the paintings from Mr. Connor's 'Masters in Pieces' series  depend on familiarity with their sources, as well as a hearty sense of irreverence. Thus, the pictures will amuse some and confuse others. As art-world inside jokes, they are sometimes strainedoverly contrived, but their unashamed borrowing points up the fact that most artists rely on the work of predecessors for inspiration.
Victor Freidman pays a more oblique homage to Cubism in his photographic montages, in which geometric structure plays off against the organic forms of fruit and human bodies. The prints are shown without glass over them, allowing their velvety texture and soft sepia tonality to be fully appreciated.
el2 The multiple complex layering in Nicke Gorney's abstract paintings evokes a sense of light and atmosphere divorced from specific observations but based on sensual experience. 'Afterlife,' for example, suggests the aura of a dawn-drenched landscape, while 'Encounter' pits red against yellow to produce vivid sparks of the orange that results from their meeting.
'Footfalls'
Various locations in Greenport. Through Sept. 28. 477-1572.
Fifteen artists are participating in this year's installation of site-specific works in various media, from sculpture to Conceptual art. Viewers may encounter the pieces at random, purchase an illustrated guide book and follow its map, or preview the ensemble by visiting the project's web site at http://www. peconic.net/footfalls.
Actually, the documentation is a bit misleading, as some of the works have been moved or changed since they were installed in June. Vandalism and the elements have taken their toll, notably on Melissa Kretschmer's pebble carpet at the end of Clark Street, which has been more or less obliterated by the tides, and Patricia Breese's driftwood carving, no longer on the Bay Street pier, for which another piece in the window of Preston's store on Main Street has been substituted.
Next door, at Preston's Marine Hardware, Maren Hassinger's 'walking' bundles of spiky unwound cable are poised like a phalanx of defenders. At once graceful and threatening, they are echoed by a  group of bristling marchers in the window of Main Street Antiques. At the entrance to a nearby dock, Nina Yankowitz has half-buried a dory, provocatively suggesting a memorial to shipwreck victims and the decline of the fishing industry.
At several locations, Frazer Dougherty uses computer-generated overlays to critique Greenport's changing townscape. His laminated 'Paintings as Transformation' reconfigure spaces and buildings in light of their previous and current status, focusing attention by means of electronically created structures that conceptually fill the gaps between past, present and future.
Using the shore near the North Ferry terminal as an anchor, Kes Zapkus has constructed a delicate web of bamboo that gracefully floats above the beach at the waterline. The best view is from the ferry itself, which also offers an ideal vantage point for Mark Hadjipateras's cartoonlike 'Steamboats,' Plexiglas panels with whimsical silhouettes of puffing vessels, and Alan Shields's elaborate construction of multicolored beads that rises like a fountain of color from Mitchell's Dock.
ART REVIEWS",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Nails That Hold a House Together
EXPERTS on building estimate that the average house has 20,000 to 30,000 nails.
The modern wire nail was first manufactured in this country in Covington, Ky., in 1875. A Roman Catholic priest, the Rev. Joseph Goebbels, set up the American Wire and Screw Nail Company and made nails, using techniques that he had learned in his homeland, Germany.
The technology remains similar today. The basic stock is a long coil of mild steel. The wire passes through straightening dies into gripping dies. The gripping dies hold the wire, while the heading tool delivers a blow that fashions the head. Cutting dies come forward to cut the nail and fashion the point. The machines can forge 150 to 500 nails a minute.
Modern nails are designated according to the penny system, which originated in England, where nails were sold by weight. Obviously the larger heavier nails  cost more and, therefore, had a higher penny designation. The abbreviation for penny was, and still is, ""d,"" from the first letter of the Roman coin denarius.  Thus a tenpenny nail was designated 10d.
Prices may have changed, but that is still how nails are graded. Nails range  in length from 2d, or 1 inch, to 60d, or 6 inches. To calculate the length to 10d, divide the penny size by 4 1/2 inches. An 8d is 2 1/2. Nails above 10d are  on the chart. The longer nails are also thicker. The diameter is designated by a wire-gauge number. The higher the number the thinner the diameter.
There are many types of nails. No one is ideal for all purposes. When choosing a nail for a specific job evaluate all the qualities. Consider holding  power. That is a nail's resistance to being pulled out of a block of wood, or withdrawal resistance, and resistance to lateral pressure. Long thick nails have greater holding power than short thin nails. But they also split the wood more readily than the thinner nails.
To increase the holding power of thinner nails, manufacturers frequently deform the shank by stamping or cutting it with a ringed pattern. Called ""ring-shank"" nails, they have superior holding power, because the shank rings give the wood fibers a rougher surface to grip. The nails were originally developed for drywall and flooring, but they can be used anywhere. Ringed nails  are also available for siding, shingles and corrugated fiberglass panels.
Another innovation that increases holding power is a resin coating on the shank. As the nail is driven into the wood, friction melts the resin, cementing  the nail in place. The initial holding power is strong. But with time the resin  is absorbed in the wood, and the holding power decreases.
Although there are many types of nails, the most frequently used are common,  box, finishing, stage, masonry, flooring and siding. Common nails have a broad flat head, for rough carpentry and construction.  Box nails look like common nails, but they have thinner shanks. They are easier to drive than common nails  and are less likely to split the wood. Their holding power is less than that of  the common nail.
Finishing nails are used for cabinetry and molding. Because those nails have  small heads they can be driven below the surface with a nail set. The hole can be filled and hidden with wood filler. Smaller finishing nails are called brads. They are specified by length, from 1/2 to 1 1/2 inches, and wire gauge. Brads with flat heads are called wire nails.
Stage nails are also called duplex nails, scaffold nails and double-headed nails. They have two heads, although technically the second head is really a flange. Those are used to build temporary structures like scaffolds and support  braces.
Masonry nails are made of hardened steel. They secure furring strips or studs to concrete or block walls. Do not try to drive those nails with a carpenter's hammer. Use a heavy-duty hammer, from 2 to 3 pounds, and be sure to wear gloves  and safety goggles.
Flooring nails are used to place strip flooring. There are two types.One is the cut nail with a flat rectangular body. They are often stacked in hammer-powered machines to bind nail flooring through the edges. Spiral flooring nails have twisted shanks, so that they turn in the wood like screws. They have  superior holding power and are less likely to split the wood than the cut flooring nails.
Aluminum siding has be secured with aluminum nails to prevent the corrosion that can occur between dissimilar metals. Aluminum nails can also be used to mount vinyl siding.
HOME CLINIC",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Quotation of the Day
LEAD: 'This is Beirut on the Potomac; there are more warring factions than I can count. If we're going to keep rethrashing issues and continuing to put the party in a position where we're certifiably giving huge tax breaks for the rich, I don't want to add to the confusion.'
- Representative Marge Roukema, Republican of New Jersey.
'This is Beirut on the Potomac; there are more warring factions than I can count. If we're going to keep rethrashing issues and continuing to put the party in a position where we're certifiably giving huge tax breaks for the rich, I don't want to add to the confusion.'
- Representative Marge Roukema, Republican of New Jersey. [10:3.]",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"From the Famous to the Nameless
AT the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale are 50 photographs by James J. Kriegsmann, a celebrity portraitist who flourished in Manhattan after World War II. As images of show-biz personalities, the pictures should by rights be at the Paramount Theater, also known as the Paramount Center for the Arts, in Peekskill. But the attraction there is 'Humans Being,' a show by 15 former students of the photographer Andrew Courtney, whose subjects are the nameless and, in some cases, the homeless.
Kriegsmann was 20 when he left his native Austria for the United States, arriving in Manhattan shortly before the Crash. In addition to his father, brother and two sisters, the young man brought experience gained as an apprentice to the trade, which enabled him to get a job retouching pictures (mostly of burlesque beauties) for Strand Studios.
According to a profile written by Janis Bultman for a 1984 issue of 'Darkroom Photography,' the first break came when  the Flying Wallendas, the trapeze artists famed for working without a net, visited the studio only to be photographed by Kriegsmann because he was the only employee able to speak with them in their own language.
Ms. Bultman said the experience of meeting them so impressed the photographer that he seriously considered joining the circus himself. Yet there is nothing romantic about his portrait of the group unless it is the emphasis on their gypsy-style bandanas, which seem so at odds with their chiseled features and stern expressions.
More craftsman than artist, Kriegsmann understood his clients' need for perfection and fulfilled it with zeal -- usually by means of lighting rather than the retoucher's scalpel and airbrush. It is possible he had the immigrant's reverence for the American band-box look or a personal desire to improve upon it, for Ms. Bultman quotes him as saying, 'Every nose has to have a bridge,' an idea that might intrigue Jack Palance, who has done so well without one.
Other stars in the lineup include Bill (Bojangles) Robinson on stage, Frank Sinatra at the piano with Nancy on his knee, Sid Caesar mugging and, in repose, Benny Goodman and Ray Charles with their instruments, Martha Raye, Doris Day, Milton Berle -- all of them caught in or before their prime.
By calling Kriegsmann the 'photographer of the rich and famous,' Ms. Bultman reminds me of his older compatriot, Trude Fleischmann, who was known in her country as 'the photographer of the famous.' He died in 1994, she a few years earlier; his portraits, a few of which are grotesquely colored, celebrate the American Dream, whereas her softer-focus images of people and places imply a taste for the finer things of life.
Fleischmann spent a few years in the United States, where her reputation has recently been rediscovered by art galleries and auction houses, but her style, already formed, was not much affected by the experience. Kriegsmann, on the other hand, lived his whole life here and, having arrived young and impressionable, became an all-American photographer. Though not camp, his pictures are dated enough to arouse nostalgia for a supposedly happier time, and as such are of anthropological interest.
Mr. Courtenay makes no bones about it: the Paramount show is as much his as it is his students'. A teacher for 35 years, he begins his introduction to 'Humans Being' by saying that the participants, who range in age from 18 to 60, were chosen because they share the 'enthusiasm that making photography brings to an active life' and a 'fascination with the human condition' as well as a 'comfort with the camera as a tool for making art.' Then, after stating, 'All will remember the mantra of my teaching maxims,' Mr. Courtenay  lists a few examples, including 'Art, self-promotion: two different things,' 'If it's pretty it can't be art' and 'Art is the making of a new idea.'
The photographer has taught at various institutions in Westchester, most recently at the Evening Star Photography Workshop in Peekskill. He has also traveled extensively, and as he explained during a conversation at the gallery it was visiting other countries, notably Nicaragua, that prompted him to change his vocation from painting to photography. 'Sandinista Pieta,' a study of an emaciated Nicaraguan woman seated in a shadowy interior, is one of his earliest efforts.
The students may be imprinted by the master's maxims, but most have their own clearly defined styles. For example, David Leviatin is a rather literal-minded Social Realist who portrays Chinese men ' holding things,' the most interesting of which is a live pig on its back. Kev Filmore is more the Surrealist with his series of tinted black-and-whites, each of which focuses on ground covered with leaves and stones and accented by discarded objects -- a child's bootie, a rear-view mirror, a shoe sole lying beside the paws of a woolly dog. The prints are accompanied by a plastic bag containing the leaves and objects (but not the dog).
Gayle Lamb's images are organic abstractions not unlike the sculptures of Louise Bourgeois but eventually reveal themselves as ingenious compositions involving the photographer's own torso and limbs. Thanks to Disneyfication and Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, Times Square is not what it was, but Nancy Siesel photographs it as others might still walk through it -- hurriedly. In her small, blurred prints, cars go down the avenues, a flatbed loaded with newsprint heads for The Times, a man gets a shoeshine, a few characters act colorful on the sidewalk, and the atmosphere continues to be dreary.
Outstanding black and whites include Eric Nevins's study of a 1950's pickup with a flat, which stands in a cluttered shed like a cow waiting to be milked; the most memorable shots in the small color division are both by Alan Hayward.
One is an almost monochromatic scene of two bathers who are small black silhouettes standing in a pool which, corrugated with ripples, lies beyond the larger silhouette of a fir tree. The second is strangely similar in that it depicts the shadow of a seated man cast by the sun on a screen of corrugated material, which is both green and translucent.
Now part of the Hebrew Home's permanent collection, the Kriegsmann photographs remain on view through July 14. The number to call for information is (718) 405-8803. 'Humans Being' closes June 26. The Paramount's number is (914) 736-9585.
ART",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Homeless Receive School Supplies
LEAD: MORE than 800 homeless children in the county began school last week with a free set of school supplies, thanks to the joint efforts of 80 community volunteers, the county's Department of Social Services, and Staples, an office supply store in Port Chester.
MORE than 800 homeless children in the county began school last week with a free set of school supplies, thanks to the joint efforts of 80 community volunteers, the county's Department of Social Services, and Staples, an office supply store in Port Chester.
'We called the collaborative endeavor 'Project Lightbulb,' ' said Judith Wiener, a Rye resident who helped organize the effort, 'because it represented an idea that passed from one person to another and eventually came together.'
Mrs. Wiener, a member of the Rye Community Synagogue, is vice chairwoman of Helping Hands for the Homeless and Hungry, an interfaith group in Rye that sponsored the project. The group was formed last spring to raise awareness in the community of the problems faced by the county's homeless and to find ways to address them. Mrs. Wiener said that Kay Frank, a member of the group, had mentioned the need for the supplies during the group's July meeting at the Rye Presbyterian Church.
'I see homeless children two or three times a week, and school supplies are not even a dream,' said Mrs. Frank, who works with them and their parents in her job as education director for the Student Advocacy Coalition 'The kids just don't think about them.' She said the free supplies were necessary because 'budgets based on public assistance or those of the very low-income, working poor don't include a five-subject spiral notebook and the pens we all take for granted.'
Mrs. Wiener said the supplies and ways to package and distribute them had been discussed further at a planning luncheon last month. That meeting, held at Christ Church in Rye, included several participants in the interfaith group: Joel Levy, an assistant commissioner in charge of housing for the county's Social Services Department; Hamilton Fish 3d (a Helping Hands volunteer who had contacted Staples and was representing the store); and two members of the Council of Educators for the Homeless, Dr. Susan Merritt (the chairwoman) and Dr. Joseph Fahey.
Dr. Fahey, a professor of religious studies at Manhattan College in Riverdale, said after the meeting that he and Dr. Merritt had talked with teachers and students from several school districts 'about the kinds of school materials that would be most helpful to the kids.'
John Conway, the general manager of the Port Chester branch of Staples - whose headquarters is in Brighton, Mass. - said the company was 'more than happy to participate in the project' and had donated to each school kit two notebooks, a ruler, some pens and pencils. The Port Chester branch opened in June. In addition, each kit contained a quarter for a phone call, the result of a $200 contribution from Caldor Incorporated in Port Chester.
The kits were put together at the Rye Library, which made space available for the project, with the help of Rye volunteers (many of them children), members of the interfaith group and others who helped plan the project.
Mr. Levy said the kits were distributed last week to the homeless children by various agencies, volunteer organizations and case workers in the Social Services Department's eight distict offices. Calling the cooperative project 'highly commendable,' he said it was an example of the type of grass-roots effort by the public that had been called for during a conference last fall on the homeless, which was co-sponsored by his office and 10 other county-based organizations.
He said he thought the children would be 'pleasantly surprised' by the gifts of school supplies. 'It is something nice for these kids, who are already encountering so many difficulties by virtue of the fact they're homeless,' he said.
Mr. Fish, who recently moved to New Rochelle and is the former publisher of The Nation magazine, said he hoped other companies 'would take this as a model of how they could join together with citizens and the county to address some of the problems in Westchester.'
Many of the youngsters who packed the school kits said they were glad to have an opportunity to do something that could help other children.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Nursery Plan or Sand Mining?
FOR perhaps as long as 21,000 years, a kame formed by a retreating glacier has risen from an area now in the pine barrens preserve in Manorville. Now a plan by the operator of a tree farm to level the  hill to expand a nursery may erase it in fewer than five years.
Opponents say the operator's real purpose is lucrative sand mining, not business expansion. The operator, Joseph Marando Nurseries Inc., denies that.
Opponents say the one million cubic yards of sand and gravel that could be excavated was worth millions of dollars.
The proposal has divided the five voting members of the Long Island Pine Barrens Commission, which was created by the state in 1995 to protect the 100,000-acre area.
The proposal has also prompted a suit by the Long Island Pine Barrens Society to block the project.
The nursery plan is providing a major test of how the commission will carry out its stewardship over the pines and the ground water in the region, an effort supported by tens of millions of dollars in public spending.
On Aug. 26, in a 3-to-2 vote, three commissioners -- Town Supervisors Vincent J. Cannuscio of Southampton, Felix J. Grucci Jr. of Brookhaven and James R. Stark of Riverhead --  voted without comment to allow the nursery to excavate the kame and sell the sand and gravel.
The vote reinforced a conditional approval from the Town of Brookhaven, which has jurisdiction over the site, and gave the first example of how the supervisors might vote in cases where the commission could overrule the towns.
Representatives for the state and Suffolk County, the two other voting commissioners, cited the extent of clearing and possible effects on water because of nitrogen and other chemicals that would be applied in the area.
The two dissenters, Ray E. Cowen, regional director for the State Environmental Conservation Department, and George Proios, assistant county executive for environmental affairs, said they believed that the supervisors might have violated the law covering the pine barrens.
This is the first time that the commission has reviewed a project that a town had approved. That made the vote even more significant because of home-rule issues.
The excavation needs final approval from the environmental department, a process that Mr. Cowen said  would involve 'a totally different set of criteria, rules and standards.' The department, he added, would not revisit the issues that the commission had voted on.
State standards emphasize the reclamation of sand-mining sites.  Because the nursery would involve  leveling instead of excavating, meeting the standards may be simplified.
The mining, the commission decided, was secondary to expanding the 62-acre nursery to an adjoining 38 acres.
Under the plan, Marando would clear 24.7 acres of all trees and vegetation. Approximately one million cubic yards of material would be removed.
The Long Island Pine Barrens Society, which was instrumental in the passage of the pine barrens law, sued  the Brookhaven Planning Board in July. The group said the proposal was 'fraudulently clothed as a request for the expansion of a nursery' but was 'actually an application for a sand-mining operation which will operate in a residential area for a minimum of four and a half years.'
The suit added that such an operation violated town laws that prohibited sand mining in residential areas.
The executive director of the society, Richard L. Amper Jr., said the group would also sue the commission, in an effort to overturn the panel's vote.
Mr. Amper said the nursery's intention to mine became obvious after it rejected an alternative proposal from the County Planning Department to terrace rather than remove the material. 'There is no reason to remove the hill except for sand mining,' Mr. Amper said.
Marando told the commission that  the terracing would be unworkable.
Large quantities of sand are used in manufacturing cement, filling operations, maintaining roads in the winter and in projects in eroded oceanfront areas like West Hampton Dunes.
Sand runs about $6 a year wholesale, according to an expert in the environmental department, Robert P. Galli. Gravel, which is found in excavated sand, sells at $15 to $20 a cubic yard wholesale, he added.
Mr. Galli said Long Island had 50 active sand mines, mostly in Brookhaven, East Hampton and Southampton, with smaller operations in Smithtown and Riverhead.
Mr. Cannuscio said the expansion  was permissible under the law. 'Candidly,' he said, 'I know some sand will be removed. But I have traveled that road for 15 years. I see the adjacent area, and it is obviously, patently, a nursery operation.'
Mr. Grucci, Mr. Stark and a lawyer for the nursery, Walter M. Conlon, did not answer calls for comment.
Mr. Amper said it appeared that the three supervisors might have 'worked out a private collective strategy' for the vote.
Mr. Cannuscio denied that the officials had had private discussions and accused Mr. Amper of 'making a career out of opposing everything.'
Mr. Grucci was involved last year in a dispute involving sand excavation. A political opponent contended  that Mr. Grucci was operating an illegal sand mine on property owned by the Grucci fireworks business in Brookhaven.
The opponent, Thomas H. Oberle,  Democratic candidate for supervisor, said the mining was conducted under the guise of a business expansion.
Mr. Grucci, a Republican, sued Mr. Oberle after the election for libel. Mr.  Grucci acknowledged selling sand,  but said that the excavation was necessary to expand the fireworks business and that the town had approved it.
The nursery is on Route 111, south of Exit 70 on the Long Island Expressway, in a so-called deep-water-recharge area, where rain and surface water replenishes ground water. Such areas are particularly vulnerable to contaminants.
The 100,000-acre preserve includes a 52,700-acre core where development is to be banned or strictly limited and a surrounding 'compatible growth' area, where controlled development is allowed. The nursery is in that area.
Mr. Cannuscio said the nursery plan met standards that allow the  clearing of 65 percent of a site. Mr. Cowen and Mr. Proios said the standard should be applied to the entire nursery property of 100 acres. They said the expansion would not meet the standard, because more than 65 percent of the entire site would be cleared.
Mr. Proios said the quantities of nitrogen that experts estimated to reach ground water would meet state levels but was too high to meet more stringent standards in the preserve.
He said clearing vegetation and  leveling the kame, 'a unique geologic feature,' also led him to vote against the project. 'The County Planning Department showed they could expand the same dimensions and kept the vegetation and the hill in place,' he said.
Dr. Les Sirkin, a research professor of geology at Adelphi University, also referred to the kame as a singular geological feature in an affidavit against the Brookhaven Planning Board.
'Although there are a number of kames remaining on Long Island,' Dr. Sirkin wrote, 'few have survived from glacial times to the present in a seemingly unscathed condition, unmined, not developed or clear cut or even settled by native Americans.'
Under the law, the commission  does not usually review proposals for the compatible-growth area that the towns have approved. But when  questions arise about compliance with the law, a majority vote of the commission can call up a proposal for review.
A permit from the commission is  required for a proposal to proceed.
The commission automatically reviews proposals in the core area.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"A Fair That Offers Unexpected Items
WHAT better time for a voyage of discovery into the world of crafts than Columbus Day weekend? Both first-time visitors and never-miss-a-show collectors can expect to find the unexpected at the 16th annual Morristown Craft Market. There will be new trends, new materials, new techniques and many crafts people who have never before shown their work at the fair.
During three days next weekend, about 15,000 people are expected to visit the 150 booths at the fair, at the National Guard Armory. Nine artists are from New Jersey, the others from around the country.
A jury of six crafts people and a gallery owner selected the participants after studying slides of their work. Jewelry and wearable fiber art predominate. Prices range from under $10 toys to jewelry with precious stones that costs in the thousands.
The artists come from varied backgrounds. Bud Nealy, a Pennsylvanian, is both a knifemaker and a drummer who has performed for 35 years in Broadway shows. His knife-making career began 12 years ago when he saw a friend's collection of custom-made knives. ""They really blew me away,"" he said.
Equipped with a book titled ""How to Make a Knife"" and a cut-up sawmill blade, he began the laborious processes of hammering and grinding metal into razor-sharp blades. He adds intricately ornamented handles with historic motifs. One knife, titled ""Viking Dagger,"" has an ivory handle cut from an ancient tusk.
These knives can be used for hunting, fishing or food preparation.  Prices range from $150 to $3,000 for knives of Damascus steel with golden handles set with jewels.
Although John Flemming, a Louisiana artist, makes belts and handbags of Italian leather, he dreamed of becoming a sculptor. His solution: sculptured leather masks.
One series of these masks depicts the energy and motion of heavy windstorms. Several years ago, while he was doing work for fashion shows in the south of France, a mistral hit. ""People just go off center in those winds,"" he said. ""I wanted leather to express that heat and energy.""
His ""Sirocco"" mask has twisted strands of leather in glowing hues of yellow and orange, touched with blue and green. The wearer's head appears to be aflame. The masks are all wearable (some are seen at carnival time in New Orleans), or they can be mounted on the wall as sculptures. Prices are $175 to $4,000.
Marjorie Simon of Highland Park is exploring the duality of male and female symbols in her jewelry. Her concept is almost primeval. ""My beads are androgynous, the male and female together,"" she said. The necklaces and bracelets are sterling silver with 22-karat gold-plated brass. Her prices are $100 to $800.
Amy Roper of Summit, a jewelry maker, is also intrigued with primitive objects. ""Blades and shields fascinate me,"" she said. In ""Eldorado Brooch,"" she abstracted these forms and overlaid them with cryptic markings. ""I use my personal vocabulary of patterns and markings to evoke the spirit of a ritual amulet or talisman.""
Gold and silver are combined with nonprecious materials like bone to form contrasts of color and texture.  Prices are $40 to $2,000 for one-of-a-kind pieces with gold and semiprecious stones.
Bob McNally of Hibernia will show the ""Strumsticks"" he invented for people who want to become instant musicians. These 29-inch-long instruments have only three strings, arranged so that ""it is impossible to play wrong notes or chords,"" he said.  For his latest version, he added an electric pickup to give sound effects that can range from New Age to heavy metal. Strumsticks, made of various hardwoods with brass trimmings, cost $98.
There will be items to appeal to the child in everyone. Gloria Orzechowski of Middlesex makes bright wooden puzzles with large interlocking pieces. When everything is in place, they form toys. Her Noah's ark has 16 pieces. ""Twelve are cats hanging on and trying to get in,"" she said. ""They are definitely individuals, not pairs."" Prices are $8 to $32.
While the figures by Constance Harper, a Michigan artist, might be called dolls, they are made to hang on the wall, not cuddle in bed. Some have doors in their torsos. When one is opened, a garden interior filled with tiny carved wooden animals is revealed. Other figures have drawers in their stomachs that contain poems. Her prices go from $500 to $2,800.
Dolls made by Wendy Ellertson may appeal to those who enjoy reading to children. She calls these figures ""Legend Tellers."" Some hold handmade books, blank inside so families can write in their own stories. ""We should all become legend tellers,"" she said. This Massachusetts artist visits schools with her dolls, which inspire students to write about their lives.  Prices are $95 to $800.
Of course, there will be carefully made traditional items at the fair. Michael Feno of Towaco, who shares the technical direction of the show with his wife, Barbara, will display his new porcelain plaques with abstract designs. His color choices show the influence of the Southwest -- turquoise, pink and tan.
There will be several quilters whose works are like ""paintings in cloth,"" Mr. Feno said. Handwoven fabrics have been shaped into high-fashion and classical styles. And a New Jerseyan, Steven Levine of Dayton, will show a coffee table covered with dyed veneers in intense oranges, greens and pinks.
A preview display of items made for the fair is in the entrance lobby of Schering-Plough at Giralda Farms on Dodge Drive in Madison. It is open weekdays through Thursday from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. Admission is free.
The Morristown fair will open on Friday at the National Guard Armory on Western Avenue. The hours are 6 to 10 P.M. An illustrated talk on the glass and crystal art of Rene Lalique will be given by Nicholas M. Dawes at 8 P.M. Friday. Admission is $10, and free parking is available.
On Saturday and next Sunday, the hours are 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Admission is $5, or free for children under 12 years old. On both days there will be mask-making workshops for children aged 4 to 10. These will take place between 10 A.M. and 2 P.M.
CRAFTS",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, an obituary on Wednesday about P.W. Botha, the South African prime minister who tried to preserve the apartheid system, misstated the year his first wife, Anna Elizabeth Rossouw, known as Elise, died. It was 1997, not 1977.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Metro Briefing | New York: Brooklyn: Priest Robbed At Church
A priest was robbed at gunpoint yesterday in the rectory of St. Teresa of Avila Roman Catholic Church in Prospect Heights, the police said. About 11 a.m., a man who seemed to be in his 20's knocked on the door of the rectory, at 563 Sterling Place, and insisted on talking to a priest, the police said. The priest asked the man to come back later. When the man returned, he had a companion and a handgun, Detective Kevin Czartoryski said. The man, who was allowed inside while his companion waited outside, pulled a gun on the Rev. Thomas Ahern, robbing him of $160 from the church's petty cash box before escaping. The priest was not hurt, the police said.
Tina Kelley (NYT)",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Corrections
The credits yesterday with a television review of 'Seeking Solutions With Hedrick Smith' on PBS misstated the day of the broadcast. As noted in the review, it is tonight; it was not last night.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"New Haven Man Is Leader Of National Humane Society
Wayne P. Pacelle, 39, a native of New Haven and a graduate of Notre Dame High School in West Haven and Yale University, has taken over as president and chief executive of the Humane Society of the United States in Washington.
Mr. Pacelle, who oversees what he said is an $89 million annual budget and a staff of 300, was elected by a national board of directors in April. He took office June 1.
Mr. Pacelle, who during the last 10 years has held several positions with the society, said he would like Connecticut to make steel-jawed leg-hold traps illegal.
'Many states have banned these inhumane and barbaric devices, but Connecticut has not,' he said.
Mr. Pacelle said he wants to 'zero in on particularly egregious abuses' such as the restrictive confinement of animals at so-called factory farms; cock and dog fighting, and the killing of animals for fur. He also wanted to increase the number of laws that carry felony penalties for animal cruelty.
Mr. Pacelle said he has speaking engagements around the state planned for November.
'Connecticut consumers have to make choices that affect the lives of animals, like eating certain foods and using products that are tested on animals,' he said.
WORTH NOTING",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Exhibitions on Costumes and Photographs Emphasize Color
NOT long ago, a museum in New Jersey exhibited paintings of birds in cages to the tune of chirps and tweets. The effect was magical, but it was hard to decide which was more disconcerting, the illusion that the painted images were singing or the fact that the sounds were actually coming from an aviary installed in an anteroom.
This audio-visual event was planned, while that at the Hammond Museum here came about by accident. The visual part consists of two shows, one featuring Chinese folk costumes, the other color photographs of nature and architectural details, taken by David Crofoot. The audio portion is the frog chorale that usually emanates from the museum's Japanese Stroll Garden. Upon reflection, the blend is anything but incongruous, for there must be frogs lurking in some of the scenes depicted by Mr. Crofoot, whereas the visual noise made by clothes mounted on fire-engine-red panels is as loud as its aural counterpart outside. The displays were masterminded by Abigail Free, director of the museum and before that assistant director of public relations at the Spoleto Festival in Italy, but this, the larger of the two, was supplied by the consulate general of China.
Corporations and countries are going in opposite directions, the first expanding in size as they shrink in number, the second becoming smaller and more numerous. Communism, meanwhile, declines, leaving the field open to its arch-enemy individualism. China defies these rules of thumb by remaining intact as a Communist superpower with a population of more than a billion, 8 percent of whom belong to 55 ethnic groups. Its record for tolerance is less than perfect, yet now the country sponsors an exhibition promoting the interests of 16 minorities. The brochure suggests that the gesture was almost certainly made with tourism and other economic factors in mind, but the show hints that nostalgia, the bedfellow of consumerism, is another probable cause. A display of clothes that are traditional in design but modern in vintage smacks of American Indian war bonnets worn in pageants.
Of course, it is not a spectacle for purists: visitors conditioned by dynastic masterpieces may be disturbed by the inclusion of modern, sometimes gaudy, printed fabrics; the sight of hand embroidery cheek-by-jowl with the machine variety may have the same effect on crafts enthusiasts. The ideal viewer is the one with at least a smattering of Chinese history who has seen work produced by contemporary artists, which ranges from the nonobjective to the Photo Realistic, as well as that of the past. Clothing this may be, but it nonetheless mirrors a culture that, for all its ethnic variations, has remained so grandly monolithic as to make the Western preoccupation with individualism seem trite.
A nomadic people, the Mongols made their mark by unifying China and founding the world's largest empire; they excelled as city planners, allowing nothing to stand in their way, and as horsemen, they may have invented the chic tunic-and-boot outfit. Still one of the most striking ensembles comes from the Gaoshan, a people indigenous to southeast China and Taiwan. It involves black pants and a matching tunic embroidered with two figures, male and female, each of whom stands with a serpent-like creature dangling from either hand. The ornament, which includes a decorative border, has a surprisingly African look, if not the outfit.
Under Mao, these bright garments, some trimmed with pearls, sequins and silver bells, were replaced by a blue cotton uniform not unlike that which took over the United States in the 1960's and 70's. Also on view are photographs of contemporary Chinese, the most striking of which is a black-and-white study of a  young Bai woman, seated in aquiline profile as she embroiders a slipper.
Mr. Crofoot resides in but is by no means confined to Bedford Hills. Paris and Atlanta bring out the classicist him, the one inspiring a sepia-toned study of the Pantheon's interior, the other a somewhat sarcastic appreciation of an airport parking lot empty of cars but full of street lamps. Mushrooms, however, send Mr. Crofoot into transports of eroticism and pedantry, both.
The historian Peter Gay has observed that literary allusions are a means whereby 'the educated communicate over the heads of the vulgar'; an insistence on botanical terms may be another. In any event, Mr. Crofoot seems waggishly determined to keep the great unwashed at bay, as when he entices them by depicting the heads of palms reeling in a gale against the stormy sky, only to title the scene 'Phragmites.'
The irritation provoked by pretentiousness is dispelled by the image, which is stunning, as are those of ice formations, tree trunks and other natural wonders. But it is less easy to forgive Mr. Crofoot when he lapses into photographic cliche (and condescension) by focusing on an overweight woman dressed in leisure clothes and leaning against a van -- this from a series called 'You Know Them by the Clothes They Wear.'
Both shows continue through July 12, and with luck, the frog concert, too; but, alas, the museum's Chinese festival opens and closes today. The number to call for information is 669-5033.
ART",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Ways to Combat Dumping in the Parks
LEAD: The Oct. 8 article 'Parks Are Becoming Dumping Grounds' highlighted the growing problem of dumping of all sorts of solid waste in New Jersey's parks and wildlife reserves because of the scarcity of landfill space. Certainly the most pressing need is more money to finance greater supervision and patrolling in New
The Oct. 8 article 'Parks Are Becoming Dumping Grounds' highlighted the growing problem of dumping of all sorts of solid waste in New Jersey's parks and wildlife reserves because of the scarcity of landfill space. Certainly the most pressing need is more money to finance greater supervision and patrolling in New Jersey's parks.
However, today the shrinking natural resource of recreational land and space for wildlife is a problem that can be attacked from another angle. I feel we must step up vigilance in preventing illegal dumping by prosecuting the violators.
It is also imperative that the public be educated on the alternatives to illegal dumping. Municipalities and state agencies must make the public aware of both public and private-sector companies that recycle solid waste like appliances and construction supplies. If the public becomes more aware that there are solid-waste recycling firms out there, the temptation of dumping illegal will lessen.  NADINE B. MARICONDA
Director, Recycling Department of Public Works
Recycling Division  City of Paterson",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Youth Chief Is Expected To Head Unit For Homeless
The city's Department of Homeless Services, which is about to regain the status of a separate agency, will be headed by Martin Oesterreich, a veteran of city government, the Giuliani administration is expected to announce today.
Mr. Oesterreich, 50, has been the Commissioner of the Department of Youth and Community Development since 1996. Before that, he spent more than 20 years in the city's Department of Employment, overseeing various job-training programs for the unemployed and disadvantaged.
Ninfa Segarra, Deputy Mayor for Education and Human Services, said Mr. Oesterreich's extensive experience with employment programs would be especially valuable at a time when the agency is planning more work programs intended to lead the homeless to self-sufficiency.
'Issues of homelessness can be controversial,' Ms. Segarra added. 'His extraordinary ability to have good community relations is a real asset.'
At the Department for Youth and Community Development, Mr. Oesterreich oversaw the creation of Citizenship N.Y.C., a program to help legal permanent residents gain citizenship, and expanded the Beacon Afterschool program to 79 locations from 39.
He is a longtime resident of Staten Island. He is a veteran of Vietnam, where he was awarded the Purple Heart, and a 1976 graduate of John Jay College.
Mr. Oesterreich will be assuming the leadership of an agency that has not had a commissioner since September 1998, when Gordon J. Campbell left. For months, the agency had been caught in the middle of a fierce political battle between the Mayor and the City Council, but a compromise was reached last month.
Mr. Giuliani had vetoed a bill that would have kept the agency independent from the city's Human Resources Administration because he opposed the conditions attached by the City Council. Those conditions included a 200-bed limit on the size of new shelters for the homeless. The Council also issued rules to stop the practice of allowing homeless families with children to sleep overnight on the floor of the city's central Emergency Assistance Unit in the Bronx for emergency shelter.
The dispute escalated when the Council passed the new shelter regulations over Mr. Giuliani's veto. In retaliation, the Mayor threatened to put a homeless shelter in the district of Councilman Stephen DiBrienza, the bill's chief sponsor. The compromise reached last month included the Council's agreement to change a provision that kept the Department of Homeless Services part of the Human Resources Administration. That bill is expected to be passed later this month, Ms. Segarra said.
The deal included a guarantee of job security to the 2,000 people who work in homeless services. Previously, the Mayor wanted to create a separate Department of Homeless Services without job protection for the workers, who are members of District Council 37's Local 371.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"INSIDE
LEAD:
Legal Battle Over Beard
A black policeman whose job required him to shave despite a painful skin condition common to blacks won a ruling in Maryland. Law, page B9.
Differing Democrats
Mario Cuomo of New York and Jim Florio of New Jersey, despite political affinities, have vastly different governing strategies.
Legal Battle Over Beard
A black policeman whose job required him to shave despite a painful skin condition common to blacks won a ruling in Maryland. Law, page B9.
Differing Democrats
Mario Cuomo of New York and Jim Florio of New Jersey, despite political affinities, have vastly different governing strategies. Page B1.
Arrest in Dart Attacks
A 33-year-old messenger from the Bronx was arrested and charged with blowing darts at women in midtown Manhattan. Page B1.
Motorola Sets an Example
Motorola, the world's biggest supplier of wireless phones, may be avoiding the past mistakes of American electronics companies. Page D1.
2 Rushdie Books Coming
Salman Rushdie has sold a new novel and a collection of essays, both of which are to be published in the United States next year. Page C28.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"CHRONICLE
WILLIAM E. CURRY JR., who ran for Governor in Connecticut last year and lost to John G. Rowland, will join the White House as an adviser to President Clinton.
A White House spokeswoman said that Mr. Curry would be working in an advisory role, probably focusing on domestic policy, but that it was premature to discuss the details at this time.
The White House is expected to make an official announcement today.
Mr. Curry, 43, a Democrat, began his political career in 1978, when he defeated a party-endorsed candidate for Connecticut state senator, and he later defeated a Republican incumbent. After four years in the State Senate, he made an unsuccessful run for Congress. In 1990, he unseated the four-term Democratic State Comptroller, Ed Caldwell.
Mr. Curry first met Mr. Clinton while working for him during the 1992 Presidential campaign.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Boycott Threat Over Essay Test
Amid the anxiety of teachers and parents over the state's new fourth-grade test, a dispute has arisen over a new, related examination that the city will give to second and third graders in early March.
Representatives from a group of a dozen alternative elementary schools will meet with the Board of Education to seek assessment options other than the test, which is called the Early Performance Assessment in Language Arts, or E-PAL. Parents from two East Harlem schools are threatening a boycott of the assessment, which involves writing an essay about a reading selection.
The schools, all members of the nonprofit Center for Collaborative Education, want the Board of Education to accept something similar to their current methods of assessing students skills, said Heather Lewis, the center's executive co-director.
Education experts say the new test is aimed at preparing students for the fourth-grade test. And the test has provoked similar worries, especially in the city's alternative elementary schools, some of which  have struggled with the board over their independence and have rejected standard report cards in favor of teacher-written essays on students' progress.
Linda Colon, the co-chairwoman of the Parents Association of Central Park East I, an alternative school in East Harlem, said she was calling parents to gauge their feelings about the test. 'We have a perfectly adequate way of assessing students in the early grades,' Ms. Colon said. 'We don't need this other tool.' Egeria Bennett, a member of the Parents Association of River East, the other East Harlem school, said she plans to call parents to discuss her objections as well.
If a waiver of the test is not granted, some parents plan to boycott the test.
'I prefer him to stay home,' said Maritza Ocasio-Solis, whose son Alex attends second grade at Central Park East I. 'I don't think he is ready for such a test.' Diana Domenech, whose daughter Jessya Brown is a  second grader at River East, plans to do the same.
Sidney Massey, the teacher-director of River East, wrote in a school newsletter article, 'Who will shout out, 'We've had enough!' ' He also asked what would happen if parents 'requested/demanded of school personnel that their youngsters not participate in such testing?'
J. D. LaRock, a spokesman for the Board of Education, said it did not have a policy on exemptions from the test. But he said because the scores are not used for promotions or school placement, there should be  no anxiety about them. 'The thought is parents would want their children to take the test to be more informed about their reading,' Mr. LaRock said.
Edward Chittenden, senior research scientist at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., said that testing small children can do more damage than good if parents or schools attach too much importance to it. Also, reading is not a skill that needs a precise measurement, he said: 'It is kind of like riding a bicycle. You can tell pretty quickly if they know how.'
But Lucy Calkins, a professor at Teachers College at Columbia University, said the new test, together with another twice-yearly reading assessment, are a 'giant step ahead' from the city's old multiple-choice tests. The new techniques help teachers to assess students against set standards, she said. 'As teachers we have to face facts,' she said. 'You have to confront where your kids are.'
JULIAN E. BARNES
NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: EAST HARLEM",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Watching Brides, and Rarely Holding Their Peace
Their friendship revolves around the arch and fountain that tie a half-dozen streets in a loop at the northwest corner of Prospect Park, and it takes form on sunny, warm Saturdays.
They have been meeting at Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn for more than a decade, drawn by a summertime phenomenon: hundreds of newlyweds pause at the plaza to have a snapshot taken in their wedding finery, using the majestic setting as a backdrop before heading off to a reception or honeymoon.
The friends, all women, often take sandwiches and ice-cold sodas to offer flower girls, and a sewing kit to mend a hem or torn seam on a gown. Their children call them the 'Happy Wedding Watchers.'
Rhoda Hill, 67, is the club president, but her official duties are few. Recently she arrived first and staked out the perfect viewing spot, a prime patch of shade with stairs nearby to rest on. 'No matter how hot it is, it's cool where we sit,' she said.
Next to arrive was Daphne Joseph, 71, a mother of seven, a grandmother of 17 and a great-grandmother of nine. She wore a white T-shirt bearing the message: 'At my age I've seen it all; I've heard it all; I've done it all; I just can't remember it all.' Ms. Joseph admits, with no shame, that it's true.
Then came Joyce Johnston, 70, carrying three mystery novels, and Madge Plummer, 55, with her hair in curlers. A dozen other women hold membership to the club, but these four claim seniority.
About 4 p.m., the white limousines began pulling up, first one, then two, then two dozen. Traffic was jammed so tight that an ambulance had to drive onto the curb and over the grass to get by. Within an hour, the police threatened to ticket and tow the limousines, which were parked bumper to bumper along the rotary, some of them crisscrossed beneath the arch.
In an instant, the plaza swirled with colors. One bride wore a traditional African dress with a matching head wrap. The bridesmaids in an Asian wedding party were draped in lipstick red, while a Latino couple wore customary black and white. Photographers barked orders as young boys in tuxedos tried to loosen their collars.
'It's a cultural experience,' Ms. Plummer explained.
'We see the good, the bad and the ugly,' Ms. Joseph interjected as five groomsmen walked past on the brick path, each of them wearing peach-colored suits and awkward smiles.
Ms. Hill, the bold one, shouted flattery, and instructions, to already bewildered brides. 'You don't want lace showing, honey,' she advised a woman posing on the steps leading up to the fountain, before rearranging the hem herself.
As another wedding procession passed, Ms. Hill grabbed the hand of a young flower girl who was teetering precariously on high heels. Moments later, she spread out a plastic Macy's bag so a bride could sit without dirtying her gown.
Ms. Hill frets over the women as only a mother could. 'This is my relaxation time,' she said.
All the women, who have raised babies and buried a few, agreed that seeing a couple in love and just starting out seemed to put things in their proper perspective.
At times, they said, the plaza feels like the nexus of the universe and the world is made a little smaller. Four generations will sometimes converge, with grandchildren and great-grandchildren scurrying about. The retired women have been reunited with old friends who just happened by, and whose children will often make a point of visiting the plaza on their wedding day.
On one occasion, Ms. Plummer recalled, a man who had lived next door to her family years ago in Jamaica (the island, not the one in Queens) arrived at the plaza, arm in arm with a woman they had not known as his wife. Taken aback, she said, she whispered to her mother: 'Isn't that him? I didn't know he had found a new wife.' Ms. Plummer mustered a shy wave. The man turned red, then turned away.
Between the ebb and flow of wedding parties, the women marveled at how big Ms. Hill's twin grandchildren, Nina and Nicholas, had grown in 16 months. Children in America grow up so fast, they said, and so wild. 'What do they put in the food?' Ms. Joseph asked in the lilting tones of her native Trinidad.
The women commiserate with one another. There's never enough time, they say, or money. Ms. Joseph moaned about a man who had promised to frame a mirror for her, but kept it and her cash instead. Ms. Plummer said she had been thinking a lot about her life lately; she had tossed flowers on the coffin of a childhood friend the day before.
'What is life?' she wondered.
Conversation turned, as it often does, to the Bible. Ms. Plummer brought up King Solomon. He had wealth, he drank from a golden cup, he had all the women he could want. But he also had something that they are all seeking: wisdom. 'Vanity is vanity, all is vanity,' Ms. Plummer recited.
They talked about Sept. 11, how some were saved and others lost, and worried that most people still treated one another like trash. They remembered their own weddings and how their families feuded over who would be in the bridal parties. When, they wondered, are people going to realize that life's too short?
Their conversation, its lines of logic circling like the traffic, continued as the sun dipped behind the trees, casting a soft green hue across the plaza.
Prospect Park Journal",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"HOT DIGGITY! DOG DIGGITY! -- QUICK BITE/Hot Grill; Staying Power, to Go
The Hot Grill in Clifton, another venerable institution in the wiener world, was featured as a Quick Bite in the New Jersey section on Jan. 12, 1997.
Many say the Hot Grill produces the definitive Texas Wiener. The Grill certainly has longevity: 35 years in operation (and built on the site of an earlier Texas wiener restaurant). And it has productivity: on an average Saturday, 3,000 to 4,000 wieners are fried up, according to Dominic Sportelli, an owner.
The Hot Grill sells a lot of its sauce to go, at $1.80 a pint and $3.60 a quart. 'People move away and miss it. We've mailed sauce to England and Italy, a lot to Florida,' Mr. Sportelli said last year. He didn't mention Texas.
Hot Grill, 669 Lexington Avenue, Clifton; (201) 772-6000. Hours: Sundays  through Thursdays, 8 A.M. to 1 A.M. and Saturdays and Sundays 8 A.M. to 2 A.M.",2
Top/News/New York and Region,"Rabbi Yitzchok Singer, 72; Led Bialystoker Synagogue
Rabbi Yitzchok Singer, whose leadership of the historic Bialystoker Synagogue on the Lower East Side of Manhattan helped it thrive despite four decades of community change, died on Sunday at Beth Israel Medical Center. He was 72.
He died of a heart attack, a spokesman for the synagogue said.
Membership of the congregation now stands at 400, but the synagogue also draws many worshipers who work on Wall Street and elsewhere downtown and who want to pray during the workday.
While other Orthodox synagogues of the Lower East Side closed as their members moved to Brooklyn or the suburbs, the Bialystoker Synagogue grew as the newly fashionable neighborhood's Orthodox community also rebounded. Rabbi Singer 'was significantly responsible in bringing about its renaissance,' said Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the New York State Assembly, in a telephone interview from Tel Aviv yesterday.
'Surprisingly, in his later years, his synagogue was the one where many young people moving into the neighborhood became affiliated,' said Mr. Silver, a vice president of the synagogue and a lifelong member whose bar mitzvah was held there. Mr. Silver invited Rabbi Singer to deliver the invocation in the State Legislature when he was elected speaker in 1994.
Known as a eloquent orator, Torah scholar and philanthropist, Rabbi Singer was a rarity in Orthodox Jewry: a magnet for those from across the spectrum of Orthodox practice from modern to Hasidic.
'Though in practice and ritual, he and the synagogue followed all the tenets of Orthodoxy, he welcomed everyone from the ultrareligious to those who were not at all observant and made them feel they belonged,' said Norman Dawidowicz, a past president of the congregation, founded in 1878 by immigrants from the Polish city of Bialystok.
Heir to a rabbinic tradition, Rabbi Singer was born in Newark in 1928. Two years after his ordination at the Yeshiva Torah Vodaath in Brooklyn, he assumed the pulpit that had been held by his late father, Rabbi Eliahu Singer, at the Austreich Ungarisher Shul in Newark. He was also spiritual leader of the Garden Street Synagogue in Hartford from 1956 to 1960.
He married Bluma Halperin, the daughter of a Hasidic leader and a direct descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, the 18th-century founder of Hasidism.
She survives him, as do five sons, Boruch Singer, Yosef Singer and Yisroel Singer of Manhattan, Rabbi Eli Hersh Singer of Brooklyn, and Nussie Singer of Queens; two brothers, Yosef Singer of Englewood, N.J., and Jack Singer of Brooklyn; and 12 grandchildren.
In 1960, Rabbi Yitzchok Singer moved to New York, where he became leader of the Bialystoker Synagogue, an anchor for Jewish life on the Lower East Side. The synagogue is believed to be the only one in the city that has four services every morning, starting at 6 a.m. for people who are in their offices at 7 a.m.
Rabbi Singer raised funds for institutions, schools, yeshivas and hospitals, and sometimes helped strangers who walked in off the street. He was a hospital chaplain at New York University Medical Center, and at his death was president of the United Jewish Council of the Lower East Side and chairman of the Lower East Side Board of Rabbis.
'He was constantly concerned about the future,' Mr. Davidowicz said. 'Two months ago, he convened a meeting of the executive committee to plan changes in light of changes in the community. After all, the neighborhood has gone from the cradle of immigrant life to the area with the highest per capita ratio of nightclubs in Manhattan.
'He saw that as an opportunity to reach out to a whole group of Jews he had never reached before, including the very young and the unaffiliated.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Tide Charts To Help Fight Beach Debris
LEAD: Federal and state officials said yesterday that they think they can use their knowledge of tides and other currents to predict where floating garbage is likely to appear in the waters around New York City in the summer and remove much of it before it washes onto beaches.
Federal and state officials said yesterday that they think they can use their knowledge of tides and other currents to predict where floating garbage is likely to appear in the waters around New York City in the summer and remove much of it before it washes onto beaches.
A $1 million program announced by the officials will use helicopters and boats to spot and collect garbage floating in the waterways leading to the Atlantic. Special attention will be paid to periods after storms and during full moons, when tides run high and carry debris.
In the last two years, much debris has been deposited on beaches, leaving them unused or underused, even on the best days. The material that washed up, some of which was medical waste, was occasionally accompanied by news of malfunctions at sewage-treatment plants and the presence of coliform bacteria in bathing areas. 'Lack of Public Faith and Trust'
The new effort was announced by the acting regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, William J. Muszynski, who cited a 'lack of public faith and trust in ocean waters' and $2 billion in lost revenue because sunbathers feared using the beaches.
Mr. Muszynski was accompanied at a news conference at 26 Federal Plaza by officials of New York State and City, New Jersey, the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers. The initiative principally involves creating a group of workers from the agencies.
The agencies have vowed to communicate more extensively with one another, coordinate efforts and work harder by using boats and helicopters to collect floating garbage, called 'floatables,' more aggressively.
'The primary thing is the coordination and the communications network,' said Margaret Randol, a spokeswoman for the E.P.A. and its acting director of external programs.
Three vessels normally used by the Corps of Engineers to collect driftwood will also collect floating garbage. They will go to designated spots in the Narrows and the Raritan Bay-Arthur Kill area for the three-day period around three full moons in the summer. The boats will be equipped with small-mesh nets to pick up garbage.
Corps vessels have tried to collect trash before, but not with the nets that New York and New Jersey will provide. An engineer, Col. Marion Caldwell, said he hoped that with the new nets his ships would be more effective. 'To Be Kept in Perspective'
Mr. Muszynski stressed that the effort was a pilot program that was not the 'be-all and end-all answer,' but that it should reduce beach closings and warnings to the public like those issued the last two summers. He cited work begun by New York City and New Jersey to clean shorelines to the high-tide point.
'I think the announcement needs to be kept in perspective,' Representative Robert G. Torricelli, Democrat of Hackensack, N.J., said. 'The harbor will never be cleaned and the beaches never secure until a proper investment is made in storm-water systems and much more is done to to remove rotting piles and submerged vessels that are causing the debris.'
Mr. Torricelli called the initiative a positive development but 'a very measured response to a much larger problem.'
'There will never be enough ships to remove debris from the harbor,' he said. 'People must understand that although the tone of the Bush Administration has changed, the budget remains remarkably the same.' Rules on Medical Waste
A senior scientist of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Allen Hershkowitz, said the Government had been laggard in issuing regulations on medical waste, where it originates and where it goes.
Mr. Muszynski said at his news conference that new rules would be issued by the end of the month. Mr. Hershkowitz said he doubted that hospitals and clinics would be able to respond quickly enough.
'I am convinced that the stuff will still wash up on shore,' Mr. Hershkowitz said. 'It is a stopgap Band-Aid gesture brought about by a desperate concern about the public's outrage that will be once again unleashed on a regulatory environment that has inadequately protected the public interest.'
The commander of the First Coast Guard District, Rear Adm. Richard I. Rybacki, said cutters and helicopters would be ordered to look for trash. The areas to receive special attention include parts of the Hudson and East Rivers, the Arthur Kill and Newark and Raritan Bays. He said the activity would be akin to the Coast Guard work in detecting oil spills.
The chief of operations of the Corps of Engineers, Thomas M. Creamer, said the corps would not hire new workers or divert people from other jobs to retrieve garbage, even though they would have the additional task of separating trash from driftwood and turning it over to the New York City Sanitation Department.
'The key,' he said, 'is to take our ongoing drift-collection boats and put them into scientifically selected positions.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Questions About a Sting That Used a Teen-Ager
The parents of an 11-year-old New Jersey boy who was murdered near his home last fall while selling candy for school are considering suing the law enforcement, court and mental health officials who had dealings with the suspect, a 15-year-old boy, for several turbulent weeks before the killing.
The victim's parents, Edward and Valerie Werner, formally notified the officials by letter this month that they might seek financial damages in the death of their son, Edward, who was sodomized and strangled Sept. 27 in Jackson Township.
The parents' lawyer, Beth G. Baldinger, cautioned that the letters did not accuse anyone of making mistakes that led to the murder. She said they were filed because a state law required the Werners to inform public agencies and officials of a possible lawsuit within 90 days of the crime. She said a final decision on a suit would be made after the criminal investigation ends.
The Werners' letter focuses on two stormy episodes in the life of the suspect, Samuel Manzie, in the month before the murder. The first was his recruitment in an undercover investigation of a 43-year-old paroled pedophile who officials say had enticed him, via the Internet, into an illicit affair. At first the teen-ager, with his parents' blessing, agreed to let investigators secretly record his phone calls with the man, Stephen Simmons of Holbrook, N.Y. But then the youth rebelled, smashing the recording device and alerting Mr. Simmons to the investigation.
After the outburst, Samuel Manzie became unruly, and his parents tried to have him committed for long-term psychiatric care. But officials at an emergency psychiatric center in the Kimball Medical Center in Lakewood, N.J., and at the Ocean County Family Court rejected their request.
The court system and the Kimball Center have received the Werners' letter, as has the Shoreline Behavioral Health Center in Toms River, where the Manzies sent their son for outpatient counseling after learning of his relationship with Mr. Simmons. Letters have also gone to the Monmouth County Prosecutor's office and the New Jersey State Police, the lead agencies investigating Mr. Simmons.
Psychiatrists and experts in prosecution of pedophiles have endorsed the use of 'sting calls' like those made by the Manzie youth. But they recommend that officials get a therapist's assessment of a teen-age victim before setting up the sting, to make sure he or she can handle the emotional stress.
That was not done in Samuel Manzie's case.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also endorsed sting calls as a valuable way to capture pedophiles, and has said that, while some teen-age participants could suffer further emotional trauma, most found that it gave them 'an almost therapeutic sense of empowerment or return of control.'
The National Center for Prosecution of Child Abuse, a branch of the National District Attorneys Association, calls the stings a 'highly effective tool' against child abuse. But in training prosecutors to work with youths, the center recommends psychiatric evaluations for the youths recruited, including those with no history of mental instability.
'The dynamics of sexual abuse creates all kinds of emotional and psychological ramifications in children,' said Daniel M. Armagh, the center's director. 'Some children are just not emotionally ready to confront a perpetrator on the phone.'
John A. Kaye, the Monmouth County Prosecutor, said the authorities had not believed Samuel Manzie needed an assessment. 'This boy was calm and cooperative throughout the entire matter,' Mr. Kaye said. 'Everything seemed normal.  We had no indication he had any psychological problems. Even if we did a psychological and it was borderline, we might have gone ahead anyway. No one thought for a millisecond what could have happened to Eddie Werner.'
Mr. Kaye said Samuel Manzie's parents, Nicholas and Dolores, wanted Mr. Simmons arrested and endorsed their son's making the calls.
But immediately after Samuel Manzie was arrested, the family's lawyer, Michael Critchley, said the authorities had been 'playing with dynamite' by enlisting the youth, since at the time he had been the victim of sexual abuse, was in outpatient psychiatric treatment and was taking an antidepressant, Paxil.
Mr. Kaye rejected the notion that the sting calls were a factor in the murder. 'I don't think you can lay the blame for what happened in Jackson Township on anyone other than the actor himself,' he said.
Several psychiatrists interviewed recently said they approved using abuse victims for sting calls. But, like Mr. Armagh, they stressed the need for an evaluation of emotional stability before a youth was selected.
The psychiatrists said some teen-age victims of pedophiles may not have the same values as detectives or share the vindictiveness that pedophilia creates in parents and other adults, especially if the child still has a sense of loyalty to the abuser.
Dr. Hans Steiner, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University Medical Center, said the Manzie youth's involvement with a 43-year-old man suggested he had already been struggling with his sexual identity and was therefore emotionally fragile. 'Their error was they thought he was a full-functioning adult,' Dr. Steiner said. 'Suppose he had a positive attachment? You're stacking the cards against the kid.'
Dr. Fred Berlin, an associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, said, 'If we were imposing our adult sensitivities on him, we may have inadvertently added to his difficulties.'
Dr. Diane Schetky, a child and forensic psychiatrist in Rockport, Me., agreed with her colleagues that the authorities should have learned more about the Manzie youth's strengths and vulnerabilities before enlisting his help. She said it was possible the boy was ashamed of his relationship with Mr. Simmons and of helping detectives.
'Shame often underlies a lot of violent acts,' Dr. Schetky said. 'If he's got a lot of self-loathing, he might turn his anger on someone beneath him, trying to feel he's in control and more powerful.'
Even though Mr. Kaye's staff did not have the Manzie youth evaluated before recruiting him, there were other attempts to treat his psychological problems before the murder.
A day or so after their son quit the investigation, the Manzies began a futile quest to have him committed for long-term psychiatric treatment.
On Sept. 22, five days before the murder, they went to the Kimball Medical Center, which is regulated by New Jersey's Division of Mental Health Services. After the boy was kept overnight, a mental-health screener found that he posed no danger to himself or others and thus did not meet the state's legal standard for involuntary commitment.
Officials at Kimball and at New Jersey's Division of Mental Health Services, which oversees crisis centers like Kimball, refused to discuss the case or identify who made the psychiatric assessment of the teen-ager, citing confidentiality of medical records.
But Mr. Kaye said Mrs. Manzie had adamantly refused to take her son home from Kimball on Sept. 23. At one point, he said, officials there discussed the possibility that Mrs. Manzie, not her son, should be in a psychiatric institution. 'She was very emotional,' Mr. Kaye said.
A family lawyer, David Ruhnke, said that the parents were afraid of their son and that Mrs. Manzie had told officials at Kimball, 'If you make me take him home, I'll slit my throat.'
But, Mr. Ruhnke said, the officials insisted on discharging the youth.
The next morning, the family took their case to a Family Court judge in Toms River, James N. Citta.
But an official in the court's family crisis unit, Paula H. Jacques, said the youth did not require long-term inpatient treatment, court records show. As the Manzies listened, Ms. Jacques told Judge Citta, 'He is their child and he is their responsibility, and he's going to get better faster if they help.'
Judge Citta told the boy that he did not seem to be mentally disabled or psychopathic, but appeared to have 'adjustment problems.' He ordered family counseling.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Lawyers Pressing Trenton On 'Megan's Law' Money
The New Jersey Bar Association began a campaign yesterday to push state government to provide public defenders for indigent sex offenders filing appeals under ""Megan's Law"" instead of relying on private lawyers to represent them free.
There has been widespread grumbling in the legal community about proposals that lawyers work free, or pro bono, for the sex offenders. The state bar association's trustees voted to file a lawsuit against the mandatory unpaid assignments in early November if they are not dropped.
In a statement issued after the trustees met in New Brunswick, the president of the association, Harold A. Sherman, appeared to set a deadline for state government to act. Mr. Sherman said the association, which has 20,000 members, will hire a lawyer by Nov. 1, ""in the event that other ways of resolving the issue prove ineffective.""
In the statement, Mr. Sherman said that state-paid public defenders were fully capable of handling appeals filed by convicted offenders and that the association would press the Legislature to finance hearings for those appeals and any subsequent ones.
The lawyer hired by the association would be charged with preparing a lawsuit, according to the statement. But no date was set for the filing of the suit.
Mr. Sherman declined to comment on the statement after the trustees' meeting. The statement read in part:
""We are hopeful that the Governor, the Legislature, and the Chief Justice will take the appropriate steps necessary to remedy the situation, and that a lawsuit won't be necessary. However, the bottom line is that attorneys should not be forced to handle cases of such a highly specialized, costly, time-consuming and onerous nature.""
In addition, according to the statement, some lawyers have a ""moral objection"" to representing convicted sex offenders.
The law was named after 7-year-old Megan Kanka, who was raped and killed in July 1994 in Hamilton Township, N.J., by a neighbor who had twice been convicted of sex crimes. Residents did not know his criminal history, and the Legislature consequently enacted a law providing for community notification of the presence of sex offenders who have served their sentences. Last July, the State Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law, but gave offenders the right to challenge notification provisions made against them. The court also said that indigent offenders were entitled to court-appointed lawyers.
This week, both Gov. Christine Todd Whitman and the Senate President, Donald T. DiFrancesco, expressed willingness to listen to the lawyers' complaints but were not ready to enlist the public defenders or provide any extra money for them. Mr. DiFrancesco said the complaints about the pro bono work were premature. He said no one knew how many sex offenders would seek appeals against county prosecutors' assessments of them as dangerous, and of those, how many would be poor enough to qualify for a free, court-appointed lawyer.
Of nine offenders' hearings scheduled so far in state courts, only two offenders have qualified for pro bono lawyers.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Mayor Turns a Step Back Into a Stride Ahead
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg figured out a way yesterday to turn bad news, like Citigroup's decision to move 1,900 jobs out of Lower Manhattan, into a ray of economic sunshine.
He announced that Citigroup, the city's largest private employer, would erect a $200 million office building in Long Island City, Queens, and had promised to increase its work force by 600 over the next two years.
The fact that Citigroup was pulling 1,600 technology jobs out of the still-wounded precincts of Lower Manhattan and sending them to a corporate campus in Warren, N.J., did not even come up until the seventh paragraph of a nine-paragraph mayoral news release. That is where it also mentioned that another 300 bank jobs would depart for Melville, on Long Island.
'Yes, some jobs are going to New Jersey, but more jobs are coming here, and that's the trend that you want,' Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference. 'You will always lose some kinds of jobs. The question is: Are you making New York an attractive place so that you have more jobs coming in than going out, and are the jobs coming in the higher-value jobs which give New York more of a future? And I think this is a very positive announcement.'
The mayor told reporters that Citigroup had promised to replace the existing 1,900 jobs over the next two years with higher-paying jobs. Citigroup's president, Robert B. Willumstad, said the bank would not give up any space in Lower Manhattan.
The bank said it would add 2,500 jobs in all to its New York payroll over the next two years. Subtract the 1,900 jobs lost to the suburbs and you have a net gain of 600, if the bank's projections are met.
'It's a great way to make lemonade from lemons,' said Harvey Robins, once an aide to two previous mayors, Edward I. Koch and David N. Dinkins. 'But I hope the bank's promises don't turn sour. We need jobs today, not a promise tomorrow. We're still 200,000 jobs behind where we were before 9/11.'
In New Jersey, Gov. James E. McGreevey did not gloat about stealing jobs from Manhattan (unlike his predecessors) when he held his own news conference in Trenton yesterday. In fact, he did not even mention New York.
He said that thanks to a tax break worth $57 million over 10 years, Citigroup planned to move 1,600 'out-of-state jobs' to a corporate campus in Warren (the former home of Lucent Technologies), and create 650 jobs.
As for Long Island City, Citigroup said it would build a 14-story, 475,000- square-foot building for 1,500 workers across the street from its existing 48-story office building on Court Square.
It plans to move 800 people from Midtown and add another 700 jobs over time.
'Citigroup is the city's largest private-sector employer,' the mayor said in the release, 'and will get even bigger with the construction of this beautiful new building and commitment to create more jobs in New York City.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Bulldozers In Camden Make Room for Affordable Homes
Workers began demolishing an entire block of abandoned, dilapidated brick town houses today as part of the Whitman administration's first major effort to help build affordable housing in this impoverished city on the Delaware River.
Gov. Christine Todd Whitman climbed into a front loader to help knock down the first of 35 city-owned buildings on Washington Street that have been empty for more than a decade. Mrs. Whitman said the demolition would not only pave the way for construction of new row houses, but also help rid the neighborhood of drug dealers who had been operating out of the abandoned buildings.
'By sending these machines into action, we are clearing the way for a rebirth of this historic city,' Mrs. Whitman said. 'Where there are crack houses, there will be family homes. Where there are dangerous streets, there will be safe communities.'
Governor Whitman, who has been accused of paying too little attention to the state's cities, said she had done more to spur economic development in urban areas than previous governors. She also dismissed criticism by affordable-housing advocates that she has not provided additional state money to create more such housing statewide. The Governor earlier this year rejected a legislative proposal for a $290 million bond act to help finance new and rehabilitated housing. Mrs. Whitman said the state had enough resources to do the job.
State and local officials estimate that there are more than 3,000 vacant houses in Camden, where the unemployment rate exceeds 20 percent and more than half of the city's 87,000 residents receive some form of government assistance. State, city and business leaders have been struggling over different plans to help revitalize the city.
While Mayor Arnold W. Webster has had his differences with the Whitman administration, he praised the project and the administration's plans to help finance the construction of 30 new row houses on the site. 'I have to take a positive approach to this,' Mr. Webster said. 'It is going to be a shot in the arm for us.'
Jane M. Kenny, the State Commissioner of Community Affairs, said the town houses, built in 1880, were in such disrepair that it was cheaper to demolish than to renovate them. She said they would be replaced with new three-bedroom row houses that are to be completed next September and then sold to low- and moderate-income families for between $50,000 and $70,000. The state intends to demolish an additional 20 buildings in the coming year in Camden, and replace them with new construction. The total cost of the project is about $6 million. The state has provided financing to help create approximately 90 new housing units in Camden in the last two years, state officials said.
The Rev. Paul J. Breslin, pastor of a nearby Roman Catholic church, St. Anthony of Padua, and a founder of Camden Churches Organized for the People, has been urging the Whitman administration to do something about vacant buildings here. He praised the demolition project, but he said he hoped the state would help renovate vacant houses on blocks where families are now living. 'That is what we are looking for and they seem supportive of that,' Father Breslin said.
Esther Lopez, 26, who stood on a corner with her five small children  watching the demolition begin, said she was glad that the buildings were being taken down. 'A lot of drug dealers have been going in and out of there,' she said. 'They find a lot of dead bodies in there.'
But Ms. Lopez added that her calls to city officials to do something about the four vacant houses on her nearby block have gone unanswered. 'It is really bad,' she said. 'There are drug dealers in there and then they sit on the stoop all night. I can't let the kids out to play because they find needles and things.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Update; Attention Shoppers: No More Parking Lot Tax Snoopers
When New York State's Commissioner of Taxation and Finance sent employees to northern New Jersey in December to write down the license plate numbers of New Yorkers shopping there and then sent them letters, he said the purpose was ""educating people about their tax responsibility.""
But many outraged consumers saw the snooping as a Big Brother-like invasion of privacy. Surprised but chastened, Commissioner James W. Wetzler now is calling the mission ""an experiment that hasn't worked."" He promises not to do it again.
While hardly anyone does, a New Yorker who makes a purchase in a state with a lower sales tax than New York's is supposed to pay New York the difference.
New Jersey allows stores in economically depressed places to charge a 3 percent sales tax, or half the normal rate, whichalso exempts clothing. By contrast,the combined state and local sales tax in Manhattan is 8.25 percent and in Suffolk and Nassau counties, 8.5 percent.
The missions were failures in terms of the taxes they generated. ""The last time I asked, we had about $300 in response to these letters, which is my idea of insignificant,"" Mr. Wetzler said.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","New Jersey Daily Briefings;Court Date for Sign Laws
Bergen County towns that require commercial signs in a foreign language to give equal space to an English translation have a date in court to defend their  positions. On Thursday, Judge William G. Bassler of Federal District Court here scheduled a June 24 hearing on the constitutionality of the sign laws in Ridgefield, Englewood Cliffs, Leonia, Cliffside Park, Palisades Park and Fort Lee, which have been challenged by Korean business people in the area.
Pending the hearing, Judge Bassler also denied a request by a Korean advertising company for an injunction against enforcement of the sign laws, which the towns say are necessary to assist police and firefighters in emergencies.
JOE SHARKEY",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","In New Jersey Court, Tales of Sex, Extortion and Murder
Jonathan Nyce's world was falling apart.
His marriage of 14 years was crumbling. His pharmaceutical company -- which he founded but had later been forced to leave -- was dying. His finances were stretched thin, and he was selling his home in Hopewell Township, N.J., for $1.6 million. His wife was cheating on him. And he knew it.
It was against this backdrop, testimony reveals, that on a snowy January night in 2004, Dr. Nyce was in the garage of his home in central New Jersey, his three children tucked in their beds, his wife, Michelle, emerging from her Toyota Land Cruiser. She had just returned from a motel encounter with a landscaper, Miguel DeJesus, 35 -- a man Mrs. Nyce had promised her husband she would not see again.
Soon Mrs. Nyce, 34, was dead, her body, bloodied and beaten, found the next day inside the Land Cruiser in a creek a mile from her home. Her husband became the prime suspect.
What happened that night is now a matter for a State Superior Court jury in Mercer County to decide in a case fraught with betrayal, lust, extortion claims, lies and, possibly, videotapes.
Testimony began last Thursday, and in the first few days jurors have heard an involved account. They learned that Mrs. Nyce had carried on a yearlong affair with the landscaper, who had planted trees in their yard, and that Dr. Nyce took steps to put a stop to it.
On Wednesday, the landscaper, who said he had used several aliases, testified that he had, indeed, had an affair with Mrs. Nyce. He also testified that Dr. Nyce, 55, had called him on his cellphone in July 2003 and threatened him. 'He said, 'You put your hands on my wife again, you're going to be a dead man,'' Mr. DeJesus said.
Prosecutors contend that Dr. Nyce confronted and viciously attacked his wife, repeatedly smashing her head into the concrete floor. They say he then stuffed her behind the driver's seat of her Land Cruiser and steered the car with an ice pick down to the half-frozen Jacobs Creek, where he left her. He faces two counts, first-degree murder and trying to cover up a crime. He could face life in prison if convicted.
Dr. Nyce's lawyer, Robin K. Lord, says that the death of Mrs. Nyce was 'an accident,' and that she will prove that in court. She says that Dr. Nyce has been accused of a crime he 'did not commit' and that she will show that his wife, who she says repeatedly cheated on him, tried to attack him first. She declined to elaborate on her strategy.
'We know what occurred in that garage,' she said in a recent interview, 'and hopefully the jury will agree, when it's all said and done.'
But Ms. Lord lost a crucial pretrial battle when a judge allowed as evidence a statement Dr. Nyce made to the police saying he had heard a thud that 'made me sick' when his wife hit the concrete. And in his initial appearance in court in January, Dr. Nyce described his wife's death -- against the protest of his lawyer -- thus: 'This, what happened, was a pure accident.' She said she has not decided whether Dr. Nyce will testify.
The case has opened up a hidden world. Dr. Nyce was, by all accounts, a bright yet socially awkward man. He was about 20 years older than his Filipino wife, whom he met through a newspaper advertisement in 1990, when she was 19, her family said. A doctor of philosophy and a graduate of Temple University, Dr. Nyce was widely published in academic journals. His paper in Nature in 1997 suggested an innovative way to fight asthma, and he founded a company named EpiGenesis, now in Cranbury, N.J., to help create the drug. But the drug failed in early trials, and the company cut costs and staff. By 2003, Dr. Nyce was forced out.
In the summer before his wife's death, Dr. Nyce went to F.B.I. agents to complain that he had been threatened with extortion by a man who claimed to have videotapes of his wife having sex with another man and who threatened to sell them unless he was paid $500,000.
Dr. Nyce obtained a restraining order against Mr. DeJesus.
In testimony on Tuesday, the lead police detective for Hopewell Township, Daniel B. McKeown, said he had investigated the extortion claims in 2003.
'I didn't think Mr. Nyce was being completely honest,' he said. So far no tapes have been found.
The defense has focused heavily on the relationship between Mrs. Nyce and Mr. DeJesus, suggesting that Mr. DeJesus posed a threat to the family and may have been behind the extortion attempt. But the judge, Bill Mathesius, has shown little patience for such questioning and has repeatedly cut off and chastised Dr. Nyce's lawyer. At one point this week, the prosecutor, Doris Galuchie, exclaimed, 'This is a trial within a trial within a trial, and it's so irrelevant.' Judge Mathesius added a day later that he did not want to be 'creating a thousand little trials.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Bush Endorses New Jersey's Welfare Revisions
Buoyed by what he saw as President Bush's endorsement of New Jersey's new welfare revision laws during the State of the Union Message on Tuesday, Assemblyman Wayne R. Bryant, the author of the laws, said today that he expected White House support to speed their implementation.
Mr. Bryant also said that he and Gov. Jim Florio would go to Washington next week to testify before the Senate Finance Committee's subcommittee on Social Security and family policy about the laws, the most sweeping in the nation.
The laws, which Mr. Florio signed earlier this month, would among other things, deny additional benefits to mothers who have more children while on welfare and require welfare recipients to participate in job training or education programs to maintain their benefits.
The revisions would allow welfare recipients to earn some outside income without jeopardizing their benefits, and they would allow mothers on welfare to marry without losing their benefits.  Federal Waivers Needed
But the state needs Federal waivers to make some of the changes.
In his State of the Union Message, Mr. Bush called for changes in the welfare system, saying, ""welfare was never meant to be a life style."" He said he intended to make it quicker and easier for states to get waivers of welfare regulations.
Mr. Bryant, a Democrat from Camden, said the President used his address to ""embrace the principles behind New Jersey's welfare reform plan.""
""I hope President Bush backs up his encouraging words with sincere actions,"" he said, ""so that New Jersey's bold welfare reform initiative can move forward.""",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Our Towns; One Small World In the Midst Of the Maelstrom
LEAD: rrFor 44 years John Randolph lived in institutions for the retarded. Then, in the early 80's, someone realized that was a mistake. As Mr. Randolph said, 'They decided at that time I was more fit to be able to be put out in the world.'
rrFor 44 years John Randolph lived in institutions for the retarded. Then, in the early 80's, someone realized that was a mistake. As Mr. Randolph said, 'They decided at that time I was more fit to be able to be put out in the world.'
Since 1984 he has had his own apartment. 'I pay $191,' he said. 'I used to pay $158.' His job, for State Sales Office Furniture, is cleaning up, organizing stock and helping on deliveries. 'I work 35 hours, take home $152.14 a week,' Mr. Randolph, 59 years old, said. 'That's after taxes.' He is a willing worker. His boss, John Bogdan, made a list of daily chores. 'He's memorized it,' said Mr. Bogdan. On slow days, if the boss asks Mr. Randolph to sweep the second floor again, he is sure to point out that the list says sweeping only two times a week.
The boss always knows when Mr. Randolph finishes a job. 'I can feel him before I see him,' Mr. Bogdan said. 'John sort of hawks you. He's sitting on your shoulder, ready for you to tell him what's next.' Mr. Randolph loves to answer the phone. 'He's punctual,' Mr. Bogdan said, 'here at 8 every morning.' 'Sometimes 5 after 8,' said Mr. Randolph.
The store hired Mr. Randolph because it needed an able-bodied worker. But in one of those quirky twists, Mr. Randolph turns out to be the biggest celebrity in the joint. People are so tired of the homeless side of deinstitutionalization that they are happy to meet a success story. They keep giving him awards.
Mr. Randolph has spoken at a conference in Africa. 'I was there 19 days,' he said. He has testified before Congress.
'I've been to Washington four times,' he added. In December, officials went to the store to present him the New Jersey Victory Award, honoring an outstanding disabled person. 'We never had so many neckties here,' said Mr. Bogdan.
Mr. Randolph is in the running for the national Victory Award, to be announced in June. His photograph will soon be hung in the National Rehabilitation Hospital Hall of Victory in Washington. 'I met the Governor,' said Mr. Randolph. Gov. Thomas H. Kean? 'Yep, that's the one,' Mr. Randolph said. 'Three times.'
The other day, the award winner was assembling a desk hutch. Next, he went to the back room to check stock. 'If the box says SOM-A, it's a file drawer,' he said. See SOM-B is a three-drawer. SWO-8 - that's an L-panel oak, and these are credenzas. And, see, SOS-H.'
He has such a good attitude, people like to help him. Sundays, friends drive him to Trinity United Methodist Church. For 42 years, Mr. Randolph has been in the Boy Scouts. Last summer, Larry Mosovich, whose family owns the furniture store, drove him to Scout camp. 'I couldn't believe where this camp was,' Mr. Mosovich recalled. 'John kept saying stuff like, 'Take a left at this tree.' '
'Take 31 from Trenton,' Mr. Randolph said, 'to 46. Take 46 to where it connects to 94 and 80, then into Blairstown, then at Walnut--'
If he is asked about all the years wasted in an institution, he says he learned a lot there. He is not a perfect worker. If he thinks a job is below him, he will pout.
'He puts his head down,' Mr. Bogdan said. 'If you try to look in his face, he looks the other way.' Oh, but when Mr. Randolph is happy, he cannot hold in the smile. 'He loves going on deliveries,' said Mr. Bogdan. He loves being outdoors, in a truck, on a highway and being paid for it. He likes stopping for a sandwich. 'See, every man has their little world,' Mr. Bogdan said. 'For John, success is going on the truck.'
At day's end, Mr. Randolph asked whether there was anything to be mailed on his way home. He put on his Scout cap and headed into the rain. He identified every building on the 10-minute walk home and waited at corners for walk signs.
On the elevator, he chatted with other residents. 'Supposed to snow by Sunday,' he said. To two others he said, 'This is a reporter with me. He's doing a story on my Victory Award.'
His one-bedroom apartment at Kingsbury Towers was messy, but not outrageously. Mr. Randolph tossed his hat on the chair, beside his four other Scout caps. 'I can see the Delaware River from the living room,' he said. 'From the bedroom, I see the State Agriculture Building parking lot. Yes, this is quite a setting.'
His bookcase was full of big batteries for his camping lantern. There was not much place to sit; the sofa was jammed with a sleeping bag, groundcloths and his Special Olympics briefcase. 'I was the ambassador for New Jersey to the Special Olympics,' he said, showing a banner. 'I'll give you one of my cards.'
The elevator down was crowded. Someone was talking about the weather. 'It's supposed to snow by Sunday,' Mr. Randolph said. 'Really?' a woman asked. 'Yep,' Mr. Randolph, said, smiling.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Restrictions on Water Use Are Ordered in Bergen County
Water restrictions were imposed today on 51 of the 70 towns in Bergen County, limiting the watering of lawns and golf courses and banning noncommercial car washing and the spraying of streets, driveways, tennis courts, patios and other paved surfaces.
'If we do not take these mandatory steps now, we may face a public safety crisis in the near future,' County Executive William P. Schuber said during a news conference on the front lawn of United Water New Jersey, the water company that serves the county. 'Our uppermost concern is the safety of the people of our county.'
Mr. Schuber said he was most concerned about sufficient water supplies and pressure to fight fires in the elevated parts of the county along the Palisades. He also said he hoped the restrictions would curb heavy demands on United Water's four reservoirs and forestall a tightening of the restrictions later this summer.
The water limits come as New Jersey and other states from Maryland to New England cope with one of the worst droughts in decades. According to state officials, New Jersey just endured its second-driest July in more than 100 years and its third hottest in that time.
Mr. Schuber's declaration and the restrictions were the first ever imposed by Bergen County officials. In severe water shortages in northeastern New Jersey in the last 20 years, the Governor or the state's environmental commissioner has ordered restrictions on outdoor use of water, traditionally imposing them simultaneously on seven northeastern counties and their 2.3 million residents.
Officials in the Department of Environmental Protection said today that they were encouraging more towns, counties and local water companies to deal with water-supply problems themselves and to impose restrictions they deem necessary.
'We feel they have the sufficient capabilities to do so,' said Shing-Fu Hsueh, the state's water supply administrator. He said his staff and Gov. Christine Todd Whitman planned to focus more on statewide policies dealing with the drought and not dictate solutions to local or regional shortages.
On Monday, Mrs. Whitman issued a drought warning for all of New Jersey and appealed to all its residents to conserve water voluntarily.
Mr. Schuber's order concerned 4 of the 13 reservoirs in the northeastern part of the state. The four serve about 550,000 people in the 51 towns. The reservoirs also supply 200,000 people in seven communities in neighboring Hudson County, United Water said.
The company, a subsidiary of United Water Resources, one of the nation's largest investor-owned water companies, asked the Hudson County Executive, Robert C. Janiszewski, to declare an emergency similar to Mr. Schuber's. Mr. Janiszewski's office was prepared to issue one early this evening, but withdrew it for extra study. The draft order covered all 12 towns in Hudson County.
William Northgrave, Mr. Janiszewski's chief of staff, said it was not certain that all 12 faced a water emergency mandating outdoor restrictions. 'We don't want to issue an order that's broader than it has to be,' Mr. Northgrave said.
United Water sought the emergency declaration because its four reservoirs stood yesterday at 59.8 percent of their capacity of 13.9 billion gallons. The nine other reservoirs serving northeastern New Jersey are in far better condition. The five that supply Newark and neighboring cities were at 80.3 percent of capacity, and the Wanaque Reservoir, the largest of the 13, was 66 percent full. The average in all 13, including United Water's, was 71.3 percent.
Mr. Hsueh said that storage level, while nearly 10 percentage points below normal, was not severe enough to impose water controls on all 2.3 million people that rely on the 13 reservoirs. When Mrs. Whitman last declared a drought emergency in the state's northeastern corner, in September 1995, the 13 reservoirs were 58.7 percent full, about 19 percentage points below normal for that time of year.
Frank De Micco, president of United Water New Jersey, said heavy demand throughout July had strained the company's reservoirs. On several days, he said, it ranged between 150 million and 164 million gallons. Normal daily use in the summer is 120 million gallons, he said.  Demand since May has been considerably higher than daily use in 1995, the year of the last emergency, the company said.
Mr. De Micco said that although the number of customers served by the company had risen only 5 percent since 1995, more and more customers have in-ground lawn sprinkling systems. He said one such system can use the same amount of water a day as five households.
DROUGHT RULES  51 Towns Affected
Following are water restrictions ordered by Bergen County yesterday. County officials say first-time offenders will probably receive warnings, but subsequent violations could result in a maximum penalty of six months in jail and/or a $1,000 fine per violation.
WATERING LAWNS -- United Water customers in Bergen County with addresses ending in odd numbers may water their lawns only on odd days of the month between 6 A.M. and 9 A.M. and between 6 P.M. and 9 P.M. Customers with addresses ending in even numbers may water their lawns on even days of the month in the same hours. On golf courses, greens and tees may be watered only from 6 A.M. to 9 A.M. and 6 P.M. to 9 P.M.
CLEANING -- Cars and other vehicles may not be washed by private water customers. But commercial car washes may operate and emergency vehicles May still be washed.
Paved surfaces may not be washed.
DECORATION -- Water may not be used for ornamental purposes like decorative fountains.
CONSUMPTION -- Restaurants are not to serve water unless a patron requests it.
EXEMPTIONS -- For now, agricultural crops, nursery stock and sod at commercial sod farms may all be watered.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Just Up the Road From E Street, a Rock Landmark Stands Its Ground
Ellen Manning, pilgrim, made the four-hour drive from central Pennsylvania and stepped into the shrine. There it was. The ugly brick walls that echoed with the voice of the Boss, the autographed electric guitar hanging on the wall, the gray carpet exhaling the perfumes of a thousand ground-out cigarettes and a million spilled beers into the dark stillness of a rock club on a Sunday afternoon.
Ms. Manning, 41, pulled out a cellphone and dialed her brother's number. 'I'm here!' she said in a trembling voice. 'I saw it!'
'Here' is the Stone Pony, stomping ground of the young Bruce Springsteen and landmark of American rock 'n' roll.
And here, at the corner of Second and Ocean Avenues, across the street from the fabled, faded boardwalk, is where it looks as if the Stone Pony will stay.
A 2,500-unit redevelopment project planned for Asbury Park's devastated waterfront had threatened to displace the club. But after a two-month campaign featuring rallies, protests and, it is said, more than 70,000 letters, e-mail messages, petition signatures and phone calls from concerned rockers in every corner of the planet, the city government and the redeveloper have agreed to build around it.
'The Pony,' its owner, Domenic Santana, said today, 'is stable.'
The non-move is not completely official yet. But tonight the club had a free concert that it billed as a victory party, complete with the reunited Stone Pony house band from days of yore, Cats on a Smooth Surface. The redevelopment plan is expected to be voted on by the City Council by April, and the city manager, Terry Weldon, said today, 'I would be very surprised if the plan was approved without the Pony staying where it's at.'
Under the revised plan, conceived by a Miami architect, Andrés Duany, the Stone Pony and its outdoor beer garden would be bordered by an arc-shaped apartment building inhabited by people who would not mind a little late-night noise in return for a chance to live next door to a living piece of cultural history.
It almost did not happen that way. Mr. Santana said he had been ready to take the $3 million the redeveloper, Ocean Front Acquisitions, offered him for a building he bought for $800,000 two years ago -- and let the Pony be installed three blocks down the beach in an Art Deco former power plant. There it would have its own private beach and be at the center of an entertainment complex.
'Domenic had visions of all these tiki bars,' said the Stone Pony's general manager, Eileen Chapman.
But that was before The People spoke. Their message was, Don't Do It. Thousands of fans pleaded with him to stay and fight. Ms. Chapman told him, 'Don't prostitute yourself.' Mr. Santana, 39, reluctantly boarded the bandwagon.
'I realized that by us moving out, it would have changed the whole face of Asbury Park,' he said. 'This city was built as an entertainment resort town,' and the redevelopers 'would basically have segregated entertainment to the south end of town, whereas entertainment was always part of the whole oceanfront.'
Never mind that the entire purpose of the redevelopment is to change the whole pockmarked face of Asbury Park -- no amusement park will rise bold and stark from a waterfront lined with luxury condos.
The point, said Councilwoman Kate Mellina, who fought to keep the Stone Pony in place, is that 'it's not the same if you move it.'
'It's like Independence Hall,' she said. 'You can't recreate it somewhere else.' It's the place that people have in their heads when they dream of Asbury Park.'
Ms. Manning agreed. 'My brother and I were in a band back in the day,' she said, 'and we would always talk about how we were going to play in the Stone Pony with Bruce Springsteen someday. It's the dream of every garage band everywhere.'
Larry Fishman, a principal of Ocean Front Acquisitions, seemed resigned to the status quo. 'If they want to stay where they are, which I don't think it's a good decision but I'll live with it, I'm going to have to comply,' he said.
Gentrification will not leave the weathered, off-white Pony completely untouched. The new agreement with the city and Ocean Front requires Mr. Santana to make some repairs. 'We don't care if the style stays the same, but we don't want it falling apart,' Mr. Fishman said.
Mr. Fishman seemed relieved that the battle of the Stone Pony was over, but today, there was a crowded open house a few blocks away at another club, the Fast Lane, that has a date with the wrecking ball and has its own claim to rock history.
'Joey Ramone, God rest his soul, has played on this stage,' the owner, Walter Burns, told an audience of about 150. 'Mr. Bruce has played on this stage, jamming several times with Jon Bon Jovi, who got his start on this stage when he was 17. John Lennon and Yoko Ono sat at that bar and saw the first ever performance of 'Beatlemania.' . . .'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","41 Protesters Arrested at an Abortion Clinic
LEAD: Forty-one protesters at an abortion clinic here were arrested today on charges of defiant trespass and were released on their own recognizance, Deputy Chief James Galfy said.
Forty-one protesters at an abortion clinic here were arrested today on charges of defiant trespass and were released on their own recognizance, Deputy Chief James Galfy said.
Protesters chained themselves together at the entrance to the clinic, employees broke a window to enter the center, the police said.
One person was charged with assault on a police officer for trying to bite him, Chief Galfy said.
About 60 protesters from the anti-abortion group 'Operation Rescue' sat down in front of the doors of the North Jersey Gynecological Center at about 7 A.M. while about 20 more picketed.
Police officers from Irvington and Essex County carried protesters to two school buses when they refused to leave the clinic, Chief Galfy said.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Our Towns; A Downtown Too Decaf For Starbucks
AT first, it doesn't hit you. A stroll down Main Avenue reveals an ordinary, if aging, suburban downtown with a shoe repair shop, a couple of dry cleaners, a luncheonette here, a bakery there, a computer store. But soon you realize something is amiss. Terribly amiss. Your eyes sweep the streetscape, and you can hardly believe it. There's no Starbucks.
In its manifest destiny to caffeinate America, Starbucks appears to have missed downtown Clifton. More curiously, when local officials and developers recently informed the Seattle-based company of its apparent oversight and invited them to open a cafe as part of a renovation project, Starbucks said thanks, but no thanks.
Clifton became a suburban downtown Starbucks didn't want, and another front in the emerging class conflict over coffee.
Like other close-in suburbs, Clifton is a crossroads of industrial grit and middle class comfort. Its face to the world is a neon clock atop the Tick Tock Diner on Route 3 imploring drivers to 'Eat Heavy.'  Clifton has its share of commuter subdivisions, but its downtown sits between Passaic and Paterson, whose South American, Asian and Arab immigrants are moving into what was once a white-ethnic city. Last year, the City Council declared English the government's official language.
The redevelopment is a bid 'to distinguish ourselves,' said Patrick DeLora Jr., president of DeLuxe Cleaners, who heads the downtown improvement group. 'We're trying to get more of an upscale image.'
That's why Clifton decided it needed a good $3.30 caramel macchiato.
But a Starbucks on Main Avenue would violate a largely unrecognized maxim that all suburban downtowns are divided into two groups: those with a profusion of expensive coffee places, and those with a profusion of expensive nail salons.
Clifton has many nail shops, three near where developers hoped Starbucks would sprout. At Choice Nails, Suzanne Garretson had her hand in a Heat 'N Dry, after having her nails tipped and wrapped for $45. 'Their coffee is expensive,' she said of Starbucks. 'You go in, and they say, do you want this one or that one or this flavor or that flavor, and I am, like, just give me the basic black.' Her nails were basic brown.
Starbucks is to basic coffee what tips and wraps are to straight-up nail polish.
The company's mission is 'inspiring and nurturing the human spirit,' said Arthur Rubinfeld, senior vice president for store development at Starbucks, which has 2,200 stores in North America. 'People connect to coffee,' he said. 'Coffee is the facilitator, the glue that holds people together.'
Downtown Clifton is going to have to make do with regular old paste. While Starbucks has stores in other faded downtowns -- and its coffee is sold at Barnes & Noble, including the one on Route 3 -- Mr. Rubinfeld said Main Avenue 'didn't have the retail synergy to merit the investment we make in our stores.'
Somehow, the people of Clifton are holding up. A few were drowning their sorrows the other day with 85-cent coffee at the Clifton Spa, a luncheonette with Formica counters and swivel stools that has found synergy on Main Avenue for 60 years.
'It is a certain type of person who likes Starbucks,' said Albina DeLora, Mr. DeLora's mother, who has seen how the other half drinks at the Starbucks in nearby Montclair. 'They like to sit and read their journals and do their laptops and have their coffee. You have to have a laptop.'
Mr. Rubinfeld says Starbucks has brought people in suburbs together, declaring, 'We are the front porch of America.'
The Clifton Spa must be the tailgate. 'The backbone of America,' Richard Schiro, a security guard, calls it. 'A man making $300 a week could come in here and feel comfortable. If they go to Starbucks, they have to first look and see if they can afford it.'
Not at the Clifton Spa. Scott Reid, the owner, will keep a tab running for you and, as for nurturing the human spirit, when there's a rare lull in banter at the counter, the TV in the corner with rabbit-ear antennae gets pretty good reception.
Oh, yes. Just like at Starbucks, the Spa's customers love the coffee and, Mr. Reid said, 'they squawk about' the price.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Roller Coaster That Killed 2 Had Past Problems, Riders Report
The roller coaster that malfunctioned Saturday night, killing a 39-year-old woman and her 8-year-old daughter, had had previous problems, according to earlier passengers of the ride who have now reported the incidents to New Jersey investigators.
William M. Connolly, director of the state's Division of Codes and Standards, said that the past riders of the coaster, Wild Wonder, in Ocean City, N.J., reported experiences he characterized today as 'unusual' and 'out of the ordinary.'
Mr. Connolly declined to provide any details of the passengers' reports while his staff is investigating and attempting to confirm them. But, he said, some of the reported problems, if true, would have required the owner and operator of the ride, Gillian's Wonderland Pier, to notify his office, which oversees ride safety at amusement parks and carnivals.
'Some of the things we're hearing could have conceivably been reported,' he said at a news conference here. Cautioning reporters that he was speaking hypothetically, Mr. Connolly said any mechanical problems that forced the roller coaster to be shut down during operation should have been reported to his office. But he declined to say whether any of the previous passengers had described a shutdown or any operational problem similar to the two malfunctions  Saturday night that prompted the roller coaster to stop near the top of a 41-foot ascent and then slide rapidly backward down the slope into a car waiting in the loading platform.
The two victims, Kimberly Bailey, of Pomona, N.Y., and her daughter, Jessica, were hurled from their car around 10 P.M. as the coaster whipped into a 90-degree curve in front of the platform. Both apparently struck the ride's support columns and then fell to the ground.
The ride's safety bars are only designed to stop riders from being thrust forward out of the cars, not backward, Mr. Connolly said. He said his staff is considering requiring that all roller coasters in the state be equipped with seat belts to prevent an ejection in either direction.
Mr. Connolly said he hoped to have a report on the cause of accident prepared by late this week. Two ride inspectors and an engineer are conducting the investigation and focusing now on mechanical failure, he said. He said they are exploring four possible factors: design defect, equipment defect, maintenance problems or operator error.
The ride was manufactured by an Italian company, Zamperla Inc., and erected in late spring at Gillian's Wonderland, Mr. Connolly said. It was inspected during construction in April and again in June, he said. Inspectors examined it again when it opened on July 1. Gov. Christine Todd Whitman attended opening-day ceremonies and pressed the button to start its first trip. State inspectors examined the ride again on July 17 and July 21, Mr. Connolly said.
No problems were detected, he said. He said the ride was inspected three times in its first month of operation because all new rides are routinely inspected frequently.
Zamperla, which has an office in Parsippany, N.J., issued a statement today saying it was 'deeply saddened by the accident.'
Mr. Connolly said Gillian's had not informed his office of any problems with the ride during its eight weeks of operation. The state requires amusement park operators to file so-called incident reports for a wide range of problems on rides. The authorities must be told immediately, via hot line, about any passenger who suffers a broken bone, a dislocation or other serious injury requiring immediate medical treatment. Less serious injuries must be reported within 24 hours via fax. A third type of report covers just about any other type of incident -- from a vomiting passenger to malfunctioning equipment. It must be filed within 10 days.
Since the accident, Mr. Connolly said his staff has interviewed 20 to 30 people, including some eyewitnesses to the deaths. Mr. Connolly declined to say which type of report would have covered the earlier incidents.
The president of the amusement park, Jay Gillian, did not return calls left at his office late this afternoon.
The two pieces of equipment that failed Saturday operated independently, Mr. Connolly said. The coaster is pulled up by a chain driven by an electrical motor and attached to a cog beneath the coaster. At the peak of the ascent, the cog and chain disengage and gravity takes over. On Saturday, the cog and chain came apart too early, he said. Normally, the coaster's antirollback braking system would have prevented the backward slide, he said. Braking devices should have pressed against the rails beneath the cars, stopping them. 'Something went very wrong with it,' Mr. Connolly said.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Brakes in Fatal Bus Crash Called Beyond Repair
The brakes of the tour bus that crashed here Sunday were probably worn beyond repair and would not have passed inspection, a Federal safety official said today.
Six people died and dozens more were hurt when the bus hurtled out of control down a steep, treacherous two-lane road here in rural Sussex County. The driver, Robert Campbell, 60 years old, of Brooklyn, who was critically injured in the wreck, has told investigators that the brakes gave out.
The Federal official, Frank Ghiorsi, the Northeast regional director for highways for the National Transportation Safety Board, said the brakes on each of the four wheels were seriously worn or were missing parts. ""If this bus was pulled over for inspection and examined, it would have been pulled out of service,"" he added.
Officials are expected to remove the air-brake system on Wednesday for reconstruction as the safety board's inquiry continues.
Federal officials said yesterday that the safety board had subpoenaed thye bus company's records from Mr. Campbell's daughter.
Mr. Ghiorsi refused to confirm officially that brake failure was the cause of the crash, but his comments underscored the hypothesis of police officials and other investigators.
Meanwhile, Gov. Jim Florio pledged $250,000 in state money today to design and build a turnaround, commonly called a jug handle, at the crest of the hill where the bus crashed Sunday.
The turnaround, Mr. Florio said, would permit drivers to check their brakes and allow unauthorized vehicles -- those over four tons -- to turn back before encountering what Transportation Commissioner Thomas Downs called ""perhaps the steepest public-access road in the state.""
The crash occurred near a notoriously dangerous intersection at the bottom of a 15-degree descent along Route 515. Officials have said there was no record that Mr. Campbell's bus had been inspected or registered with New York State or with the Interstate Commerce Commission, as required.
The Sussex County Prosecutor, Dennis O'Leary, declined to say whether he would charge Mr. Campbell with any criminal violations.
""He could face anything from violation of a local ordinance to aggravated manslaughter,"" said Mr. O'Leary, who defined the possible manslaughter charge as wanton disregard of human life. But he emphasized that he was not predicting whether charges might be filed.
The safety board said it had sent samples of Mr. Campbell's blood to an independent laboratory in Salt Lake City. Some tests will come back quickly, Mr. O'Leary said, and other more sophisticated tests could take several weeks.
The police have said that Mr. Campbell told them his brakes failed as his bus descended the two-lane county road that runs north through dense woods to the Orange County, N.Y., border.
Jean Marie Poole, the chief investigator here for the safety board, said that Mr. Campbell had described in detail how the brake system lost air at the top of the hill. ""People reported seeing his brake lights going on and off,"" she said. ""But he watched his pressure gauge go down. He knew it was his problem.""
Mrs. Poole said the driver reported traveling at 20 to 25 miles an hour at the top of the hill. ""He tried to downshift,"" she said Mr. Campbell had told authorities. ""Neighbors said they heard gears grinding."" Florio Visits Accident Site
But the bus, carrying four dozen people from Brooklyn to a daylong outing at Action Park in nearby Vernon Valley, raced out of control, struck two cars and caught fire. Five aboard died at the scene, and another bus passenger died later in University Hospital in Newark.
The Vernon Township Police and some survivors reported initially that the bus rolled over four times before stopping, but Ms. Poole said today that she was not certain of this.
It appeared, she said, that the bus might have fallen on its right side and flipped upright as it slammed into a car and a guard rail.
Governor Florio announced the road improvement plans this afternoon after he and other state officials toured the accident site and spoke with local officials. Mr. Florio said the money would come from a Transportation Department discretionary fund as the first step in what township and county authorities hope will be a more ambitious project of their own to improve safety on Route 515.
Sussex County has had plans to improve the road for seven or eight years, said David Mortimer, a freeholder. But in the wake of the accident, he said, the repairs, projected to cost $10 million, had ""risen to the top"" of high-priority projects that have so far gone unfinanced. New Signs Posted
The Township Committee convened Monday in a session called before the crash to review the county engineer's plans, which include relatively inexpensive proposals for new signs -- some of which have just been installed -- and road widening and straightening.
Mr. West said the township eventually hoped to build a pull-off lane to allow vehicles to test their brakes. This would be paid for with the money the state allocated today for the jug handle.
Mr. West also called for a ""runoff"" lane, to allow vehicles with brake problems to steer harmlessly off to the side, as well as an extra climbing lane on the southbound incline to permit cars to pass slower vehicles.
Signs that went up today on Route 23, within a half mile of the turnoff to Route 515, cautioned: ""Vehicles Over 4 Tons Prohibited."" The orange-and-black signs, four by eight feet, replace smaller back-and-white ones. And for now, Mr. O'Leary directed that a sheriff's officer be stationed at the intersection to wave away buses and trucks heavier than the limit allows.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Shooting in Newark Kills Woman and Injures Child
A woman was killed and a 6-year-old girl was injured on Thursday afternoon when they were caught in a shooting on a busy street in Newark's South Ward, authorities said.
The 39-year-old woman, whom the police did not identify, received a single gunshot wound to her torso and was taken to University Hospital, where she later died, said Anthony F. Ambrose III, director of the Newark Police Department. Mr. Ambrose said the girl, who was not related to the woman, was injured when a bullet grazed her head. She was treated and released, Mr. Ambrose said.
The police said that about 4 p.m. the woman and the girl had just left a bodega on Avon Avenue and were getting into a blue Chevrolet Cavalier when two men -- one standing in front of the car and one at its side -- suddenly opened fire, hitting them. The gunmen, along with a male passenger who had been in the car, fled the scene on foot before the police arrived, Mr. Ambrose said.
'It was a spontaneous event, and we don't know if they were shooting at one another or at the party in the car. We just don't know,' Mr. Ambrose said. 'It's just a tragic event.'
There were two other people in the car at the time of the shooting. Mr. Ambrose said they were cooperating with investigators.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","In His Own Words
RICHARD A. ZIMMER
At the Menlo Park Mall in Edison yesterday, he spoke about the Republican National Committee assistance to his campaign:
'I wish that we didn't have campaigns that have soft money. I've supported legislation, co-sponsored legislation, that would put an end to soft money. But when Bob Torricelli socked away more campaign funds than any other Senate candidate in the country, I couldn't very well ask the Republican National Committee not to help, and to not level the playing field.'
POLITICS",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","State Agrees to Speed Help For Infants Without Homes
New Jersey agreed today to stop keeping healthy infants whose parents are unwilling or unable to care for them in hospital wards for weeks and sometimes months at a time.
Under a consent decree signed today by a Federal district judge in Newark, the state will move infants out of hospitals and into foster homes or back with their families within seven days, beginning Jan. 1. In the last year, infants waiting for placement in foster homes spent an average of two months in the hospital, while those who were returned to their parents stayed an average of two weeks in the hospital after they were cleared for medical discharge.
The court order, signed by Judge Alfred J. Lechner Jr., is the result of an agreement between the Whitman administration and the Association to Benefit Children, a child advocacy organization in New York City that sued the state in August on behalf of the infants.
Gretchen Buchenholz, executive director of the association, said the consent decree would allow her organization to closely monitor the state's efforts to move the infants, commonly known as 'boarder babies,' out of hospitals.
'We really believe that this will work,' said Ms. Buchenholz, who filed a similar lawsuit against New York City in 1986, which led to a Federal court order requiring the city to move boarder babies from hospitals within seven days. 'We believe that this agreement is going to result in these babies getting the nurturing, the love and the opportunities that they are entitled to.'
In September, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman asked the state's Human Services Commissioner, William Waldman, to immediately draw up a plan to shorten the hospital stay of boarder babies, after The New York Times reported that New Jersey was the only state in the country where babies were languishing in hospitals.
'New Jersey does not take lightly the responsibility of finding homes for these children, and we will continue doing everything we can to accomplish that goal,' Governor Whitman said.
Despite efforts by hospitals, such as University Hospital in Newark, to provide a special unit for boarder babies, child development experts say that busy hospital staff members cannot replace parents or other primary caregivers, particularly in the early months of a child's life.
'Children who are raised without primary caretakers tend to be retarded in all areas of their development,' said Dr. Leo Kron, a child psychiatrist and senior attending physician at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City. 'This includes their language development, even their physical growth, their motor development and of course, most importantly, their social development.
'The damage to those children is compounded as they grow older, as society pays the cost of their arrested development, social maladjustment and aggressive behavior.'
An average of 54 infants a month lived in New Jersey hospitals during the last year while under the care of state child welfare officials. Many of the babies had been exposed while in the womb to drugs or the virus that causes AIDS.
New Jersey officials acknowledged that they had not recruited enough foster families to care for the infants. They also said they did not have enough caseworkers to give families support services and to determine, in a timely manner, whether the infants should go home to their parents or relatives.
At Governor Whitman's request, state officials outlined a new plan in September to assign additional caseworkers to address the problem. State officials also promised to run a series of public service announcements to help recruit more foster families, and to hire nonprofit social service agencies to find foster homes and give mothers prenatal care and other support services.
Mr. Waldman said the State Division of Youth and Family Services, an agency in his department, has been 'working diligently to reduce the length of time children remain in hospital nurseries instead of in the arms of consistent caregivers. The fact that our agency has made a strong effort -- and some progress -- resulted in us being able to dispose of this lawsuit.'
While the Whitman administration has already taken some steps to help move infants more quickly from hospitals, the consent decree outlines specific goals and insures that the state's progress will be closely monitored by the association.
For example, the Division of Youth must respond within 24 hours after hospital officials notify the state that an infant is at risk of becoming a boarder baby. The state must also provide the association with weekly reports on the status of boarder babies and their average length of stay.
'We have won a victory for the neediest and most vulnerable New Jersey citizens,' said Lawrence S. Lustberg, a Newark lawyer who represented the Association to Benefit Children in court. 'We are confident that the result is not going to be further litigation. It is going to be progress toward ending the boarder baby problem.'
Before the court order in New York City, boarder babies stayed in city hospitals for weeks and sometimes months. The average length of stay is now three and a half days, city officials said, and slightly longer for children with special needs.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Permission to Board? Absolutely, Please!; Bigger Crowds Wanted For Battleship's Big Guns
When the battleship New Jersey was formally welcomed to its permanent berth along the Delaware River here on a bright October day in 2001, it was billed as a ship-turned-museum that would promote maritime history, excite veterans and military buffs and provide a much-needed boost to downtrodden Camden.
But after winning a competition with Bayonne to become home to the ship, Camden is finding that keeping the New Jersey afloat financially may be harder than getting it here in the first place.
The Battleship New Jersey Memorial and Museum operated on a $1.2 million deficit in 2003, its directors said recently. About 192,000 people visited the ship last year, compared with the year before, when about 218,000 went aboard to examine the Navy's most decorated battleship. The budget problems last fall forced the Home Port Alliance, the nonprofit organization that runs the battleship tours and museum, to lay off 12 of its 90 workers.
And because the cold weather this winter has kept many tourists away, officials decided to reduce access to the ship to four days a week -- Friday through Monday -- until March 1.
The majestic 45,000-ton vessel, about 3 football fields long, 108 feet wide and 11 stories high, has legions of fans. Its return to New Jersey, across the river from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, where it was built in 1942, was an emotional event for the tens of thousands of sailors and officers who served on it during three major wars and other battles.
But its problems are a reminder that not every retired Navy ship can rival the Intrepid in New York as a tourist attraction.
Jeff Nilsson, executive director of the Historic Naval Ships Association, said that there were about 122 retired military ships on display throughout the nation and that attendance for them varied. The Intrepid had about 650,000 visitors in 2002, while the frigate Constellation in Baltimore had about 100,000. How each one fares as a tourist attraction varies depending on the ship's size, its place in military history, its current location and the strength of the organization running it, he said.
As a museum and memorial, the New Jersey is not in danger of going under financially, its directors said, but even its supporters admit these are rough times for the fledgling operation.
'It's unfortunate that it's not getting the visitors,' said State Assemblyman Joseph Azzolina, a retired Navy captain who served on the New Jersey in the 1980's. 'But it's a great ship, and they're doing a great job with it.'
Many of those involved with the battleship say the museum and memorial is merely experiencing the growing pains of any new attraction. Legislators are trying to secure state funding for the ship, and museum directors are working to attract more private financing and to come up with more ideas to raise revenue.
'I don't think it's any different than anybody expected,' said Assemblyman Louis Greenwald, a Camden County Democrat who is trying to persuade other legislators to help the museum with a state grant of $1 million or more. 'It's difficult for any entity or museum to be self-sustaining, especially at first.'
The New Jersey was one of four Iowa-Class battleships constructed during World War II. With hulls more than a foot thick, the battleships were built to 'keep floating and keep fighting.' Workers at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard, in a competitive mood because many of them lived in the state for which the ship would be named, made sure the New Jersey was almost four inches longer than the other Iowa battleships.
The New Jersey is equipped with nine 16-inch guns that could fire shells weighing as much as a Volkswagen Beetle up to 23 miles. During its first 19 months on active duty in the Pacific during World War II, the ship steamed more than 200,000 miles and shot down 20 enemy aircraft, including five in one day.
The New Jersey also took part in the Korean War and the Vietnam War and last saw active duty in 1983 in the Mediterranean off Beirut before being decommissioned in 1990.
The Navy chose to let the ship retire here rather than in Bayonne because of what they saw as Camden's growing waterfront cultural and tourist attractions. Indeed, local leaders saw the ship as a major player in the renaissance of a depressed city. In the last few years, developers have turned Camden's waterfront into a place more families want to visit. Besides the battleship, there are Campbell's Field, home to the minor league Camden Riversharks; the Tweeter Center, an open-air concert stage; and the New Jersey State Aquarium, which is about to be privatized and expanded to double its size.
A cable car system is being constructed that will carry people between Philadelphia and Camden's waterfront, and the former RCA Victor building near the waterfront is being turned into 341 luxury loft apartments.
But while the aquarium, for example, continues to be a big family draw, with about a half million visitors a year, the battleship had fewer than half as many last year.
Mr. Nilsson said the battleship's low attendance so early in its development was not that worrisome.
'Is this unusual? No, not at all,' he said. 'Forget that it's a museum or a ship. The first three years of any business are going to be rough.'
But others say that retired warships can face severe problems as tourist attractions.
'You're trying to keep up something that the Navy got rid of because they couldn't keep it up,' said Jack Green, a public affairs officer at the Naval Historical Center in Washington. 'It's a lot of work and expense to keep up a ship. You no longer have 2,000 sailors on your work force to holystone the wooden decks,' he said, referring to the need to keep the decks polished.
Troy Collins, the Home Port Alliance's executive director, said that while attendance for the ship's tours might be down, its other revenue producers performed well last year. The ship had a 25 percent increase in attendance at special events, receptions and other ceremonies booked onboard and overnight encampments, which are open to Scout groups, he said.
The alliance also plans to attract more visitors this year by adding a Navy Seahawk seaplane motion simulator that can seat 13 people and a self-guided tour route with more interactive displays, he said.
Mr. Collins and the board of directors know that one big challenge is to raise more money for operating costs. Utilities alone cost $360,000 a year, he said. And the ship will need to set aside even more by building an endowment for future expenses, such as the day not too many years from now when the battleship will have to be dry-docked for major maintenance.
'It's no different than what happens with most new museums,' Mr. Collins said. 'This is the toughest period that we'll ever have. The early days of juggling have caught up with us, and we haven't solidified our future. We're trying to get ourselves funds to keep us going through July.'
Mr. Collins said the battleship's endowment should be $3 million to $4 million. That means beginning a campaign now to find donors, including corporate sponsors and foundations. Its supporters say the state also needs to help out this year, especially after a $7.2 million grant that they had been counting on last year did not come through because of the state budget crisis.'We don't want to be dependent on anybody's money for long,' Mr. Collins said. 'But we'll need five to seven years to build up a base to become independent.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Mother Accused of Starving Four Children in New Jersey
A single mother living with her family in a lakeside cabin in northwestern New Jersey has been arrested and charged with starving four of her five children so badly that one of them, an 8-year-old girl, weighed only 35 pounds, the authorities said yesterday.
The woman, Estelle Walker, 47, was charged on Wednesday with child endangerment and is being held in the Sussex County jail in $200,000 bail, said William Fitzgibbons, the first assistant county prosecutor. Last week, the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services received a tip that Ms. Walker was abusing her children, leading the police to the cabin in Hopatcong where they found the children -- ages 8, 9, 11 and 13 -- nearly emaciated and with 'substantial malnutrition,' Mr. Fitzgibbons said.
The four children, along with their 18-year-old sister, who the authorities say has no connection with the charges, have been taken from Ms. Walker and are now living with family members out of the area, Mr. Fitzgibbons said.
'They are improving quite a bit -- it's noticeable,' he said.
Late last year, Ms. Walker tried to escape an abusive husband in Brooklyn by moving into a two-story, four-bedroom log cabin on the shores of Lake Hopatcong, said Lisa Peluso-Guice, whose property includes the cabin as well as her family home. Ms. Peluso-Guice said she agreed to let Ms. Walker and her children live in the cabin after a minister at the Times Square Church in Manhattan, to which both women belonged, called and requested her help.
At first, the family seemed 'perfectly nice,' Ms. Peluso-Guice said. Ms. Walker's children would often come by to play ball with her own two children.
But in January, the church called Ms. Walker, telling her that the cabin was only a temporary residence and that she would have to move out by May, Ms. Peluso-Guice said. The church called again in April, she said, but even by the middle of May, Ms. Walker and her children had still not left.
By June, Ms. Peluso-Guice said, she had asked a lawyer to file eviction papers against Ms. Walker. Around this time, she saw the children, and while 'they looked a little thin,' she said, they were hardly emaciated.
Still, the children looked skinny enough that Ms. Peluso-Guice said she went to the store and bought boxes of food for the family.
Then, two weeks ago, the cabin's hot water heater blew up in the middle of the night, Ms. Peluso-Guice said, and a panicked Ms. Walker called her husband, Brad Guice, at 2 a.m. to come fix it. When Ms. Walker opened the door, she looked 'really bad, really skinny,' Mr. Guice said.
The next day, Mr. Guice said he went to check on the water heater and saw Ms. Walker's children. 'The kids looked incredibly skinny,' he said. 'Immediately, I knew there was something wrong. It was obvious she had gone too far.'
Mr. Guice then went to the store and returned with more food. He also called his lawyer -- the same one who was working to evict Ms. Walker -- and asked him to call state officials from youth and family services.
The officials visited the house on July 25, Mr. Fitzgibbons said, and Ms. Walker was arrested the same day.
'Their faces were emaciated,' Mr. Guice said of the children. 'The boys' arms were just not there almost.'
Mr. Guice said he had confronted Ms. Walker, told her that she was abusing her own children, and asked her what she thought she was doing.
Her only answer, he said, was that God would take care of them.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","A Warning, and a Response
After prosecutors distributed fliers noting the presence of a convicted child killer in South River, N.J., the man, Glenn H. Baker, passed out his own fliers in response. Following are excerpts of both fliers.
PROSECUTOR'S FLIER
Local Activities: Barker cruises mall parking lots, has stopped to assist a stranded female motorist, looks for women to talk to, and has coached youth basketball and baseball teams at a Y.M.C.A.
Past History: In 1981, in North Carolina, Barker was charged with kidnapping a 16-year-old girl at knifepoint, tying her to a bed, and threatening to burn the house. She escaped when he went to hide her car. He plead guilty to a lesser charge when she refused to testify.
In 1983, in Virginia, Barker was convicted of the murder of a 12-year-old girl who had been spending the night at the house of a woman he was seeing. Her body was never found. He was sentenced to prison for 18 years, and was released on parole in 1992.
GLENN H. BARKER'S RESPONSE
To start with let me make it perfectly clear that no one in this community or any other community has anything to fear about me. I have no desire for your children, wives, husbands, pets, or anything else that you have. All I want is a normal life without the community being scared for no reason by the powers that are.
Yes I have stopped to help female motorist. I have also helped males, couples (giving them jumps to their batteries, etc.), and even helped a neighbor put a starter on his van. But there is NO ONE person male or female that can say I was in any way suggestive or out of the way in my dealing with them and I have NEVER asked them if they needed a ride. I would always either fix the problem (flat tire, etc.) or offer them my cellphone to use.
TWO SIDES",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","In Tackling Tax Problems, Corzine Is All Business
You could be forgiven for arriving late to Gov. Jon S. Corzine's speech before a joint session of the New Jersey Legislature on Friday and thinking that you had stumbled into a shareholders' meeting.
More than in any other speech since his election last year, Mr. Corzine drew on his Wall Street experience as he opened a special summer session devoted to lowering property taxes.
Both in tone and in vocabulary -- Mr. Corzine, using a chief executive's lexicon, referred to the 'monetization' of some state assets and 'free cash flow' -- the governor seemed more confident than ever about the possibility of using solutions forged in the private sector to address problems with public fiscal policy.
To some State House veterans, Mr. Corzine -- first elected to public office only six years ago -- still seems more comfortable in the skin of a Wall Streeter than wearing the mantle of a State Street politician.
'The comment has been made that Corzine is more like a C.E.O. and less like a politician,' said Philip Fang, a portfolio manager for Lord Abbett & Company. 'You can see that in pretty much all of the speech.'
Part of that observation, which is not wholly unexpected, can probably be explained by simple human nature. Before turning to politics, Mr. Corzine worked at Goldman Sachs for nearly a quarter-century, working his way up to co-chairman, and his managerial compass could almost certainly be expected to point toward lessons learned there.
But perhaps some of Mr. Corzine's comfort with business concepts can also be traced to a mistrust of the largely ineffective techniques that have been used by politicians in Trenton for years to deal with issues like high property taxes.
Mr. Corzine succinctly referred to his disdain for those techniques near the start of his speech when he spoke of the importance of changing the way the state subsidizes municipalities and schools.
'Our business model for delivering and paying for government and school services is broken,' he said, striking a decidedly corporate tone at the beginning of his 30-minute address on Friday. 'If we were a business, we'd be bankrupt.'
From there, he described an ambitious program in which he proposed that the state use $250 million to create incentives for municipalities to consolidate services, study whether to sell or lease state assets like the New Jersey Turnpike and impose a 4 percent limit on year-to-year increases in property tax bills that are, on average, the highest in the nation.
Those changes, especially the proposal to encourage more efficiency through consolidation, are the kind of practices generally favored by business leaders.
'I think the government adopting methods and methodologies that have been used by corporate America makes some good sense,' said Assemblyman Gary S. Schaer, a Democrat of Bergen County.
Mr. Schaer, who is an investment consultant and a vice president at Ryan Beck & Co., said that he heard distinct echoes of Mr. Corzine's business background in the address.
'I hear Wall Street throughout,' he said. 'And I've got to tell you: I work on Wall Street, and I think it's refreshing. I think it's something we need to hear more of.'
Others noted that Mr. Corzine painted a compelling portrait of how fixing property taxes could lead to improvements in other areas of the state's fiscal policy.
'There's a businesslike characteristic that is very thoughtful, understated and logical and rational in drawing a picture that everything is connected to everything,' said former Gov. Jim Florio. 'And, if you sign on to the proposition that our budgetary problems are severe and they won't get easier, then you have to appreciate the fact the governor is correct that property tax is related to that.'
Other observers were struck by the way Mr. Corzine incorporated many ideas that have been put forth by Republicans in Trenton like overhauling the pension system, changing the formula used to calculate school financing and scaling back benefits for state employees.
'I joked to myself that this is Jon Corzine going to China,' said David P. Rebovich, managing director of the Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. 'A guy who, at the federal level, has always been called a very liberal Democrat that here is really speaking the language of public administration and applying corporate management principles to the public sector to free up dollars.'
Mr. Rebovich said Mr. Corzine also made it clear that like any business leader, he would hold lawmakers accountable should they not make what he feels is sufficient progress in fixing the tax problem.
Mr. Corzine warned that if the Legislature did not move forward on substantial improvements to the tax system, he would ask that a measure calling for a constitutional convention be placed on a ballot in November 2007.
Left unspoken, however, was the suggestion that if lawmakers failed to address the tax dilemma, the makeup of the Legislature would almost certainly undergo a drastic change in that same election.
Mr. Rebovich said he was struck by a line in Mr. Corzine's speech that prefaced the constitutional convention scenario with the words, 'If we fail '
'If we fail -- what does that say?' Mr. Rebovich asked. 'It says: 'Guys, if we don't follow through on what I've laid out here today, that's going to be a failure. I'm going to regard it as that, I'm going to call it that and the public will call it that.' So he really has put the onus on the Legislature to get moving.'
Political Memo",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Political Talk
Selling New York Assets
In last year's campaign for governor of New York, Pierre A. Rinfret, the Republican candidate, compared Gov. Mario M. Cuomo's budget gimmickry to breaking up the family furniture to feed the fireplace.
The furniture in the Executive Mansion and Executive Chamber is apparently still intact. But how about selling an expressway or some state jails complete with prisoners and guards?
The Governor is selling the maximum-security state prison at Attica to the Urban Development Corporation, which is headed by his friend and big contributor, Vincent Tese, for $200 million. The corporation, which was created to build low-cost housing but has been building jails in recent years, borrowed the money, so the state's taxpayers will have to pay back $745 million in principal and interest over the next 30 years. Attica was the scene of a riot in 1971 that left 43 prisoners and guards dead.
This is the latest sale of the state's capital assets to help balance the state budget. Earlier, the state sold the Cross Westchester Expressway for $20 million to the State Thruway Authority, which will finance that borrowing with road-side restaurant revenues. It also sold the Eastern Correctional Facility in Ulster County to the development corporation for $80 million. The Expressway transfer took place on April Fools' Day.
The State Comptroller, Edward V. Regan, said the Cuomo fiscal policy is ""even worse"" than Mr. Rinfret's description. ""He's busting up the house, not just the furniture, for firewood,"" Mr. Regan said. He added that the grandchild generation will be paying ""billions and billions"" in interest to pay off current deficits.  Impeachment Suggested
Gauging the anger of protesters is becoming a new science at Connecticut's Capitol. Over the last week, state employees enraged about layoffs called Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. a ""chicken"" and urged his prompt lynching. People upset about cuts in the state's higher-education budget were more circumspect, suggesting only Mr. Weicker's impeachment.
The 5,000 parochial school students who complained about proposed cuts in school-bus financing were the most vocal, chanting, pep-rally style: ""Weicker's a wimp."" When the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Richard J. Balducci, climbed on top of a car to address them, he was beaned with an acorn.  Termination Candidate
Plagued by internal dissension and caught in one of the first power struggles between the new City Council and the Mayor, New York City's Voter Assistance Commission may be put out of business as the Dinkins administration looks in every nook and cranny to save money.
""It's a candidate for termination,"" said City Councilman Herbert Berman, chairman of the Council Finance Committee.
Deputy Mayor Bill Lynch acknowledged that ""there is some question whether we can afford to put our resources"" in the commission and that in a budget crisis ""you have to make these kind of choices."" Trying to preempt criticism, he noted that the Mayor would normally be the major beneficiary of voter-registration drives among minorities.
But, there's more to it than that. Mr. Lynch would like to set up voter-registration programs under his control within several departments dealing with the public like the Human Resources Administration. But, the Council, more oriented to political parties, wants the commission activities folded into the party-controlled Board of Elections.
Adding to these external threats are the internal squabbles that have cost the three-year-old agency its first two executive directors. The post is vacant now.
Finally, the State Ethics Commission is deciding whether the chairman of the Voter Assistance Commission, Charles Hughes, the municipal workers union leader, can hold both the unpaid commission post and a $12,500 job with the New York City Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.  The Division of Newark
The recent reapportionment of New Jersey legislative districts angered not only the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People but also a number of Hispanic groups that are considering court challenges as well.
Arthur Baer, a lawyer with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, said his group objected to the decision by the reapportionment commission to divide the northern part of Newark into two separate districts. In effect, Mr. Baer said, the power of Hispanic voters will be diluted to about 24 percent of the electorate in the new districts. The group had asked the commission to create a district with about 35 percent of the population of Hispanic origins.
Meanwhile, a growing list of veteran legislators have announced that they do not plan to run for re-election, including the former Senate President, John F. Russo, Democrat of Toms River, and the former Speaker of the Assembly, Charles H. Hardwick, Republican of Westfield. Both men had ran unsuccessful campaigns for governor.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","BOMBING SUSPECT SEIZED AT RESORT
An Egyptian welder described as a major conspirator in the foiled plot to bomb four targets in New York City was surprised at a barbecue in a New Jersey seaside motel Thursday night and arrested while trying to flee with an 11-year-old boy he had grabbed, Federal officials announced yesterday.
The man, Matarawy Mohammad Said Saleh, 44, a convicted heroin dealer, became the 11th suspect seized in what authorities have charged was a conspiracy by Muslim militants to explode bombs in the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels, the United Nations and the Federal Building, which houses the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A second man, accused of hiding Mr. Saleh, was also arrested.
A Federal complaint said that Mr. Saleh had discussed ways of getting cars for the bombings without being detected, and that he had been with other suspects in a Queens bomb factory -- being bugged by the F.B.I. -- within a day of a June 24 raid, which prosecutors say smashed the scheme.
""He was right in the middle of the group,"" said Joseph R. Borrelli, the New York City Chief of Detectives, who joined F.B.I. officials at a news conference yesterday in Newark.
Mr. Saleh was tackled by a member of an F.B.I. team that had infiltrated the sleepy Sea Wolf Inn in North Wildwood, N.J., on a strip of motels and guest houses packed with vacationing families, according to officials and eyewitness accounts.
The snatched child, who was not identified but was described as a member of Mr. Saleh's party, was not hurt, said James Esposito, the F.B.I. agent in charge of the Newark office. It is not clear from the official accounts why Mr. Saleh picked up the boy. Mr. Saleh's lawyer later said in court that Mr. Saleh had suffered ""bruises, abrasions and contusions"" in the arrest.
Mr. Saleh, a chunky, clean-shaven man of medium height whose address was given as 7 Alan Terrace, Jersey City, appeared in Federal Court in Camden yesterday afternoon, handcuffed and wearing a white T-shirt, khaki cutoffs and black plastic sandals. Through his lawyer, he offered no objection to extradition to New York City but otherwise made no statement. He was held without bail pending a hearing, which is expected next week in Manhattan.
The man arrested with him, Ashraf Mohammed, 31, of 83 Bleecker Street, Jersey City, was similarly dressed and handcuffed and was ordered held until a bail hearing next week. He was charged with knowingly concealing Mr. Saleh from arrest, including planning with him to flee to Florida, but F.B.I. officials said he was not considered a suspect in the bombing plot.
By holding a news conference to announce the arrest, the F.B.I. made clear it was elated by the development. But authorities declined to say much about where they believed Mr. Saleh fit into the case.
One investigator said Mr. Saleh was believed to have an Egyptian military background that may have included experience with explosives.  Mentioned on Hidden Tapes
Another said that as investigators monitored the plot through hidden tape recorders and video cameras in the days before the June 24 raid, they heard references to Mr. Saleh as a welder who was expected back in New York City from a marine welding job in the Caribbean. That, they said, made them think that Mr. Saleh might be important in the construction of a bomb, a theory that was not fully tested before the arrests.
But investigators said that Mr. Saleh had been expected in the Jamaica garage at the time of the raid and that when he was not with five others arrested there, he was avidly hunted. Three other suspects were arrested elsewhere about the same time and two others were later arrested, one last week, while Mr. Saleh was listed as a fugitive.
In court yesterday he was described as a legal immigrant who entered the country about 10 years ago and supported himself selling goods at flea markets, making less than $10,000 last year.
An assistant United States Attorney, Jeremy D. Frey, told Judge Robert B. Kugler that Mr. Saleh had been convicted of a felony charge involving heroin in Detroit in 1988 and had received a five-year sentence. But Mr. Frey said that records available yesterday did not detail the circumstances of the conviction or how much time Mr. Saleh may have served in prison. He said, however, that a felony charge suggested more than just possession and probably at least intent to distribute or sell. Suspected in Drug Dealing
Investigators said last week that several defendants in the case were suspected of involvement in drug trafficking. But they said it did not appear to be a way of raising money for the bombing schemes.
Officials yesterday guarded the secret of how they had tracked Mr. Saleh to the North Wildwood motel. Court papers said agents learned that Mr. Saleh and his son and Mr. Mohammed and his wife had checked into the motel on Wednesday, Mr. Mohammed's wife signing in under ""an assumed Hispanic name.""
Eight days earlier on July 13, the complaint said, Mr. Mohammed had told the F.B.I. he did not know where Mr. Saleh was and had promised to advise agents if he found out.
Ruth Wolf, who with her husband, Woody, has owned the hotel for 19 years, rented the group apartment No. 4 in the upstairs rear, a suite that sleeps eight for $475 a week. Outside the unit was a shuffleboard court, picnic tables and a gas grill and lounge chairs.  Cooking Steaks and Hot Dogs
Mrs. Wolf said the guests wanted to stay for some time but were told that it was reserved and they could only have it until Saturday. They paid a partial rate based on three days, she said.
The incident began Thursday night shortly after 10 o'clock, sometime after the Saleh and Mohammed families began cooking steaks and hot dogs on an outdoor grill and invited the Wolfs to join them.
Frank Davis, 21, of Medford, N.J., staying at the motel in the rear, said he had seen a man with a gun standing by the ice machine. He asked him what was happening and the man told him to leave the area.
Suddenly, Mr. Davis said, a van pulled up with seven or eight armed men who leaped over a small wall and raided the apartment.
Some of the agents were in summer shorts and casual clothes and others were in suits, he said. They took the families out and put them in separate cars.
A 12-year-old visitor, Jeff DuPuis of Big Flats, N.Y., near Corning, who has been coming to the motel for five years said he was out on the front porch when he saw a man run around the side of the building carrying a child and run across the street, followed by the F.B.I. agents who tackled the man.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Toxic Levels For an Aquifer Worry E.P.A.
LEAD: The Ciba-Geigy Corporation, a chemical manufacturer with a legacy of pollution cases at its sites here and in Rhode Island and upstate New York, has created an underground lake of contamination next to the Toms River that Federal officials say will require 30 years to remove.
The Ciba-Geigy Corporation, a chemical manufacturer with a legacy of pollution cases at its sites here and in Rhode Island and upstate New York, has created an underground lake of contamination next to the Toms River that Federal officials say will require 30 years to remove.
The plume of poisons, about a mile square and between 30 and 100 feet deep, will have to be pumped at a rate of about 3 million gallons a day for three decades before the aquifer is cleansed to drinking-water purity, said Fred Luckey, a geologist with the Federal Environmental Protection Agency team that has been drafting a cleanup plan.
The E.P.A. says it has found 95 chemicals and metals in the plume, including cancer-causing agents like benzene, arsenic and chloroform. Most cling to subsurface soils and must be dissolved by repeatedly sucking ground water over them during the extraction process, Mr. Luckey said. Removing more water each day would not quicken the pace of the cleansing. Seepage From Toxic Pits
'Each contaminant has its own rate to desorb from the soil, depending on the water temperature, water pressure and acidity,' Mr. Luckey said. 'After you exceed a certain pumping rate, you won't get more contaminants out of the aquifer.'
Seepage from toxic-waste burial pits and lagoons near Ciba-Geigy's dye and plastics factories here created the plume, Federal and state studies have found. Over the years, it has spread beyond the company's 1,400-acre site and now flows beneath a residential neighborhood and the adjacent Toms River, about eight miles inland of Barnegat Bay, a heavily developed section of the Intracoastal Waterway.
A decade ago, neighborhood children swam, fished and floated on inner tubes on sections of the river that flow through Winding River Park next to the Ciba-Geigy property. Now, according to an E.P.A. study released last April, a river-bank marsh and river sediments are contaminated. Fishing, swimming or inhaling evaporating chemicals in the marsh all pose health threats, the report said. 'No swimming' signs are posted in the park.
Anxieties about cancer and sagging sales of homes are common in the neighborhood.
'Houses stay on the market for a year,' said a woman on Sun Valley Road who is suffering from breast cancer. 'Can I in clear conscience sell my house to a young family?'
The drinking water for the neighborhood is not affected, officials say, because the nearest town well is about half a mile northeast of the Ciba-Geigy plume. But some private wells used for watering lawns have been shut down.
Public acceptance of the company seems to have soured beyond this neighborhood. 'I think they've run out of time - people don't trust Ciba-Geigy anymore,' said Wayne Cimorelli, who lives near the river's mouth on Barnegat Bay. In Trenton, political support for the company has eroded steadily since the State Environmental Protection Department fined it $1.65 million in 1985 for disposing of 14,000 drums of hazardous waste in its nonhazardous-waste landfill.
In the last year, the state has refused to let the company build a $90 million pharmaceutical plant and has ordered it to shut by the end of 1991 a discharge pipe that has poured treated industrial effluent into the Atlantic since 1966. Ciba-Geigy and two of its environmental officials have been indicted on state charges of illegal dumping in its landfills from 1974 to 1984 and falsifying reports to the state. A trial is pending. 'Some Mistakes'
'Some mistakes were made in the past, but we deny there was any criminal wrongdoing,' a company spokesman, Glenn Ruskin, said of the indictment.
Since the pharmaceutical plant rejection, Ciba-Geigy has announced plans to stop all chemical and plastics manufacturing here by December 1991 and cut its work force, once the largest in Ocean County, to 340 from 600.
In the last three years, Ciba-Geigy has shut and torn down similar river-bank factories in Cranston, R.I., and Glens Falls, N.Y. Environmental officials say both sites are contaminated with toxic wastes, some of which have reached the Pawtuxet River in Cranston and the Hudson River in Glens Falls. Cleanups at each site have been ordered upon completion of studies of the degree of soil and ground-water contamination.
A similar study was finished here in April after four years of work. Recently the E.P.A. started planning for the design and construction of the extraction system that is to cleanse the aquifer. Officials estimated that it would be at least three more years before the actual pumping begins. Drinking-Water Standards
New Jersey has mandated that the aquifer be pumped out until it matches state drinking-water standards. The extracted water must be treated by Ciba-Giegy to levels of purity roughly similar to those standards before it is released into the Toms River through a new pipe.
For instance, the carcinogen benzene, measuring an average of 223 parts per billion in the aquifer, must be withdrawn and treated until the benzene level in both the aquifer and the discharged water is 1 part per billion.
Brian Steelman, Ciba-Geigy's director of environmental technology, said in a recent telephone interview that the company could meet state mandates for all the contaminants except a group of salts that are considerably less harmful than toxic chemicals. They include calcium, sulfates, magnesium and chloride.
New Jersey's allowable level of these salts in drinking water is 500 parts per million. But the state is requiring Ciba-Geigy to treat extracted ground water to a level of 45 parts per million, roughly the average level of the salts now in the Toms River.
Mr. Steelman complained that the level was too strict and could be attained only through construction of a complex treatment system using a process called reverse osmosis. This would cost the company $80 million to $100 million, he said.
That amount is already included in the E.P.A's projected cost of $164.5 million for the 30-year cleanup. But in a recent meeting with local environmental opponents of Ciba-Geigy, E.P.A. officials seemed to hedge on requiring reverse osmosis. That set off an uproar.
'They're looking for the cheapest way out,' said Frank D. Livelli, a retired chemist and a founder of the Save Our Ocean Committee. 'They polluted. Let them pay for it.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Trenton at Work; Senator Seizes Chance to Revise Image
The stream of supplicants and nervous politicians never seems to stop flowing through the offices of John A. Lynch, the second most powerful politician in New Jersey and the man who recently managed to reshape this capital's political agenda.
If, as Mayor Edward I. Koch used to say, a leader can be defined by what he is not, Mr. Lynch, the president of the New Jersey Senate, has skillfully used Gov. Jim Florio in recent weeks to define himself as a Democrat in tune with middle-class voters.
While many Democrats regarded the public reaction against last year's tax increases as devastating to their chances of re-election, the 52-year-old Senator, who was often a controversial figure as mayor of New Brunswick, has treated it as an opportunity.
Since November, Mr. Lynch has relentlessly mustered the support of the state's municipal leaders and fellow Democrats in the Senate to put pressure on Mr. Florio and the State Assembly to revise the way more than a billion dollars in revenues from increased income taxes would be spent.
Only by shifting $360 million from school aid to property-tax relief and putting a cap on what school districts could spend, Mr. Lynch and his allies argued, could the Democrats help middle-class voters who had seen their property taxes double in the last decade. It was, they said, a matter of political survival.
""It serves no useful purpose to dig in your heels and defend mistakes,"" Mr. Lynch said on Wednesday, munching on a turkey sandwich in his statehouse office during a break between visitors and phone calls. ""The Florio administration's philosophy was correct. But they made many mistakes.""
It was also Mr. Lynch's Senate that passed a bill to weaken Mr. Florio's ban on assault rifles, a bill Mr. Florio's aides say he is most likely to veto.
And in the coming weeks, Mr. Lynch says he plans to criticize major portions of Mr. Florio's proposed budgets and fight to repeal the Governor's extension of the sales tax to paper products, to many people the most onerous symbol of the $2.8 billion in new taxes pressed through the Legislature last year. Such voters are essential to retaining Democratic majorities in both houses in elections this November. Mr. Lynch and the Speaker of the Assembly, Joseph P. Doria, supported Mr. Florio's proposals at the time they were made.
Mr. Lynch's recent independence and visibility has spawned speculation that he is planning to run for governor, perhaps against Mr. Florio in 1993, an idea that Mr. Lynch vehemently denies. At the very least, politicians here say, he has significantly altered the political landscape from last year, when Mr. Florio led and Democratic legislators followed.
""I see Lynch emerging as an alternative power center to Florio,"" said Stephen A. Salmore, a professor at the Eagleton Institute at Rutgers University and a Republican consultant. ""Democrats have had support in the state when they broaden their base to include the suburbs. One of the problems for Florio has been that he gave the impression he was narrowing the base to urban areas."" Career Mirrors Father's
Friends say that Mr. Lynch's career echoes that of his father, John A. Lynch Sr., who also served as mayor of New Brunswick and president of the Senate, and who saw the Republicans take control of the Senate the year after he stepped down as the Senate leader.
Mr. Lynch, whose compact, fireplug frame is often adorned with double-breasted suits, monogrammed shirts and gold cuff links emblazoned with the scales of justice, is known here for his intelligence, his long days, his powers of concentration.
When Mr. Florio's fortunes sagged last fall and the reaction to the tax package resulted in the near defeat of Senator Bill Bradley, friends say, Mr. Lynch resolved not to let control of the Senate be lost without a fight. Mr. Lynch grew increasingly disturbed by reports from municipalities that unless spending by school districts were limited, increases in school aid would not reduce property taxes, as the Governor had promised.
In November, Mr. Lynch told Mr. Florio that he would press to shift the school money to property-tax relief, and place tighter caps on school districts' spending. His power to influence the Governor, who at the time was opposed to the change, in large part came from the support he received from mayors around the state, as well as some administration officials who agreed with him.
""I felt we had missed the chance, the one time in a generation for real property-tax relief,"" Mr. Lynch recalled.
His fighting to have school aid shifted to municipal property-tax relief, he said, stems from his 12 years as mayor of New Brunswick, when he saw the devastating effects of high property taxes on cities that are struggling to draw investment and residents.
Mr. Lynch is credited with the revitalization of downtown New Brunswick, done with the help of the Johnson & Johnson Corporation and Rutgers University, which are both in the city.
The father of two children in their 20's from a marriage that ended in divorce, Mr. Lynch remarried four years ago. He and his wife are expecting a baby in August.
But among the factors which could limit Mr. Lynch's ambitions, some Democrats say, is a corruption scandal that tarnished two top members of Mr. Lynch's administration in New Brunswick and resulted in the conviction and imprisonment of his former city law director, Gilbert Nelson, in 1987.  Criticism in Hometown Paper
Mr. Lynch has also been the subject of critical articles in his hometown newspaper, The Home News, questioning whether he and associates benefited from his city's redevelopment. On a number of occasions, Mr. Lynch has lost his temper with reporters who he said have treated him unfairly.
Mr. Lynch's aides point out that Mr. Lynch has never been charged with wrongdoing. And he denies that he benefited from his tenure as mayor.
Politicians in Trenton, including those who have opposed him, generally praise Mr. Lynch. They describe him as cautious, private, and careful not to speak out on an issue until he has thoroughly studied it.
""Anybody who is the mayor of a large city is going to have enemies,"" said James P. Fox, Mr. Florio's deputy chief of staff. ""The bottom line is that he turned New Brunswick around, from a dying city to one of the premier small cities in the northeast.""
On Wednesday, Mr. Lynch's schedule was packed with visitors trying to gain his support for lung-transplant operations to new construction. His visitors and callers included the Commissioner of Insurance, a representative of the Casino Control Commission and a host of Senators fearful of the effects of newly drawn district lines.
The coming weeks, Mr. Lynch said, will be dominated by Mr. Florio's proposed budget for fiscal 1992, one that Mr. Lynch said, troubles him. Although Mr. Lynch had no new proposals to fill an estimated budget gap of $800 million, he said he had plenty of criticisms.
Mr. Lynch called a proposal to raise $400 million by selling roads to the New Jersey Turnpike Authority ""smoke and mirrors,"" which would most likely result in more toll roads. And, he said, the senate will raise questions about Mr. Florio's proposal not to comply with contracts with state workers by refusing to grant scheduled pay increases.
""I have a great number of reservations about the state not fulfilling a contract,"" Mr. Lynch said. ""I have a great deal of difficulty with that.""",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Camden's Renaissance Is Hailed, and Doubted
In his 37 years living here, Samuel Benson has seen the best and worst of Camden: its lively, industrial past, its bleak, abandoned present; the countless, unfulfilled promises of renewal and rebirth.
While government officials hail the two-year-old New Jersey State Aquarium as proof of Camden's sputtering recovery, and wait in hope for an agreement that could bring the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team to this city of 85,000, Mr. Benson and others in his North Camden neighborhood remain skeptical. If the Sixers really come to Camden this time, if the aquarium does spur growth along the waterfront, Mr. Benson asked, what does that mean for him?
""It will not help the residents of Camden,"" Mr. Benson said. ""I don't see tourists from other parts of the country coming in to spend big bucks here, like they say. I don't see it.""
Is Camden recovering? Some people here believe so. Others say they see no proof, and worry that any turnaround will resemble the experience of Atlantic City, and be limited to a strip of land along the waterfront. The question of Camden's fate is an important one, because for years the city has stood out as a pocket of poverty in one of the nation's most prosperous states. Staggering Unemployment
The bleak statistics are easy to find. More than half the children in Camden live below the Federal poverty level. Unemployment is a staggering 22 percent.
Camden has no movie theaters and few supermarkets, but it does have the county sewage plant and an imposing brown-brick prison near the library downtown. On some blocks half the houses have crumbled or collapsed. Lot after vacant lot holds charred debris, much of it left from deliberately set fires.
A depleted tax base has left Camden painfully dependent upon state aid. Each year the city carries a deficit -- $14 million this year -- and each year city officials go hat in hand to Trenton seeking relief, said Gary Warden, the city's senior budget examiner.
""We say we're going to give them the keys to the city or something until they finally say okay and give us the money,"" he said. At least that is what has happened for the last four years under Gov. Jim Florio, a product of the Camden Democratic machine. The election of Gov.-Elect Christine Todd Whitman has left city officials anxious.
""It's a very tenuous situation,"" Mr. Warden said. Hope Goes On
But hope exists in Camden, spurred by movement after years of stagnation and decay. If nothing else, the aquarium proved a point many doubted: visitors will come to Camden, if only to its waterfront. The aquarium drew 1.2 million visitors in its first year, which ended in February 1993. Attendance has fallen significantly this year, but aquarium officials say the drop was expected after a better-than-hoped-for beginning. They also say a new coral reef tank will lure tourists back.
There are other signs of resurgence. Ferry service between Philadelphia and Camden has returned after a 40-year absence. And at the end of Market Street overlooking the Delaware River stands a sprightly new $65 million office complex for Martin Marietta, the company that purchased G.E. Aerospace. The project added no new jobs to the area, but maintained momentum on the waterfront and, more important, kept the company from leaving Camden, said John T. Shannon, executive vice president of the Coopers Ferry Development Association, the agency overseeing waterfront development.
And, as always in Camden, optimistic plans for other projects abound: a $20 million waterfront headquarters for the Delaware River Port Authority, an expanded medical center, a Sony/PACE Music amphitheater along the river.
Not even the apparent faltering of another long-planned office building for a new Campbell Soup Company headquarters can dampen spirits, especially since Campbell officials say they remain committed to the city with or without this particular building. Opportunity Seen
""Despite all the bleak statistics, which cannot be denied, there exists a real opportunity in this city,"" said Mr. Shannon, who actually lives in Camden, unlike many police officers, firefighters, city department heads and others planning the city's revival.
""In my mind, the city has already bottomed out and is on its way back.""
Camden officials said that Harold Katz, the 76ers' owner, may be serious about this offer to move the team -- he has publicly discussed the idea in the past -- in part because of the aquarium's early success.
Under the deal offered by Governor Florio, the Sixers would occupy an $80 million, 18,000-seat arena on a site near the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Governor Florio, who negotiated the deal, has said the arena would be financed by bond sales, with the debt paid with revenues from ticket sales, parking and concessions. But Mrs. Whitman said that before she would approve any deal she wants assurances that taxpayers would not be required to foot the bill if revenues fall short of projections.
Jeffrey Nash, a member of the County Board of Freeholders, said the arena would create 900 construction jobs and between 500 and 900 other permanent jobs. The Spectrum, the team's current home in Philadelphia, employs fewer than 150 people full-time, a spokesman for the Philadelphia arena said. Nonbinding Payments
The arena would be exempt from property taxes, and would likely contribute about $1 million to the $101 million city budget, said Mr. Warden, the budget examiner. Such payments in lieu of taxes are nonbinding and can be reduced or eliminated. The aquarium promised to pay the city $2.2 million in fiscal year 1993, but paid only $1.5 million.
""It's very subjective,"" Mr. Warden said.
Proponents say the arena, like the aquarium and the waterfront in general, would contribute to something more important and less tangible than the city budget -- the perception that Camden is a safe and desirable place to do business. Without that, businesses will not move to Camden. And without businesses to create jobs and expand the tax base, Camden will not recover, Mr. Nash said.
""The waterfront is a great marketing tool, if nothing else,"" he said.
But many of those who live and work in North Camden are not buying that argument. 'Not for Us'
""You mean the circus on the waterfront?"" said Ernest Boyd of the North Camden Land Trust, a nonprofit organization rehabilitating homes in that section of the city. ""It's not for us.""
Getting to the aquarium from Philadelphia is almost easier than getting there from North Camden, a neighborhood severed from the rest of the city by the highway feeding the Ben Franklin Bridge. Most visitors glimpse North Camden only from high above the bridge.
""One of the ways it's been sold, and the way the Sixers will be sold, is, 'Don't worry -- you can get there without having to touch Camden,' "" Mr. Boyd said.
Still, Mr. Boyd said he would not object to a Sixers arena.
""It's fine as long as it doesn't divert money from the neighborhoods.""
But the perception among many Camden residents is that projects like the aquarium, which was paid for with state funds, do divert resources away from the neighborhoods. Lillian Ubarry, a community organizer with Concerned Citizens of North Camden, said Camden needs to have its crumbling homes rebuilt, its tattered streets fixed, its sewer system replaced, its schools improved and its police department expanded. An ambitious, 15-year, $100 million North Camden development plan by the group addresses these problems and has been approved by the City Council. Now it needs financing, Ms. Ubarry said. Other Uses Stressed
""We always felt the aquarium was just a big spending of money that could have been used for other things,"" she said.
In North Camden, the median annual income is $11,000 and more than 57 percent of the residents live in poverty. Two-thirds receive some type of public assistance. More than anything, the people of North Camden need jobs, said Mangaliso Davis, one of Camden's most vocal advocates.
""We don't need a Sony amphitheater with seats at $25 a pop,"" he said. ""If Sony wants to do something, let them put a factory in here.""
Floyd T. Caston, the city's outspoken affirmative action director, estimated that only 25 percent of construction jobs for the aquarium project were held by minorities, even though the city is 81 percent black and Hispanic. About half the aquarium's 279 full and part-time jobs are held by Camden residents, aquarium officials said. Mr. Caston said most of those are low-level jobs, and most were handed out as political patronage.
""To get something, you had to be connected,"" he said. ""If this arena gets off the ground, it will be the same thing."" Revitalization Plan
To that complaint, state and county officials offer the Camden Initiative, a multi-faceted revitalization plan that state and county officials say will create three industrial parks and lure businesses to Camden.
The Delaware River Port Authority has approved a $3 million grant for land acquisition for a new industrial park in South Camden, and the county has committed to pay for much of a second, Mr. Nash said. But much of the money for the third park, and other parts of the initiative, will fall to the state. And a spokesman for Mrs. Whitman said that while the Governor-elect supports the plan, she is concerned about finding money for it.
Mr. Benson, who moved to Camden in 1957 to work at a food store, said he has seen too many other plans come and go -- from the City Within a City program in the 1960's to the promised Veterans Administration hospital that was killed by the Reagan administration -- to get excited about this one.
""A political gimmick,"" he said. ""I don't see it in my lifetime, Camden coming around. Maybe in my grandkids' lifetime, hopefully. But I think I'll be long gone if it happens.""",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","On Sunday; White, Male, Middle-Aged And Wavering
Every Tuesday afternoon, about 100 business executives gather at the Knights of Columbus hall in this prosperous suburb. The group is middle-aged, all white, virtually all men (""A few ladies,"" says Steven Salaway), with impressive resumes -- vice presidents, division managers, systems analysts. Most are in the $70,000 to $120,000 salary range.
As a group they are not political, but individually, they tend to vote Republican. These are the out-of-work Republicans. It is why they meet, to share job leads. Some, like Mr. Salaway (bank vice president, $86,000) have been out two years. Many Americans who voted for President Bush in 1988 are now jobless. Unemployment is 9.8 percent in New Jersey, (a 10-year high); 9.4 in Michigan; 8.9 in California; 8.6 in Florida, all states that went for Mr. Bush.
While Republicans in Houston cheered family values, these people fretted over house payments and health insurance. Many would not give their names because they now call themselves consultants and don't want employers knowing it's a fancy title for jobless. Mr. Salaway has been set back 10 years financially. When William Graham visited his son at camp, the 11-year-old asked, ""Dad, you found a job?"" The father said, ""Not yet."" And the boy asked, ""Dad, we in the poorhouse yet?""
To businessmen like these, perhaps the single most surreal moment of the Republican convention -- even more surreal than Marilyn Quayle bashing draft dodgers -- was the Secretary of Labor saying, ""Are we better off than four years ago? Of course we are!""
The men at the Knights hall (they use it free) are not dinosaurs, not steelworkers or coal miners. They are management information systems specialists, fellows who know how to maximize performance from a computer system. If the economy were growing, they'd be in the thick of it. Most have been laid off during ""downsizing"" -- the lopping off of entire corporate divisions. Nothing personal. As their job searches stretch on, they view the economy as a downward spiral of shrinking companies going through round after round of layoffs to stay solvent.
Inflation's upward spiral helped unseat a President in 1980 and these people have that spiraling feeling again. ""I'm diehard Republican,"" said Mr. Salaway. ""I almost voted for a Democrat once -- I can't remember who."" If the election were tomorrow, he said that he could not vote for Mr. Bush and that he had several Republican friends who felt the same. ""Bush pretended the economy was fine too long.""
""I'm definitely not voting for Bush,"" said Ted Sogrotzki, another longtime Reagan-Bush man. He came to the meeting like he used to dress for work, in gray suit and carrying a brief case. He's ""90 percent sure"" he'll vote for Bill Clinton. He found nothing new in the President's speech of a lifetime.
The economy is moving them. Walter Mazuryk voted for Mr. Bush in '88; he's moved to undecided. ""I'm afraid to vote for a Democrat but I'm left with no choice."" Alex Diamant couldn't get enthusiastic about anyone in '88 and didn't vote; he's moved to Mr. Clinton.
They care about family values, but few look to politicians for them. It is partly that the press has ballyhooed Gennifer and Jennifer to the point that they seem to cancel each other out. But beyond that, does anyone believe a national politician has made family a top priority? ""For national businessmen and politicians, family is secondary,"" said Allan Karan. ""Work is primary."" Who spends more time raising their children, unwed mothers or the Vice President of the United States? ""Family values is a smokescreen to hide the economy,"" says Mr. Mazuryk.
Weekly meetings are so impressive, they're painful to watch. Most participants arrive 15 minutes early. They bring job leads that didn't work for them, but may help others. Six new members introduced themselves; three had been vice presidents. They sat in rows of 10 so job leads could be efficiently distributed and collated. Free computer courses were announced in subjects like AS400/RPG3. A speaker lectured on interviewing techniques, and they took notes. They make you realize how much work unemployment is.
Each week they survey themselves. ""I'd like a count of how many had interviews this week for a real job, not a recruiter or agency?"" Sixteen. ""How many went on a second interview?"" Five. ""How many offers?"" Zero.
""It's scary how fast we're growing,"" said Mr. Mazuryk. ""Each month we get 20 to 30 new members and maybe six people find a job."" Afterward, they raced off. Jim Matulevich, a systems manager, had to get to a $5-an-hour liquor store job. Many will stay with Mr. Bush, but a lot are ready to hold their noses and vote Democrat and this looks to be an election that will be decided by the nose-holders.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","'Jim' and 'Chuck' Letters: Trenton Foes Call a Truce
After weeks of trading potshots over taxes, the state budget and education financing, Gov. Jim Florio and the Republican leadership of the new Legislature have agreed to take a ride together, a bipartisan, whistle-stop train ride across part of New Jersey and on to Washington to fight for mass-transit money.
The truce of sorts was forged last week in an exchange of cordial and carefully crafted letters between Mr. Florio and the Republicans. First, Mr. Florio sent identical letters to Assembly Speaker Garabed (Chuck) Haytaian and State Senate President Donald T. DiFrancesco in which he raised concerns over proposed cuts in Federal mass-transit aid. Mr. Florio also invited the Republicans to accompany him to Washington ""to present the state's case to Congress.""
""In past years, our state's Congressional delegation has worked aggressively in a bipartisan way to prevent reductions in mass-transit aid,"" Mr. Florio wrote. ""I am asking you to join me in the same kind of coalition to benefit our state's residents.""
He also asked the Legislature to consider adopting a resolution urging stable Federal financing.
""I anticipate going to Washington in the next few weeks to testify before Congress on this matter, and I hope you will join me,"" the letter ended.
Mr. Haytaian responded the next day in a one-page typewritten letter that began, ""Dear Governor Florio."" The formal greeting was crossed out, however, and substituted with a more personal handwritten, ""Dear Jim.""
""I will be happy to accompany you to Washington to press for our fair share of Federal funds,"" wrote Mr. Haytaian, who had also raised the idea of taking the train to Washington. ""We could board in Newark. This would give us a chance to talk to commuters about this and other matters of mutual concern.
""The journey would also give us a long overdue opportunity to discuss other issues of important to the people of New Jersey in the spirit of bipartisan cooperation.""
Mr. Haytaian signed the letter ""Chuck.""
""Maybe some people didn't think I would take him up on it,"" Mr. Haytaian said today. ""But there's nothing sinister intended. This is something that we both can agree on, and maybe if we can go down to Washington together and show some bipartisanism, we may influence Congress to change its mind.""
A spokesman for Mr. Florio said the Governor intended to take up the offer.
The tenor of the letters and the swift and friendly responses is a marked shift from the tough talk and gamesmanship that has dominated the first month of political affairs in Trenton under the Democratic Governor and the Republican leadership of the Legislature. The 205th Legislature opened on Jan. 14 with Mr. Florio and the legislative leaders' pledging cooperation. But the fighting quickly heated up.
The Republicans took control of the Senate and the Assembly after many Democrats were defeated in the elections in November. This is the first time in 20 years that one party is in the State House and its rival has a ""vetoproof"" majority in both chambers of the Legislature.
The trip to Washington would be the first significant follow-through on the promise for bipartisan cooperation. But that effort, of course, focuses on efforts outside the state. Neither Mr. Florio nor Mr. Haytaian tried to make a too much of their joint transit venture, but each side it demonstrated that they could and will cooperate.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","U.S. Accuses Emery Airlines Of Racial Bias
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit yesterday against Emery Worldwide Airlines, accusing it of racial discrimination and harassment against black employees at a trucking center in Kearny, N.J.
The civil lawsuit asserts that Emery managers discriminated against blacks on job assignments, pay and overtime and allowed a racially hostile environment where hangman's nooses were displayed in work areas and some workers uttered racial slurs and insults.
The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Newark, accuses Emery of discriminating against 11 black employees and of improperly firing a white worker who complained about what he viewed as unfair treatment of black drivers.
'It's the year 2001, and it's a real concern that these types of things are still going on,' said Jacqueline McNair, regional attorney at the commission's Philadelphia office. 'This harassment was carried out by some managers, supervisors and co-workers. This type of activity was tolerated in the work environment, and it grew and grew.'
Nancy Colvert, a spokeswoman at Emery, which is based in Redwood City, Calif., said, 'The allegations are absolutely untrue.' Emery, a subsidiary of CNF Inc., has also denied allegations of racial discrimination made in a lawsuit that several of the black Emery drivers had filed in state court in New Jersey.
Commission officials said that two nooses were hung conspicuously at the mail-processing center, one of them around a black doll's neck.
Commission officials also said Emery had retaliated against a black driver who complained about discrimination by giving negative references when he sought work at another transportation company.
Corrado Gigante, director of the commission's Newark office, said that under federal law, companies could be held responsible for racial harassment by co-workers and not just by managers when management has created a pervasive hostile racial environment or allowed one to persist.
Under the Civil Rights Act of 1991, a victim of intentional discrimination may recover damages of up to $300,000 from employers with more than 500 employees, like Emery.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","New Jersey Acts to End School Chiefs' Tenure
The State Senate gave overwhelming final approval today to a bill eliminating career tenure for school superintendents in New Jersey, the only state that guaranteed superintendents their jobs for life.
The measure, passed 25 to 6, now goes to Gov. Jim Florio. The Governor, who has argued that schools must be made more accountable for their policies and spending, made elimination of superintendent tenure a legislative goal in his State of the State address in January.
Lifetime tenure for school superintendents became a particularly hot issue after several school boards were forced to buy out the contracts of superintendents who resisted efforts to oust them.
The bill addresses the concerns of superintendents that they might be dismissed frivolously by requiring school boards to give them three-to-five-year contracts with automatic renewal, unless the board provides a year's notice to terminate.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Residents Rally For a Response To 8 Killings In Newark
Two days after four young people were killed in separate execution-style shootings, and three weeks after a similar slaughter, residents of this hard-pressed city rallied on Thursday to demand a response from Mayor Sharpe James, who they said was minimizing the violence.
About 30 people showed up for a hastily called rally on the steps of City Hall to complain about the climbing murder rate and what they said was cold indifference from city officials. So far, 85 people have been killed here this year, police statistics show, compared with 83 in 2003 and 68 in 2002. Since Thanksgiving Day, there have been eight murders, the police say, a per capita rate that outpaced New York City during the same period.
Members of the clergy, community leaders and friends and relatives of the crime victims said Mr. James, who has been mayor since 1986, had not done enough to address the violence.
Russell Yancey, 45, an unemployed computer technician who attended the rally, said he had lost faith in the city's leader, after more than 15 years of support.
'Sharpe James is more concerned with himself than with his city,' Mr. Yancey said. 'He is out of touch with the people who put him in office.'
The killings on Tuesday occurred within a two-mile section of the city's South and West Wards. The violence started around 2:30 p.m. Sutton Davis, 22, was shot five times on South 15th Street, the police said; about two hours later, Robert Brown, 26, was gunned down on Clinton Avenue; and Nyru Simmonds, 20, was shot later that night on Elizabeth Avenue near Meeker Avenue, and died at University Hospital in Newark at 1 a.m., according to the police. The fourth victim, Ronald Logan, 20, was shot about 8:30 p.m. in the hallway of an apartment at 416 Irvine Turner Boulevard.
On Nov. 26, the bodies of three men and a woman were found lying face down, side by side, with coats over their heads, in a vacant lot near a church in the South Ward. Each had been shot in the head, the police said.
At the rally and in telephone interviews, many residents said that the eight murders, coming so close together, had brought concerns about the city's priorities to the surface.
While Newark is enjoying a mild revival, with property values on the rise, clergy members and residents questioned whether neighborhood crime-fighting had been pushed aside by downtown building projects, like a proposed $310 million hockey arena. The city seems more concerned with newcomers, they said, than residents.
'They ignore the plight of the population for the sake of buildings that will be used mostly for people from outside,' said the Rev. Raul Comesanas, the pastor St. Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic Church, next to the vacant lot in the South Ward where the four bodies had been dumped.
Salaam Ismial, chairman of the National United Youth Council, a youth advocacy organization, agreed. 'We're tired,' he said. 'There are black people suffering and the only thing the mayor can do is talk about downtown.'
Mayor James declined requests for interviews. He issued a statement praising the heroism of the police and denouncing the killings.
After the rally, the deputy mayor, Ras Baraka, said it was unfair to blame city government for problems that had their roots in poverty, unemployment and other social ills. 'The mayor could come to every meeting in the city,' he said. 'That doesn't mean people will stop shooting each other.'
The police director, Anthony Ambrose, said at a news conference on Wednesday that overall crime was down 9 percent from 2003, and that most residents did not have to fear violence, because it typically involved criminals attacking criminals. Mr. James has said that the four people shot on Tuesday were involved in gangs.
The police said that three arrests were made Tuesday night. Two of the suspects -- Tony Johnson, 19, and an unidentified 17-year-old -- were arrested after a chase that led the police to Elizabeth and ended with the suspects' car crashing into several parked vehicles on North and Newark Avenues. A third suspect, Noel Riddick, 26, was arrested when he walked into University Hospital with a gunshot wound and was recognized by an officer who had exchanged gunfire with one of the suspects. Despite the arrests, Stephen Adubato Sr., a local power broker and founder of the North Ward Center, a social services agency, said that the entire city had been shocked. 'We're turning the corner economically, so it would seem that this is a time where we would be safer since there is more reason to protect what we have,' he said. 'But instead, there's this.'
Friends of at least one of the victims also took issue with the mayor's charge that everyone involved in the shootings had ties to gangs. Nichelle Woolridge, 27, Robert Brown's fiancée, said that Mr. Brown, an aspiring rapper, only wanted to make music and get married.
Kent Stokes, 33, a friend of Mr. Brown's who said he was with him when he died, criticized the mayor and the police for assuming that the victims were criminals. 'You see a cop get killed and they find a suspect,' he said. 'But they can't find who killed my brother.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","After Bruising Campaign and Close Vote, Healy Becomes Jersey City's Mayor
Ten days after voters went to the polls, a councilman was declared the mayor of New Jersey's second-largest city Friday in a decision delayed by absentee and provisional ballots.
The councilman, Jerramiah T. Healy, who is also a former municipal court chief judge, won the special election with 17,401 votes, beating his closest opponent, Assemblyman Louis M. Manzo, by 2,242 votes. Moments after the county clerk certified the election Friday, Mr. Healy, who was one of 11 candidates, was sworn in as acting mayor in a ceremony held in the old Jersey City courthouse.
'We are going to achieve the heights that Jersey City is destined to achieve,' Mr. Healy said as he stood in front of an audience that included Senator Jon Corzine, Congressman Robert Menendez and the State Senate president, Richard J. Codey, who will become New Jersey's acting governor on Tuesday. 'And we will achieve as we all work together with the 240,000 people of this city and all the people of Hudson County.'
A special election was held after Glenn D. Cunningham, who was elected mayor in 2001, died of a heart attack in May. Mr. Healy will serve out the remainder of Mr. Cunningham's term, which ends in June, and said that he planned to run for a full four-year term in the election to be held in May.
'I am certain that Glenn is looking down, not just on me but on everyone here in this room, everyone assembled and all of these elected officials, and I'm sure he is smiling because I believe that Glenn would be happy to see this and see all of this unity here in Hudson County,' Mr. Healy said.
The mayoral campaign was marked by feisty exchanges and the tearing down of opponents' banners by campaign aides. In one campaign attack, a photo was posted on the Internet showing Mr. Healy naked, unconscious and slumped on his front porch after a night of drinking.
'It's time to put the backbiting and infighting of the past year in Jersey City and Hudson County behind us,' Mr. Healy said. 'It's time for all of us to stand together and unite.'
Mr. Manzo conceded the race Friday in a letter he sent to Mr. Healy. 'As your challenger, I hope that I was able to bring some of our city's most pressing issues to the forefront, and I trust that they will be considered by your administration,' Mr. Manzo wrote.
Jersey City has experienced impressive business and residential growth in the last several years, partly because the Sept. 11 terror attack led many Manhattan businesses to relocate across the Hudson River.
Mr. Healy said he would focus his efforts on hiring more police officers, filling the city's many potholes and working on ways to get guns off the streets.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Pension Funds In New Jersey Face Shortfall
Just as New Jersey has patched up its worst fiscal mess ever, the state is staring at another: next year an enormous payment for its shrinking pension funds will come due.
The total will approach $1 billion, by the estimates of some state officials and consultants, most of it in new spending. John E. McCormac, the state treasurer, said the shortfall would be 'much worse' than he expected just a few months ago, although he said he would not know what new contributions would be needed until the most recent investment returns were analyzed.
Soon, Mr. McCormac said, the state will be able to calculate the damage done so far by a bold plan in the 1990's that borrowed money to finance the funds with stock market profits.
The dismay and blame surrounding the pension funds are directed mostly at former Gov. Christie Whitman, who now more than ever is accused of mortgaging the state's future to pay for the tax cuts that propelled her to national prominence.
'You think what's going on in the business world is bad?' said Judith C. Cambria, a fiscal policy specialist who wrote a report on the state's fiscal trends over the last decade. 'The last administration used every trick in the book.'
While criticisms of her administration have mounted with New Jersey's escalating budget problems, Mrs. Whitman has continued to defend her fiscal management.
'So much of it has gotten personal,' she said in a recent interview with The New York Times.
More recently, as the stock market has stagnated, pension funds all over the nation have lost money. But in New Jersey, said Tom Vincz, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, 'a perfect storm is coming up now.'
The market plunge has cost New Jersey's funds $22 billion over the last two years. The state will have to resume regular contributions, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, after skipping payments for several years. And pension costs were bumped up after the State Legislature granted 9 percent increases to teachers and retired state workers before last year's elections.
What's more, the state must pay $160 million in the current fiscal year, which began July 1, on the $2.75 billion in bonds that the state issued to replenish the funds in 1997. The payment schedule was set up to start with small amounts and balloon later.
The idea five years ago was to wipe out a pension-fund deficit by floating bonds, invest the assets in a galloping stock market and make more on the investments than it cost to pay off the bonds. The plan was purposely overfunded so that the state could skip payments for several years.
The returns, however, have not covered the 7.64 percent annual interest on the bonds -- although they might over the life of the bonds.
'I believe it was in essence arbitrage, and I don't think the government should engage in arbitrage,' said State Senator Leonard Lance, who as a member of the General Assembly was one of the few Republicans to oppose Governor Whitman's proposal. 'Unfortunately, I believe I've been proved right on this.'
Even before Gov. James E. McGreevey took office in January, he blamed his Republican predecessors for the growing budget gap. But the pension funds were not even a factor for the 2003 fiscal year, because by law no contribution was scheduled until 2004.
While the pension funds have lost value, there was no way to anticipate the market losses of the spring and summer.
When Moody's Investors Service downgraded New Jersey's bonds in March, it predicted that in 2004 the state would have to start making pension payments of 'several hundred million dollars per year.' Tim Blake, the author of the report, said he had since heard estimates of $1 billion.
Over the last two years, the state's investment portfolio, most of which is pension funds, declined from $94 billion to $72 billion. About 60 percent of the portfolio is invested in stocks.
Ms. Cambria, the fiscal policy specialist, said that while the recent losses were alarming, 'It's absolutely essential that we realize we are seeing the consequences of irresponsible action over a long period of years.'
In the 1990's, the state's long-term debt rose to $15.7 billion from $4 billion. Of that, $2.75 billion came from the 1997 pension bond sale, the state's largest debt offering ever.
The bond issue allowed Mrs. Whitman to balance her election-year budget by drastically cutting the state's required contribution to the pension funds. The problem was 'unfunded liabilities' -- that is, money that was supposed to be in the pension funds and was not -- dating to 1994, when the state started deferring its payments.
When the governor proposed borrowing to raise the funds and investing the money, the idea was wildly unpopular. No state had ever issued bonds to cover pension costs, and even the Republican chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Robert E. Littell, pronounced it a 'wacko idea.'
But Mrs. Whitman prevailed, and critics were shushed when the bonds sold in an eager market at an average interest rate of 7.64 percent, instead of the 7.78 percent that the state had expected.
Over the next two years, the pension system's returns averaged 19.3 percent. But by Jan. 1, 2002, the total return had dropped to 7 percent, and losses since then have depressed returns further.
McGreevey administration officials acknowledge that the funds have performed worse than most public pension plans in recent months. Mr. McCormac, the state treasurer, said New Jersey was one of just two states that use in-house employees to manage all investments. But he dismissed reports that some administration officials were considering hiring private brokerage firms to manage the funds.
'That's not even on our radar screen,' Mr. McCormac said.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Horses, Yes, But Please, No Ranches
LEAD: These are nervous times for Bob and Mary Sargent and other horse owners scattered around this hilly country township.
These are nervous times for Bob and Mary Sargent and other horse owners scattered around this hilly country township.
Abandoning years of indifference toward backyard stables and corrals, the local government now wants to limit the number of horses that residents can keep.
Officials say they do not want to crack down on people who own only a few horses but to impose controls on large ranches. There is a small but growing number of complaints about horses damaging property, they say.
Backyard horsemen, long accustomed to a laissez-faire approach to herd sizes, have banded together in protest and enlisted the aid of the New Jersey Horse Council, the industry's lobbyist and booster. Proposed Ordinance
For years West Milford - with 78 square miles, 26,000 people and long stretches of unbroken woodland 35 miles northwest of midtown Manhattan - has been a horseman's haven. People squeezed from other towns by anti-horse laws were content here because the township ignored its law permitting only one horse per acre.
A proposal now before the Township Council would require two acres for one horse and an acre for each additional one. Ownership of 15 horses would constitute a commercial ranch, requiring 25 acres. Any land sloping more than 20 degrees cannot be included in the allowable acreage. About 70 families would be affected by the proposal.
Such squabbles are increasing throughout the state, New Jersey officials say. And they are bracing for new battles as more people move into open spaces. The state's rapidly growing horse industry - now valued at $4 billion - is vying for the same land. About 4,500 new farms opened statewide between 1977 and 1987, compared to 1,500 in the prior decade.
Horsemen who love West Milford for its wooded solitude and miles of meandering riding trails are indignant at the proposed ordinance. Big Sky Stables
Take the Sargents, who have an immaculate stable, three corrals and a riding ring behind their log house. They have 15 horses on 16 acres.  Mr. Sargent scoffs at his property being called a commercial ranch under the proposal. On a spread they call Big Sky Stables, he and his wife say they have raised horses strictly as pets and companions, with no financial incentive, for 15 years, since their daughter Ann Marie was 12. Attachments run deep, they say. 'Horses all have personalities, just like people,' said Mrs. Sargent. 'There's timid. There's aggressive. There's mischievous. There's playful. You just can't throw them away like an old toy.'
Ada Erik has been shoeing horses for families here for 20 years. She has 16 horses on two acres. As she spread hay bales around her corral the other day, Ms. Erik talked of animals as if they were grandchildren. 'My Oldest Boy'
'Babe, here, I bought her at an auction at a meat market,' Ms. Erik said about a mare poking around her tractor. 'She's given me three babies, Sonya and Honey and Beggar. And Bobo, up there by the tree, he's 27. He's my oldest boy. He was once a championship show horse.'
Ms. Erik argues that anyone with one acre of land should be allowed to keep any number of horses.
Owners have also complained about harassment. Hay sheds are being more carefully checked for permits than in the past, they say.
Mayor Stewart C. Perry, however, said complaints have been made about horses poking their heads over fences and eating shrubs. He said a summer camp's lake was closed because of runoff from manure.
He denied that officials want to free horse acreage for new homes. The only goal, he said, is controlling large ranches. The horsemen scoff.
'They're trying to restrict ownership of horses to rich individuals,' argued Thomas Parisi, whose family of five has five horses on four sloping acres. He is worried about losing his barn, he said. The proposed law says barns must be 100 feet from all property lines. Mr. Parisi's rectangular plot is only 180 feet wide.
Since the New Jersey Horse Council stepped into the squabble, Mayor Perry has started talking about compromising and possibly allowing existing farms to keep one horse per acre and more than one per acre on five acres or more.
'Acreage is not a factor,' said Rod MacDougall, the Horse Council's zoning and legislative chairman and chief mediator here. 'The key is how well the farm and horse is maintained.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Debate Rages Over Site Proposed for Incinerator
After 10 years of looking for a place to put a major hazardous-waste incinerator and backing away in the face of local opposition across the state, New Jersey has been pushed onto a potential site on the Arthur Kill. The state now finds itself in a fight, not only with local officials and residents, but with New York City, just across the brackish waterway.
The city, with New York State providing some legal support, has joined Linden and a group of its residents in opposing the incinerator, which New Jersey officials say could solve a major problem if it meets strict environmental criteria.
Lawyers fighting the incinerator, which would be capable of processing 60,000 tons of hazardous waste annually, say it will increase air pollution over the Arthur Kill and increase health hazards for Linden and Staten Island residents as well as for herons and other species that nest on Pralls Island, just to the east. They also argue that the site does not meet the criteria established by the state.
The lawyer for the company that wants to build the incinerator contends that the site meets the state's criteria and argues that the incinerator would not add significantly to existing air-quality problems or threaten wildlife.
Before it was offered the Linden site, the state's Hazardous Waste Siting Commission examined 11 others, principally in rural areas with low population densities. It eliminated all of them because of environmental problems and local political opposition.
The Linden site, which is on a 143-acre tract owned by the GAF Corporation in the middle of one of the state's heaviest concentrations of industrial plants, came in unexpectedly in 1988.
GAF, which ceased chemical manufacturing operations in Linden in April 1991, offered to build the incinerator on about 20 acres of its land.  The company has signed a consent order with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and Energy to clean up the heavily polluted site.
The GAF plan has advanced further than any other. After accepting the proposal for study, the commission sent it, along with a detailed criticism by Linden officials, to Administrative Law Judge Joseph Lavery, who conducted a series of hearings beginning last September. Final briefs are in, and Judge Lavery is expected to make a recommendation on the proposal to the commission next month. The commission would then have 30 days to render a final decision.
If the GAF proposal is accepted, something that both sides predict, it will mean the triumph of the ""brown fields"" theory of site selection, which favors putting the incinerator in an already polluted industrial area, over the ""green fields"" theory, which supports locating it in a sparsely populated area.
David Samson, the lawyer for GAF, said New Jersey has a serious need for the incinerator, ""and the point is, if this site doesn't satisfy the need then no site will satisfy it.""
But Sandra T. Ayres, the lawyer for Linden, objected to the idea that its residents should have to bear the impact of another industrial operation. ""The idea seems to be that if they don't like the increased risk they should move away,"" she said. ""That says the victims are to blame for staying where they are.""
She also said the ""brown fields"" theory smacks of elitism. The per capita income of residents in industrial areas is generally lower than that of residents in the outlying areas who successfully fought the incinerator, she said.
Beatrice Bernzott, the leader of Concerned Citizens of Linden, said residents are fed up with oil spills in the Arthur Kill from nearby refineries, tank cars loaded with chemicals parked on rail sidings in town and the attempt to force Linden to accept the incinerator. ""With everything we already have, you'll need a shoehorn to put it in,"" she said.
Senator Raymond J. Lesniak, Democrat of Elizabeth, also opposes the incinerator, contending that a recent law requiring manufacturers to reduce hazardous wastes at the source may make it unnecessary. Moreover, he added, ""The area is not in compliance now with Federal and state clean-air standards, and this incinerator, along with a solid-waste incinerator already approved for Rahway, will make it impossible to comply.""
Judge Lavery allowed New York City to join the hearing over the objections of Mr. Samson, who said the city's reaction ""takes the idea of Not In My Backyard to new levels of hysteria."" Mr. Samson said the siting decision ""is a New Jersey matter and should be decided on New Jersey criteria.""
Christopher A. Amato, an assistant corporation counsel for New York City, said the ecological analysis presented by GAF did not ease the city's concerns about the impact of emissions on the bird sanctuary in the Arthur Kill and on the region's air quality. He said the company should have been required to do more than simply report on the incremental emissions the incinerator would produce.
""We are already experiencing a lot of pollution from New Jersey,"" he said, so GAF should be required to analyze the impact of the incinerator in the context of all existing sources of pollution.
Mr. Samson said the rotary kiln incinerator planned for the site would destroy 99.9999 percent of the organic waste it handled and would have far lower particulate emission rates than the regulations allow. In such a case, he said, it is not necessary for the company to examine all other pollution sources in the area. Mr. Samson presented 15 expert witnesses who testified that the site meets all criteria, something disputed by the opponents.
Judge Lavery will have to decide arguments over whether the site meets requirements for withstanding flooding caused by storms, whether the water table is too close to the surface, whether the site is too close to a residential area and whether there are adequate safeguards and evacuation plans in the event of an accident at the incinerator or one involving a truck en route to it.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Critics of Deal With Giants Want to Read the Fine Print
While New Jersey officials are poised to approve a new stadium for the New York Giants, the deal that was struck last week with the team has some lawmakers asking whether the state is giving up too much.
The board of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority is expected to vote in favor of the agreement today, since Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey has lined up support for what he calls 'a big win for taxpayers.'
The Giants are to build and finance a $750 million replacement for the 29-year-old state-owned stadium in the Meadowlands Sports Complex, pay $6.3 million in rent and taxes and take over maintenance costs of more than $3 million a year.
The state's obligations and potential losses are less clear, however. No one has determined exactly how much of the debt on the existing stadium must be paid off or whether the sports authority could have received more money for the 40 acres of prime property it is providing to the Giants for retail development.
The deal has critics within the administration and the sports authority, but few are willing to be identified. The public complaints are coming from legislators who raise doubt about the deal's benefits.
'I am afraid this ultimately will end up costing the taxpayers,' Assemblyman Kevin O'Toole, a Republican on the budget committee, said in a statement on Wednesday.
Lawmakers also say they have been given no information about the agreement, which Mr. Codey, a Democrat, signed on April 14.
'This may be the best deal in the world,' said Assemblyman Joseph R. Malone III, the ranking Republican on the budget committee, who with fellow Republican committee members called for a public hearing on the agreement. 'I just want it to see the light of day.'
Independent sports economists say that they believe the plan is a far better deal for the taxpayers than most N.F.L. stadiums are.
Even if the deal ends up costing the state $10 million to $20 million a year, as some detractors say, said Mark S. Rosentraub, an economist at Cleveland State University, that price would be negligible when spread over millions of households.
There are questions, though, about what the state is giving up over the 40-year term of the lease. It will take on $124 million in debt.
The chairman of the sports authority, Carl J. Goldberg, said the agency's lawyers believed that $72 million of that amount would have to be retired immediately when the existing stadium is demolished. He added that the authority already has the cash to pay that off. Whether the authority pays off more than that, refinances the remaining debt or both has not been determined.
The state now relies on revenue from the stadium to pay its debt service of $5 million to $6 million a year. Another source would have to be found if any debt is refinanced. It is not clear, either, how the state will finance the $30 million in infrastructure improvements that it plans to spend.
At the same time, the state will lose about $18 million a year that it receives from Giants, Jets and MetroStars games, concerts and other events -- although it already stands to lose income if the Jets and MetroStars soccer team, which also uses the stadium, leave as planned.
The state's consultants say the project will produce $15.3 million in added tax revenue in its first year of operation, 2009, and $1.1 billion more than the existing stadium would yield over a 30-year period.
Mr. Codey and Mr. Goldberg say the alternative to a new stadium -- improving the old one under a lease provision the Giants have sought to enforce in court -- is a huge risk that could cost the state $300 million.
Still, Republicans are critical, and even some Democrats are wary of the agreement. Mr. Goldberg says he has reached out to legislators to talk about the deal. But some complain that the terms are still mysterious.
Assemblyman Paul DiGaetano of Bergen County, a Republican running for governor, said Wednesday that the Giants were getting 'prime real estate' at almost no cost.
'The governor and the leadership of the sports authority are acting quickly before the people realize what's going on,' he said.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","On Radio Show, Torricelli Takes The Times to Task
Senator Robert G. Torricelli said yesterday that The New York Times had deliberately misrepresented his relationship with a wealthy political contributor who was at the center of a federal investigation into his activities.
Five days after the announcement that the lengthy federal inquiry would end without criminal charges, Mr. Torricelli, a Democrat from New Jersey, offered some new details of the matter, saying for the first time that he had never accepted a Rolex watch or Italian suits from the contributor, David Chang.
In an appearance on the syndicated radio program 'Imus in the Morning,' on WFAN-AM (660), Mr. Torricelli also denied that he had brought Mr. Chang along to lobby for him in meetings with senior officials in South Korea, asserting that Mr. Chang had simply sneaked into one of the meetings without his knowledge.
'I had no idea what this man was doing in the room, nor did he play any particularly important role in the meeting,' Mr. Torricelli said. 'He showed up.'
The former United States ambassador to South Korea, Stephen W. Bosworth, gave a different account of Mr. Torricelli's actions there, echoing one given earlier by the former Korean finance minister, Kang Bong Kyoon.
Mr. Bosworth, who was interviewed about the matter last year by federal investigators, confirmed yesterday that in July 1999 he apologized to Mr. Kang after learning that Mr. Torricelli had taken Mr. Chang along to an official briefing with the minister and then lobbied him on Mr. Chang's behalf. At the time, Mr. Chang was trying to buy a $1.5 billion insurance company that was being sold off by the Korean government.
'Nobody sneaks into a meeting with the Korean finance minister,' Mr. Bosworth, now the dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., said in an interview with The Times. 'I thought it was inappropriate and I said as much to the minister.'
People involved in the inquiry said that federal prosecutors had also interviewed the American diplomat who had accompanied Mr. Torricelli to his meetings with Mr. Kang and the Korean prime minister, Kim Jong Pil, and that the diplomat, Marc Knapper, had confirmed that the senator had brought Mr. Chang along and had raised his bid for the insurance company with both officials.
Asked about the discrepancy, a spokeswoman for the senator, Deborah DeShong, declined to clarify or elaborate on Mr. Torricelli's remarks.
In his interview with Mr. Imus, Mr. Torricelli said that The Times had printed stories 'which to a certainty -- a certainty -- their reporters must have known were untrue, that appeared in no other newspaper.'
Mr. Torricelli said the paper's reporting had 'permanently damaged' the reputations of some of his aides, and that he himself felt like 'the New Jersey Wen Ho Lee.' Mr. Lee, the nuclear-weapons scientist who was suspected of spying for China, was the subject of articles in The Times that the newspaper's editors defended, though they acknowledged some flaws.
The senator said he was considering making a detailed presentation to reporters and editors at The Times about what he believed were its inaccuracies. Yesterday afternoon, however, Ms. DeShong said Mr. Torricelli had no further comment now.
Mr. Chang, who has cooperated with the government as part of a plea bargain, told federal investigators that during the course of his five-year relationship with Mr. Torricelli, he gave the legislator an $8,100 Rolex watch, about 10 off-the-rack Italian suits, a large-screen television set, an Oriental rug and other jewelry and gifts, people involved in the inquiry said.
Several merchants confirmed selling those items to Mr. Chang, and at least two of those also told investigators that they had been delivered to Mr. Torricelli's home, these people said. A tailor in Palisades Park, N.J., told investigators and reporters about having fitted the suits for a friend of Mr. Chang's who appeared to match Mr. Torricelli's description.
Asked about those assertions by Mr. Imus, Mr. Torricelli sometimes responded as he has since the first report of the allegations appeared in The Times, saying he had never taken 'illegal gifts.' When pressed, however, he specifically denied having taken a watch or suits from Mr. Chang.
Mr. Torricelli also said that all of his watches had been stolen in a burglary of his home in 1998, and that 'I had a record of every watch that I owned at the time.'
A copy of the report filed with the Englewood Police Department by one of Mr. Torricelli's aides, Roberta L. Stern, on Jan. 9, 1998, listed four watches missing in the burglary, including a Rolex made of stainless steel and valued at $3,200.
The United States attorney's office in Manhattan, which handled the federal inquiry over the last year, referred some of the evidence it had gathered to the Senate Ethics Committee. In a letter yesterday, a government watchdog group, Common Cause, urged leaders of the panel to name an outside counsel to conduct its inquiry, and called on the committee chairman, Senator Harry Reid, to recuse himself from the case.
Mr. Reid, a Nevada Democrat, is a longtime friend and supporter of Mr. Torricelli's who contributed $500 through a political action committee to the defense fund that the New Jersey senator set up to defray his legal costs during the inquiry.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Poll Finds Whitman In Lead for Senate
A survey of New Jersey voters showed Gov. Christine Todd Whitman leading by 16 percentage points over former Gov. Jim Florio in a matchup for the United States Senate seat to be vacated by Senator Frank R. Lautenberg next year. Neither Mrs. Whitman nor Mr. Florio have formally declared their intentions in the race.
Mr. Florio, who narrowly lost a race for re-election to Mrs. Whitman in 1993, has formed an exploratory committee to consider seeking the Democratic nomination. Mrs. Whitman is expected to announce next week whether she will enter the race.
According to the Quinnipiac College poll, Mrs. Whitman was favored by 51 percent and Mr. Florio by 35 percent in the poll that asked 984 New Jersey residents their preference if the Governor and former governor were paired in the contest. Fifty percent said they believed Mrs. Whitman has been a better governor than Mr. Florio; 18 percent said they preferred Mr. Florio. The poll has a margin of error of 3.1 percent.
Mr. Florio said that other recent polls, conducted by Democratic Party officials, suggest that he would beat Mrs. Whitman. 'I don't think that there is anybody in the state who does not believe, if it comes to pass, that this will be a competitive race,' he said.
Pete McDonough, a spokesman for Mrs. Whitman, said that 'walking into a race that you have not even entered with a 50 percent base is a very strong place to be.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Lobbyist Named as Transportation Chief
New Jersey's Transportation Commissioner resigned today, and Gov. Christine Todd Whitman quickly announced that she would replace him with a lobbyist who represented a casino owner in his dealings with the state.
The nominee, James Weinstein, who worked in several state government positions during the 1980's, has been a lobbyist since 1990 and has represented Mirage Resorts Inc. of Las Vegas, Nev., since 1996.
Mr. Weinstein said he directly lobbied state officials for money to build a $330 million tunnel to the site of a proposed casino resort in Atlantic City. The state has has agreed to pay at least two-thirds of the project's $330 million cost.
The much-debated tunnel will connect the Atlantic City Expressway to the 168-acre site where Stephen A.  Wynn, the chairman of Mirage Resorts, plans to build a $1 billion casino and resort, including a 4,000-room hotel. Mr. Wynn has agreed to contribute $110 million to the tunnel.
The project has drawn opposition from Donald J. Trump and other owners whose casinos will have to compete with the Mirage project, from residents who will be forced to move and from environmentalists.
Today, some Atlantic City residents criticized the ties between Mr. Weinstein and Mirage Resorts.
'It's very shocking to me that there would a lobbyist instead of a transportation specialist for the top job in the entire state,' said Lillian E. Bryant, an Atlantic City homeowner who has opposed the tunnel. 'These people are supposed to look out for the citizens of New Jersey, not just the rich casino owners. How can we take this project seriously?'
Mr. Weinstein, 52, said he would avoid potential conflict of interest by recusing himself from any matters involving Mirage. 'Anything regarding the tunnel, or the casino, I will have no involvement in,' Mr. Weinstein said today. ' It will be dealt with by the deputy commissioner.'
Mr. Weinstein's permanent appointment requires the approval of the State Senate.
Across the country, as the number of gambling establishments has grown over the last decade, something of a revolving door has developed between government and the gambling industry. Because gambling is so heavily regulated, and casinos frequently receive tax abatements and other publicly financed incentives, casino owners have actively recruited influential politicians to negotiate favorable deals. Casinos are so profitable that they can easily attract government officials to work for them.
Mr. Weinstein would not discuss the salary he made by lobbying or the fees he was paid by Mirage, but said he was honored to be returning to public service. Mr. Wynn's spokesman, Alan M. Feldman, did not return calls for comment.
Governor Whitman's communications director, Peter McDonough, said Mr. Weinstein has extensive experience in transportation, as the former director of the New Jersey Governor's Authorities unit, which oversees the operation of the New Jersey Turnpike, New Jersey Transit, Garden State Parkway and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Mr. McDonough dismissed the criticism of Mr. Weinstein's appointment as the grumbling of a handful of rival casino owners who were threatened by the competition with Mr. Wynn. They refuse, he said, to acknowledge the economic lift that the tunnel project will provide to South Jersey.
'This is a project that will create thousands and thousands of jobs where they are needed most, in Atlantic City,' Mr. McDonough said. 'It's a project that people all over the country rave about.'
Mr. Trump could not be reached for comment and his lobbyist, Alan Marcus, said the Trump organization would make no public statements about the appointment.
The departing Transportation Commissioner, John J. Haley, said he was leaving to accept an unspecified private job.
Mr. Weinstein, who will begin working as acting commissioner on Dec. 7, said that his top priorities would include carrying out the EZ-Pass system on New Jersey highways, advancing construction of a light rail rapid transit project in Bergen and Hudson Counties, and improving the service of New Jersey Transit trains and buses.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Montclair Football Players Held in Rape of Schoolmate, 15
Two high school varsity football players in Montclair, N.J., were charged yesterday with kidnapping and raping a 15-year-old sophomore schoolmate on Monday night after approaching her on a street, forcing her into a car and driving her to a park where the attack occurred, the police said.
The Montclair police chief, David P. Sabagh, said last night that the case had been under investigation since Tuesday, when the girl's parents, school authorities and the police all learned of it. He said the accused boys, a 17-year-old senior and a 15-year-old junior, had surrendered to the police under an agreement worked out with their lawyers. Both were suspended from school on Wednesday.
The suspects, whose names were withheld because of their ages, were charged with kidnapping, aggravated sexual assault, conspiracy and endangering the welfare of a child. They were held at the Essex County Juvenile Detention Facility in Newark pending a court hearing early next week, according to Charlotte Smith, a spokeswoman for the Essex County prosecutor's office.
Christopher Patella, a lawyer for the 15-year-old player, said the suspects were not cooperating with the police. 'I would never allow my client to talk to the detectives,' Mr. Patella said. He refused to comment on the case except to say, 'There are two sides to every story, and people should not be prejudiced by what they hear.' He called his client a 'good kid and a good student' who was acting 'like any other 15-year-old kid who's in this situation.' It was not immediately clear who was representing the 17-year-old.
Chief Sabagh said the girl told the police she had left the Montclair Public Library and was walking home early Monday evening when a car bearing three youths, whom she knew, approached her at Bloomfield Avenue and Elm Street, three blocks from her home. She said the two accused boys forced her into the car, and she was driven about a mile to Canterbury Park, which is on the border of Montclair and Glen Ridge. It was unclear if alcohol was involved, the police said.
Upon reaching the park, one of the three boys, a 16-year-old who is also a varsity football player, got out of the car and left the scene, the police said.
'When he saw things were getting out of hand, he bailed out,' Deputy Police Chief Roger Terry told The Star-Ledger of Newark. The youth, who was not identified, has not been charged with any wrongdoing and has been cooperating with the investigators, Chief Sabagh said.
The girl told the police the other two youths raped her. She put the time at about 6:30 p.m. After the attack, she said, the assailants drove her back to the area where they had accosted her, dropped her off and drove away. Apparently frightened, she did not immediately tell her parents, officials said, but confided in a girlfriend at school the next day.
Dr. Frank Alvarez, Montclair's superintendent of schools, said the victim's friend told a school staff member, who told a police officer employed at the school. The police were then called, Dr. Alvarez said, and the parents were notified by the police on Tuesday afternoon. School officials met with the parents of the girl and the accused youths and their parents on Wednesday, and the suspensions were invoked.
Chief Sabagh said the girl was not hospitalized and did not appear to have been bruised or otherwise physically injured. But he added: 'We do believe her. She seems to have been through a lot, and she has given detectives specifics that make her story credible.'
While word of an attack had been common knowledge in Montclair since Wednesday, when the allegations were first reported in The Montclair Times, the news that arrests had been made and charges formalized shocked many residents of the leafy suburban enclave of 40,000 people, 12 miles west of Manhattan, that is known for its diversity, its high-quality schools and its relative affluence.
'This is pretty upsetting,' Montclair's mayor, Ed Remsen, said last night. 'It's not something that we take lightly. I actually found out about it in the papers, so I don't know many details. But I do know that people are really upset. From the little bit I know, it looks like the high school and the police are moving quickly. Obviously, kids who are athletes sometimes go out and drink, but this doesn't sound right even for athletes.'
Dr. Alvarez, who became the school superintendent in Montclair last November, emphasized in a telephone interview that the alleged attack had not occurred on school grounds and that the school authorities were doing all they could to cooperate in the inquiry and provide psychological counseling and other assistance to students troubled by the week's events.
'I think everyone in town is distressed by this,' he said. 'Even though the incident didn't occur at the school or on school premises, these are still our students, and you feel a certain responsibility. Our main concern is for the well-being of the alleged victim and for the privacy of all involved.' He noted that coaches had spoken with members of the football team and that guidance counselors were available for all the students.
At Montclair High, a pastoral campus of broad lawns and brick buildings shaded by large oak trees and traversed by a brook, several football players emerging from practice said that a sports psychologist, Dr. Ben Brennan, had warned team members to be cautious around girls, and expressed concern that the accusations could reflect badly on the team.
The players, who declined to give their names, spoke of the accused youths as good teammates -- the 15-year-old junior plays defensive end, and the 17-year-old senior plays fullback and linebacker. One youth said of the older suspect: 'He's real cool. He never really bothers anybody.'
Ed Walker, 14, a freshman at Montclair High, said that many students were skeptical of the girl's account. 'I think she's just saying stuff,' he said. 'A lot of people around the school say she's not serious.' He called the accused youths 'two of the most popular guys in the school.'
Corinne Cuozzo, 15, a sophomore at the school, said she was not surprised that Montclair students may have been involved in a sexual assault case. 'I could definitely see this kind of thing happening here,' she said. 'It was just shocking that they got arrested for it. Kids here usually get arrested for something like lighting a garbage can on fire.'
Justine Legge, 15, a sophomore at Montclair Kimberly Academy, a private school in town, said the incident had been much discussed on the community's online bulletin board. 'There was a posting that said something like, 'All females be informed,'' she said. 'You have to be very aware as a teenage girl. I know girls who would be, like, 'Wow! He's a senior. He wants to give me a ride. I'm going.''
Evisa Gallman, 17, a senior at Montclair High, was not surprised that the accusations had been made against football players. 'Frankly, the football team does some pretty dumb things,' she said. 'Some of the people on the team come across being not the sharpest tools in the shed.'
A junior student who did not give his name said the school had made no formal announcement about the case. Still, students were buzzing about it, he said. 'It's a little shocking because sexual assault doesn't happen every day,' he said.
Although it has not gone beyond the stage of unproved allegations and charges, the case appeared to hold echoes of a notorious assault in neighboring Glen Ridge 15 years ago. In the 1989 case, more than a dozen teenagers watched in a basement as a mildly retarded girl was sexually assaulted with a broomstick and a toy bat by three youths, who eventually went to prison.
A delay of six weeks in reporting the Glen Ridge incident to the police led to accusations of a cover-up. Intense publicity turned the town into a national caricature of moral decay in the affluent suburbs, and the community endured a wrenching self-examination on how to raise privileged youths, especially athletes.
The case gave rise to a book, 'Our Guys: The Glen Ridge Rape and the Secret Life of the Perfect Suburb,' by Bernard Lefkowitz, which became required reading for teachers at the high school. The book, which was made into a television movie, explored the impact of the case on the community and the ways in which affluent, mostly white suburbs failed to reckon with the sexual violence of children.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","I.R.S. Agents Seize Records From a New Jersey School Board
Federal tax agents have seized seven years' worth of financial records from the headquarters of the school board in this affluent suburban community as part of an investigation into possible money laundering, corruption and budget irregularities, officials said today.
A few hours after the raid, the school board voted to suspend the district's business administrator.
Ten agents of the Internal Revenue Service spent most of Tuesday afternoon at the board's small, one-story office building examining files, and left with several cartons of vendor lists, purchase orders, bills and a computer containing financial data, Benjamin Fox, the president of the school board, said.
In addition, the agents, who came with a wide-ranging federal search warrant, confiscated school board resolutions, meeting agendas and 19 other categories of material dating back to 1993, said Al Drucker, a spokesman for the criminal investigation section of the I.R.S.
Mr. Drucker said the warrant gave the agents authority to search for possible violations of eight sections of the federal criminal code, including those dealing with money laundering and public corruption. He would not offer other details of the inquiry, including the reasons for it or whether it was a spinoff of a broader federal investigation of public officials elsewhere in New Jersey.
Mr. Fox, the superintendent of this small district of 2,200 students, said he was mystified about the origins of the investigation and the reasons for it, and pointed out during an interview that the search warrant bore only the name of Richard Davis, the school system's business administrator and chief financial officer for the last 17 years.
The board held an emergency meeting Tuesday night and suspended Mr. Davis, who is also the secretary to the school board. Mr. Davis was allowed to continue collecting his annual salary of $135,000, Mr. Fox said.
Mr. Davis could not be reached today for comment on the inquiry and his suspension. A woman who answered the phone at his home said, 'Not available, thank you,' and hung up.
The federal government has seldom investigated school district financing in New Jersey. Typically, the State Department of Education monitors school budgets and usually helps local officials resolve minor problems with them.
In districts with deep-seated, persistent budget problems, the state has usurped local control and put a fiscal monitor in charge of spending. In an extreme case of fiscal mismanagement in the late 1980's, the State Education Department seized control of the Jersey City school system, which it continues to run.
In Wyckoff's case, officials at the Education Department and the State Division of Criminal Justice said they had no prior knowledge of the I.R.S. inquiry or the seizure of documents.
Mr. Fox said the district's books were examined each year by an independent outside auditor as required by state education law. 'There's been no irregularities whatsoever,' he said. 'All those audits in the past have had A+ ratings.'
He said the State Education Department routinely reviewed the audits and had never raised questions about Wyckoff's $19 million annual budget or any of its accounting practices. He said he had no idea whether any money was missing from school district accounts. And he said he and other board members knew nothing about the possible existence of any obscure accounts with questionable deposits or payments consistent with any money-laundering scheme.
Mr. Fox said the inquiry had unfairly 'cast a shadow' on the entire school system and its teachers and other employees. 'It's important for the public to continue to support this district,' he said. 'The Board of Education has nothing to hide, and we want to get to the bottom of whatever took place. That's a message I want to make perfectly clear.'
At its meeting on Tuesday night, the board voted to hire another auditing company to review the financial data at issue, Mr. Fox said. He said there was no indication that the board's regular auditor was involved in the investigation.
News of the inquiry startled many in this suburb of about 17,000 in western Bergen County. The school system generally has a solid educational reputation and, as in many of the wealthier suburbs in northern New Jersey, Wyckoff's schools are an important underpinning of high property values. The system has five elementary schools, a middle school and two regional high schools. Pride in the system runs deep, and parents were disturbed today.
'Everybody is just totally shocked right now,' said one parent, Helene Naftali, interviewed outside George Washington Elementary School. 'This is a community where the feeling is that everything is upstanding. This is very shocking and very upsetting.'
Another parent, Barbara Lucia, said she was worried that the investigation could undermine support for a $20 million bond issue for renovations at one of the regional high schools, Ramapo High.
'It just goes to show you that there's no community that's immune from this kind of thing,' she said.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","The Gang's All Here, and All Under Arrest at a Party in N.J.
It was a familiar weekend-night call to a suburban police department: a teenagers' party at a nearby house was getting loud and rowdy, and the neighbors wanted officers to investigate.
When the officers arrived at the two-story home on Shrewsbury Drive in suburban Livingston, N.J., they said they discovered much of the cause for the raucousness: dozens of open beer containers and several marijuana water pipes in plain view inside the open front door. The smell of marijuana smoke was pervasive, the police said.
So the officers did what has become part of their routine at large house parties where there is evidence of drugs and alcohol being consumed by minors: they arrested all 42 teenagers at the home.
'We were lucky,' Detective Lt. Craig Handschuch said last night. 'No one tried to run out of the house. No one got in a car and drove away.'
Detective Handschuch said it appeared that many of the teenagers were under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Fifteen 18- and 19-year-olds were charged with possession of marijuana, drug paraphernalia and consumption of an alcoholic beverage. Twenty-seven teenagers ages 14 to 17 were accused of the same charges, he said.
The party was held at the home of Tzvi Gerstle, 18, a student at the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy in Livingston, whose parents were away for the weekend, Detective Handschuch said. Mr. Gerstle was also charged with serving alcohol to minors.
While 42 arrests at a single location might draw some attention in other places, Detective Handschuch said that the police regularly broke up large parties in Livingston, which is west of Newark, and often made numerous arrests.
Most of the minors were released to their parents at the home. The 18- and 19-year-olds, who were charged as adults, were taken to the police station for processing before being released to their parents, Detective Handschuch said. 'We made sure everyone was released to a responsible adult,' he said.
Correction:  December 4, 2004, Saturday  An article on Nov. 22 about the arrest of 42 teenagers at a house party in Livingston, N.J., included an erroneous reference from the police to the host, Tzvi Gerstle, 18. He is a recent graduate of a local high school, not a current student. The article also misidentified the school. It is Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School; the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy is an affiliated elementary school.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","DiFrancesco Sworn In as Acting Governor
After 25 years in New Jersey government and 7 years in the shadow of a political celebrity, Donald T. DiFrancesco, a middle-of-the-road Republican from Scotch Plains, humbly took possession of one of the nation's most powerful governor's offices today as he was sworn in to fill out Christie Whitman's remaining 11 months in office.
Mrs. Whitman's resignation took effect at 10 this morning, and with that, Mr. DiFrancesco, the president of the State Senate since 1992, became the first person since 1919 to succeed a departed New Jersey governor for more than a few days. Under a unique and often criticized provision of the state Constitution, he is required to retain his legislative role, blurring the separation of powers.
In a short speech after taking the special oath reserved for acting governors, Mr. DiFrancesco, 56, called himself 'doubly blessed' to be entrusted with the positions that make him two-thirds of the triumvirate -- with the speaker of the Assembly -- that traditionally rules Trenton. But he indicated that he would be careful not to abuse his extraordinary power.
'Citizens of New Jersey, I fully understand the awesome responsibility that I have undertaken,' he said in the governor's outer office, as his wife, Diane, and three grown daughters looked on.
Mr. DiFrancesco is also a candidate for a full term as governor in this year's election, which will be the only major race in the country besides Virginia's gubernatorial contest. And he promised today to use the 'window of opportunity' of the next four months, as the state's budget is prepared, to act on what is simultaneously his legislative agenda and his campaign platform: increasing rebates to homeowners to ease the pain of soaring property taxes, expanding access to affordable health care and prescription drugs, investing in education and promoting water quality.
But his political opponents -- Bret D. Schundler, the conservative mayor of Jersey City who is mounting a challenge in the June Republican primary, and James E. McGreevey, the Democratic mayor of Woodbridge who is unopposed in his party -- have vowed to make an issue of Mr. DiFrancesco's responsibility for what they call the failures of the Whitman administration.
Indeed, in his first brief news conference, the acting governor was immediately confronted with questions about two such items: the continuing problem of racial profiling and the persistently high cost of automobile insurance. He echoed Mrs. Whitman's vow of 'zero tolerance' for racial profiling. And he called a report of a looming spike in car insurance rates erroneous, saying, 'It is not my intention to see the auto insurance rates of the citizens of New Jersey raised at all.'
Democrats greeted Mr. DiFrancesco's new title warmly today, while musing that state politics, already feverish with election-year politicking, was about to enter a strange new world. The Senate minority leader, Richard J. Codey, warned that he would scrutinize the acting governor's every act to make sure it was 'what's best for all the people of New Jersey, not just what's best for his candidacy.'
But Mr. Codey wondered aloud whether Mr. DiFrancesco would be bold enough to risk controversy. 'Will he be a profile in courage, or will he go along to get along and get elected?' Mr. Codey asked. 'That's the question: are you willing to take an unpopular stand for the people of New Jersey?'
In his remarks, Mr. DiFrancesco thanked the absent Mrs. Whitman, who was sworn in as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency today in Washington, for her 'strong leadership,' but he made clear in a number of ways that his own style of governing would be quite different.
While Mrs. Whitman drew the resentment of many lawmakers by excluding them from major policy discussions, Mr. DiFrancesco, a devoted legislator, has honed a consensual leadership style in the State Senate. Today, for example, he was asked why he had not embraced Governor Whitman's last-minute surprise, an agreement-in-principle for a new arena in Newark for the New Jersey Devils and Nets. He responded by repeating no fewer than five times the need to involve lawmakers in any deal-making process.
Mr. DiFrancesco also showed that he would not drop his regular-guy demeanor at the door to the governor's office. Repeatedly asked his timetable for approving a Newark arena, he told a reporter: 'I don't have a timetable. You've got to give me a chance here.'
Mr. DiFrancesco also said he would not move into the governor's mansion in Princeton, where Mrs. Whitman spent a few nights each week. His aides say he has resisted the 24-hour security bubble that enveloped Mrs. Whitman, and complained of the impracticality of having troopers stationed in his modest home in Scotch Plains. But after a news photographer appeared in his front yard early this morning, his spokeswoman, Rae Hutton, speculated that he might reconsider.
Mr. DiFrancesco began his day attending the 8 a.m. Mass at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Roman Catholic Church in Scotch Plains with his family. After his oath-taking, he spent several hours in meetings, missing lunch, before leaving for Newark to attend the swearing-in of a new Superior Court judge, Stephen J. Bernstein. The two men had been partners in the same law firm in Warren, N.J.; both had resigned, effective today.
Mr. DiFrancesco told a roomful of lawyers in Newark that he felt obliged to keep his promise to attend the ceremony despite his new promotion. He then left for New York City for another previous commitment: speaking at a banquet of construction-industry executives belonging to a fraternal group called the Moles, where he was asked to wait two hours to give the keynote speech.
But acting governor or not, Mr. DiFrancesco's life seemed to change by the hour today. He came to work at the State House in a car driven by an aide. He left for Newark in a car driven by a state trooper. And he left Newark for New York behind a pair of police officers on motorcycles, their sirens yelping to clear the way for New Jersey's new chief executive.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Suspect in '95 Vandalism Is Dead After Accident
A Springfield man who faced charges that he cut a 70-foot swastika into a Burlington County cornfield in 1995 appears to have died in a motorcycle accident, the police said yesterday, a week after he had been reported missing.
An autopsy had not been completed yesterday on the man, James Pippitt, 21, but he appeared to have suffered head and chest injuries in the accident, said Sgt. Al Della Fave, a State Police spokesman. His motorcycle skidded off Arnie's Mount Road and into a patch of trees, which had hidden his body from an aerial search conducted a week before, said Sergeant Della Fave.
METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY  Correction:  August 6, 1998, Thursday  A brief report yesterday about the death of a man in Springfield, N.J., who had been facing criminal charges described the crime incorrectly. Although James Pippitt had been charged with five counts of bias crimes, they did not include cutting a 70-foot swastika into a Burlington County cornfield in 1995.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Unusual Allies Succeed in Halting Princeton Deer Shoot
An odd teaming of animal rights advocates and sports hunters have at least temporarily derailed Princeton Township's ambitious program to thin its deer population by using professional sharpshooters.
On Thursday, the state's Fish and Game Council, a majority of whose voting members represent hunting interests, narrowly voted to stop the five-year program after its second year because they were offended by some of the methods used by White Buffalo Inc., the professional hunters, and because they wanted Princeton to open its public lands to sports hunting instead.
'They were concerned that the town and the White Buffalo group were killing deer that hunters should be able to kill,' the council chairman, W. Scott Ellis, said today. Mr. Ellis said he had been surprised by the 5-4 vote, with one member abstaining and Mr. Ellis, as chairman, not voting.
The 11-member Fish and Game Council is made up of six members nominated by the hunting groups, with the rest representing farmers and commercial fishermen. Their vote banned having the deer killed by sharpshooters, as well as a controversial method for capturing deer and slaughtering them, and the experimental use of contraceptive vaccines that act on the animals' immune system.
To the small but persistent group of animal rights advocates who have been trying and failing for years to stop the Princeton deer program, the decision by a panel weighted toward sport-hunting interests was still a victory for deer.
'We want to say to the state that they made the right decision,' said Carl Mayer, a leader of the antihunting coalition.
Bruce Afran, a lawyer for the group, said, 'This great liberal bastion of the United States should not have associated with a program as barbaric as this.'
The township, which has already reduced its deer population by nearly half, to about 750, said it would likely modify its plan in time for it to be reconsidered at the council's February meeting, perhaps by offering some hunting on the township's open lands.
'We are extremely disappointed in the decision,' said Deputy Mayor Bill Enslin. 'We've worked very closely with the Fish and Game Council in the development of our program over the past three years, and we've achieved success. We've reduced our deer-car collisions by over 50 percent, and our deer population was getting down to striking distance of our objective.'
The township wants to reach a deer population of about 350.
'We need to talk to a number of people and figure out exactly where we need to compromise,' Mr. Enslin said. 'I guess our preliminary sense is that there are really two things going on. One is that the hunters were unhappy with us because we don't allow hunting in our public parks, and I think we need to look at that. The second part is the autoimmune contraception. That was a real surprise.'
Using rifles with silencers and nets at corn-baited ambush sites, White Buffalo's shooters have killed nearly 350 deer per winter season over the last two years. Protesters objected that the shooting was being done too close to houses. And they lambasted as inhumane the practice of netting deer and then stunning them for slaughter by driving a pneumatic bolt into their skulls. That system was used in places too close to housing for shooting to be allowed.
Bradley M. Campbell, the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, said today that he expected Princeton's program to win approval, although with modifications. He noted that Princeton was the only township to use the net-and-bolt approach, and appeared to defend the practice while acknowledging that it was morally troubling for some people.
'I recognize the serious concerns that animal protection advocates have raised as to whether the net and bolt element of the plan is humane,' Mr. Campbell said. 'But you have to consider the issue in context. Allowing large numbers of deer to starve or be killed or wounded by cars will often result in far more suffering than the plan that was proposed.'
Mr. Enslin, the deputy mayor, said that the township had spent more than $250,000 defending its deer management program in court. He added that the town might sue to recover some of those costs on the ground that the advocates' suits were frivolous.
Mr. Afran, the lawyer, today accused the township of unnecessarily prolonging the litigation.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Convict Costume Leads to Warnings
Trick-or-treating is still weeks away, but a realistic-looking prison costume has already tricked the New Jersey Department of Corrections and prompted the store chain selling the outfit to issue a warning to those who buy it.
The incident began on Sept. 23, when an off-duty correction officer, walking through the Cumberland Mall in Vineland, N.J., thought he spotted an escaped convict at the food court.
Catching a glimpse of a man in an orange jumpsuit with the words Department of Corrections printed on the back, the officer, who has not been identified, had his girlfriend call 911. When the Vineland police arrived, it took almost 40 minutes for the man in the jumpsuit to persuade them that he was the manager of the Spencer Gifts store, part of an international chain that makes its employees dress up in costumes between Labor Day and Halloween.
Chris Carden, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said the costume, which comes complete with a set of handcuffs,  posed a 'risk to the public safety,' because it looked much like the outfit worn by some prisoners on work detail in New Jersey.
Correction officials were so concerned about the possibility of mistaken identity that they sent a telex to local and national law enforcement officials warning them not to be fooled.
'They have every right to sell it,' Mr. Carden said, but officials wanted people to know it looked like a state prison jumpsuit. 'There is a certain amount of risk in wearing it -- not much, but some.'
By yesterday, after Mr. Carden had talked with the corporate lawyer for Spencer Gifts, the retailer had agreed to take precautions as it continues to sell the costume at its 600 stores and Web site.
Tracy Wain, a marketing research and strategy analyst for Spencer Gifts, which is based in Egg Harbor, N.J., said the chain had agreed to send a letter to all of its stores, instructing employees to wear the prison costume only in the store. The chain also agreed to warn customers who bought the costume, which sells for $27.99, that they ran some risk in wearing it.
'We are sending out a communication to our employees in our stores, to advise customers that the costume could pose a risk and that they should wear a jacket or cover up when wearing it,' Ms. Wain said.
Ms. Wain said the costume had been selling well. A survey of several stores in the area showed that there were costumes in stock.
Ms. Wain was asked if she thought the correction officer at the mall had overreacted. 'All I can say is that it's a little unlikely that an escaped convict would be sitting at a mall eating lunch,' she said.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","From a Church's Ashes, a Friendship Is Born
The embers were still smoldering in the ruins of West Side Presbyterian Church in this upscale Bergen County village when the Rev. Michael Pulsifer got the first of many calls of consolation. It was from a rabbi in Manhattan.
Rabbi Peter J. Rubinstein offered sympathy because, several years earlier, his own house of worship, the historic Central Synagogue, had burned down.
From that act of kindness, a friendship has grown. Although they have never met face to face, the New Jersey minister and the New York rabbi have spent hours on the telephone and communicated by letter and e-mail. 'We're a rare fraternity,' said Rabbi Rubinstein, 'those of us who have lost sanctuaries.'
One suggestion that the rabbi offered was that Mr. Pulsifer invite people from outside the church to speak to its 1,500 members, and, he said, 'help them understand they're not in this alone.'
Mr. Pulsifer, the senior minister at the church, figured that there was no better person to do that than Rabbi Rubinstein himself. And so this Sunday, nearly four months after the fire at West Side, Rabbi Rubinstein, who is the senior rabbi at Central Synagogue, is scheduled to speak at the church's regular 8:45 a.m. and 11:15 a.m. services.
Adding to the ecumenical character of Rabbi Rubinstein's visit is the location. West Side is still a scorched shell with roof beams open to the sky, so the congregation has been conducting services and Christian education classes in the auditorium of a Catholic girls' high school, Immaculate Heart Academy, in neighboring Washington Township.
The academy is providing the space free. So are a number of other churches, groups and companies that have been providing space for West Side's many activities, which include 70 community organizations and a social ministry the church is renowned for here and abroad.
West Side, a Gothic stone structure dating to 1923, had just completed a $1.8 million renovation when the five-alarm fire, caused by faulty electrical wiring, erupted on Jan. 9.
Besides engulfing the sanctuary, flames collapsed the slate roof; destroyed a Tudor-style wing containing the auditorium, a library, a chapel and several basement meeting rooms; and damaged an adjacent nursery school. The loss was estimated at $8.5 million.
Mr. Pulsifer's neighbor, Paul J. Reichenbach, director of the international education department of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, was in Orlando, Fla., when he saw the fire on a cable news channel.
He immediately left a message of sympathy on Mr. Pulsifer's answering machine and called Rabbi Rubinstein, a friend of 30 years, who he thought could offer the minister good advice.
Rabbi Rubinstein soon sent a check for $1,000, 'a token of our support for the rebuilding effort.'
'None of us in the ministry or rabbinate is ever prepared for what lies ahead,' he said in the accompanying letter. 'But I can tell you that there will be blessings in it all, that your strength and vision will be resilient, and that I believe you will lead your congregation with the same fortitude and goodness to which your reputation gives credit.'
Like West Side, Central Synagogue, which is at East 55th Street and Lexington Avenue, was being renovated when on Aug. 28, 1998, fire badly damaged much of the interior of the Moorish-Revival temple. Built in 1872, the city and national landmark was considered -- before the fire -- the oldest building in continuous use as a synagogue in New York. It re-opened Sept. 9.
Rabbi Rubinstein said that after the fire, the congregation drew strength from friends and neighbors, including other synagogues and churches. 'It's amazing, actually,' he said. 'While we were out of the sanctuary, we grew dramatically in number and became more aware of the essence of the soul of the congregation.'
Mr. Pulsifer said Rabbi Rubinstein counseled him, 'Let your lay people and your rebuilding committee run the project.'
Mr. Pulsifer said he was happy to leave the details to the architects, financial people and other experts in his congregation; encouraging leadership is his style, anyway. 'People learn the faith not only through worship but also by doing,' he said. Besides, he added, 'It's no use building a building, if you don't have a congregation when the building is built.'
Kurt Kaboth, president of West Side's board of trustees, said shortly after the fire, officials at Central Synagogue helped the church's insurance committee with duties like filing insurance claims and coordinating construction.
Today, minister and rabbi still will not get to meet in person. Mr. Pulsifer has been in Reynosa, Mexico, for the past week with a group of adult volunteers building houses and manning a clinic, and is beginning a three-month sabbatical.
Rabbi Rubinstein's sermon, touching on his temple's rebirth, is titled 'Let Us Rise Up and Rebuild,' and he said he hopes it will be a message of 'hope and courage.'
'Sanctuaries are supposed to be invulnerable, so that losing one feels like an incursion into one's being, the core of who one is as an individual and as a congregation,' Rabbi Rubinstein said. 'But after that initial response, you realize that whereas a sanctuary is a projection of what you want to be, it's not who you are. So then you spend your time finding the values that are the real core of who you are. And that's never in a building.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Woman Dies And 7 Fall Ill At Convention
A 45-year-old Massachusetts woman attending a business convention at a hotel in the Philadelphia suburb of Cherry Hill, N.J., died of aggressive bacterial pneumonia early yesterday, and seven other conventiongoers were hospitalized with a flulike respiratory illness, medical officials said.
Bacterial pneumonia is not highly contagious and usually not fatal, and an expert in infectious diseases said the death of the woman, Joanne Hemstreet, of Kingston, Mass., who became seriously ill on Saturday and died hours after being admitted to a hospital, seemed to be an isolated case that had not endangered others.
But for much of the day, the cause of her death was uncertain, and mounting concern over a possible outbreak of anthrax, Legionnaire's disease or meningitis prompted health officials to quarantine the 400-room Cherry Hill Hilton for eight hours while they interviewed scores of guests and employees.
In addition, about 80 conventioneers were examined at the Cherry Hill campus of Kennedy Memorial Hospitals, where the woman died. Seven were admitted with flulike symptoms, and others who had come into close contact with Ms. Hemstreet -- conventiongoers, hotel employees, emergency medical personnel and police officers -- were treated with antibiotics as a precaution against meningitis.
'No one realized how serious this was until this morning when we woke up and found out this woman had died,' said Christopher Holmes, of Scottsdale, Ariz., one of 450 people who attended the five-day national sales convention of Cendant Mortgage, a subsidiary of the Cendant Corporation, at the hotel.
After a day of intensive investigation that included an autopsy, laboratory tests, interviews with the sick and growing concern over the mysterious source of infection, officials late yesterday virtually ruled out anthrax and other highly infectious bacteria, and said the danger to others seemed minimal.
'This does not appear to be anthrax,' Dr. David Condoluci, the chief of infectious diseases for Kennedy Health System, which operates several hospitals in the area, said at a late-afternoon news briefing in Cherry Hill. 'We are fairly confident this was not an intentional exposure.'
Tests for Legionnaire's disease and meningitis were expected to take another day or two, he said, but they also were expected to be negative. Dr. Condoluci said that of the seven people admitted to the hospital -- six women and a man -- two appeared to have minor bacterial pneumonia and the other five a bronchitislike illness. All were stable and were expected to be released today or tomorrow.
New Jersey has been a focal point into the investigation of anthrax-laced letters that were postmarked in the Trenton area and killed five people last fall. Legionnaire's disease, a pneumonialike sickness caused by a bacteria that grows in water and can spread through air-conditioning ducts, was named for a July 1976 outbreak that killed 29 people at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia.
Dr. Condoluci said that Ms. Hemstreet, an account manager for Cendant Mortgage's northeast region,  had begun to suffer flulike symptoms on Wednesday as she drove to the convention with co-workers from Massachusetts. On Thursday and Friday, she told friends at the sales meetings that she was feeling worse, and on Saturday she apparently contracted what Dr. Condoluci called an aggressive bacterial infection of the lungs.
She retreated to her room, and as her condition worsened through the day and early evening, she experienced headaches, severe nausea and vomiting, and her temperature rose above 102 degrees, Dr. Condoluci said. At her behest, friends called 911 and she was taken by ambulance to the Kennedy Memorial Hospitals  emergency room, where she was admitted at 8:40 p.m.
'She was already very sick, critically ill, with shortness of breath and mental-status changes,' Dr. Condoluci said. Despite immediate treatment with antibiotics, her condition deteriorated. He said a chest X-ray showed pneumonia in both lungs, and what began as a small rash on her thigh rapidly spread into a purple discoloration that covered her body.
Overwhelmed by the infection, the victim went into shock and despite efforts at resuscitation, died at 3:14 a.m. An autopsy by the Camden County medical examiner's office was conducted immediately, and preliminary results indicated that death was a result of an overwhelming bacterial pneumonia.
As the convention went through its final day of meetings on Saturday, and concluded with a banquet that evening, most of the conventioneers were unaware of Ms. Hemstreet's illness. But concern over her case prompted health officials to quarantine the hotel from 2 a.m. to 10 a.m. yesterday.
None of the seven admitted to the hospital were known to have been in close contact with Ms. Hemstreet. Their symptoms included fever, chills, sore throat, coughing and general weakness. All were given antibiotics. 'Most of these cases probably would not have been admitted under normal circumstances,' Dr. Condoluci said.
Conventioneers or hotel employees who might have had close contact with Ms. Hemstreet -- touching drinking glasses or eating utensils that she might have used, for example -- were treated with antibiotics as a precaution against meningitis, as were hospital and emergency service personnel who attended her.
Dr. Condoluci said that health officials were also interviewing relatives of Ms. Hemstreet in Massachusetts and Florida, seeking further information about her medical history and any recent medical problems.
Terry Edwards, president and chief executive of Cendant Mortgage, which is based in Mount Laurel, N.J., issued a statement expressing sorrow over Ms. Hemstreet's death and sympathy for her family. It also said the company was working closely with state and local health authorities to investigate what happened.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Commerce Comes Calling In the Park
IT may have lawns, benches, winding pathways and frolicking children, but whatever you do, don't call the four-acre greensward in downtown Plainfield a park.
A municipal sign anointing it Roberto Clemente Memorial Park has been removed. To clear up lingering confusion, city officials recently dismantled the Victorian gazebo that once graced its center.
Set in the heart of this bedraggled city, the Park-Madison site, as officials prefer to call it, may soon sprout a four-story complex of stores, county offices and parking. The deal will earn Plainfield $1 million and inject desperately needed life into a city that has been floundering since the late 1960's, when school busing and race riots fueled the familiar scourge of white flight and economic decline.
There is only one problem. Under state law, any land that has been used as a park must remain a park. Of course, there are loopholes. Municipalities can claim that bureaucrats mistakenly designated a space as parkland. Even though Plainfield spent $300,000 in federal money making the place look more like a park, and despite the fact that dozens of permits are given out for carnivals and community fund-raisers -- officials are saying that the Park-Madison site was never a park.
'It was a clerical error,' said Dan Damon, a spokesman for the city, which has a population of 48,000, explaining why the plot was placed on a New Jersey open spaces inventory. Although state officials insist on calling it a park, the site's future rests with Robert C. Shinn, New Jersey's commissioner of environmental protection, who is expected to decide in the coming weeks.
The land, which was cleared 35 years ago, was originally part of a federal urban renewal project that died when financing evaporated. Mayor Albert T. McWilliams  said the improvements, which started a decade ago, were meant only to turn an embarrassing eyesore into a temporary urban amenity. 'To us, that land has always been a symbol of Plainfield's inability to progress,' Mr. McWilliams said.  'The only reason we put grass there was to keep the dirt from blowing all over the place.'
TELL that to Myrna Rivera, 32, an office cleaner from Ecuador, who was taking her 2-year-old daughter, Vivian, for a stroll on a recent warm afternoon. 'We love this place,' she said. 'We would be very sad if they took it away.'
Although Plainfield's growing Hispanic population stands to lose a cherished swath of greenery, it is the city's wealthier residents who are battling the backhoes. In a city that is 83 percent minority, Plainfield  officials privately say that that the most vociferous proponents of keeping the site green are white. Mr. Damon calls them 'the newcomers.'
Deborah Dahl, a consultant to nonprofit organizations, has been leading the charge. She believes that Plainfield is making a grave error by paving over what they call the village green. 'The health and economic vitality of a town is shaped by its center,' said Ms. Dahl, who bought two rambling mansions here two years ago and is converting one into corporate apartments. 'When potential home buyers or employers come here, the first thing they see is this beautiful open green. It says: 'This is great place for children. This is our soul.' '
The debate, tinged by talk of racism and underhanded politics, has become rancorous. Ms. Dahl says the city tried to secretly push the project through the approvals process. Mr. Damon accuses her of spinning lies. Others complain that the project, anchored by social services, is less than ideal. Downtown, they point out, is littered with empty buildings begging for revitalization.
'The city has no foresight,' said Murray Roberts, who moved here in 1968, when most middle-class residents were fleeing. 'To me it sounds like a political deal, the perfect place for patronage. If they really want to develop downtown, they should improve the park and then enhance the area.'
At its core, the dispute is a clash between visions of how to revive a wounded city. Ms. Dahl said the future of Plainfield, blessed with one of the country's largest collection of Victorian architecture, lies in drawing affluent homesteaders, people much like herself.
But Mr. McWilliams believes the elixir for Plainfield's woes are lower property taxes, a feat that can only be achieved by luring more commerce. Sure, downtown is littered with empty buildings, he says, but so far, no one is clamoring to buy them.
'These people are just sitting on the sidelines saying, 'Do this, do that,' ' he said. 'But bring me an interested developer and I'll be happy to listen.'
Our Towns",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Just Another Day on Train Turns to Morning of Torn Metal, Chaos and Fear
This morning, like every morning, William Jackson sat right behind the driver in the first window seat on the first car on the 8:24 out of East Rutherford, N.J. Before the train reached Hoboken, Karen Chambers was plunging through as many pages of her medical thriller as she could. Robert Farkas would not have been on board at all, except that a flat tire stopped him on the way to the 7:30 train.
Scores of passengers dozed or stared out the window at the forgettable moonscape of frozen marshes and six-foot reeds caught terminally in the middle of nowhere. Then suddenly an utterly ordinary moment in the daily commute became anything but: an abrupt disharmony of blaring train horns, screeching brakes, cleaving metal and sparks, of train cars jarred to a halt at frightening angles.
I always pick that seat,"" said Mr. Jackson, lying in the emergency room of University Medical Center in Newark, remembering that he had been tucking his newspaper away when he was lifted out of his seat. ""The next thing I knew I was  knocked up against the window, I was knocked upside the head into the window.""
George Burger, 43, has been getting on the same train at Fair Lawn, N.J., every working day for the last 12 years. Today, he was among about 50 passengers in the half-full front car, about 20 rows from the front.
""My eyes were closed, I was relaxing, and then I was sharply awakened,"" Mr. Burger said. ""It felt like a very big earthquake, just a tremendous shaking. I realized something really bad had happened and my fear was that the train was going to roll over.""
No one remembers traveling at any great speed, but they do remember that horn and the sudden slam of brakes at 8:40 A.M. as the commuter train filled and then overflowed with the motion and noises of the ordinary run amok.
Karen Chambers, 43, an insurance saleswoman, was lost in the pages of ""Nothing Personal,"" a medical thriller set in an emergency room. Sitting toward  the back of the front car, she was hurled into the seat in front of her.
""I thought I was dead,"" she said. ""I couldn't see, I couldn't move. I was completely covered in blood and I didn't know where it was coming from."" Later she learned she had broken her nose.
R. Richard Hirtler, 34, had been looking out the window from the third car and watched transfixed as each of the six cars of the outbound train clipped the shattered front end of his train.
""The cars were being torn open and derailing as they went by,"" Mr. Hirtler said. ""There was a shower of sparks and the cars were derailing.""
Little decisions that seem inconsequential took on enormous importance, like  where passengers chose to sit. One commuter sitting five rows from the front of  the first car thinks he watched a fellow passenger die.
""I saw it but I didn't want to look,"" said the passenger, a resident of Porterville, N.J., who declined to give his name. ""Fifteen seconds felt like 10  minutes. It felt like an eternity.""
Mr. Farkas, the man who had the flat tire, caught a train an hour later than  he should have and sat in the front car, a few rows back from the front. He ended up with a shattered skull and was whisked into surgery at the Jersey City  Medical Center because the bones around one eye socket had collapsed.
Mr. Burger remembers that he had been holding a folder crammed with loose-leaf papers and watched transfixed as it flew through the air and slammed  into the wall intact. ""It flew so fast that it didn't have time to fall apart,""  he said.
The moment ended with the most unearthly silence and then some of the worst screams most passengers had ever heard. The first car in the Hoboken train jumped six yards sideways and came to rest tilted at a 45-degree angle, like an ocean liner that suddenly heeled over. The cars in the outbound train tilted  about 20 degrees as they derailed, digging into the gravel track bed and shearing off metal boxes from the undercarriage.
""It was so strange, that deadly silence,"" said Jon Gemmer, 50, headed from Rutherford to his job as a systems analyst at Chemical Bank. ""It was silent. It  was just too silent.""
The cars briefly filled with smoke from all the grinding metal, and the lights went out. Mr. Gemmer looked out the window and saw that half the front of the locomotive on the other track was a mass of jagged metal strips where the cab should have been. Amid the groaning and screaming there was nearly a moment  of collective panic because people thought they were trapped, but gradually all  but the most severely wounded found their way out onto the rails.
Robert Morris, 44, a vice president at Chase Manhattan Bank, was standing against the back wall of the first car and braced himself when he heard the hissing of the emergency brakes. He thinks he was the first person to clamber off and walked up to the front of the train, where he saw the body of the engineer.
""The whole cab had been ripped apart and he was lying down inside it,"" Mr. Morris said. ""He looked like a Raggedy Ann doll.""
The emergency crews arrived within 10 minutes, popping out the windows and sliding in boards to take out the dead and most seriously wounded.
Carol Brantley, 56, of Paterson, N.J., left behind her leopard-skin pillbox hat, lost somewhere among the rubble of bloody newspapers and abandoned shoes at the very bottom of the car.
""You don't know how lucky you are to walk away from disaster,"" Ms. Brantley said.
Mr. Jackson lost his glasses and felt blood dripping down his face. Some men  hauled him over the back of the seat where he was trapped and a medical student  dressed his eye. He was evacuated by helicopter to Newark but released from the  hospital later today. And he wasn't the only passenger who said he would change  at least one of his daily habits.
""From now on,"" Mr. Jackson said, ""I'll make it a point to sit in the last car.""
CRASH ON NEW JERSEY TRANSIT: THE SCENE",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Layoffs Start In New Jersey As Towns Brace for Cuts
Even during his campaign for governor, James E. McGreevey warned New Jerseyans that a yawning budget deficit would cause pain. Now, as governor, he has begun to inflict it.
So from state government employees to local governments, the question today was where his knife would cut the deepest.
About 600 state employees, most of them in technical jobs outside Civil Service protection, ended their day Wednesday with brusque notices saying they were laid off. In the process, Mr. McGreevey eliminated the Office of State Planning, headquarters for the state's nationally recognized efforts to control sprawl.
And that may be just the start. His staff has also put already nervous Civil Service unions on notice by warning that some layoffs of regular employees, of the kind that roiled the state under Gov. Jim Florio a dozen years ago, may also be coming.
And Mr. McGreevey has told New Jersey's towns and municipalities, where costs have been rising steadily, that their nearly automatic annual increases in state aid are a thing of the past, and that they will get no increase for the new budgets many of them have just begun to draw up.
The new governor, who took office on the 15th, has put some of the blame for the state's budget problems on his Republican predecessor, the former acting governor Donald T. DiFrancesco. Some Democratic officials went out of their way today to pin the impending pain on the Republicans, and Governor McGreevey himself declared that he would stir a political hornet's nest by auditing, and perhaps trying to reopen, the $500 million, seven-year contract the departed Republican administration signed in 1998 with Parsons Infrastructure and Technology Group to operate New Jersey's auto emissions testing program.
At the end of the day today, many of the men and women who had been laid off were cleaning out their desks and hoping that their jobs might yet be saved. After all, they said, the 600 jobs that were cut would save only about $25 million according to the governor's own calculation. Of that, the 27 people in the Office of State Planning accounted for only about $2 million of the $2.8 billion budget shortfall Mr. McGreevey has said he must erase.
'Everybody was shocked,' said Kathleen Bird, who had been the spokeswoman for the planning office. Like the others, she received a letter telling her that her 'duties and obligation to report to work cease immediately' and that she would get two weeks' severance pay. Some of her colleagues wept, Ms. Bird said, and others were simply numb.
In a note of concern, champions of managing the state's rapid growth added that the cost in sprawl could be much greater if the planning office is left vacant.
'What McGreevey said was that these people are expendable, they're unnecessary or they're political hires,' said Barbara Lawrence, executive director of New Jersey Future, a controlled-growth advocacy group. 'But in the case of the Office of State Planning we are losing the best professionals you can hire. They are the brains behind the concept of smart growth in New Jersey.'
Mayors and managers of New Jersey's more than 500 municipalities have been left scratching their heads over the impact of Governor McGreevey's freeze in municipal aid, which towns and cities apply to abating their high property taxes. Officials in several wealthy towns said today that Mr. McGreevey's ample warning of a budget crisis prepared them to expect no additional help.  But for large cities, where state aid accounts for a disproportionate share of municipal revenues, the prospect of a freeze brought a sense of foreboding.
New Brunswick, for example, had been counting on a 3 percent annual increase to keep up with inflation, said Thomas Loughlin, the city administrator. A freeze would amount to $510,000 lost, he said. 'We're going to feel the impact here, there's no question of that.'
Eric Maurer, business administrator for Morristown, was among the town officials who said they were in the dark about the impact of the governor's freeze in state aid levels. 'We're operating in an information vacuum,' he said.
Mr. Maurer said officials from the previous administration had promised Morristown a $100,000 increase in state aid, to $3.8 million. The town is already planning to raise the tax rate by an amount equal to $180 for a typical $200,000 home, he said. If state aid is frozen at the current $3.7 million aid level, that tax increase will grow by an additional $16.
In Newark, Mayor Sharpe James said his city received about a quarter of its $432 million budget from Trenton, but he did not know how much it would be hurt. 'Recognizing the budget crunch, all of us have to share in that pain,' he said.
A spokesman for Parsons Group said that it was ready to work with the new governor in examining the state's auto emissions testing contract, but that the engineering company was not prepared to reopen the contract, as Mr. McGreevey had suggested. Matching the discussion of the state's budget problems, Parsons seemed prepared to do the same as the newly empowered Democrats: blame the departed Republicans.
'We welcome the opportunity to work with the McGreevey administration to show how effective the system has been for New Jersey motorists,' said Bob Sommer, the spokesman. 'We could not agree with him more that some of the previous administration's contract specifications and a condensed time frame were the cause of many of the start-up problems, and they bear further review.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Agents Seize Cash In Raids on Aide To Newark Mayor
Escalating their inquiry into corruption in Newark, Federal agents raided the home and the City Hall office of a top aide to Mayor Sharpe James yesterday, and officials said they found tens of thousands of dollars in cash that the aide had been keeping. The home and office of the city's Police Director were also searched.
Beginning in the morning and continuing into the night, the agents searched the offices and homes of Jackie R. Mattison, who is chief of staff to Mr. James  as well as a member of the State Assembly, and of the Police Director, William R. Celester.
The cash was found at Mr. Mattison's home, people familiar with the raids said.
Mr. Mattison, a Democrat who won re-election to the Assembly on Tuesday, has  been under investigation for more than a year, and one focus has been the fund raising he did for his election campaigns and those of Mr. James. Investigators  have been examining whether money was siphoned from campaign accounts for the personal use of the Mayor or his aides.
After months of subpoenas, grand jury testimony and other behind-the-scenes maneuvering, the raids yesterday brought the investigation into the open. Though Mr. James's office was apparently not searched, Mr. Mattison is one of his closest advisers and the agents were not far from the Mayor's desk in City Hall.
Besides City Hall, the raids also jarred the neighborhoods around the homes of Mr. Mattison and Mr. Celester. Councilman Luis Quintana, who is not believed to be under investigation, said the activity around Mr. Celester's home on Parker Street yesterday afternoon was surprising.
""When I went to pick up my child from day care on Parker Street, near the Police Director's house, there were more than 20 official vehicles outside, with red lights on top,"" Mr. Quintana said. ""Guys were standing on the lawn in front  of Mr. Celester's house. There must have been about 25 or 30 guys there.""
Mr. Quintana said he was told by Mr. Celester's deputy, Police Chief Thomas C. O'Reilly, that agents ordered Mr. Celester to leave his office during the investigation.
Mr. Celester's wife was taken to University Hospital during the raids, a hospital spokeswoman said, and she left after doctors advised her to remain for  treatment. It was not known what her ailment was.
Investigators would not say where Mr. Mattison lived. His address and phone are not listed.
The investigation has focused on various top officials in Newark and has already yielded several convictions.Federal law-enforcement officials are examining the finances and fund-raising practices of Mr. James, and the inquiry  into Mr. Mattison is believed to be tied to the case prosecutors are trying to build against Mr. James.
At City Hall yesterday, officials said little. Mr. Mattison, Mr. Celester and Mr. James could not be reached for comment, and many of their aides would not speak about the searches.
Detective Daniel Collins, a spokesman for Mr. Celester, said Federal agents removed cartons from police headquarters about 3:30 P.M., but he would not say what was in them. ""We are cooperating fully with Federal authorities,"" Mr. Collins said.
Pamela E. Goldstein, a spokeswoman for Mayor James, said he had instructed all members of his administration to assist law-enforcement officials in any way.
Faith S. Hochberg, the United States Attorney in Newark, and Larry R. C. Stephen, her chief deputy on corruption matters, refused to comment.
People with knowledge of the investigation, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said teams of agents with drug-sniffing dogs went to the homes of Mr. Celester and Mr. Mattison.
People familiar with the investigation gave varying estimates of the cash recovered from Mr. Mattison's home, but all said it was many tens of thousands of dollars. It was not known where the money came from.
Councilman Henry Martinez, who is not believed to be under investigation, said the searches were ""a dark day"" for Newark.
""Usually when the Federal Government conducts an operation such as this, they know what they are looking for,"" Mr. Martinez said.
The investigations of Mr. Mattison and Mr. Celester do not appear to be related.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Kidnapped Girl and Family Reunited
Four-year-old Kelly Gonzalez, who the police feared had been killed by kidnappers who abducted her eight days ago, stood with her mother before a battery of television cameras in the Police Chief's office today, tugging at a white stuffed duck and smiling shyly.
At 10:30 Tuesday night Kelly was found crying outside a bodega in northern Manhattan, eight days after gunmen posing as police officers took her from her Hackensack apartment. And now she was the centerpiece of a happy portrait with her mother and baby brother and the cause of a moment of deep relief for the police officers and Federal agents around them.
""I would say she's lucky to be alive,"" said Bruce Gebhardt, assistant special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's office in New Jersey. A 'Very Happy' Mother
A reporter asked Kelly in Spanish, the family's native language, whether she had missed her mother.
The girl nodded yes vigorously.
Her mother, Marleyda Alvarez, was asked, also in Spanish, what she had done with Kelly after they were reunited about 2:30 A.M. today at Police Headquarters here.
In a quivering voice, she said in Spanish: ""I bathed her. I haven't bathed her in a long time, and I slept with her."" Then, in English, she added that ""I feel very happy.""
Before appearing at the news conference, Kelly visited her father, Ruben Gonzalez, a suspected drug dealer, in his jail cell in Police Headquarters.  'Very Emotional'
""It was very emotional,"" said Lieut. Ron Natale of the Hackensack police, who directed the investigation with an F.B.I. agent, Edward Peterson.
The authorities believe a feud between Mr. Gonzalez and drug dealers led to the kidnapping. Mr. Gonzalez, 28, was jailed on Monday after the police found what Chief William Iurato called a ""multikilo"" cache of cocaine hidden in an apartment he leased here.
The two gunmen who seized Kelly on May 27 had gone to the family's apartment looking for Mr. Gonzalez and drugs, the police said. Finding neither, they fled with Kelly.
""They took the child for something he did, something he knows, or something he didn't do,"" Chief Iurato said.
Other than saying that Kelly was well treated, the police refused to divulge anything she had told them about her eight days in captivity. ""She was well cared for; she hadn't been thrown in a closet,"" Lieutenant Natale said.
He said doctors who examined her Tuesday night at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in Manhattan found no sign of injury. Chief Iurato said investigators believed the girl had been kept in two places, the last one in the Bronx. He offered no other details.
Today, Kelly was wearing flowered-print shorts, a jersey with a decorative bow and a lacy pink hairband. The police said the kidnappers had provided the outfit prior to her release.
""I think this case is a prime example of the viciousness of drug trafficking we have in the United States,"" said Mr. Gebhardt, the F.B.I. agent. ""When you wrong a drug organization, they're going to respond in terms of killings, bombings or kidnappings.""
Before releasing Kelly, the kidnappers pinned notes to her clothing with her name and address and directions to her home via Interstate 80, which cuts through Hackensack about half a mile from the apartment, the police said.
The authorities had kept the kidnapping secret until about noon Tuesday. They had said they feared that publicizing the kidnapping could jeopardize the child. Today they speculated that the publicity prompted the release.
""I think that's a real good motivation,"" Mr. Gebhardt said. ""And maybe they got some heart and decided to release her.""",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","State's Top Court Voids Death Sentence
The New Jersey Supreme Court yesterday overturned the death sentence of a woman who admitted to killing a Haddon Heights police officer and an investigator from the Camden County Prosecutor's office in 1995, ruling that crucial information was never shown to the jury.
In May 1997, Leslie Ann Nelson was sentenced to death after pleading guilty to fatally shooting the officer, James Norcross, and the investigator, John McLaughlin, during a 14-hour stand-off at her home in Haddon Heights. Ms. Nelson, 40, also admitted to wounding Detective John Norcross, Officer Norcross's brother, during the standoff, which occurred when the authorities went to her home to confiscate several weapons.
In its ruling yesterday, the court said prosecutors should have informed the jury that Detective Norcross had filed a civil lawsuit during the sentencing hearing, charging that he was not adequately trained to handle the standoff. In her defense, Ms. Nelson's lawyers had also argued that the officers were unprepared to deal with the standoff.
Peter G. Verniero, the state Attorney General, said disclosure of the suit would not have affected the jury's decision. But the court agreed with Michael B. Jones, a lawyer for Ms. Nelson, who said jurors might have sentenced Ms. Nelson to life in prison had they known that one of the officers involved felt he was improperly trained.
The case will now be returned to Camden County Superior Court for a new sentencing trial.
Ms. Nelson, known as Glen Nelson until she underwent a sex change operation in 1992, was the only woman on New Jersey's death row.  METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Car Kills a Woman in K Mart
LEAD: A car driven by a 72-year-old man went out of control and crashed through the plate-glass front doors of a K Mart department store in Belleville, N.J. yesterday, killing one shopper and injuring 12 others, one seriously, as the car drove 100 feet into the store.
A car driven by a 72-year-old man went out of control and crashed through the plate-glass front doors of a K Mart department store in Belleville, N.J. yesterday, killing one shopper and injuring 12 others, one seriously, as the car drove 100 feet into the store.
The driver, Louis Prosperi, of Bloomfield, N.J., drove his 1985 Cadillac Eldorado into the parking lot in front of the store around 2:10 P.M. and was pulling into a parking place when he suddenly lost control, said Lieut. William Escott of the Belleville Police Department.
'Somehow, the accelerator apparently got stuck and the car shot forward through the glass doors,' the lieutenant said.
He said the car traveled 100 feet inside the store, striking 13 people, strewing clothing, cameras and jewelry across the floor and leaving thick black skid marks.
One shopper, Barbara Urbanovick, 37, of Nutley, N.J., was pronounced dead at the scene, the police said.
One of the 12 who were injured, Dorothy Becker, 65, of Belleville, was taken to University Hospital in Newark, where she was in critical condition early today, officials said. Belleville, a community of 40,000 people, is just north of Newark. The store is in the center of town, on Main Street.
The other injured people were not immediately identified. They were taken to Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville. Lew Gardner, a hospital spokesman, said three of them were suffering from leg and hip fractures.
The K Mart store was closed for repairs after the accident.
Lieutenant Escott said the car, which has an automatic transmission, was impounded for inspection.
He said Mr. Prosperi, who was alone in the car, had not been charged.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Police Task Force Recovers 2 Torahs Stolen From New Jersey Synagogue
The New York Police Department's Torah Task Force, a little known but highly effective squad that investigates thefts of the sacred Jewish scrolls, recovered two Torahs and their precious ornaments that were stolen last month from a synagogue in Englewood, N.J., the police said yesterday. The task force charged a man with possessing stolen property after he tried sell the scrolls on Tuesday night to an undercover detective in Manhattan.
The Torah scrolls, each of which contain the Five Books of Moses inscribed by hand in Hebrew, were stolen before dawn on Oct. 18 from Temple Emanu-El, a prominent synagogue that was led for nearly 30 years by Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, the noted historian.
Each scroll is adorned with a breastplate and crown, made of inlaid silver and gold, which were drawn by Irvin Koons, the industrial designer, and handmade by artisans in Portugal. Temple officials estimated the value of the two scrolls and their handmade ornaments at $88,000.
Charlie Jones, 31, of 24 East 109th Street in Manhattan, was charged with possession of stolen property after he tried to sell the scrolls to an undercover detective on Tuesday night, the police said. In a search of his apartment, the police said they found a high-powered automatic handgun, so Mr. Jones was also charged with illegal possession of a weapon. The police said that Mr. Jones worked alone in stealing the Torahs and would be charged with burglary and theft in New Jersey.
Lieut. Scott Jenkins of the Englewood Police Department said that Mr. Jones claimed that he bought the Torahs at an estate sale, but that the police think he had been planning to rob Temple Emanu-El for about two years.
Investigators from the task force worked on the case with the Englewood Police Department and the Bergen County Prosecutor's office. At separate news conferences yesterday afternoon in Englewood and Manhattan, investigators said the task force had received at least two tips from informers saying that a man was trying to find a buyer for the two Torahs.
One informer said that a Manhattan rabbi, whom the authorities would not identify yesterday, had set up a meeting to see the Torahs on Sunday, Lieutenant Jenkins said. The Torah Task Force then called the rabbi, who agreed to cooperate with an undercover sting operation. As part of the sting, Detective Mordecai Dzikansky, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, posed as another rabbi.
Detective Dzikansky, who has helped solve numerous Torah thefts, including a spree of them in 1992 and 1993, attended the meeting with Mr. Jones and said he would buy the Torahs for $20,000 after authenticating them. He left the meeting with the scrolls, two crowns and one breastplate. New Jersey investigators said Mr. Jones kept the remaining breastplate, which he traded for the money on Tuesday night. He was then arrested.
'The key to this investigation was the unique talents of Detective Dzikansky,' said Kevin P. Farrell, the chief of Manhattan detectives.
Chief Farrell praised the task force, which is headed by Lieut. George Pagan. 'This is certainly a unique crime, and fortunately we had the unique resources to address it,' the chief said.
Rabbi Geoffrey J. Haber of Temple Emanu-El appeared at both news conferences and said that his congregation was thankful and relieved to recover the Torahs. One crown appeared to have a small scratch and one Torah had its velvet protective mantle torn, he said, but otherwise they appeared to be in good condition. He said the Torahs would be inspected by a scribe to make sure that they had not been damaged.
'I am going to get teary eyed,' he said. 'We're overjoyed.'
Rabbi Haber also cited a passage from the Book of Psalms. 'Those who plant in sorrow,' he said, his voice cracking, 'shall reap in joy.'
The ark in the sanctuary of Temple Emanu-El contained eight Torahs, but only the two largest were stolen. Three others had been placed on the floor of the platform at the front of the sanctuary, called the bema, from which the rabbi and the cantor lead the services.
The ark is mounted on a wall directly above the bema. An alarm, triggered when the burglar broke a window to enter the synagogue, apparently scared him away before more scrolls could be taken.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Post Gets $24.4 Million in Incentives to Stay in New York
For the second time in two years, The New York Post has received large tax breaks and other subsidies from city and state officials after threatening to move some of its operations out of New York City.
Officials have granted the newspaper $24.4 million in incentives to build a new printing plant on 17 acres at a rail yard in the South Bronx. The deal, which included a $12.9 million cash grant from the state that was approved yesterday, has been criticized by community groups, environmentalists and some politicians who doubted that the company actually intended to leave New York.
Randy L. Levine, Deputy Mayor for economic development, said the deal would enable The Post to build a $200 million plant and transfer 400 valuable manufacturing jobs to the South Bronx from the company's printing plant on South Street, near the Brooklyn Bridge. City and state officials had feared that The Post would follow The Daily News to Jersey City, where that newspaper opened a printing plant last year.
But critics say The Daily News has had occasional problems transporting newspapers through the tunnels into Manhattan during the morning rush, a problem that would discourage other newspapers from moving operations to New Jersey.
'It's another case of the city and the state throwing away hard-earned tax dollars on a company that would not have left the city anyway,' said Franz S. Leichter, a State Senator from the Bronx. 'Certainly, The Daily News shows the folly of moving these kind of jobs to New Jersey.'
In addition to the $12.9 million  grant from the Empire State Development Corporation, the deal brings The Post $4 million in sales tax breaks and $7.5 million in low-cost electricity from the New York State Power Authority.
'This is a great opportunity to keep and grow manufacturing jobs in the city,' Mr. Levine said.
The Post is not the only newspaper to obtain subsidies. In 1992, The New York Times got a benefit package worth more than $29 million for a new $315 million printing plant at College Point, Queens. The following year, The Daily News got more than $15 million in tax breaks from New Jersey to move its printing operations from Brooklyn to Jersey City.
The Post and its parent company, News America, have now gone to the bargaining table with New York officials twice in recent years. In 1996, the city granted News America a $20.7 million package for the company's new headquarters at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, at 47th Street, after it had threatened to move some employees outside New York. News America transferred 400 editorial employees at The Post to the midtown building from South Street.
Charles Millard, president of the city's Economic Development Corporation, said yesterday that News America had refused to include the printing plant in the original deal.
He said that the latest agreement with The Post cost a modest $9,600 per job to keep the Post printing plant in New York City, far less than the subsidy given The New York Times. 'We're getting jobs in the South Bronx for a good price,' Mr. Millard said.
Mr. Millard's calculations did not include both the value of the electricity from the State Power Authority and the $12.9 million in cash benefits granted by the state. All told, the deal to keep 400 manufacturing jobs cost taxpayers about $61,000 per full-time job.
The Post project would benefit further from millions of dollars in tax benefits and training grants that are available because the site of the new plant in the Bronx is within the city's Empowerment Zone.
The plant is to be built in what is known as the Harlem River Yards, in the Port Morris section of the Bronx, and the project also includes an adjacent eight-acre parcel where the Walnut Avenue bus depot sits.
The bus depot had been scheduled to close in two years, but the Post deal forced the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to move 220 buses to five depots in the Bronx and upper Manhattan and to spend an additional $1.6 million to speed the completion of a bus depot along the West Side Highway in Manhattan that will open when the Walnut Avenue depot closes.
Lawrence B. Reuter, president of New York City Transit, has acknowledged that it would cost more to run Bronx buses from a depot in Manhattan.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","McGreevey Drops Plan to Hold Meeting at Seton Hall After Abortion Foes Object
Bowing to a barrage of complaints by opponents of abortion, Gov. James E. McGreevey of New Jersey has decided not to hold the first of a series of town hall meetings at Seton Hall University, a Catholic school in South Orange, on Tuesday, the 29th anniversary of the Supreme Court's legalization of abortion.
Instead, Mr. McGreevey, a Catholic who has said he once opposed abortion but now supports the right of women to choose, will hold the 7 p.m. gathering at Montclair State University, Paul Aronsohn, his communications director, said last night, confirming a report in The Star-Ledger yesterday.
Mr. Aronsohn said the governor, who took office on Tuesday, had decided to change the site after the university and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark had received numerous angry calls from abortion foes, who complained that the location was inappropriate, particularly on the anniversary of the Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade.
While it is unusual for a governor to act in response to criticism, aides to Mr. McGreevey -- whose abortion views have upset many Catholics -- said that his decision was not intended to convey any political or policy signals.
By changing the site, Mr. Aronsohn said, the governor merely hoped to spare Seton Hall and its president, Msgr. Robert Sheeran, from further criticism. Mr. McGreevey said that he had not been asked by the school or its president to change the site, and that his office had not realized the date's significance when the town hall meeting was scheduled.
Monsignor Sheeran, who has been criticized for allowing campus speakers regarded as soft on abortion, reiterated his own opposition to it, but defended Seton Hall's right to hear speakers of diverse opinions and insisted that holding the meeting was no endorsement of the governor's views.
'As this is a town meeting, the setting neither honors him nor supports his views,' he said in a statement. 'Rather, as a university -- and especially a Catholic one -- we are honoring our role as citizens who have the right to voice the concerns that arise out of our personal and faith commitments.'
About 300 people are expected to attend the meeting, at which the governor will answer questions on a range of topics.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","New Jersey Loses Battle On Air Traffic
New Jersey lost and New York City won in the battle over aircraft noise with an all-but-final decision by the Federal Aviation Administration yesterday on flight patterns from the region's three major airports. The F.A.A. rejected a New Jersey proposal to reroute air traffic away from northern New Jersey's suburbs and send the planes out over the ocean instead.
The agency said the over-water routes favored by New Jersey citizens groups and the state's Congressional delegation were too dangerous and, in any case, would simply shift the noise over to the homes of people on the Jersey Shore.
Instead, the regulators recommended that the agency offer only a slight modification of the current flight patterns, which were adopted in 1987 as a solution to growing airplane congestion over the New York City region. The plan had the effect of stacking up low-altitude inbound and outbound air traffic over rural and suburban areas of northern New Jersey that until then had been relatively free of overflights.
If today's recommendations become the basis for a final decision in October -- and F.A.A. officials suggested yesterday that only a serious change in Federal policy would prevent that from happening -- the current flight rules would be modifed only slightly. The changes would involve steering 140 departing flights from Newark International, about a third of the daily total, away from their current path over Scotch Plains to a more southerly path over Raritan, in central New Jersey.
That modification is called the Solberg Mitigation Proposal, after a navigational beacon at Solberg, N.J, near the town of Raritan.
The recommendations were released yesterday in the final version of an environmental study report that New Jersey's Congressional delegation forced the F.A.A. to undertake in 1990.
The Congressional delegation and a vigorous northern New Jersey organization, called the New Jersey Citizens Against Aircraft Noise, reacted angrily to the F.A.A.'s conclusion that their plan, which would have sent most Newark flights over the ocean, was dangerous and would only have shifted noise to the southern part of the state.
""Bill Clinton went to the Pacific Northwest and took on the timber industry to save the spotted owl, but he would not take on the airline interests on an issue of deep concern to the people of New Jersey,"" said Michael Schatzki, a Bernardsville management consultant who heads an arm of the anti-noise movement, New Jersey Citizens for Environmental Research, which was also a part of the New Jersey effort.
""This is not good news,"" said Representative Rodney P. Frelinghuysen, a freshman Republican whose wealthy Morris County district underlies large sections of the flight patterns the F.A.A. wants to keep.
""And I must say, that in my dealings on the air noise problem, the F.A.A. epitomizes the arrogance that many citizens feel some Federal agencies have,"" Mr. Frelinghuysen continued. ""There has been tremendous anger on the part of my constituents on this issue.""
In New York City, however, officials were pleased that the aviation agency has evidently chosen to stay with existing flight patterns, and to reject an ocean route that would have had the effect of pushing flights from Kennedy International and La Guardia Airports over Brooklyn, Queens and the rest of Long Island.
""The Borough President has opposed the ill-conceived and unfair ocean routing proposal since it was initiated because, basically, it would limit the options for air controllers working at La Guardia and Kennedy,"" said Peter Managni, a deputy to Claire Schulman, the Queens Borough President, who strongly defended the current flight plan for the region. ""We look forward to seeing the ocean plan finally defeated.""
Aviation agency officials said their choices were limited because of an ever-increasing number of flights funnelling daily into the most constricted and congested airspace in the country. Accordingly, the officials chose to focus on the Solberg modification as at least a bit of good news for about 19,000 residents of Scotch Plains and Fanwood, in Union County, N.J., who would benefit by having about 140 Newark departures per day shunted to the south of them, leaving them to contend with about 240 departures from Newark.
""We are now on the fast track to providing relief for many of the state's residents"" said Barry Valentine, the F.A.A.'s assistant administrator for policy. ""In keeping with the Clinton Administration's open communications policy, we have worked closely with the public in addressing this extrememly complex issue.""
Representative Frank Pallone's Middlesex and Monmouth County district would be on the receiving end of the shifted flights, and his anger yesterday illustrated how hard it is to insulate the most densely populated section of the country from jet noise.
Mr. Pallone, a Democrat, said in a statement that he was ""strongly opposed"" to the F.A.A. recommendation, and like every other member of the state delegation who condemned yesterday's report, he promised to keep fighting the plan in Congress.
Although the fight over flight plans has been mostly technical until now -- the citizens groups even chartered a 747 to try out the ocean route -- it is likely to turn political with next year's elections. Members of the anti-noise movement said yesterday that they had organized a 30,000-member voting block and political action committee that would likely be Republican in nature, and intent on punishing President Clinton for yesterday's report.
Mr. Clinton carried New Jersey by 79,000 votes in 1992.
The movement is likely to try to recruit people like Barbara Fawley, of Boonton, which underlies four separate approach and departure paths into the New York area. She said yesterday that the roar of airplanes passing 4,000 feet overhead has all but driven her indoors.
""I used to enjoy watching the Mets games on T.V.,"" Mrs. Fawley said, ""but it got so I couldn't stand listening to noise from planes taking off from La Guardia on television, and then hear them again a few minutes later when they came over my house.""",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Trying to Make Some Sense Of That Syrupy Scent. Why? It's Thursday.
New Jersey has been accused of many things, and almost none have had to do with smelling sweet.
But when a strange, syrupy scent descended on parts of New York City and New Jersey twice (and possibly three times) in the fall, theories spread faster than warm Aunt Jemima on pancakes. Speculation fell on the Garden State, a historic center in the production of fragrance, flavor and hoary olfaction jokes.
'What disgusting smell doesn't come from New Jersey?' asked Michelle Collins, 24, a paralegal and blogger who lives at 111th Street and Broadway. She has been widely credited with writing first about the smell on her Web site, youcantmakeitup.blogspot.com.
The evidence appears to be mounting: the earliest recorded calls for the October incident came not from New York, but from New Jersey. And a recent odor pocket was noticed by several people in Hoboken.
In an unscientific poll conducted in October on the Web site for NY1, the cable channel, 40 percent of the respondents said they believed that the smell came from New Jersey (call it the 'bridge and tunnel theory').
There are other theories, of course, ranging from a candy factory in Manhattan to at least a few half-serious worries in this age of terrorism that the smell represented something dangerous.
The smell came on at least two dates: Oct. 27 and Dec. 8, both Thursdays, in the late afternoon or early evening.
On both days, the barometric pressure was high, and the wind was blowing lightly from the west, about 10 miles an hour or less, according to data compiled by the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University.
Climate experts say that these atmospheric conditions often prompt what is called an inversion, a phenomenon common to the late fall and winter in New York that keeps pollution trapped at low altitudes.
Call logs for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection show that on Oct. 27, the first recorded complaints came from parts of New Jersey. A third occurrence of the smell came on Dec. 15, also a Thursday, when Hoboken residents who had noticed the odor previously claimed they smelled it again.
'Immediately, as soon as I arrived at the PATH train station, I noticed it off the bat,' said Sean Iaquinto, a telecommunications engineer who wrote about his experience on his blog.
On philly2hoboken.com, he said he turned to a person and asked: 'Do you happen to notice that kind of syrupy smell? And they nodded their head and said, 'Yeah.' '
Government agencies said that they do not believe the scent is dangerous and that they did not receive any complaints that day, but a spokesman for the city environmental protection agency said the current theory is that it most likely came from New Jersey.
'It's food processing,' said Charles Sturcken, a spokesman for the city's environmental protection agency.
Mr. Sturcken said that this was 'based on common judgment of our air inspectors,' and that 'things do drift over often from Jersey.'
In New Jersey, in places like South Hackensack, Teterboro, Newark and North Bergen, the smells of ginseng or strawberry or rhubarb root often fill noses, and few give it a second thought.
As Eric Schlosser noted in his 2001 book, 'Fast Food Nation,' northern New Jersey produces 'about two-thirds of the flavor additives sold in the United States.'
The world's largest flavor company, International Flavor & Fragrances, has two plants in New Jersey, in Hazlet (Monmouth County) and Dayton (Middlesex County).
Veronique Ferval, the company's director of fragrance development, said that it was unlikely that her company produced the smell, but said she was thrilled with the idea.
'From our perspective, it's very positive,' she said. 'It could be a new form of art. Scent is really underpresented.'
While the company has its corporate offices at 57th Street and 10th Avenue in Manhattan, none of the employees could detect the smell.
'I work in a very strong-smelling environment,' Ms. Ferval said.
Chris Rutkowski, a chemist from Ridgefield Park, N.J., can often smell the factories in South Hackensack, a couple of miles away.
'You get maple syrup smell, you get strawberry flavor,' he said. 'The worst one of them is the artificial butter flavor. When it's concentrated, it'll make a skunk blush.'
On a recent afternoon drive to the area, a stop was made at Takasago, a maker of flavors for Japanese food in Teterboro, N.J. Though no smell could be detected around the plant, inside was a vaguely sweet but decidedly nonsyrupy smell. A secretary who answered the door said she was not familiar with the story and said she had smelled nothing funny.
Next it was on to a plant named Naturex/Pure World, a French-owned business located on a stretch of road in South Hackensack crammed with factories and warehouses. The green-colored factory looms on a stretch of road near Route 80. From afar, the air smelled faintly sweet, like strawberry.
Through the gates and into the parking lot, the smell became muskier, until at the front door, an earthy scent could be detected, like ginseng.
A helpful secretary named Louise said that the production manager was too busy to talk, but that when she interviewed for the job about a month ago, she was convinced that someone was having 'a delicious breakfast' until she realized that the building was extracting flavors that day.
Promotional material from the company lists hundreds of extract products, including maple bark, brussels sprouts, elderberry, dandelion root, horse chestnut seed and something called buchu leaf (an herb product that purportedly helps with incontinence and urinary tract problems).
In a telephone interview, the president of the company, Jacques Dikansky, said the company dries vanilla and almond nearly every day but noted: 'We don't do maple syrup, for sure. And I don't see a product that's close to a maple syrup.'
As far as he could tell, there were no production problems at the plant in recent months that could account for any lingering smell.
New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection has responded to complaints regarding the smell, mainly in Bergen County and the Meadowlands area, but with little success.
'Over the past month we've investigated a number of flavor and fragrance facilities, but we've been unable to verify the source,' said Karen Hershey, a spokeswoman for the department.
Unlike New York, which uses meters to determine whether toxins are present in the air, New Jersey is decidedly low-tech. Investigators use their noses.
'Tracing it back can be challenging,' Ms. Hershey said.
A spokesman for the Bergen County executive's office said that when smells were reported, the county investigated 'the usual suspects' -- the flavor and fragrance companies in the southern part of the county -- but were unable to determine who or what, exactly, was producing it.
On Dec. 8, Erich Rastetter said, he was driving home to New York from flying lessons in Lincoln Park, N.J., when he was hit by the smell on Route 80 near Teaneck.
'It was really cold that day, and I had the heat on full blast,' said Mr. Rastetter, a computer network administrator who lives on Ninth Avenue in Manhattan and also detected the smell in October. 'I remember this blast of really sweet, really strong smell, and I kind of smiled and it kind of came together, that it was the smell.'
He said he opened the windows of his car to make sure it wasn't coming from inside. 'It only lasted like two or three minutes,' hesaid. 'As soon as I went past that roll in the road, it started disappearing fairly quickly.'
Patrick L. Kinney, a professor of environmental sciences at Columbia University and an expert on air pollution, said that while it's 'hard to fathom' that the scent could come from one source, it is in the realm of possibility.
'Clearly it's some kind of sweet production facility that's doing its thing,' he said, adding that the smell is being aided by atmospheric conditions.
Ms. Collins, the paralegal, said she had thought she might be going crazy when she first smelled the odor in October, but realized other people outside her building were talking about it. 'I thought: 'This is it. The terrorists are going to get us with the maple syrup smell.' '",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Lawmakers' Bills Get Tough on Sex Offenders
Sex offenders would have to prove that they have been rehabilitated or spend the rest of their lives in prison under a provision in a legislative package to be introduced in the New Jersey Legislature later this month, leaders of both houses said today.
And Gov. Christine Todd Whitman today signed three related bills that would toughen penalties for preying on children, for criminal trespassing at schools and for luring children into buildings or isolated areas.
Mrs. Whitman said she supported the aims of the bills in the proposed package and would sign them if they are ""constitutional and uniform."" But she stressed the need for rehabilitation, especially for juvenile offenders, who she said should not spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
The proposed laws, which would be among the most stringent in the country if enacted, are being given priority over other legislation in response to widespread public anger over the deaths of two young girls at the hands of two male neighbors whose prior sex offenses were not known to the people living nearby. Shifting Burden of Proof
The Senate President, Donald T. DiFrancesco, said the public anger was reflected in the feelings of lawmakers in both houses and he promised, ""We will use our anger and your own as a catalyst for change -- serious, meaningful change of the laws governing sex offenders.""
The most sweeping change would shift the burden of proof to the sex offender and subject him to an indefinite-to-life term that would make a condition of any release an ability to convince officials that he has been rehabilitated.
Although it was not mentioned at the news conference conducted by Mr. DiFrancesco and the Assembly Speaker, Chuck Haytaian, offenders could agree, as a condition of release, to ""chemical castration,"" a program of taking drugs that inhibit the libido, said Andrew K. Ruotolo Jr., the Union County prosecutor who advised Mr. DiFrancesco in preparing the bills.
Mr. Haytaian said his house would pass the package on Aug. 29 when it returns from its summer break. Mr. DiFrancesco said some of the bills would be given a public hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Aug. 22. On Parole for Life
If an offender wins release under the new system, he would be on parole for the rest of his life, and be required to report his whereabouts every 30 days. Police officials in the town where he moves would be alerted and asked to notify residents in his neighborhood of his presence.
Other bills in the package would increase the sentence for aggravated sexual assault on someone 16 or younger to 30 years to life, from the current penalty of 10 to 20 years; allow the involuntary commitment to a psychiatric hospital of sexual offenders deemed dangerous even after they serve their maximum prison sentence, and make the murder of a child a crime punishable by death.
Mrs. Whitman said her administration has prepared a bill on sex-offender registration that would require anyone released after serving a sentence for a sex crime to register with the police department of the town where he moves, or the state police, if the town has no police force.
The Governor said she had asked the Attorney General, Deborah T. Poritz, to try to establish a cooperative agreement with other states that have laws on notification and registration so that New Jersey could be alerted if a sex offender decided to move into the state.
The two recent cases that have heightened public anxiety over the unsupervised release of convicted sex offenders were the sexual assaults and killings of Amanda Wengert, 6, of Manalapan in March, and Megan Kanka, 7, of Hamilton Township last month. In each case, a neighbor with a record of sexual assaults has been charged with murder.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","New Jersey Prescription Plan Expanded for Elderly and Disabled
New Jersey expanded its groundbreaking prescription-drug assistance program, previously limited to low-income residents, to include about 100,000 middle-income disabled and elderly people under a bill signed into law today by Acting Gov. Donald T. DiFrancesco.
The new benefit is patterned after the state's low-income prescription plan, which requires only a small co-payment for prescriptions. The law signed today, for the elderly or disabled, helps pay for prescriptions for couples who make up to $33,589 and for single people who earn up to $29,238. But unlike the low-income plan, these beneficiaries will pay a $15 co-payment plus half the cost of the prescription until they have spent $3,000 in a year. From that point, they would pay only the $15 co-payment for the rest of the year.
'Back in 1975, New Jersey was the first state to provide a prescription drug plan for low-income seniors,' Mr. DiFrancesco said at a bill-signing ceremony in Lodi today.
'And now, in 2001, we are yet again in the national forefront of pharmaceutical assistance plans with our middle-income Senior Gold program.'
The first person to sign up for the new program was Helen Yezefski of Lodi, who declined to give her age except to say she met the age 65 threshold, and who said she had been spending between $300 and $400 a month on prescriptions.
'Medication is so expensive, and I am living alone on a fixed income with bills to pay, so some months it's very hard to get by,' Ms. Yezefski said. 'Hopefully with this plan I won't have to worry so much about the other bills each month.' The program will be paid for with the $7.6 billion that New Jersey expects to receive over the next 25 years from the national tobacco settlement. It was one of the key elements in Mr. DiFrancesco's legislative agenda when he took over as acting governor, and when he was still an active candidate for election to a full term next fall. Mr. DiFrancesco has since dropped out of the governor's race.
State officials said applications  would be available at pharmacies, state offices and centers for the elderly. The phone number for the plan is (800) 792-9745 and applications can be downloaded from the Department of Health and Senior Services Web site, www.state.nj.us/health.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Family Farmers Fear Urban Inroads
LEAD: Members of 17 families who have owned their New Jersey farms continuously for more than 200 years met here today to talk about heritage, but the talk rapidly turned to the urban development that one day could take away their farms.
Members of 17 families who have owned their New Jersey farms continuously for more than 200 years met here today to talk about heritage, but the talk rapidly turned to the urban development that one day could take away their farms.
'We're trying to stop development because if farmland dies out, we'll all die out,' said Frank Wallace Jr., whose family has owned Brookdale Farm in Chesterfield since 1766. 'I hate to think of it, but it's coming our way.'
Brookdale, believed to be New Jersey's oldest farm, is 10 miles southeast of Trenton in Burlington County, in a setting of rolling hills, horses, cattle and the brick manor house where Anthony Taylor, grandson of an English immigrant, built his home.
The families gathered here to be honored by the Secretaries of Agriculture from 10 Northeast states for persevering with farming. The ceremony was part of the observance of the bicentennial of the United States Constitution.
Some of the families still farm their own land, while others rent it out. All of them, like Mr. Wallace, had some tale to recall in emphasizing the importance of their farms to their families and in some cases to American history.
The British visited Brookdale Farm during the Revolution and because they were treated so well, they did not burn the house, Mr. Wallace said.
At the Merino Hill Farm in Upper Freehold Township in Monmouth County, part of the house has a false ceiling, where it is believed slaves were hidden as part of the 'underground railway' during the Civil War. And at the Pitney Farm in Mendham in Morris County, a script etched on a windowpane, which can still be read, honors a relative of the Pitney family for fighting at Williamsburg in the Civil War.
To many of the families, it was a sentimental ceremony. Then the issue came up of whether the past would help insure the future. New Jersey, one of the largest farm states in the Northeast, is losing 20,000 to 30,000 acres of farmland each year, said Arthur Brown, the state's Secretary of Agriculture. 'When you only have close to one million acres, that's a lot,' he said.
According to state figures, farming is a $600 million industry in New Jersey, with the No. 1 product being nursery sod and greenhouse material. In 1987, there were 7,600 farms in the state, down from 8,600 in 1977. As a result, he said, New Jersey has instituted an 'expensive' program to help farmers hold on to their land. 'Fighting Lots of Battles'
Joseph Taylor, whose children are the 11th generation to own River Side Homestead Farm in Burlington County along the Delaware River, agreed.
Once, he said, he was able to concentrate on farming almost exclusively. These days, he added, he is busy 'fighting lots of battles with people wanting to build high-rise condos.' And he has to attend many planning board meetings to oppose housing development on farmland near his farm. But it is possible, he said, to coexist with the new type of nonfarming resident beginning to live on what used to be farmland. Farmers just have to adjust. Today, only about 120 acres of land remain at River Side, and fruits, vegetables, hay and straw are still grown on his farm as they were in the 1720's, he said. But now about 90 percent of the crops are sold as a pick-your-own operation.
Mr. Brown agreed. He said agriculture would continue to change and New Jersey would see more greenhouses and container nurseries to serve the needs of the state's rising population.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","New Jersey's New Law May Let Parents Choose Schools
By tucking a single sentence into the 72-page school financing bill that she signed this month, Gov. Christine Todd Whitman hopes that New Jersey parents will soon be sending their children to the public schools of their choice.
The sentence -- which could significantly change how children are educated in New Jersey by allowing them to attend classes outside their home districts, with state aid covering the cost -- apparently was overlooked by state legislators as they debated the school bill over several months.
Educators, school officials and politicians involved with the school legislation were trying over the weekend to understand the meaning of the change in the law and how it would work. Some were stunned by how such a change could happen with no debate, and a few expressed concern that it would drain money and talented students from troubled school districts.
'It is a major policy change and it needs full review and discussion,' said Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, which represents 122 school districts. 'Unfortunately, it appears to be a way to get something controversial passed through the first gate.'
Administration officials included the sentence in the original draft of the school financing bill. But several people involved in hearings on the bill said yesterday that administration officials had never pointed out the sentence, which appears in a section that provides definitions of the bill's terms. And even Republican legislators who helped Mrs. Whitman get the bill passed said they had not known it was there.
'I don't remember any discussion about it whatsoever,' Senator John H. Ewing, a Republican who is chairman of the Senate Education Committee, said in an interview with The Star-Ledger.
According to the Whitman administration, the sentence authorizes the state's education commissioner to set specific guidelines so that students can attend the public schools of their choice -- a concept that Mrs. Whitman has supported since she ran for governor in 1993.
Students can already attend other schools outside their home district, but they must pay tuition, said Peter Peretzman, a spokesman for Education Commissioner Leo F. Klagholz. Under the new law, parents could send their children to another school for free, Mr. Peretzman said, because the state would pay instead. School districts would participate in the program on a voluntary basis, he said.
Becky Taylor, a spokeswoman for Governor Whitman, said Sunday that she did not know why there had been no public debate. 'It was a very complicated bill,' she said. 'There were so many issues. I guess people just focused on other issues.'
In 1993, Mrs. Whitman campaigned on a pledge to bring more choice to parents who send their children to public schools. After she won, she called for a voucher system that would provide parents with tax money to send their children to private or parochial schools, but she could not muster support from legislators.
'Governor Whitman really believes if there is more competition and parents have more choice about where to send their children, our schools will ultimately be better for it,' Ms. Taylor said. 'It's really terrible to think parents would be faced with the prospect of having to sell their homes just to chase after the best schools.'
Ms. Taylor said that Mr. Klagholz would probably test the concept in a pilot program involving a handful of districts around the state before making it available to all students. She said she did not recall whether Mrs. Whitman had spoken publicly about the sentence before it became law, but added that it had been part of the legislation since it was introduced more than a year ago.
'She has talked about school choice and competition for the last three years,' Ms. Taylor said.
The sentence, which appears on page 6 of the 72-page bill, in a section that defines 'resident enrollment,' reads, 'Beginning in 1997-98 and thereafter, resident enrollment shall also include those nonresident children who are permitted to enroll in the educational program without payment of tuition as part of a voluntary program of inter-district public school choice approved by the commissioner.'
David G. Sciarra, executive director at the Education Law Center,  questioned whether that sentence was enough to give Mr. Klagholz the power to enact a system of public school choice. 'I'm not sure the commissioner has the legal authority to do this anyway,' Mr. Sciarra said. 'That's a major question.'
And if the provision was legal, Mr. Sciarra said he feared the state's poorest performing districts could lose both money and their brightest students under the law.
But Mr. Peretzman said that would not happen. 'We're in no way interested in harming school districts,' he said.
Some educators and Democrats said yesterday that they supported the concept of giving parents more choice when sending their children to public schools. But the public should have had an opportunity to debate the issue before it is made law, they said. 'I thought the purpose of a legislature was to debate these things,' said B. Thomas Byrne, Jr., chairman of the state's Democratic Party. 'This would have been a three-month debate.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Boyfriend, 15, Is Charged In Fatal Beating of Child
A 15-year-old boy has been charged with murder, and his 27-year-old girlfriend has been charged with child endangerment in the beating death of her 20-month-old son, the police said yesterday.
The boy, whose name was withheld because of his age, was charged on Wednesday with beating the child, Omar McCollum, to death while baby-sitting for him on Monday, said Matt Greimel, a spokesman for the Newark Police Department. The mother, Erica Johnson, was also charged with making a false statement to the police, Mr. Greimel said.
The police said that when Ms. Johnson returned home on Monday afternoon, Omar appeared to be ill and she took him to University Hospital in Newark, where she told doctors he had asthma. Omar died a few hours later, and an autopsy conducted Tuesday showed that he had been seriously beaten in the head and abdomen, Mr. Greimel said.
METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Our Towns; Creating Castles At a Discount For Playgrounds
LEAD: No one at Fairmount Elementary School had ever met a celebrity architect before. And what a celebrity. Robert Leathers has built 450 playgrounds all over America. (How do you get a job like that, they wanted to know. Might as well be eating ice cream for a living.) At each school he mobilizes hundreds of children and parent volunteers, showing them how to construct a playground in practically no time for a fraction of the normal cost.
No one at Fairmount Elementary School had ever met a celebrity architect before. And what a celebrity. Robert Leathers has built 450 playgrounds all over America. (How do you get a job like that, they wanted to know. Might as well be eating ice cream for a living.) At each school he mobilizes hundreds of children and parent volunteers, showing them how to construct a playground in practically no time for a fraction of the normal cost. He's even been featured on Mr. Rogers.
For weeks they had been preparing for his visit. Yesterday was the big first step, Design Day. Each child had a chance to give his ideas for the playground and in just hours the celebrity architect would draw a blueprint.
They had prepared their own designs for him, full of castles and haunted houses and octopus swings. Adam Andrew had been bringing in fresh designs daily. Kate Roetzer's design, a horse tunnel leading to a castle, was completely annotated. 'Give horse some furry hair to touch,' she wrote. 'Don't make points on castle too sharp.' Mark Arrgbito's sketch included stick figures saying 'Wee, wee, that was fun.'
They were shocked to learn how long the actual building would take. The first graders guessed 10 months, the second grade a year. Christian Crews, a third grader, said, 'Until we get to sixth grade.' (He apparently thought New York City was doing the building.) 'We'll build it in four days,' said Paula Weiss, one of the celebrity architect's assistants. The first graders laughed, second graders applauded. Josh Bohannon, one of the oldest, a fifth grader, shouted, 'I knew it!' When Ms. Weiss asked, 'Who would be enthusiastic to build?' Allan Alston said, 'Me. I'm in it! Yo!' It turns out that celebrity architects are just as tightly scheduled as normal celebrities. Mr. Leathers has this down to a science. Even with all the volunteers, a playground can cost $40,000, usually raised through parents' fund drives. To cut costs, he reduces his professional staff's time.
His people met with each class for 13 minutes. To prepare them for Design Day, he gives out pages of instructions, including where to place the pencil sharpener. He arrived at 8:35. 'I just came from California,' he said, 'and I'm headed for California.' He hadn't taken off his coat when he said, 'I have two ideas already.' First he met parents. One asked if they could build by spring. 'Spring was booked a long time ago,' he said. He suggested fall, though that wasn't sure. 'I have 40 waiting for fall.'
While he sketched in the cafeteria, assistants ran from class to class, collecting ideas. 'You could have an ice cream slide,' said Lonnie Caine, a second grader. A few laughed, but when they saw an assistant making notes, they stopped. Maybe Lonnie had something there.
Aaron Pinsley wanted a volcano with spraying sand, Elizabeth Nauman wanted a wiggly bridge. As Ms. Weiss rushed out. Kelly Sands chased her. 'Can you put in a fun house?' Kelly asked. Not all ideas were practical. Several wanted a seesaw, but Ms. Weiss said they're unsafe.
Meanwhile, Mr. Leathers sketched madly, making notes in the margin like, 'ice cream cone slide,' 'octopus swing.' Students filed into the cafeteria for lunch - pizza and potato soup - but Mr. Leathers rarely looked up. Once he raised his head to tell a parent, he needed 'absolutely precise, accurate' directions back to his Ithaca office.
An assistant, Barry Segal, explained the design to groups of kids. 'If you get tired of being in the castle,' he said, 'right outside is an obstacle course.' Mr. Leathers paused to sharpen his pencil; everyone became quiet and watched.
'If you take a left-hand turn,' said Mr. Segal, 'here's a swing platform. Next to that's a pirate ship. Then you can run to the gigantic castle.' There was a lot more going on in the drawing, but finally, Mr. Segal said, 'then you'll slide out the mouth of the dragon. O.K.? Next group.' 'Excuse me,' said Melissa Longo, 'which one's Mr. Leathers?' (She had a last-minute volcano design for him; an assistant took it.) Rebecca Fernandez picked her up so she could get a better look at Mr. Leathers.
They were excited to see their ideas on the blueprint. Christina Corcoran had suggested two slides coming out of an ice cream cone. 'Look,' said Jacqueline Lora, 'Christina's idea.'
At 11:36 Mr. Leathers got the exact directions and in three minutes he was gone. There were many more meetings, deep into the night, mainly to discuss months of fund raising. They were learning that it's one thing to have a celebrity playground plan, and another thing to pay for it. When Charlie Capozzi asked, 'Do we have to, like get some tools from our Dads now?' a grown-up said, 'Not yet, Charlie.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","OSHA, Citing Limits, Imposes $127,000 Fine in Lodi Blast
Saying a loophole in safety rules limited them, Federal officials today imposed a fine of $127,000 for an explosion at a chemical plant in April that killed five workers in Lodi.
The penalty, imposed against the owner of the plant, Napp Technologies, by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, was a fraction of fines in previous fatal industrial blasts. Those include $11.5 million after a blast at the IMC Fertilizer and Angus Chemical plant in Sterlington, La., that killed eight workers in May 1991 and $8.2 million against a Citgo Petroleum refinery in Lake Charles, La., three months earlier.
The stiffest penalty in Lodi, for $70,000, was for the ""willful failure"" of Napp to train the company fire brigade adequately, OSHA officials said. The rest of the fine was for 16 other violations, including poor emergency operations and the absence of protective clothing and equipment for the workers.
Officials at the regional OSHA office here said they could not order tougher fines because the safety standard for mixing chemicals did not specifically mention the two volatile chemicals that erupted in the five-ton vat at Lodi. ""Had the chemicals been covered, the magnitude of the citations and penalties could have been higher,"" the regional OSHA director, Efraim Zoldan, said. ""It's very sad we could not apply the standard.""
Had the Federal standard listed the chemicals, sodium hydrosulfite and aluminum powder, the fines could have run into the millions.
In Washington, an assistant labor secretary, Joseph A. Dear, instructed his staff to re-examine the standard for ""process-safety management,"" to consider adding the chemicals and how they react when mixed. ""This tragedy is the result of multiple mistakes and mismanagement that unfortunately were not covered by specific OSHA standards,"" Mr. Dear said in a statement.
Mr. Dear and New Jersey labor leaders were disturbed by the penalty and criticized efforts by Republicans in Congress to cut the OSHA budget, reduce its force of factory inspectors and soften regulations.
""For OSHA to reopen its standards is a stark indicator of the weakness in basic regulations for chemical industry safety,"" said Eric Frumin, regional health and safety director of the New York-New Jersey Regional Board of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, which represented the workers at Napp.
In a statement, the company denied violating OSHA standards or requirements. ""Napp will vigorously contest the unfounded allegations contained in this notice and is confident that the company will be completely vindicated,"" a spokesman, Jon Holt, said in the statement.
Napp has 15 days to file an appeal.
The plant, which the explosion demolished, was part of a pharmaceutical business controlled by three brothers, Raymond, Mortimer and Arthur Sackler. Their largest holding is the Purdue Frederick Company of Norwalk, Conn. That company has sales of $400 million a year.
The blast in April occurred 12 hours after workers began mixing 8,000 pounds of sodium hydrosulfite, 1,000 pounds of aluminum powder and potassium carbonate and benzaldehyde to produce a substance that extracts gold from raw materials. At an early point, a tube to the vat clogged, and workers used water to try to clear it, according to an investigation by Prosecutor Charles Buckley of Bergen County.
Mr. Buckley's office said neither the crew operating the vat nor the overnight crew that replaced it did anything to halt the volatile reaction in the mix, even though a powerful odor of rotten eggs -- a danger sign -- filled the blending room. Shortly after the day crew arrived the next morning, the workers were removed. Several minutes later, 13 workers were asked to re-enter and none objected, said Mr. Zoldan, who would not identify the executive who made that request.
Some workers were instructed to begin emptying the chemicals from the vat into 55-gallon drums. Others, members of the fire brigade, were told to prepare hoses in case of an explosion. The blast a few minutes later killed 5 workers and hurled the huge vat through a wall into a parking lot 50 feet from its original spot.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Man Sentenced to Prison For Death of a Friend
A New Gretna man has been sentenced to five years in prison for driving while intoxicated and causing an accident that killed one of his friends, county prosecutors said yesterday.
The man, Kenneth Rose, 37, pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide in the death of James Merrill, 42, of Tuckerton, on Oct. 25, 1997. Mr. Merrill was killed while Mr. Rose was driving him home after the two had visited several bars in Atlantic and Cape May Counties, said Susan Curcio, the chief assistant Atlantic County Prosecutor. The two men were on the Garden State Parkway in Port Republic when Mr. Rose fell asleep at the wheel and struck a guard rail, Ms. Curcio said.
Michael Schreiber, a lawyer representing Mr. Rose, said he had asked Judge Albert Garofolo of Superior Court to grant his client the possibility of parole because Mr. Rose had not intended to hurt anyone.
Judge Garofolo sentenced Mr. Rose yesterday to serve at least 85 percent of his sentence before being eligible for parole.
METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","7-Year-Old Is Linked To Drowning of Girl, 3
A 3-year-old girl who prosecutors say drowned in a backyard pool in Cherry Hill in May while her father took drugs inside was pushed into the pool by a 7-year-old, the Camden County Prosecutor said yesterday.
The death of the 3-year-old, Samantha Wann, on May 24 was ruled a homicide, but the 7-year-old will not be prosecuted, said the Prosecutor, Lee A. Solomon. Supervision and counseling will be sought, he said.
The 7-year-old apparently became angry with the victim, Mr. Solomon said. Samantha had been sexually assaulted shortly before her death, the Prosecutor said, but no charges of abuse have been filed.
Samantha's father, Michael Wann, 34, has been held since May on $100,000 bail on charges of child endangerment. Martin Hunsinger, 51, who hosted the party where the drowning occurred, was charged with showing a pornographic videotape to a 7-year-old girl, and with tying her to a wheel and whipping her with a belt.
Mr. Solomon would not say whether the abused 7-year-old, who is in state custody, was the same one who pushed Samantha into the pool.
METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Metro Datelines; U.S. Jury Indicts Man In Youth-Sex Case
LEAD: A bus company manager was indicted yesterday on Federal charges of unlawfully transporting two young girls to New Jersey to engage in prostitution, the authorities said.
A bus company manager was indicted yesterday on Federal charges of unlawfully transporting two young girls to New Jersey to engage in prostitution, the authorities said.
The defendant, Victor Einhorn, 36 years old, was arrested last July 7 at a motel in Fort Lee, N.J., and charged with sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault. He was released on $75,000 bail.
The Federal indictment charges that Mr. Einhorn took te girls, 12 and 13 years old, from Brooklyn to a New Jersey motel six times between May and July. An assistant Bergen County prosecutor, Fred Schwanwee, said Mr. Einhorn gave the girls $20 to $30 several times.
Mr. Einhorn, of Monsey, N.Y., and Brooklyn, manages the Private Trails Bus Company of Brooklyn, the authorities said.
He is charged with 12 counts of unlawfully transporting minors for the purpose of engaging in prostitution and other unlawful sexual activity. If convicted on all counts, he would face a maximum of 120 years in jail and a $3 million fine. He is to be arraigned today in Brooklyn. (AP)",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","10-Minute Happy Hour Heads Down the Track
LEAD: 'The shufflers are here,' someone yelled out, and all the regulars at Lagoda's Saloon looked up to see the end of an era.
'The shufflers are here,' someone yelled out, and all the regulars at Lagoda's Saloon looked up to see the end of an era.
The 5:15 N.J. Transit train from Manhattan had arrived just 25 feet from Lagoda's back door and now sat powerless on the track as a crew spent 10 minutes coupling a diesel locomotive to it. At 1:28 A.M. Saturday, if all goes according to plan, this is to happen for the last time.
As the train stopped today, scores of commuters hurried into the bar, grabbed a beer or soft drink from the icebox, plunked down some money and rushed back to the train for the rest of the trip home. Others jumped off to light a cigarette, since smoking is forbidden on all N.J. Transit lines. This scene has been repeated hundreds of times during the past decades at Lagoda's and another bar nearby, the Landmark. But the use of diesel is to end this weekend on the North Jersey Coast Line from New York to Long Branch. Change Will Hurt Bars
The switch to electricity means that trains from New York will no longer have to stop here to switch over to diesel, and trains from Long Branch will not have to stop to switch to electricity on the way north to New York.
Instead, they will stop only briefly before speeding on to Newark or New York City, and the beverage stops at Lagoda's and the Landmark and the smoking on the platforms will be merely memories.
For George Fuller, the bartender at Lagoda's, the change will hurt. Those 10 minutes per train have translated into a sizable infusion of cash for a saloon in an economically depressed blue-collar town.
'It's going to be bad for business,' he said as he collected another dollar for a beer. 'But we're hoping that some of them are so used to us that they will get off and maybe have two beers and wait for the next train.' #18 Minutes Trimmed Many commuters, though, were looking forward more to the time saved than the chance to wait for a second train. As it is, by the time they arrive here on their way home, most riders have already been en route from 43 minutes to an hour.
Now, with the stopover cancelled and the trains accelerating faster under electic power than they do behind a diesel locomotive, riders will save up to 18 minutes each way on their daily commute, N.J. Transit officials said. For many of the line's 12,000 riders, the evening trip is a time for sleeping; their coats, crisply pressed during the morning, are thrown haphazardly on the overhead racks. Others read or play cards. Talk is minimal.
But as the train approaches South Amboy, there is an abrupt change in atmosphere.
It stops, and a tide rushes out the doors. Mr. Fuller runs behind the cash register as the 'shufflers' - so called by the regulars because of their quick steps - flock to the refrigerators. #10-Minute Happy Hour With one hand, Mr. Fuller collects money; with the other, he mixes drinks. Then, after 10 minutes, the train swallows the drinkers again, and Lagoda's regulars return to talking, joking and watching television.
But after this weekend, many riders said, it is unlikely they will stick to their 10-minute happy hour.
'Who needs this wait?' said one. 'Let's get home on time.' 'I'd rather get home earlier and have my Diet Pepsi and chips at home,' said Jack Diamond, a structural engineer from Little Silver who works in Manhattan. 'It's going to be a big improvement and will cut down a lot on my commuting time.'
'Time is more important to me,' said Joseph Farrell, a consultant who was sipping a beer and talking with Robert Gorgone, a sales manager. Project Planned Since 1960's
The three-year, $97-million modernization project was first promised in the late 1960's. Back then, voters approved a $42 million bond issue to extend electrification to Bay Head, the end of the line, about 67 miles from New York City.
But ultimately, the new project added only 16 miles of electrification, from South Amboy south to Long Branch, including the stops at Little Silver, Red Bank, Middletown, Hazlet and Matawan. Electrification for the rest of the line is still being studied.
Previously, electrical service had only been essential into New York City because the trains had to go through tunnels to get there.
Transit officials said electrification will allow them to add up to 19 more trips to New York on weekdays from most stations.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","In a Final Push, Gubernatorial Candidates Seek Black and Hispanic Support
With only three days left before Tuesday's primary, the three Democratic candidates seeking the nomination to challenge Gov. Christine Todd Whitman this fall reached out today to black and Hispanic voters from Newark to Camden.
'We cannot win in the fall if our base is not solid,' said Representative Robert E. Andrews, of Haddon Heights, whose black and Hispanic supporters here organized a motorcade with more than 30 cars and vans through the city's streets this morning, awakening residents with sound trucks blaring, 'Support Rob Andrews for governor.'
In Newark, both Michael Murphy and State Senator James E. McGreevey courted black voters at a candidates' forum organized by the N.A.A.C.P. at the Abyssinia Baptist Church in Newark.
Taking turns responding to questions from about 40 people, both Mr. Murphy and Mr. McGreevey vowed to end the state takeover of the Newark public school system, if elected.
'The day of my oath of office will be the last day of Dr. Beverly Hall,' said Mr. McGreevey, referring to the state-appointed school superintendent of the Newark public schools.
And Mr. Murphy said that he wanted 'to return the school system to the parents and the people.'
'I want you to know that I am on line F,' he said, referring to his ballot position in Essex County, 'and that stands for faith.'
'I am not the choice of the bosses,' said Mr. Murphy, whose opponents have better positions on the ballot. 'But I hope to be the choice of the people.'
Governor Whitman has also been stepping up her appearances in the state's cities in recent months in an effort to sway black and Hispanic voters, who are expected to play a critical role in this fall's general election. In last year's Senate race, 12 percent of the 3.1 million New Jerseyans who voted were black residents, helping United States Senator Robert G. Torricelli, a Democrat, win by a substantial margin of 300,000 votes.
During the last gubernatorial race, in 1993, former Gov. Jim Florio lost to Governor Whitman by only 26,000 votes, in part because turnout among black voters was low and 25 percent of the black vote, representing 50,000 votes, went to Mrs. Whitman.
Trying to make sure that Governor Whitman does not fare well with black and Hispanic voters this time, all three candidates have devoted considerable attention in the last three weeks to them, making appearances at black churches and meeting with community groups.
Mr. McGreevey also made stops today at the Black Masons Breakfast in Somerset, a prayer breakfast at the Christina Pentecostal Church in Newark, and the Haitian Political Action Committee meeting in Orange.
He then took his campaign to southern New Jersey, venturing into the heart of Mr. Andrews' political base in Camden County.
Mr. McGreevey picked up the endorsement of Milton Milan, the newly elected Mayor of Camden, surprising the Andrews campaign and some of Mr. Milan's longtime friends in Camden. They said that they did not understand why Mr. Milan turned his back on Mr. Andrews, who has represented Camden as a Freeholder and as a United States Representative since 1988.
'It is really a mystery,' said Angel Fuentes, a member of the Camden City Council who helped organize the motorcade on Mr. Andrews's behalf today. 'Every time we have turned to Rob Andrews, he has helped us. That is why we are working very hard to help him today. What has Mr. McGreevey done for Camden?'
Mr. Milan said that he got to know Mr. McGreevey during the Democratic National Convention last summer, and he believes that Mr. McGreevey offers a better vision, particularly on education, than Mr. Andrews or Mr. Murphy.
Mr. McGreevey said that he believes Mr. Milan represents a 'distinct change in the leadership of the city' and that his endorsement will help him win votes there.
But Mr. Andrews, in between campaign stops in Camden, dismissed the political impact of Mr. Milan's endorsement. He waved toward the dozens of his supporters, many of whom had voted for Mr. Milan.
'This is Milton Milan's campaign,' he said. 'These are the local Hispanic leaders of Camden here. I'm very confident that we are going to win.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","In Quest for Tax Cut, Corzine May Be Key
If New Jersey's quest to reduce its burdensome property taxes were a paint-by-numbers project, it would be a colorful palette: 24 legislators on four committees held 41 hearings over 100 days before releasing 98 recommendations.
But whether some of those proposals ultimately reform the system for the long term could come down to a final number: one -- as in Gov. Jon S. Corzine.
Trenton's lawmakers -- all of them up for re-election next year -- surely have great incentive to make some of the recently concluded special session's more significant proposals a reality.
But their attempt will probably depend on the endorsement of Mr. Corzine, who has expressed wariness about the fiscal viability of the most high-profile proposal -- a 20 percent property tax credit for most homeowners.
Even as the Legislature crowed about the tax credit last week, Mr. Corzine made it clear during an address before the state League of Municipalities' convention in Atlantic City that he was concerned about the lack of details on how the state would pay for it in the years to come.
For their part, the legislators acknowledged that they were still not sure what the income cutoff would be for taxpayers to reap the full benefits of the credit; the current cutoff is $200,000 annual household income. They said they would pay for the program by scrapping the current rebate programs and combining that money with revenue from half of the one percentage point increase in the state's sales tax that was enacted during the summer.
But the use of the sales tax for property tax relief is limited to one year only. Among the others proposals is one to sell the state's highways and the lottery system, which many feel would generate only short-term revenues. But the Legislature's plan does not include a way to pay for the credit beyond the next two years, something that Mr. Corzine alluded to in his speech on Thursday, where he nudged lawmakers to smooth the proposal's raw edges before submitting it for his signature.
'The effort to provide immediate property tax relief cannot be done by creating a giant hole for future budgets,' Mr. Corzine said.
Lawmakers said they hoped to have the most significant proposals in place by year's end.
The thinking of Mr. Corzine, a Democrat, seemed like a low-calorie version of the perspective offered by Republicans like State Senator Leonard Lance, the minority leader, who shortly after the governor's speech said he was 'gravely concerned about the sustainability' of components of the property tax overhaul plan.
Indeed, Mr. Corzine used a version of the word 'sustainability' six times in his 25-minute address.
Such concerns underscore the delicate balance that Mr. Corzine must strike between the executive branch and his colleagues in the Democratic-controlled Legislature: how to reap the electoral benefits of addressing the property tax issue in the short term while maintaining fiscal responsibility far into the future.
'Governor Corzine is thinking about the long term, the need for balanced budgets, the need for fiscal integrity,' said David Rebovich, of the Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. 'While the Legislature -- and I say this gently -- they just want to get through the election. You know: 'How big is the check going to be so I can put it on a campaign brochure?' '
Since the special session began in July, few could argue that the Legislature had not grasped the political stakes surrounding property taxes, which polls have shown to be among the most volatile issues for state residents.
With its homeowners paying an average of $6,000 annually, New Jersey has the highest property tax rate in the country and twice the national average.
The 20 percent credit would shave about $1,200 a year off of the typical bill.
With all of the 120 seats in the Legislature in play next November, Mr. Rebovich said lawmakers had to look only as far as this month's election results to recognize the possible consequences of seeming tone-deaf.
'The Republican-controlled Congress didn't listen to the voices in the wind about the war in Iraq,' he said. 'I think New Jersey lawmakers are saying, 'We don't want to do that regarding property taxes. We can't fudge our way through another year. These people expect some gosh-darn relief.' '
The effectiveness of the proposals cannot be fully evaluated until finishing touches are put on the legislation that will be drafted over the next several weeks.
Still, some said that the recommendations raised more than their share of questions.
'My concern is how do we make the numbers work?' said Henry Coleman, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University, noting that a 20 percent reduction in property taxes would leave a $4 billion hole in the budget.
Mr. Coleman wondered whether the state could save enough through efforts like consolidating municipal and educational services and revising school financing -- other recommendations made in the special session -- to make up for the shortfall. To most lawmakers, the word consolidation seems more like a poison pill than a remedy.
'I am a little bit leery that we are promising so significant an amount of money potentially in property taxes savings from those types of things,' he said.
Mr. Coleman urged lawmakers to 'think comprehensively.'
'If we keep looking for one thing or one or two things to do,' Mr. Coleman said, 'we're almost guaranteed not to get where we want to go.'
In which case Mr. Corzine has a few highways to sell.
POLITICAL MEMO",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Behind Tax Pledge: How the Numbers Came Up for Whitman
The news came on Jan. 4 in a low-key way, just the State Treasurer wrapping up another tedious budget briefing with the words, ""So, Governor, if you want to do it, my feeling is that the revenue is going to be there to cover the whole fifteen.""
No one seated around the conference table in Gov. Christine Todd Whitman's murky, wood-paneled office needed to be told what the full fifteen was, nor its political significance.
Even some in her own party had scoffed during her run for office 16 months ago when she had pledged to cut state income taxes 30 percent in three years, and now, with the Jan. 4 numbers, it was looking as if they might be able to deliver the promise in two years.
State Treasurer Brian W. Clymer had been churning out computerized budget projections for nearly three months by the time of that Jan. 4 meeting. He was tracking the course of New Jersey's tax receipts like an astronomer following a rogue comet. He kept factoring in income tax cuts of 5 percent, 10 percent and the full 15, the cut that would complete Governor Whitman's 30 percent tax-cut pledge a year early.
Peter Verniero, Mrs. Whitman's chief counsel, sat at the table, along with Judith L. Shaw, the chief of staff, and Jane M. Kenny, director of policy and planning, along with several aides to this inner circle. Mrs. Whitman had taken her seat in the middle of the conference table, closest to her desk, and the only question the Governor asked at Mr. Clymer's news was, ""Well, what would it take?""
Last Monday, Governor Whitman answered that question to the state: cutting the state income tax 15 percent would take severe cuts in several departments, the loss of 3,400 state jobs, a virtual freeze on municipal and school aid for all but the poorest school systems. It would mean a flurry of small taxes and fees, on computer software, on grocery store coupons. It would take a few strange twists: a visit to a state motor vehicle agency in person, instead of sending that renewal in by mail, would cost $5 extra under Mrs. Whitman's budget.
But delivering on her tax-cutting promise early, the officials at that meeting knew, would also be a sensation in the state and cement Mrs. Whitman's reputation as a comer in a Republican Party that is leading an anti-tax revolution and looking to the states to prove that Washington no longer has the answers.
In October, the Governor had seemed to be moving the other way. She conceded in a radio interview that the cuts might take four years to complete instead of three, setting off a flurry of I-told-you-so's among state Democrats and from Gov. Mario M. Cuomo of New York, who was fighting for a fourth term and used the admission against his rival, George E. Pataki.
Governor Whitman now maintains that she intended only to say that she would put prudence over politics in setting the tax-cut schedule, yet the dynamics of budget-writing may also have played a role in the October warning.
That is the jittery month when commissioners and bureaucrats begin to focus on their coming year's spending plans, and the Governor and her staff began bearing the brunt of intense lobbying from people interested in protecting their share of the pie. With so many dire warnings being made against this cut or in favor of that financing increase, and so little firm information about the prospects for tax revenues, the Governor's staff began making worried noises about the three-year timetable.
All that changed on Jan. 4, however, before the regular budget briefing. Ms. Kenny recalled Mr. Clymer's beckoning excitedly from a door in the Governor's outer office.
""Brian is very even, very steady,"" Ms. Kenny recalled, ""but before the meeting that day he was gesturing at me, like he's really excited, to come over. He said, 'Jane, I want to show you something. If we do this and this and that, I think we can do the whole fifteen.' ""
Mr. Clymer is a certified public accountant by training, but his background was in public transportation management, a tax-spending way of life that is far from the tax-saving, program-cutting purview of a state treasurer. He had spent the four years ending in 1992 running the Urban Mass Transit Administration in the Bush Administration, doling out Federal subsidies to city transit agencies.
Even now, two years later, Mr. Clymer's ground-floor office fronting West State Street in Trenton is festooned with models of commuter rail cars and with the kind of commemorative plaques that ranking public officials collect, like the testimonial from the city of Los Angeles to Brian W. Clymer for his help in restoring the Los Angeles Red Car Line, signed by Mayor Tom Bradley.
But it did not take a fiscal genius to see the importance of what Mr. Clymer had in his hand that day. Sales tax receipts, which grew by only $3 million from 1993 to 1994, were running $300 million above the 1994 figure, and income-tax collections were reflecting similar increases. The opening for a tax cut, a big tax cut, was growing wider.
Mr. Clymer had started his budget-making months earlier, in the heat of July and days after the current fiscal year's budget took effect. He began with three ground rules laid down by Mrs. Whitman:
""Any increase in spending had to be kept at or under the rate of inflation,"" the Treasurer recalled. ""That was No. 1. No. 2, there had to be some extra money in it for Abbott versus Burke,"" the shorthand name for a State Supreme Court order to increase state aid to New Jersey's 30 poorest school districts.
""And three,"" Mr. Clymer said, ""there had to be a tax cut in there.""
In fact, early on, Mr. Clymer had picked an arbitrary figure out of the air, $300 million, 2 percent of the total 1995 state budget, as the goal for the cut, but first the state's 17 departments, the state colleges and universities, the state-owned New Jersey Transit system and dozens of other constituent groups were assigned the task of finding places to cut their budgets.
Those agencies use about a third of the state budget, with the other two-thirds devoted to school and municipal aid and to social services. A proposal was made -- no one will admit to it now, ""but it was always out there,"" said Mr. Vernerio, the chief counsel -- to make an arbitrary across-the-board cut of state agencies, say, 10 percent, which would produce about $400 million in savings. The idea had appeal because it was easy, Mr. Verniero said, and it would be easier to defend than a line-by-line review of the 550-page spending plan. The Governor said no.
At another time, it looked as if extra savings would be gained by raising the number of state job cuts above 5,000. That figure, too, was trimmed, to the final 3,400 figure.
Meanwhile, rumors about state money grabs began to circulate, like the story that the Treasurer had his eye on a dormant $130 million fund held by the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission to maintain its huge, now-closed landfills in the future. The Meadowlands agency quickly issued defensive press releases against the potential grab, and nothing came of it. But Mr. Clymer is not saying never.
""Do you keep public money sitting in an account when there's not an immediate need for it?"" he asked, the Treasurer offended by idle cash. ""Well, there are a lot of symbolic reasons and aggravation reasons"" why he decided it was too much trouble to fight for the money now, ""and you end up selling a marina or something for $7 million because it becomes unavoidable.""
Conflict also arose within the administration as the budget cutters from the Office of Management and Budget took after numerous small programs, like the $430,000 for the State Commission on Science and Technology, and Ms. Kenny, as keeper of the Governor's agenda, fought to put them back in.
""It's understandable,"" Ms. Kenny said. ""They see a lot of money there. But the Governor is also committed to developing these economic incubator programs.""
By mid-November, the once-a-month budget meetings in the Governor's office had increased to two a week, with the Governor combing the print and instructing her staff to separate programs into three categories: a ""cut"" list of programs that could be reduced, a ""look"" list of programs that needed more study, and a a ""booked"" or untouchable list, like the $10 million she wanted for a new juvenile justice program.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Jersey System Of School Aid Is Ruled Fair
LEAD: The State Education Commissioner today rebuffed a challenge to New Jersey's system of financing public schools, the latest move in a 16-year battle over whether the state discriminates against its poorest school districts.
The State Education Commissioner today rebuffed a challenge to New Jersey's system of financing public schools, the latest move in a 16-year battle over whether the state discriminates against its poorest school districts.
In a written decision released today, Commissioner Saul Cooperman reversed the ruling of an administrative-law judge who had declared last summer that New Jersey's system violated the state Constitution because it did not eliminate financing disparities between affluent suburban school districts and those in poor cities.
While acknowledging these disparities, the Commissioner wrote that the plantiffs in the case, representaives of urban school districts, had not demonstrated 'that children educated in property-poor districts are in any way disadvantaged.' Critical Impact on Education
The ruling, which enraged officials who represent poor areas, is expected to be reviewed by the State Board of Education and ultimately by the New Jersey Supreme Court. Experts believe that the outcome will have a critical impact on public education and taxation in New Jersey.
The dispute over how to pay for public schools in New Jersey is just one symptom of what some urban leaders say is the state's most pressing problem: an increasingly troubled tax system. The leaders say their cities must shoulder too much of the cost of the state's social ills.
In an attempt to ease the pain of property-tax payers, Gov. Thomas H. Kean Wednesday joined with leaders of the Democratic-controlled state Senate to propose a plan that would provide $370 million of additional aid to school districts, counties and municipalities. But the Assembly's Republican leadership rejected the package.
In his decision today Dr. Cooperman said local school boards, not the state's method of supplying aid, were responsible for the underfinancing and poor performance of some urban schools. He said the poor districts were guilty of 'a clear moral failure' for not raising and spending more of their own money on schools.
But a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, Marilyn J. Morheuser, the executive director of the nonprofit Educational Law Center in Newark, said the Commissioner's ruling was self-serving, and she expected it to be overturned.
Creating a fair system for state school aid has been a matter of debate throughout the region.
In New York, the Legislature goes though an annual struggle to distribute funds to each of the 721 school districts, using a complex formula intended to give more aid to poorer districts. In Connecticut the General Assembly last year created a new formula for distributing aid to its 169 towns. The amount of aid to each town is based on property-tax rates, the income of residents and students' test scores. 'Thorough and Efficient'
Here in New Jersey, the school-financing issue emerged in 1973 when the State Supreme Court struck down the state's old system of supporting schools, which relied chiefly on local property taxes.
The court said the financing method provided students in tax-poor urban districts with an education inferior to those in wealthy suburbs in violation of the State Constitution's guarantee of a 'thorough and efficient' school system for all students.
The ruling led the Legislature to enact a state income tax and a school-financing law that increased state aid to local districts.
In 1981, however, a suit was filed on behalf of 20 students in four cities. The suit argued that state school spending still discriminated against students in poor districts. In 1985 an administrative-law judge, Steven L. Lefelt, heard testimoney from 99 witnesses in 95 days.
The State Public Advocate, Alfred A. Slocum, told Judge Lefelt that the Princeton school district spent $7,015 on each pupil in the 1987-88 school year, compared with $4,500 spent per pupil in Camden. He said this disparity was mirrored by the passing rate of students in the two systems on proficiency tests - 93 percent in Princeton and 23 percent in Camden. Problems Not Solved
Last summer Judge Lefelt ruled that the 1975 school-financing law did not solve the the problems that it was designed to address.
'I believe the case comes down to whether this state desires to enhance the educational opportunity of students living in poor urban areas,' he wrote.
He said poor areas 'must use a larger portion of their small tax bases to raise revenues for noneducation services' than suburban and rural areas.
'This causes fiscal pressures and political conflict which inhibit the abiltiy of poor urban school districts to address fully the education needs of their students,' he said.
In addition, the judge noted, the formula in the 1975 law was not implemented at the level anticipated by the Supreme Court. Blame for Local Officials
Under administrative procedure, the judge's decision was passed to the Education Commissioner, who was allowed to accept, reject or modify it. An appeal could then be taken to the State Board of Education, and, after that, to the courts.
In today's ruling Dr. Cooperman said local education officials should shoulder some of the blame for underfunded schools. Districts that claimed they could not increase more taxes and expenditures, he said, were suffering from a 'mindset' and 'a percieved inability to raise sufficient funds.'
The decision drew some angry responses from legislators reprsenting poorer districts.
Senator Gerald S. Stockman, a Democrat from Trenton, described the ruling as 'an outrageous insult to every mayor and councilman in these same districts. There is nothing 'perceived' about a present $20 million shortfall in funds for Trenton's Mayor.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Stunned Reactions Where Lightning Hit Twice
People here were shaking their heads today and wondering if their community was cursed.
For the second time in less than two months, a law enforcement professional had slaughtered his neighbors and shattered the tranquillity of streets where people brag about unlocked doors and worry-free living.
'I'm starting to think there's something wrong with this place,' said Edward Garcia, 29, a pizzeria employee who lives midway between the homes of Edward L. Lutes Jr., the Seaside Heights police officer who the authorities say fatally shot five neighbors on Tuesday night, and John W. Mabie, the retired Newark officer whose Feb. 21 rampage left four dead. 'We used to have it so easy here. Maybe life is becoming too stressful.'
Most residents seemed to be especially stressed in the early part of the day today, before investigators found Officer Lutes, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, in his car in the driveway of a home some 20 miles away.
'Thank God it's over,' said Maggie Reilly, 49, who lives a few doors away from the officer's home on Second Avenue. 'It's a sin he took those other people, but at least now we'll be able to sleep.'
Like most people who live in the converted bungalows and tiny Cape Cod houses here, Ms. Reilly and her two children spent last night locked inside their home, confused and afraid, jumping every time a car passed. Police helicopters hovered all night, adding to the terror and uncertainty.
'It was surreal,' Ms. Reilly said, taking the sun this afternoon on the front steps of her home, her daughter and son by her side. A number of parents kept their children at home today, saying they feared that the killer might strike at a school, the boardwalk at Seaside Heights or the Ocean County Mall.
Others, noting that the killer had struck private homes, decided that their children would be safer in a public place. Shaniiyka Anderson, 14, went to school, but insisted that her mother drive her. 'I was too scared to wait for the bus,' she said. 'But I was also afraid to stay home because I heard he killed people in a blue house, and our house is blue.'
As word of Officer Lutes's death spread this afternoon, nearby residents strolled up to the crime scene, which was marked by yellow tape that enveloped a row of homes.
Dominic Fernicola, 10, fresh from a marathon session watching the news, said he was intrigued, even excited by the buzz of police and reporters so close to his living room. 'This usually happens on TV,' he said, standing beside a line of humming television vehicles. 'It's weird to see it here.'
With 90,000 people spread out over 41 square miles, Dover Township -- which includes Toms River -- is a booming place fed by the Garden State Parkway and filled with retirees and working-class refugees from the urbanized north of the state.
Of the 13,300 newcomers who arrived between 1990 and 2000, many are like Gena Rinaldi, who moved here from Belleville three years ago, lured by affordable homes, solid schools and quiet neighborhoods.
'The only bad thing that happens here is the traffic in the summer,' said Ms. Rinaldi, 31, a customer service representative. 'Otherwise it's real boring. Almost too boring.'
In recent years, the township has earned headlines for reasons good and bad. In 1998, Toms River's Little League team won the national championship. But the township has earned notoriety for a cluster of adolescent cancer cases that state officials have said is abnormally high. Between 1979 and 1995, 90 children were found to have cancer, and last year their families shared in a $13 million settlement from two chemical firms and a local water company.
Although many residents seemed to be numbed by Tuesday's killing spree, more than a few said they worried that all the cumulative bloodshed and health concerns were giving Toms River a less-than-rosy reputation.
'These things aren't supposed to happen here,' said Pat Maglihan, 46, after giving an interview to a local television station. 'It's really going kill our business.'
But when asked if she expected more of the same, she paused, did the numbers in her head and then brightened. 'Listen, the odds of this happening twice are one in 10 million,' she said. 'There's just no chance this could happen again.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Man Agrees To DNA Tests In Deaths Of Prostitutes
A man who stayed at a motel on the outskirts of Atlantic City shortly before four prostitutes were found dead there agreed on Friday to submit to DNA tests.
The man, Terry Oleson, 35, of Salem County, who has been in jail on an unrelated charge -- invasion of privacy in connection with videotaping a naked 15-year-old girl -- agreed to the testing during a hearing in State Superior Court here.
'We believe the DNA will speak volumes, and he will eventually be exonerated,' said James J. Leonard, a lawyer for Mr. Oleson.
The Atlantic County prosecutor, Jeffrey S. Blitz, has been careful not to call Mr. Oleson a suspect. But forensic scientists for the prosecutor have sought a DNA sample as well as head and pubic hair. Mr. Leonard said it could take two to four months to get results.
The chief Atlantic County assistant prosecutor, Jill Horenberger, said in a motion filed in April that Mr. Oleson's DNA would be compared with biological evidence from the scene and the women's clothes and bodies.
Mr. Oleson's court appearance was the latest development since the barefoot bodies of four women were discovered in a trash-strewn ditch behind a seedy motel in Egg Harbor Township in November.
The women were identified as Kim Raffo, 35, Tracy Ann Roberts, 23, Barbara V. Breidor, 42, and Molly Jean Dilts, 20.
Hugh Auslander, the former husband of Ms. Raffo, who was in the courtroom on Friday, looked at Mr. Oleson and said he 'would like to be quick to judge, but that's too easy.'
After the hearing, a prostitute from Atlantic City said she recognized Mr. Oleson from a tryst in November in which he confessed to being a murderer.
The woman, Denise Hill, 44, said that she met Mr. Oleson around the time the victim's bodies were discovered and that he told her he had 'killed some people.'
But Mr. Leonard said that Mr. Oleson had never kept company with prostitutes and called Ms. Hill, who has admitted to smoking crack and appeared in a 2004 HBO documentary about Atlantic City prostitutes, 'the definition of reasonable doubt.'
Although Mr. Oleson has not been charged with the slayings, the police have questioned him at length about them. He lived for most of November at the Golden Key Motel in the weeks that the four bodies were dumped yards from his room.
The police questioned Mr. Oleson about the murders in April, and four days later they charged him with invasion of privacy in connection with the taking of nude videos of his female companion's daughter in their Alloway Township home.
At that time, Judge William Forester set his bail at $100,000 cash without the option of paying 10 percent to be released.
In a November interview, Ms. Hill said she called the police after spending a night with a man whose name she did not know in an Atlantic City motel in the neighborhood frequented by the women.
She said that when she saw Mr. Oleson's photograph in a newspaper several months later, she recognized him. And on Friday she found a ride from Atlantic City to see him in person.
'I watched his nose twitch, his high cheekbones, his eyes, I remember those thin lips,' she said. 'He's the one I was with. He said he killed some people.'
Clean-shaven and walking with a limp, Mr. Oleson smiled slightly after his lawyer told Judge Albert Garofolo of Superior Court that he would submit the DNA samples. As he was led from the courtroom, he looked back over his right shoulder in the direction of Mr. Auslander and Ms. Hill.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Jersey Races For Governor Nearing End
LEAD: The candidates for governor scurried about New Jersey yesterday, shaking hands wherever they could find them, with each candidate hoping to combine enough longtime supporters with new-found followers to win the primary election tomorrow.
The candidates for governor scurried about New Jersey yesterday, shaking hands wherever they could find them, with each candidate hoping to combine enough longtime supporters with new-found followers to win the primary election tomorrow.
At stake is an office with more power to affect state policies than any other governorship in the nation, and the opportunity to succeed Gov. Thomas H. Kean, a leader who has overshadowed all aspects of state politics since 1982 but who is prohibited by the state constitution from seeking a third term.
Among the Republicans, polls indicate an extremely tight race, with at least four of the eight candidates within striking distance of the nomination: Representative Jim Courter of Warren County, Assembly Speaker Chuck Hardwick of Union County, former Attorney General W. Cary Edwards of Bergen County and State Senator William L. Gormley of Atlantic County.
Each candidate is trying to combine a base of supporters from his home county with legions of new followers who, the candidates hope, were attracted in recent weeks by millions of dollars in advertising.
Among the Democrats, Representative James F. Florio of Camden County is approaching the primary in a commanding position, benefiting from a well-financed campaign, the support of all 21 Democratic county leaders and widespread voter recognition. His opponents, Assemblyman Alan Karcher of Middlesex County and Mayor Barbara Boggs Sigmund of Princeton, spent far less money and are considered long shots. 'This Is The Real One'
Mr. Florio won the Democratic nomination but lost the general election eight years ago, when Mr. Kean beat him by 1,797 votes.
'Last time was practice; this is the real one,' Mr. Florio said yesterday after wading through crowds of Polish-Americans and receiving a Solidarity button at a Polish Heritage festival in Holmdel. 'I think it's going very well, but I don't take anything for granted,' he said.
The candidates are seeking the governorship at a time when New Jersey is facing up to the consequences of more than six years of dramatic and often uncontrolled growth.
Although unemployment in the state is 3 percent, surveys indicate that New Jerseyans are troubled over swelling traffic jams, toxic pollution and overdevelopment in the nation's most densely populated state. Both conservatives and liberals say that government must take a strong stand to protect the state's shoreline and unscathed stretches of rural landscape.
As recently as January, political leaders said the election might turn on such 'quality of life' issues.
But after campaigning in 21 counties and spending almost $10 million on advertising, the candidates have come to focus on issues that cost the voters money, particularly automobile insurance, garbage, taxes and the growing budget woes.
The state's handling of these issues will be determined in large part by the next governor. New Jersey, unlike any other state, elects only one statewide official, and leaves it to the governor to appoint all other officeholders in the executive branch. Support From Home Bases
In the Republican race, each of the four leading candidates, plus State Senator Gerald Cardinale of Bergen County, hopes to combine support in their regions with enough voters from other parts of the state to win the plurality of 25 percent believed necessary for victory.
Representative Courter of Warren County may enjoy a slight advantage because the borders of his Congressional district shifted twice in the last 10 years, making him well known across a wide swath of northern New Jersey.
The area he has represented includes about 80,000 of the 400,000 Republicans expected to vote in the primary. Mr. Courter is hoping that his reputation as a fervently conservative Congressman, along with television and direct mail, will draw enough votes in other counties to win the nomination.
'He is combining a solid core of voters who have supported him in the past with a fairly large statewide recognition,' said Stephen A. Salmore, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, who is active in the Republican Party. 'It is not a sure thing by any means. But that should make him very competitive.' Stressing Family Values
Competing with Mr. Courter for the loyalty of conservative Republicans is Mr. Hardwick, who can count on a small base in Union County and, he hopes, the efforts of officeholders and party officials whom he has won as allies in his years as Assembly speaker. Mr. Hardwick has also gained the support of a number of organizations active on single issues, like anti-gun control and anti-abortion groups, and has tried to capitalize on anti-New York sentiments by filing an unsuccessful suit to end a New York State tax on commuters.
'As I go into the last two days of the campaign, I continue to stress my family values as a conservative Republican,' Mr. Hardwick said at the Polish Festival yesterday. 'When I am governor, we are not going to let New Jersey get pushed around anymore.'
Mr. Gormley is trying to put together a different winning combination, starting with his home base of Atlantic County, where there are 30,000 registered Republicans, and other areas of southern New Jersey, where he is well known.
Mr. Gormley has been forthright in his support of what are, for Republicans, relatively liberal stands. He hopes to appeal to moderate Republicans, who, though not a majority, may be numerous enough to help a candidate win a plurality in a crowded field. Appeal to Moderate Republicans
But Mr. Gormley needs to make at least a respectable showing in the northern half of the state, and he spent yesterday campaigning in the north, with stops in Hudson, Passaic and Hunterdon Counties.
Mr. Edwards, who resigned as Attorney General earlier this year, hopes to combine his base in Bergen County, which has the most Republicans, with the votes of moderate Republicans around the state. Mr. Edwards spent the day securing votes in his base, making 14 separate appearances in Bergen County.
Although Bergen has 100,000 registered Republican voters, an important question for the Edwards campaign is how many Bergen residents will vote for Mr. Cardinale, who is also from Bergen.
Mr. Cardinale has presented himself as the most conservative candidate. He hopes that while other candidates divide the various elements in the party, he will win by convincing conservatives that he best articulates their views.
The underdogs in the Democratic race, Mr. Karcher and Mrs. Sigmund, each began campaigning yesterday at two Baptist churches and moved on to campaign at the Heritage Festival, an annual outdoor event in Trenton. Both promised that tomorrow, the voters would deliver the political pundits and pollsters a surprise.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Criticism of Postal and Health Officials Grows Louder
The news that a seriously ill New Jersey postal worker is believed to have contracted pulmonary anthrax has intensified complaints that the United States Postal Service and state public health officials did not act quickly or aggressively enough to contain the problem.
For almost a week after postal officials learned that an anthrax-tainted letter had moved through the Trenton regional mail processing center here, health officials and postal supervisors insisted that employees were not at risk because it was nearly impossible for the spores of the potentially deadly bacteria to leak out of a sealed envelope.
But now that three New Jersey postal workers have tested positive for skin anthrax and another is almost certainly suffering from the more serious form of the disease, pulmonary anthrax, all postal workers at the center have been ordered to undergo testing and are being given free antibiotics.
Public health officials have also issued a statewide alert, warning doctors and druggists to be on the watch for any flu symptoms that might mask a case of anthrax and to report them to the state immediately.
But as the authorities have stepped up their response, postal workers and their representatives have become increasingly alarmed and angry, saying that their lives have been endangered by inappropriate assurances from health officials who underestimated the possibility that anthrax might contaminate work areas in the building.
Steve Bahrle, the local branch president of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, has criticized the postal service in recent days for having workers continue working in the facility before results of the full range of environmental tests had been completed. The state's Department of Health acknowledged today that 19 of 59 samples taken from different sites in the building showed signs of anthrax.
After learning today that a worker at the plant was suspected of contracting inhalation anthrax, Mr. Bahrle said he was shocked that spores had apparently became airborne, raising even greater health risks. At the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Hamilton,  where hundreds of postal workers waited in line today to receive anthrax tests and antibiotics, others were upset that the Postal Service had not taken precautions sooner.
'I'm just coming here now?' said John Clark, a letter carrier from Hamilton. 'It doesn't seem right. As soon as they found out there was any case, they should have just locked the door, right then and there.'
But health officials said they have been dispensing medical advice as quickly as possible based on the best information available. The problem has been, they said, that this type of anthrax outbreak is unprecedented, meaning that the medical knowledge about it is evolving on a daily basis.
'I'm not sure it's the best time to be doing Monday morning quarterbacking because the game is still going on,' said Eddy A. Bresnitz, New Jersey's state epidemiologist.
The rift here between workers and the postal and health officials mirrors the disgruntlement reverberating in Washington, where postal workers have been outraged that they were not tested or treated more quickly. Two workers have died of pulmonary anthrax and two others have been hospitalized.
State officials have released only scant details about the worker in New Jersey believed to have pulmonary anthrax, describing her as a mail handler in her 40's who sorted mail near the machine that postmarked the contaminated letter to Tom Brokaw on Sept. 18 and the letter to Senator Tom Daschle on Oct. 8. Because she began to experience flulike symptoms on Oct. 14, and inhalation anthrax has an incubation period of about a week, health officials theorize that she was infected by the letter to Mr. Daschle, according to Dr. Bresnitz.
Faced with evidence that the bacteria had contaminated a far wider area than public health officials had anticipated, New Jersey's health commissioner used his strongest words yet to urge postal employees to seek preventative treatment immediately. 'Given this suspected case of inhalation anthrax, those workers who have not seen a physician or a nurse so far absolutely need to see a physician or a nurse to receive this preventative prescription,' said George T. DiFerdinando, commissioner of health and senior services. 'For those who have received this prescription who have not begun to take it, they definitely need to begin taking this medication.'
The blunt tone of Dr. DiFerdinando's comments were a marked departure from the response of health officials in the first days of the crisis.
New Jersey officials first learned on Oct. 12 that a tainted letter -- the one sent to Tom Brokaw at NBC -- had moved through the Hamilton facility. On Oct. 14, the people who worked at the processing center were told that there were no plans to test employees. Officials later learned that another anthrax-laden letter, one sent to The New York Post, was postmarked in Hamilton Township on Oct. 8.
The F.B.I. announced that the Brokaw letter had been tested for anthrax on the outside of the envelope and the tests were negative. Postal officials repeatedly assured workers that environmental tests at the plant showed no signs of anthrax contamination and their risk of exposure from handling the letter was infinitesimal and 'practically nonexistent.' They said this despite the fact that at least two workers here had complained of feeling ill with symptoms consistent with anthrax and were being tested.
Everything here changed radically on Oct. 18. It was learned then that one carrier assigned to a route in West Trenton had contracted cutaneous anthrax, and a day later another worker from Hamilton Township was found to be similarly infected.  With the word of the test results, officials closed the facility, and in the coming days encouraged workers and customers who might have used it to be tested if they felt worried.
As postal employees arrived for work outside the processing center in Hamilton today, some said that there has been so much conflicting information released by government officials in recent days that it was difficult to feel reassured. 'There's no panic,' said Bob Mecanko, 54, who has worked for the postal service for 30 years. 'But it's pretty scary.'
A NATION CHALLENGED: NEW JERSEY",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","35 Arrests in Gang Inquiry
In what officials said was New Jersey's most comprehensive investigation of gang-related crime, 35 people were arrested on charges that they conspired to deal drugs, buy guns, rob, steal and commit murder as members of the Bloods street gang, the authorities said.
The arrests were among 42 warrants issued, including two for juveniles, after a four-month investigation led by the Essex County Prosecutor's office. The acting prosecutor, Donald C. Campolo, said the case marked the first time that state racketeering laws were used to charge gang members.
Investigators were still looking for 7 of the people named in charges today, when officials said a total of 24 gang members were arraigned in State Superior Court on racketeering and drug charges.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Stays in Foster Homes Shortened, Agency Says
Troubled children, including those up for adoption, are spending less time in foster care before being placed in permanent homes, according to a study released yesterday.
The study, conducted by the State Department of Human Services, reported that children who were returned to their original families this year had spent an average of 20.9 months under the care of the Division of Youth and Family Services. Last year, children who were returned home had spent, on average, 22.8 months in the foster care system, the study found.
Children who were adopted this year had spent an average of 23.5 months in foster care, the same amount of time as children adopted last year, the study found.
The state increased the number of foster families in the system to 2,686 this year from 2,593 last year, the study said. This year, nearly 90 percent of the foster families in the program last year continued their participation, the study found.
Charles Venti, director of the Division of Youth and Family Services, attributed the increase in foster homes and the high percentage of families that stayed in the program to a series of efforts this year, including a $450,000 advertising campaign  to attract new foster families, a $100-a-month increase in board payments to foster families and new counseling programs for foster children.
METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Our Towns ; After Slaying, Finding Tears And Blame
THE bouquets were shin high under the pin oak across the road from the suspect's house. Families kept coming and going, bringing more lilies or roses or teddy bears. Tracy Devine carried a spray of mums, at a loss as to where to put it. Then she saw, tacked to the trunk, a page of verse titled 'Eddie Werner: A Life.'
Life is so tender, Life is so sweet
Life is to precious for us to defeat
went the first lines of the verse, which had a shiny green bow taped to the top of the page, in honor of Eddie's favorite color. Ms. Devine didn't know Eddie Werner. She did not know Samuel Manzie, the 15-year-old accused of sexually assaulting and strangling Eddie before tossing the 11-year-old's body into the woods. But those lines in that verse summed up everything she had been feeling.
She put her bouquet under the verse and between two little yellow stuffed bears, blew her nose hard and wiped her eyes. A blond woman standing by a bunch of green balloons saw her and started tearing up, too. So did the woman's daughter, who looked to be about Eddie's age. The rest of the crowd of about 20 people stood silent, heads bowed. It was like church, the fathers and mothers and their children standing solemnly around the pin oak, which the suspect is said to have passed on his way to dumping Eddie in the woods.
EVERYONE looked exhausted, it being the end of the worst week in Jackson Township in who can remember how long. It started with the body of poor Eddie Werner, who was snatched while selling candy and wrapping paper door to door for the Christa McAuliffe Middle School P.T.A. It finished with his funeral. [Page 41.] In between came the arrest of a quiet, nerdy teen-ager from a good family in a good neighborhood.
Which just goes to show, said Jeannette Schermer, who came to the pin oak with her parents to pay respects to Eddie, 'you just don't know who your neighbors are.' She eyed the empty house where the suspect's family has lived for several years. The house has white siding, a basketball court in the driveway and a freshly mowed lawn. 'You just don't know,' Ms. Schermer said again.
Her mother, Jeannette Scanlon, looked at the house, too. 'They'll have to put it up for sale now,' she said. 'Absolutely,' Ms. Schermer said.
THE women were gathering in a circle that included Ms. Devine, Fred Foulkrod, Debbie Mitrosky and a few others, all Jackson Township residents who moved to the quieter part of New Jersey from places they considered more likely for something sordid to happen.
Every day last week, they were rocked by revelations about Eddie's suspected killer: how the authorities said he had started having sex at age 14 with a 43-year-old man, Stephen P. Simmons of Long Island, whom he had met in an Internet chat room; how he was getting violent with his parents; how his parents had tried to commit him to an institution days before Eddie was killed, only to be turned down by a Family Court judge.
But everyone at the pin oak agreed that no matter what troubled the suspect, it was no excuse. Someone had to take responsibility for killing Eddie as well as all the peace of Jackson Township.
'What gets me,' said Ms. Devine, still sniffling, her eyes red with tears, 'is that little Eddie Werner was taken way before his time. Now we'll have to pay for his killer for the next 50 years.'
'The press has tried to make like he's a victim, too,' Ms. Schermer said. 'Oh, please,' Mr. Foulkrod said.
'He should be dragged into the woods, just like he dragged poor little Eddie,' Mrs. Scanlon said. Two women standing nearby nodded in agreement. 'He should be raped in prison,' Ms. Devine said. More nods.
'I blame the judge who wouldn't let the parents commit the boy,' Ms. Scanlon said.
'But why did his parents leave him alone?' Ms. Mitrosky asked. 'Now I'm afraid for my five children.'
'Oh, you can't let them out,' Ms. Scanlon said. 'Don't ever let them out alone again.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Officers Are Accused Of Misusing Computers
Nearly half of the Oakland Police Department in Bergen County could be suspended and even demoted after being accused of using the mobile computers in their patrol cars to send each other inappropriate electronic messages.
'The messages run the gamut from personal use to making disparaging remarks about other officers and members of the public,' said Mark Tabakin, a lawyer for the borough, who declined to elaborate. Mr. Tabakin said that hearings on departmental charges against 13 officers in the 29-member department would begin on Nov. 6.
The Bergen County Prosecutor, William H. Schmidt, said no criminal activity was involved. But Mr. Schmidt said rules prohibit the personal use of the so-called mobile data terminals, which allow the police to check drivers' license and registration information and to transmit law enforcement-related messages.
Joseph Licata, a lawyer representing the 13 officers, said it was difficult to comment because he had not yet received transcripts of the messages and the specific accusations associated with them. 'I think it almost has a big brother quality to it, that they're now going to go back and monitor six months of conversations,' he said.
METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Talks on Moving a Police Killer Break Off, His Lawyer Says
Prison officials in Washington State have broken off discussions to receive Thomas Trantino, who killed two New Jersey police officers in 1963 and was recently ordered sent to a halfway house, his lawyer said yesterday.
The lawyer, Roger A. Lowenstein, said he learned on Friday that Washington corrections officials would no longer consider allowing Mr. Trantino to be placed in a halfway house there.
Mr. Trantino, 63, has been in a halfway house in Camden, N.J., since January, after serving 37 years in prison for killing two Lodi, N.J., police officers. But after he was sent there, city leaders, state officials and Mr. Trantino himself asked that he be transferred out of state.
'It's back to square one,' Mr. Lowenstein said.
Mr. Trantino had been sentenced to death, but his sentence was changed to a life term after the death penalty in New Jersey was ruled unconstitutional in 1972.
The New Jersey State Parole Board had rejected at least nine parole applications from Mr. Trantino since he became eligible in 1979. But in January, the State Supreme Court found the board's reasons insufficient, and it ordered that Mr. Trantino be placed on parole after a 12-month stay in a halfway house.
Mr. Lowenstein said corrections officials in New Jersey and Washington had agreed that Mr. Trantino would be sent to a halfway house in Washington. But officials there rejected the the move after it gained attention in Washington, Mr. Lowenstein said.
But Dick Van Wagenen, an adviser to Gov. Gary Locke of Washington, said yesterday that no such deal had ever been struck. Mr. Van Wagenen said corrections officials in Washington were willing to confine Mr. Trantino until law enforcement officials there were satisfied that he posed no threat to public safety. Mr. Van Wagenen said that public reaction to Mr. Trantino may have been heightened by the recent killing of a law enforcement officer in Washington.
Deirdre Fedkenheuer, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Corrections, said the department did not comment on pending transfers of prisoners.
Mr. Lowenstein said Mr. Trantino, whom he described as a model inmate who earned a college degree while in prison, was eager to find a new home. 'All he wants to do is what the victims' families want him to do, which is disappear,' he said.
Correction:  March 23, 2001, Friday  Articles on Saturday and Monday about Thomas Trantino, who killed two New Jersey police officers in 1963 and is now the subject of a disputed proposal for a transfer to a halfway house in Washington State, misstated the date he was paroled from prison to a halfway house in Camden, N.J. It was Feb. 11, not the 12th and not in January.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Parents Dead, Former Doctor Is Now Suspect
As far as neighbors could tell, Dr. I. Kathleen Hagen was not just an accomplished Harvard-educated doctor but a devoted daughter who left her home in the Virgin Islands and returned to care for her ailing parents in their modest home in Chatham Township, N.J.
Even when Dr. Hagen, 54, was living on the island of St. Thomas, the couple's neighbors said, she visited her parents frequently, working in the garden with her father and, when Tropical Storm Floyd hit, helping pump water out of the sloping driveway next to her parents' home, a three-bedroom 1950's ranch home surrounded by more stately houses.
Now, neighbors, the police and prosecutors are struggling to piece together the chain of events that led to Dr. Hagen's being charged this weekend with the murder of her parents, Idella F. Hagen, 92, and James Hagen, 86.
At 6:45 a.m. Saturday, Dr. Hagen telephoned the police to say that her parents were dead, said Capt. Christopher D. Linne, a spokesman for the Morris County prosecutor's office. Captain Linne said 'there were additional conversations' between Dr. Hagen and the police, but he would not say whether she had confessed.
When the police arrived at the Hagen home, at 614 Fairmont Avenue, they found Mr. and Mrs. Hagen in their nightclothes in twin beds in the master bedroom, Captain Linne said. The Morris County medical examiner determined that they had been asphyxiated, he said.
The couple had been dead for three to seven days when their bodies were discovered, officials at the prosecutor's office said.
When the police arrived, Dr. Hagen was wearing a nightgown that appeared to have been worn for several days, said the Morris County prosecutor, John B. Dangler. 'She appeared to be very distraught,' he said.
Dr. Hagen's bail has been set at $2.5 million, and she is scheduled to appear before a Morris County Superior Court judge either today or tomorrow, Mr. Dangler said. Even though Dr. Hagen has 'a sizable amount of personal wealth,' Mr. Dangler said, she has not moved to post her own bail and she remains in the Morris County jail.
Investigators have not determined a motive for the killing, the authorities said. But for Dr. Hagen, the arrest is the latest twist in an unconventional life in which she left an apparently successful career in urology to manage a small island inn.
Records indicate that Idella Kathleen Hagen graduated from Harvard Medical School in 1973. She was an intern and a surgery resident at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston until 1975, when she became the first woman to be appointed a urology resident there. By 1979, Dr. Hagen was a fellow at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York.
According to The Daily Record of Morris County, Dr. Hagen was appointed chief of the urology division at Rutgers Medical School in 1982 and was chief urologist at Rutgers's main teaching hospital, Middlesex General in New Brunswick. The hospital is now called the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital, and the medical school is Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
While officials said that Dr. Hagen's medical license was valid until next year, she seemed to have dropped her medical career in the late 1980's, when she moved to the island of St. Thomas with her husband at the time, William Tyrrell of Stuart, Fla.
Mr. Tyrrell did not return several telephone calls to his home yesterday. The prosecutor's office said that Dr. Hagen had been married and divorced twice.
From about 1987 until 1992, Dr. Hagen and Mr. Tyrrell lived on St. Thomas, where they operated the West Indies Inn, said their landlord, Richard Doumeng, the general manager of the Bolongo Bay Beach Club. They left that business after a series of storms ravaged the building and hurt tourism, he said.
'They had put so much of their blood, sweat and tears into the place, and then it got severely damaged,' Mr. Doumeng said. 'They just didn't have the energy to do it again.' Mr. Doumeng said the inn was Mr. Tyrrell's dream more than his wife's. 'Their time here took a toll on them as a couple.'
Dr. Hagen had been living with her parents since last month, the authorities said. 'She was in between careers and was torn between staying with her parents and going back down to the Virgin Islands,' said Scott Tucker, 48, a neighbor.
'We had no idea what she was going through,' said Mr. Tucker's wife, Laura. 'It must have been something awful.'
Correction:  August 30, 2000, Wednesday  An article on Monday about charges that Dr. I. Kathleen Hagen murdered her parents, Idella and James Hagen, at their home in Chatham Township, N.J., misspelled the street where they lived. It is Fairmount Avenue, not Fairmont.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","In New Jersey, Smiley Sunday Near End of a Mean Campaign
Even by the bare-knuckled standards of national political campaigns, the contentious race for New Jersey governor between two multimillionaires, United States Senator Jon S. Corzine and Douglas R. Forrester, has been particularly venomous.
Last week, Mr. Forrester quoted Mr. Corzine's ex-wife in an ad attacking the senator's integrity. Mr. Corzine responded by calling that move an act of desperation and continued his own negative advertisements against Mr. Forrester.
And the campaign, which had already been rocked by questions about a loan that Mr. Corzine had given to a former companion who is a state union leader, reached a low point when both candidates had to fend off questions about women with whom they were rumored to be romantically involved, prompting lurid news reports.
The rancor of the last week in the campaign played against the backdrop of public opinion polls that showed a race that seemed to be tightening by the day, as what had been a lead of more than 10 percentage points for Mr. Corzine for much of the campaign dwindled in some surveys to the low single digits.
The race is one of only two for governor in the nation on Tuesday, and as in the other, in Virginia, the incumbent is not running.
As Senator Corzine and Mr. Forrester crisscrossed the state on Sunday, images of the smiling candidates shaking hands at Elks lodges and ascending church pulpits contrasted with the way they have savaged each other in the past week, including an angry, face-to-face argument during a debate televised live on Saturday night.
Mr. Corzine, who made his fortune in investment banking and became co-chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, and Mr. Forrester, who owns a company that manages prescription drug benefits, dipped into their personal wealth and broke spending records, buying time for commercials that often ran to the negative and the inflammatory.
But on Sunday each seemed sensitive to the idea that the bitterness of the campaign might alienate many of the state's voters.
'With about 40 hours left until people have a chance to vote, I really think it is important that we stay on the issues that will impact people's lives,' Senator Corzine said after an appearance on Sunday morning at a Baptist church in Trenton, where he acknowledged that the race had 'spun out of control.'
But along the campaign trail Sunday, each candidate was being scrutinized by voters weary of bickering by two wealthy men, and tired, too, of attack ads and published reports that named women with whom each man was rumored to be involved.
'One thing that bothered me is I'm not hearing a lot about what their plan is, just how bad the other guy is,' said Alfred Olson, 50, of Mount Laurel, after listening to Mr. Forrester at a diner in Marlton. 'To tell the truth, I actually expected more from both of them.'
Mr. Forrester, after greeting voters with his wife, Andrea, on Sunday morning, acknowledged that sentiment, which has been bolstered by poll results showing that voters were fed up with negative ads even before the events of the past week.
'I think that there is a lot of discouragement and there has been for months about a lot of the ads that have been run,' Mr. Forrester said. 'We've always tried to be straightforward. What I'm trying to say is, if people want to change things, they need to vote for me.'
The polls continue to show Mr. Corzine ahead, with a lead that ranges from 2 percentage points to about 12. The polls also show that the number of people who remain undecided is dwindling. Still, New Jersey's electorate is notoriously fickle, and it may be difficult to place much credence in poll results. Christie Whitman trailed James J. Florio in several major polls in the 1993 governor's race but defeated him by about 26,000 votes.
Mr. Forrester hoped to erode Senator Corzine's advantage further over the next two days. 'You know, all the polling that I'm aware of has been done really before there was an opportunity for everybody to see recent ads,' Mr. Forrester said. 'So I think it's unlikely that there was any reflection. Obviously, we'll see Tuesday.'
As the final hours ticked away on the campaign, both Mr. Forrester and Senator Corzine tried to stay on message about the issues -- property taxes and corruption -- of most importance to voters, and to consolidate their bases. At stop after stop, Mr. Corzine sought to remind voters in Democratic and socially liberal New Jersey of his record in the Senate. Mr. Forrester, meanwhile, assailed that record.
Mr. Corzine's nine-event schedule on Sunday included the visit to a predominantly black church in Trenton before he sprinted across the state for a string of appearances up and down New Jersey's eastern edge. Mr. Forrester had a comparatively light schedule of five appearances, mostly the so-called meet-and-greets at diners and shopping malls.
For much of the day, Mr. Corzine was joined by Senator Barack Obama, a rising star in the Democratic Party who represents Mr. Corzine's native state, Illinois, and who received help last fall from Mr. Corzine, as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, in winning election.
Speaking at Shiloh Baptist Church with the informal diction and rolling cadences of a preacher, Senator Obama reminded parishioners of Mr. Corzine's record in the Senate, including his opposition to the war in Iraq and his efforts to fight genocide in the Sudan.
'I'm here to help my homeboy,' Senator Obama said in a nod to the two men's shared Illinois roots.
Mr. Obama called Mr. Corzine 'a kindred spirit' and told parishioners that they should not be discouraged from casting ballots by the 'slash-and-burn kind of politics' that has typified the race in the past week.
'Our job as candidates is to talk about what we're going to do for the people who we hope to represent,' Mr. Obama said, 'to talk about property taxes and to talk about health care issues and to talk about education. Those are the things Jon Corzine's talking about.'
Mr. Corzine continued to express regret about an answer in Saturday's debate, when he was caught flatfooted by a question about lowering the drinking age; Mr. Corzine did not know that the legal age was 21.
He also said that the testy tenor of the debate was a result of the format, in which, at one point, the moderator, Gabe Pressman of WNBC, asked each candidate to critique the other's TV ads. Combined, the candidates have spent $72 million on their campaigns so far -- a record for a governor's race in the state.
For his part, Mr. Forrester, the Republican, seemed satisfied by his showing in the debate. 'I felt that when I came away from the debate that everything we have been trying to communicate was laid out there in a very reasonable way,' he said. 'And I would guess that the audience is going to look at that and say, 'Yep, we want a change.' '
Still, after the vitriol of the last week, it seems that the change some voters most want to see is the conclusion of the race. 'It's like any other campaign,' said Tom Stavros, who heard Mr. Forrester in Marlton. 'When it gets down to the last couple of weeks, everyone starts throwing mud. Everyone's seen this before. I guess that's why they're tired of it.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Bishop Installed Amid Dust-Up Over Stand on Governor's Divorce
The new bishop of Camden said on Thursday that he would not let Gov. James E. McGreevey receive communion at his installation ceremony on Friday, because the governor had remarried after his divorce without obtaining an annulment.
The governor was wondering how the bishop knew this.
'The governor has remarried but he has never discussed whether he sought or received an annulment,' Micah Rasmussen, the governor's spokesman, said Friday. 'It is something he always considered a private matter.'
Governor McGreevey did not attend the ceremony because he was scheduled to be elsewhere in the state.
In a meeting with reporters Thursday, Bishop Joseph A. Galante was categorical in his assertion that he would offer Governor McGreevey a blessing, but not the host, if the governor had attended the installation at St. Agnes church in Blackwood Friday. 'If he comes to communion, I'd give him a blessing,' the bishop said at a news conference in Camden, according to local press accounts confirmed by the diocese. 'In his case, he can't go to communion.'
On Friday, at the installation ceremony, Bishop Galante's spokesman, Andrew J. Walton, appeared to soften the bishop's views, saying the bishop had been speaking hypothetically. 'He did not know the status of his previous marriage,' Mr. Walton said.
Whatever the intended force of the bishop's statement, it was the second time Mr. McGreevey, a Roman Catholic who attends Mass regularly, has been attacked by a leader of his church. Last month Bishop John Smith of Trenton said the governor, a former altar boy, was 'not a devout Catholic' because he held the view, common among Democratic politicians, of being personally opposed to abortion but feeling compelled to support abortion rights in his public life.
'He cannot compromise what it means to be a Catholic,' Bishop Smith wrote in the diocesan weekly, The Monitor. 'I speak, as your bishop, for the devout Catholics of the Diocese of Trenton. Jim McGreevey does not.'
Catholic leaders have raised the same complaint against Senator John Kerry, a Catholic and the presumptive Democratic nominee, following Mr. Kerry's vote in the Senate this spring against a bill that criminalized harming a fetus during the commission of a federal crime.
In New York City today, the Archdiocese confirmed rumors that Mr. Kerry might not be invited to the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, a charity fund-raiser sponsored by the Archdiocese of New York that is a national fall ritual, especially in an election year, for Catholic politicians and the church.
'There have been discussions on who should be invited to speak at the Al Smith Foundation dinner, which is in October,' said Joseph Zwilling, the spokesman for the archdiocese. 'The discussion has centered on the question of whether John Kerry should be invited. There has been no decision reached on that.'
Governor McGreevey was married to Kari Schutz in 1991 and the couple had a daughter, Morag, a year later, Mr. Rasmussen said. It was out of concern for the 11-year-old girl's privacy that Mr. McGreevey has never discussed the end of his first marriage, Mr. Rasmussen said.
'So I don t know where anyone would be getting any information,' he said of the bishop's statements. He added that the governor would not comment on the bishop's remarks.
Mr. McGreevey is now married to Dina Matos McGreevey. They have a 3-year-old daughter.
Mr. Rasmussen said the governor never had any intention of attending the installation of the new bishop. His schedule for Friday, released after 6 p.m. Thursday, said he would be in Menlo Park and in other parts of the state during the ceremony.
However, Mr. Walton said Mr. McGreevey had been expected at the installation. A packet of information released to the news media included his name at the top of a list of 'civil officials' expected to attend. Criticism of Catholic politicians who hold views that are contrary to church teaching has been an issue in national politics since at least 1986, when Mario Cuomo, then governor of New York, made a fiery defense at the University of Notre Dame of the right of Catholic politicians, particularly the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Geraldine Ferraro, to distinguish between their personal and political views.
This year the issue sharpened with the candidacy of Mr. Kerry, and a statement from Rome earlier this month from Cardinal Francis Arinze, who presides over the Vatican office on worship and the sacraments, that any Catholic politician who supports abortion rights was 'not fit' to receive the eucharist.
The remark prompted Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop of Washington, to say that he was not at 'the stage where I'm comfortable in denying the eucharist.' But canon lawyers said Friday that Bishop Galante would be on firm ground in denying the host to any Catholic who had remarried after a civil divorce, and had failed to obtain an annulment.
'The law is absolutely clear,' said Msgr. Brian Ferme, dean of the School of Canon Law at Catholic University in Washington, D.C. 'And it does not only apply to the governor, it applies to all Catholics. And it is very painful, no doubt about that.'
As for why the views of Catholic politicians are in the news now, Monsignor Ferme said, 'It is an election year -- it's as simple as that.'
About 1,500 people, many of them fellow members of the church, attended the installation of Bishop Galante at the large, octagonal shaped church, its stone altar festooned with red roses. Bishop Galante succeeds Bishop Nicholas Di Marzio, who was installed last October as Bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn.
The Diocese of Camden encompasses six counties and, according to its Web site, claims 445,000 Roman Catholics.
Bishop Galante, 66, was born in Philadelphia and served most recently as the coadjutor bishop of Dallas. He also is a past member of a special panel on the participation of Catholics in political life convened by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
At his installation, the bishop spoke of his distress over the sexual predations of some priests, but he did not allude to his views on Governor McGreevey beyond urging the guests to remain faithful to the teachings of the church.
'I am grateful to the baptized men and women who live your vocations as married and single,' he said, 'who teach and work, who are faith-filled and faithful members of the church.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Jersey Panel Said to Seek Tax Shifts in Report
LEAD: A New Jersey commission on taxes and spending will recommend changes in the state income and sales taxes when it delivers its report to the Legislature early next year, the commission's chairman said.
A New Jersey commission on taxes and spending will recommend changes in the state income and sales taxes when it delivers its report to the Legislature early next year, the commission's chairman said.
The chairman of the State and Local Expenditure and Revenue Policy Commission, Bruce G. Coe, said during a recess at the commission meeting Friday, 'I'm sure there will be recommended changes in both taxes.' He said the commission would not meet the January deadline for its report, but said it should be ready by March. Governor Kean said recently that he did not support any increase in the income tax but would keep an open mind on any other tax changes 'as long as they don't adversely affect the state's economy.'
The Governor's remark drew a rebuke from the Senate majority leader, John A. Lynch, Democrat of New Brunswick, who said it could have 'a chilling effect on the final weeks of deliberations' by the commission and could cause it 'to steer away from a balanced approach to tax reform.' Mr. Lynch is Mayor of New Brunswick and, like other urban mayors, he is looking for some recommendations for easing the local property tax burden.
Despite the Governor's remark, Mr. Coe and others indicated the 32-member commission would deliver its recommendations on the subject of taxes and spending and leave it up to the Governor and the Legislature to decide what changes sould be enacted.
The commission now has no firm proposals for changing the income and sales taxes, but several ideas are being explored. The commission probably will not call for an increase in the 6 percent sales tax, which raises about $2.5 billion a year, but it may ask to extend it to some items not now covered, including disposable paper products, which would raise about $30 million, or home heating oil, which would yield $60 million. The figures are according to the State Division of Taxation.
The commission is also studying whether to extend the tax to services, such as those provided by attorneys, accountants and architects, which could raise $90 million. Proposal to Raise Income Tax
The state's gross income tax of 2 percent to 3.5 percent, depending on income, yields about $2 billion annually. The commission considered a proposal Friday to increase the top rate to 5 percent on incomes of $200,000 and more and to raise some of the intermediate steps, which could raise an additional $611 million. However, the commission members emphasized that it was solely an interim proposal. The commission's executive director, Henry A. Coleman, said that among the problems 'that have percolated up' through the studies of commission task forces in the last year were recognition of a fiscal disparity among municipalities that has resulted in higher taxes and a lower quantity and quality of services in poorer urban centers; the need to realign the division of responsibilities between state and local governments to promote 'accountability, equity and efficiency;' the need to reduce the reliance on local property taxes, and the need to improve the quality of education in poorer districts, and to curb the growth in the cost of some services to prevent state expenditures from outrunning state revenues by the turn of the century.
The commission is studying proposals for the state to take over the welfare, trial court and mental hospital costs now borne at the county level, and for a cap on local property tax rates. Under this proposal, if a municipalitity's budget costs cannot be met within the cap, the state would pay the balance.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Man Admits Gun Trade Via a 'Firearm Freeway'
A Linden man admitted yesterday in Federal court that he was the head of an operation that bought dozens of weapons from a West Virginia gun shop and drove them north along a route nicknamed 'The Firearm Freeway' to sell illegally on the streets of New Jersey.
The suspect, Kareem Prunty, 21, was responsible for bringing more than 60 weapons into the state between 1995 and last February along Interstate 95, said Henry E. Klingeman, an assistant United States attorney.
Mr. Klingeman, who could not say how much the operation earned, said four other people arrested with Mr. Prunty in June were scheduled for trial in September.
Dominick Polifrone, Special Agent in charge of the New Jersey office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, said the overwhelming majority of weapons used in crimes in New Jersey come from southern states like West Virginia that have lax gun laws.
METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Gay Episcopal Priest Named As Possible Newark Bishop
Propelling the Episcopal Church in the United States closer to a possible schism with the global Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Diocese of Newark nominated a gay priest on Wednesday as one of four men to be considered for bishop.
The nominations came the day after the archbishop of Canterbury, the nominal leader of the world's 77 million Anglicans, proposed a plan that could force the Episcopal Church either to renounce gay bishops and the blessings of same-sex unions or to lose full membership in the communion, the world's third-largest body of churches.
The Episcopal Church, the communion's American branch, attracted international disapproval after choosing a gay priest, the Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson, to be the bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.
Reaction to the list of candidates came quickly.
The American Anglican Council, an orthodox umbrella group, said, 'We are shocked that just one week after the close of General Convention and one day following release of the archbishop of Canterbury's statement on the Communion's future, the Diocese of Newark has sent a clear and defiant message nationally and internationally that there will be no turning back.'
Of the handful of dioceses electing bishops since 2003, Newark is only the second, after the Diocese of California in San Francisco, to have gay nominees, said Jan Nunley, a spokeswoman for the Episcopal Church Center, the church's administrative office. The church has 2.3 million members.
The American Anglican Council objected to the nomination of the Very Rev. Canon Michael Barlowe, a congregational development officer in the Diocese of California and one of the gay nominees for bishop of California, saying, 'Canon Barlow's manner of life is contradictory to Scripture and the mind of the Anglican Communion.'
At the General Convention in Columbus, Ohio, last week, the leaders of the Episcopal Church encouraged individual dioceses to avoid supporting the election of gay bishops, a retreat from the church's previous stance. The convention fell short of issuing an explicit apology for the ordination of Bishop Robinson and calling for a moratorium on ordaining gay bishops, two steps called for in a report prepared by a committee appointed by the archbishop that addressed the possibility of a schism.
The Diocese of Newark, which covers 113 parishes in Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Morris, Passaic, Sussex and Warren Counties, and one parish in Union County, is considered one of the nation's most liberal and has a history of including gay and lesbian parishioners and priests in church life. It became the focus of national controversy in 1989 when its bishop at the time, the Right Rev. John Shelby Spong, ordained an openly gay man as a priest.
The Rev. Sandye Wilson, chairwoman of the screening committee of the nominating committee, said the group looked for candidates with strong records of working for peace and justice, encouraging good pastoral care and helping congregations grow spiritually and financially.
'We really have a great desire in this diocese that all candidates be looked at and examined for the gifts that they bring, not lifting one out of the group based on whom he happens to love,' Ms. Wilson said, noting the church's history of inclusiveness. 'One of our core values is that there's a place at the table for everyone.'
Diocese officials said Canon Barlowe, who previously worked in parishes in Westfield and Plainfield, N.J., and the other nominees had chosen not to grant interviews.
The other nominees are the Rev. Mark Beckwith, rector of All Saints Church in Worcester, Mass., and a former associate rector of St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Morristown, N.J.; the Very Rev. Petero Sabune, the Protestant chaplain at Sing Sing state prison in New York and a former dean of the cathedral in Newark; and the Rev. William Stokes, rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Delray Beach, Fla.
The Rev. Susan Russell, president of Integrity, a gay and lesbian advocacy group in the church, praised the nominations.
'For the Diocese of Newark to come out so quickly with a gay man in its list of candidates is a strong statement that this is not a church that is willing to be blackmailed into bigotry,' she said.
After the current bishop, the Right Rev. John P. Croneberger, announced in April 2005 that he would be retiring, the diocese received about 70 nominations, some from church leaders and some from the candidates themselves.
A survey of member parishes found that the diocese's 35,000 to 40,000 members were generally open to choosing a bishop 'without regard to gender, race, sexual orientation, age or physical ability.'
Groups of clerical and lay people chosen by each parish will choose the new bishop on Sept. 23. That choice will need the majority approval of two national groups, the bishops of each diocese and the standing committees, groups of clergy and lay people who run each diocese. The new bishop is expected to take office by the beginning of December.
Correction:  June 30, 2006, Friday  Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about the nomination of a gay priest as a candidate for Episcopal bishop of Newark misspelled his surname at one point. He is the Very Rev. Canon Michael Barlowe, not Barlow.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Newark Group Seeks Housing Body's Ouster
A housing advocacy group has asked a federal court to remove a local housing authority overseeing the construction of replacement public housing and substitute it with a court-appointed consultant, saying the agency has been inadequate in its efforts to come up with liveable alternatives to decaying and demolished high rises.
The Newark Coalition for Low Income Housing said that the Newark Housing Authority had, through 'ineptitude,' violated numerous construction and replacement schedules. Those timetables were the outgrowth of a lawsuit brought by the coalition in 1989 which resulted in a consent decree, under which the agency agreed to embark on a court-supervised housing replacement program.
The advocacy group said it now wanted the agency cited for contempt and removed from the program. In its place, the group said, the court should appoint Abt Associates, a Cambridge, Mass., housing consultant that has been monitoring the agency since it was appointed by the court two years ago. The company was appointed after the coalition petitioned the court to strip the public housing agency of its authority.
'Over the past 11 years, the Newark Housing Authority has violated a slew of construction schedules,' said David Weiner, spokesman for the coalition, which is made up of public housing tenants, unions and local community groups. 'Eleven years after the settlement agreement, only 53 percent of the housing they said they would replace has been completed. This is unacceptable, and there are thousands of people on waiting lists for low-income housing.'
The request is due to be heard Monday at a regularly scheduled conference in the case before Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise of Federal District Court in Newark. It will face the strong opposition of housing authority officials.
MaryAnn Russ, the Abt consultant who is monitoring the housing authority, and who has just submitted her own assessment of the agency's performance, said that she had been unaware of the coalition's proposal.
'At this point we are not ready to agree that this is the way to go,' Ms. Russ said in a telephone interview. 'I will be reporting to the court large improvements by Newark in the past two years, especially when you are talking about the repair and turnaround of older units.'
Robert Graham, the executive director of the Newark Housing Authority, which owns 8,000 apartments, said he believed that Judge Debevoise would reject the coalition's request largely on the basis of what he called its inaccurate figures.  He said by counting low-income units near completion and those expected to begin construction soon, the agency had reached over 85 percent of the replacement goal set by the court,  much more than the 53 percent cited by the coalition.
Under the consent decree, the court had directed the city to provide 1,777 replacement public housing units for ones lost in in a series of demolitions of high-rises that were built in the 50's and 60's.
In addition, said Mr. Graham, the waiting list for public housing that was 10,000 people in 1990 is now down to 4,000. That progress had been acknowledged by the court and the consultant in the past.
Still, Mr. Weiner and other coalition officials said that the agency was falling short of court-set goals and faced even more problems as it prepared to divert scarce resources to a number of other projects.
Noting that the city had aggressively torn down old high-rise housing to replace it with less dense low-rise and town-house developments in recent years, Richard Cammarieri, another coalition member, said that waiting lists had grown, as had the time families remained on the lists.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Signs of Progress Seen in Closing Trenton Budget Gap Before Sunday's Deadline
With four days remaining for New Jersey to adopt a budget, the mood in the State House has become an odd blend of fiscal crisis and summer recess.
The State Constitution requires that a balanced budget be approved by July 1, and with that deadline approaching, Republican lawmakers complained today that Gov. James E. McGreevey had still not released a detailed spending plan because his budget for the 2003 fiscal year would lead to higher property taxes.
Democrats retaliated by blaming Republicans for the fiscal trouble Mr. McGreevey inherited when he took office in January, and said they had made contingency plans for a government shutdown in case a balanced budget was not in place by midnight Sunday.
Yet despite all the talk of fiscal doom and crushing deadline pressure, officials from both parties managed to find time this week for some of the less urgent chores of elective office. The budget negotiations scheduled for Thursday are expected to end by midafternoon so state leaders can attend fund-raisers: Republicans have an event featuring Rudolph W. Giuliani, and Democrats will hold a party before a Jimmy Buffett concert in Camden. The Democratic State Committee will also hold its annual convention in Atlantic City Thursday night through Saturday morning, whether or not a budget agreement has been reached.
Leaders of the State Senate, which is split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, have scheduled sessions for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, although legislators from both parties said they hoped to avoid working into the weekend.
But even as the rhetorical battle between the parties heated up today, there were fleeting signs of progress. Senator John O. Bennett, the Republican co-president of the Senate, said the two sides had moved closer to an agreement on the most divisive aspect of the budget: the plan to raise more than $1 billion in additional revenues from corporate taxes.
'One way or another, I think we'll have a budget in place,' Mr. Bennett said.
New Jersey's fiscal problems have so thoroughly dominated state politics during the past eight months that lawmakers from both parties seemed eager to play out the endgame of the budget process. The day after he was elected last November, Mr. McGreevey began warning New Jerseyans that tough times were looming and that Republicans had left the state's finances depleted.
By March, Mr. McGreevey had unveiled his own $23.7 billion budget plan, a 9 percent increase in spending, which raised revenues by draining the surpluses in an assortment of special state trust funds, and proposing to sell bonds against the state's portion of the tobacco settlement.
But the slumping economy has made the budget process more difficult because state tax revenues continue to decline and Wall Street analysts have lowered New Jersey's bond rating three times.
While a complete appropriations bill had not been made available to Republicans by this evening, the McGreevey administration did release a summary of its updated budget proposals, which call for spending $400 million less than in the governor's original plan.
Mr. McGreevey has dropped plans to increase casino taxes by $33 million and to raise $12 million by making rural communities pay for the state troopers assigned to patrol them, said an aide to the governor who insisted on anonymity. The summary also calls for reducing spending for health and senior services by $47 million and environmental protection by $8 million.
Republicans said they suspected that Mr. McGreevey was reluctant to release the appropriations bill because its details would anger the public. Mr. Bennett said that by freezing school aid, Mr. McGreevey would force communities to raise their property taxes.
'The budget bill has been hidden because it is bad for New Jersey,' Mr. Bennett said.
The governor brushed aside those criticisms, saying that both he and the treasurer had conferred with Republicans about the budget plans, and that the delay was caused by the complexity of the state's fiscal problems.
'Ultimately, New Jersey cannot repeat the mistake that was made over the past two years,' Mr. McGreevey said. 'New Jersey must have a balanced budget based upon sound revenue projections and not fanciful expectations.'
One expense yet to be determined is the amount allocated for legislators' pet projects, which New Jersey politicians refer to as Christmas tree items and add hundreds of millions to the state budget some years. Richard J. Codey, the Democratic co-president of the Senate, said that this year's budget would be too tight to allow for any such spending.
But after 10 years in the minority, many Democratic legislators are eager to be heard now that their party has attained a split in the Senate and controls the governor's office and General Assembly. The McGreevey administration also needs at least one Republican vote to win approval of the budget in the Senate.
But Mr. Codey cautioned that Republicans were in no position to make harsh criticisms or costly demands. 'They dug New Jersey into a big hole,' he said. 'It's their job to dig out of the hole, and we'll help them.'",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Shooting of Newark Suspect, 17, Leads to Widening Police Inquiry
An investigation into the shooting of a 17-year-old suspected of driving a car stolen from a police officer's mother widened today. Officials focused on nine officers who may have been at the scene or may have known of the incident but failed to report it.
Police officials are trying to determine whether one or more officers fired at the youth and whether others tried to cover up the incident, which occurred early Tuesday but did not come to the attention of department officials until hours after the shooting.
The weapons of all nine officers were sent to the state police laboratory. Six of the officers have been placed on light duty without weapons, and the others have been rearmed and remain on regular duty. 'We Asked Them to Trust Us'
Police Director William Celester and Mayor Sharpe James met today with relatives of the shooting victim, Howard Caesar. ""We assured them we would do everything possible to find out what happened,"" Mr. Celester said. ""We asked them to trust us, and they said they would.""
The teen-ager was listed in critical condition at University Hospital, suffering from a gunshot wound to the abdomen that caused extensive injuries. A spokesman for the hospital, Rogers Ramsey, said Mr. Caesar was using a life-support system. He underwent surgery to repair a lacerated liver and other injuries, Mr. Ramsey said, but no attempt was made to remove the bullet.
Mr. Celester identified the officers who are on restricted duty as Michael Cavallero, John Costa, Kenneth Holloway, Neftalis Mendez, Jose Montalvo and Gerard Piacenza, all patrolmen. The three officers remaining on normal duty were not identified.
Mr. Celester said there was no evidence that racism was involved in the incident. Three of the transferred officers are white, two are Hispanic, and one is black, he added. Mr. Caesar is black.
The shooting occurred about 4 A.M. at 16th Avenue and South 17th Street, at West Side Park, a few blocks from the Irvington border.
People in the neighborhood, including a teen-age girl who reported having seen the shooting from her third-floor apartment, said six or seven shots were fired in Mr. Caesar's direction after the 1987 Chevrolet Camaro he was driving in circles in the intersection went out of control and struck a curb.
The shots, they said, came without warning from officers who had been hiding in West Side Park. Mr. Caesar, holding his right side, ran past his sister Reshonda, who was at the intersection, and headed to a friend's home a block away, on South 18th Street, where he collapsed, said Omar Stark, 26, who identified himself as Mr. Caesar's brother.
A young man who would not give his name said today that he was at the intersection at the time of the shooting. ""The boy had no gun or nothing,"" he recalled. ""And the police didn't say, 'Hold, police!' or anything. They just started shooting, and people began ducking."" No Reports From Scene
The police have not officially said how many shots they believe were fired, but members of the department who insisted on anonymity said investigators believed that there were three or four.
In violation of department regulations, Mr. Celester said, the officers believed to have been at the scene at the time of the shooting, or later, failed to report the shooting, their presence or whether they had fired their weapons.
No officers ever reported their presence at the scene. Residents said they had called the police to notify them about shooting.
Police spokesmen said on Tuesday that the incident began when the mother of Officer Dino D'Elia reported that her 1987 black Chevrolet Camaro had been stolen. The police have not said whether Officer D'Elia was at the scene of the shooting or if he is one of the officers under investigation.
Four officers were the targets of the initial investigation, but the number placed at the scene grew to six after internal affairs officers reviewed tapes of radio conversations.
Officer Cavallero, 28 years old, has been on the force for six and a half years, and Officer Costa, 25, has been an officer for five years. Officer Holloway, 30, has been a patrolman for one year, Officer Mendez, 31, has been in the department for five years, and Officer Montalvo, 23, has been on the force for one and a half years. Officer Piacenza, 23, has one year of service.
A bartender who lives on 19th Street said he was returning from work at about the time of the incident. He said people were milling around and talking about the shooting when he arrived.
""The police are always hiding in the park or in a parking lot down 17th Street to catch drug dealers or car thieves,"" he said. ""And they often use their weapons. This is nothing new."" 'Doughnuts' in Intersections
The intersections along 16th Avenue are marked with black rings made by cars forming ""doughnuts."" The cars are usually stolen, police officers and neighborhood residents said, and the exhibitions are almost nightly.
""Nobody wants problems,"" the bartender said, but he added that tension was high in Newark because of the beating in Los Angeles of Rodney G. King, a black motorist, and the acquittals of the white police officers who were videotaped in the incident, and because of the death of Phillip Pannell, a black teen-ager shot by Gary Spath, a white police officer in Teaneck who was found not guilty of manslaughter this year.
""There is frustration in the community because nothing happens when one of these things occur,"" the bartender said. ""People are talking.""
Mayor James, saying he is aware of what can occur, especially in hot summer months, if an incident like the shooting is not promptly and thoroughly investigated, urged all members of the Police Department who might know about the shooting to come forward.
Mr. James, who attended a meeting today to discuss the car-theft problem in the city, one of the worst in the nation, said the city was doing everything possible to solve it. ""On the other hand,"" he said, ""stealing a car, crashing it and walking away from it does not give anyone the right to shoot you, to execute you.""",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","City Is to Study Port Unit
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has fought a running battle with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said yesterday that he has commissioned a  study to determine how New York would fare without the authority.
""The Port Authority has been funneling New York City-generated revenues into  New Jersey projects,"" the Mayor said yesterday afternoon. ""With this study we're hoping to lay that case before the public and set forth a clear plan or plans for the improvements that could be made in the operations of these facilities.""
The study, which will be undertaken by a private consultant for the city, will examine the effectiveness of the Port Authority's management of its New York City operations. It will also examine the possible consequences of turning  over some or all of the operations to private interests.
The Giuliani administration has long contended that the Port Authority, a quasi-governmental body, does not devote enough of its resources to New York City, and has maintained that it favors projects in New Jersey. In the most recent battle, the city is suing the authority for $400 million in back rent that city officials claim is owed for Kennedy International and La Guardia airports.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Baseball's Disputed Origin Is Traced Back, Back, Back
It is as elusive as the search for Atlantis, as tangled in legend as the quest for the Holy Grail. For nearly a century, historians have trolled stacks of dusty tomes in hopes of unearthing the origins of baseball.
Its primordial myth held that Abner Doubleday, a West Point cadet, invented the game in 1839 on a dirt field in Cooperstown, N.Y., where the Baseball Hall of Fame is now situated.
In recent years, historians have credited Alexander J. Cartwright, a New York bank clerk, and the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club for codifying many of the modern rules and using them for the first time in an 1846 game at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, N.J.
Now, two newspaper references to baseball have turned up that show that an organized version of the game was being played even earlier in New York City. The articles appeared April 25, 1823; they indicate that some form of the game was even then being called 'base ball' and was played in Manhattan.
The articles, discovered by a librarian at New York University, George A. Thompson Jr., bolster a growing consensus that baseball emerged gradually, by evolution and not by invention.
The longer of the two articles appeared in The National Advocate, one of about eight daily newspapers published in New York at the time. It is signed by a person wishing to be known only as a spectator. A mere four sentences, the article begins:
'I was last Saturday much pleased in witnessing a company of active young men playing the manly and athletic game of 'base ball' at the Retreat in Broadway (Jones'). I am informed they are an organized association, and that a very interesting game will be played on Saturday next at the above place, to commence at half past 3 o'clock, P.M. Any person fond of witnessing this game may avail himself of seeing it played with consummate skill and wonderful dexterity.'
The game was played on the west side of Broadway between what is today Eighth Street and Washington Place in Greenwich Village, long before anyone dreamed of putting on a pinstripe uniform.
The booming port city of New York had more than 120,000 residents in 1823, according to the census, and its warren of cobblestone lanes had pushed as far north as present-day Canal Street. The Retreat mentioned in the article was a two-acre rural estate that in 1822 became the site of a tavern run by a man named William Jones.
John Thorn, a baseball historian, said the article supported the theory that baseball gradually evolved from prototypes. 'It really is an uninterrupted lineage,' said Mr. Thorn, who edits 'Total Baseball' (Total Sports Publishing, 2001), a 2,600-page encyclopedia of the sport. 'Amateur scholars will attempt to put stakes in a moving stream. But the water is the water.'
Newspaper articles discovered over the last decade or so bolster that theory. In 1990 a Harvard student unearthed an account, complete with a box score, of a baseball game between teams from New York and Brooklyn in 1845.
Then an article surfaced the following year that had been published in 1825 in a newspaper in Delhi, N.Y. Signed by nine men from the town of Hamden, it challenged an 'equal number of persons in any town in the County of Delaware' to 'play the game of BASS-BALL, for the sum of one dollar each per game.' (Stagecoach Series, anyone?)
In the early 19th century, Americans were just starting to adopt leisure activities, historians say, and ball games were still considered child's play. Boxing, horse racing, rowboat racing and bowling in saloons were more popular as entertainment for adults. But many sports, and the gambling that inevitably accompanied them, drew denouncements from newspapers.
Scholars say that probably explains why the author of the 1823 article in The National Advocate ended it with this line: 'It is surprising, and to be regretted that the young men of our city do not engage more in this manual sport; it is innocent amusement, and healthy exercise, attended with but little expense, and has no demoralizing tendency.'
The second article discovered by Mr. Thompson, the soft-spoken N.Y.U. librarian, was published the same day in The New-York Gazette and General Advertiser. That paper apparently received the same letter printed in The Advocate and summed it up in one paragraph, starting with 'We have received a communication in favor of the manly exercise of base ball.'
The writer of the letter seemed to assume readers knew what he was talking about, indicating the game was 'not a revolutionary new product' in 1823, Mr. Thorn, the editor of 'Total Baseball,' said.
Another baseball historian, Mark Alvarez, said, 'The exciting thing about this discovery is that it implies this game was a regular meeting, that you could go somewhere and expect people to play ball and you could watch.' Mr. Alvarez is the editor of The National Pastime, an annual journal of baseball history that recently published an article by Mr. Thompson on his finding.
Dean A. Sullivan, another baseball scholar, said the finding was fascinating and had some significance as to the overall evolution of baseball.
But Mr. Sullivan, who edited 'Early Innings' (University of Nebraska Press, 1995), a collection of early accounts of baseball, cautioned that although the article 'mentions the magic word, you can't equate that exactly to what we know as baseball today.'
The Advocate article has no description of the game it refers to. Many rules of the modern game, like foul territory and throwing to a base to get a player out, were not known to have been formally introduced until the 1846 match in Hoboken. Other elements, like nine innings in a game and nine players to a team, did not become the norm until the following decade, scholars say.
So, the 1823 game could have resembled any of the ancestors of baseball that were being played at the time. For example, a game called town ball (probably played before or after a town meeting) required a player to be hit with the ball to be called out. In cricket and rounders, all the players took a turn at bat. Variations of another game, known as ol' cat, used holes as bases and required players to stick their bats in them as they raced from one to the next.
'History is much more interesting, much more messy, and baseball has 1,000 fathers,' Mr. Thorn said.
Ball games involving bases were mentioned in print as early as the 18th century, said David Q. Voigt, a retired professor of sociology and anthropology at Albright College in Reading, Pa., and the author of a three-volume history of baseball.
For instance, a doctor in George Washington's army in Valley Forge, Pa., wrote of a game where players ran from base to base, he said. Children's books of that century described a similar game. And Mr. Thorn points out that an Englishwoman named Lady Hervey wrote in a letter in 1748 that the family of the Prince of Wales was 'diverting themselves with baseball, a play all who are or have been schoolboys are well acquainted with.'
By the early 1830's, a version of baseball was starting to be played by clubs in New York, according to a book published several decades later. But after its mention in The Advocate in 1823, references to the game did not crop up again in New York newspapers until the 1840's, scholars say.
Mr. Thompson said he had looked through thousands of early 19th century newspapers on microfilm without finding any other reference to baseball. (As for why he spends hours each week poring over such papers, he said, 'It's a cheap hobby, and it keeps me from falling into the company of frolicsome women.')
'Finding this paragraph on the 1823 ballgame was an accident,' he said as he stood outside his cluttered office, a navy blue tie with white baseball diamonds dangling over his belly. 'I certainly didn't go looking for it. Anyone who goes looking for something specific in newspapers of that era is in for a lot of frustration.'
As baseball overtook cricket in popularity after the Civil War, it showed up in more and more writings. People would wax nostalgic over how it was played during their childhoods, Mr. Sullivan said. One politician, for instance, wrote in 1884 of seeing the game in Rochester in 1825, only two years after it was played at the Retreat in Manhattan.
But such recollections are unconfirmed and possibly apocryphal, Mr. Sullivan said.
By the 1880's, baseball had already entered the mythos of the United States as a symbol of an 'idyllic, rural American past, an expression of nostalgic desire for 'the good old days,' ' Mr. Sullivan wrote in 'Early Innings.' In other words, it had become the national pastime.",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","2 Guilty of Killing Man Who Tried to Stop Fight
Two men were convicted yesterday in the fatal beating of a man who tried to intervene in an argument on behalf of a young woman, officials said.
The victim, Alan Wedemeire, 41, was walking home from his sister's house in Pompton Lakes on Sept. 26, 1996, when he saw Kevin McGrath, now 22, having a heated argument with the woman, who was Mr. McGrath's girlfriend, said Walt Dewey Jr., senior assistant Passaic County prosecutor. Mr. Wedemeire repeatedly told Mr. McGrath to leave the woman alone, Mr. Dewey said. A friend of Mr. McGrath's, Shawn Dilzer, now 20, then rushed across the street and punched Mr. Wedemeire in the face, knocking him back on his head and causing a severe skull fracture, Mr. Dewey said. Mr. McGrath then kicked Mr. Wedemeire in the head, causing another fracture that, combined with the first, resulted in Mr. Wedemeire's death, Mr. Dewey said.
The defendants had been charged with murder but the jury convicted them of aggravated manslaughter charges after 10 hours of deliberations. They each face up to 20 years in prison when sentenced on Feb. 19, and could be eligible for parole after 4 years.
METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Police Intensify Patrols As Girls Report Intruder
The police say they are increasing patrols and staking out a neighborhood in central Woodbridge after three reports of a man breaking into the bedrooms of young girls.
In the most recent intrusion, at 3:18 A.M. on Tuesday, two sisters, ages 8 and 10, awoke to see a man's arm withdraw from inside their bedroom window on East Smith Street, said Deputy Chief Phil Dinicola of the Woodbridge Police Department.
At 5:30 A.M. the day before, he said, a 5-year-old girl on Augustus Street told her parents that a bearded or scruffy man in his 30's or 40's had been in her bedroom. The chief said the girl told her parents the man had warned her to be quiet and showed her a handgun, but had left through the bedroom window without touching her.
Early on Sunday, two sisters, ages 10 and 15, said that a man had tried to climb in their bedroom window on East Day Street but had fled when they screamed.
A public meeting is scheduled for 5:30 P.M. Monday in Town Hall to inform residents about the investigation and offer them safety tips.
METRO NEWS BRIEFS: NEW JERSEY",2
"Top/News/U.S./U.S. States, Territories and Possessions/New Jersey","Few New Jerseyans Act on Gun Law
The first day of the state law banning the possession of ""assault"" firearms brought confusion and scant compliance from gun owners.
No figures on the number of people who turned in or listed their weapons as inoperable will be collected statewide before Monday. But Lieut. William Hillis of the state police said there did not appear to be a rush to comply with the law. ""Unfortunately, we haven't had that,"" he said.
By Thursday night 382 owners had registered guns under a provision that allows people to keep certain weapons for target shooting. Eighty-six had registered and certified their guns as inoperable.
Evan F. Nappen, a lawyer for the Coalition of New Jersey Sportsmen, an ally of the National Rifle Association in fighting the weapons ban, said he had been deluged by calls from gun owners asking what they should do. ""I don't advocate that they violate the law,"" Mr. Nappen said. ""As an attorney I can't do that. But a lot of people aren't accepting that position.""  Jail or $7,500 Fine
New Jersey enacted the ban last May, giving owners a year to sell their weapons out of state, turn them in to the police or render them inoperable and file a certificate with the police declaring that they have done so. Owners of certain weapons who belong to certified shooting clubs could also keep and register their weapons.
Failing to comply with the law carries a penalty of up to three to five years in jail or a fine of $7,500.
The state police estimate that 100,000 to 300,000 have such weapons. Spot checks with police departments suggested that few people were registering their weapons.
Assemblyman Patrick J. Roma, Republican of Paramus, turned in the firing mechanism of a .22-caliber rifle in Bergen County. By noon he was the only person to have done so.
He called the law vague and confusing. ""I was the only one in town who went in to register my rifle as inoperable,"" Mr. Roma said, adding that his 15-year-old Remington was ""basically a plinking gun."" Mr. Roma filled in a form certifying that the rifle was an ""Inoperable Assault Firearm.""
The police in Glassboro, with 15,000 residents in Gloucestor County, said that ""maybe two people a day"" had registered their guns in the last few days, ""but none today.""  Handful Here and There
Chief Donald Pavak of the Wayne police said that one person had turned in an assault weapon today and that there had been several inquiries. ""To be honest with you,"" Chief Pavak said, ""I don't think you're going to see a long line of people surrendering weapons.""
In Wyckoff in western Bergen County, the police said one target weapon was registered today and five earlier in the week. The state police in Sussex County reported no weapons turned in or registered today, nor did the police in Newton, in a hunting area. In Newark, Detective Dan Collins said six weapons had been turned in to the department over the last week, but none today. The police in Paterson said two target weapons were registered today.
Attorney General Robert J. Del Tufo has said the state police ""will not go out and knock on doors"" to confiscate weapons and arrest the owners, but would rely on voluntary compliance.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Former Spy Chief Talks for Dukakis
LEAD: Much like A.T.&T., the Dukakis campaign is telling reporters to pick up the phone and touch someone - in this case Adm. Stansfield Turner.
Much like A.T.&T., the Dukakis campaign is telling reporters to pick up the phone and touch someone - in this case Adm. Stansfield Turner.
After allegations by Admiral Turner, the Carter Administration's Director of Central Intelligence, that Mr. Bush fostered close ties to Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the Panamanian strongman, the Dukakis campaign has been only too pleased to give Mr. Turner's phone number to anyone who asks.
'What happened,' said one Dukakis campaign aide, 'is that Stansfield Turner let us know that he had told reporters that, contrary to George Bush's debate statements, General Noriega was not on the C.I.A. payroll during the Carter Administration and was put back on the C.I.A. payroll during the Reagan years. We talk to 100 reporters a day. In the course of these conversations we let people know that if they want more information they can follow it up with a call to Stansfield Turner.'
Mr. Turner does not seem to mind. 'Is it a crime,' he asked, 'if the Dukakis people want to get publicity on something favorable to them? Of course not. Don't you think Jim Baker is out there manipulating the media as best he can?
CAMPAIGN TRAIL",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Citing a Disclosure, Noriega Seeks a New Trial
Lawyers for Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega asked a Federal judge today for a new trial, saying that a major prosecution witness had testified under a secret arrangement between the Government and a Colombian drug cartel and that the deal was never disclosed to the defense or the jury.
Lawyers said the jury, which convicted General Noriega of drug trafficking, should have known about the arrangement under which they say one cartel member testified while another won a reduced sentence.
The lawyers said the secret deal came to light this week when a person they would not identify provided them with letters exchanged by the United States Attorney's office in Miami and a lawyer for the Cali drug cartel.
A spokesman for the District Attorney's office, Wilfredo Fernandez, said it would not comment on because the case was still in the courts. But Mr. Fernandez said the office would respond in court to the motion for a new trial.
General Noriega, the deposed Panamanian leader, appealed his 1992 conviction on eight counts of drug trafficking, racketeering and money laundering. He is serving a 40-year sentence at a Federal prison in Miami.
Lawyers for General Noriega gave reporters copies of the letters exchanged by prosecutors and the cartel lawyer. They outline a plan under which an indicted drug trafficker, Ricardo Bilonick, would surrender to American authorities and testify against General Noriega. In exchange, an imprisoned Cali cartel leader, Luis Santacruz Echeverri, would receive a reduced sentence, to 14 years from 23.
Mr. Bilonick served three years.
At General Noriega's trial, Mr. Bilonick testified that the general had allowed cocaine to be shipped through Panama by the Medellin cartel, a rival of the Cali organization. Defense lawyers said that the jury should have been told that this testimony came as part of a larger deal, and that the cartel might have compelled Mr. Bilonick to testify with offer of rewards and threats -- ""silver and lead.""
""This reflects a level of hypocrisy and cynicism beyond words,"" Frank A. Rubino, one of General Noriega's lawyers, said today. Mr. Rubino said the Government made a ""deal with the devil"" by taking ""any measures necessary to gain a conviction against Manuel Noriega.""
General Noriega was apprehended in January 1990 after the American invasion of Panama, and defense lawyers have argued that the Bush Administration had to convict him to justify the military action.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"The U.S. and Panama;   Noriega Judge Orders Lawyers Not to Talk About Move of General
LEAD: In another move to tighten security in the case of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, a Federal district judge today ordered lawyers not to discuss with reporters a possible move of the defendant from downtown Miami.
In another move to tighten security in the case of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, a Federal district judge today ordered lawyers not to discuss with reporters a possible move of the defendant from downtown Miami.
The Judge, William M. Hoeveler, also ordered that the lawyers' motions related to a move of General Noriega be kept under seal.
Judge Hoeveler's order came at a closed hearing in his chambers at which defense lawyers had said they would object to a planned transfer of General Noriega from a cell in the basement of the Federal courthouse here to a more secure Federal prison, possibly out of state. The Government's prosecutors had served notice Wednesday that they planned to move the general.
The judge said in an interview today that he ordered the lawyers not to discuss the hearing to protect General Noriega's security. He declined to be more specific, saying: 'Anything I might say on this subject would really be getting into the contents of the hearing. That would not be appropriate. I hate to be so vague, but that's the best I can do at the moment.'
Motions to Be Under Seal
Earlier this week, Judge Hoeveler also ordered that any motions involving intelligence materials be kept under seal and that any court sessions related to secret documents be closed to reporters. Sensitive documents are expected to be an important part of the drug-trafficking case against General Noriega because of his longtime connections to United States intelligence organizations. Defense lawyers say they will seek certain classified records to help them in their defense of General Noriega, who was for years a source of American intelligence in Central America.
The judge said that all documents in the case would be made public except those related to national security and the defendant's security.
Document Reviews Planned
Frank A. Rubino, a lawyer for General Noriega, said the judge was making arrangements for the safekeeping of classified documents that may be used in the case, and that defense and prosecution lawyers would be able to review sets of those documents at separate sites.
Although Mr. Rubino would not discuss the issue of moving General Noriega, he was more forthcoming in an interview Thursday evening before the judge issued the order. He said then that he would file a lengthy motion with the court today outlining why the Federal authorities should not move his client.
The judge said he instructed the court clerk today not to make that motion public, at least until Tuesday.
The Federal authorities have said that General Noriega needs to be moved to a more secure site and that his lawyers would be given a travel allowance to visit their client out of state.
Only after defense lawyers protested to the court did the judge block a move of General Noriega earlier this week. On Wednesday, the prosecutors filed a document with the court serving notice that the United States Marshals Service could move General Noriega after 6 P.M. that day.
But Mr. Rubino said Thursday that he was 'obviously going to strenuously oppose' a move on several grounds, notably that his client would not be afforded adequate access to his counsel if he was moved from South Florida.
Atlanta a Possible Site
Government officials have contended that the closest Federal prison secure enough to house a prisoner as well known as General Noriega is the Federal penitentiary in Atlanta. Mr. Rubino said he had been told early in the week by Federal officials that they wanted to move his client to Atlanta.
General Noriega was accused in an indictment returned here by a grand jury in February 1988 of receiving more than $4.6 million to protect cocaine shipments from Medellin, Colombia, through Panama to the United States. In addition, he was accused of assisting in the laundering of drug money and of arranging for the sale of chemicals used to produce cocaine.
A Federal magistrate today set bail at $1 million for one of General Noriega's 15 co-defendants, Daniel Miranda, who is charged with flying $800,000 in laundered drug money from Fort Lauderdale to Miami. Prosecutors appealed the decision and the magistrate blocked Mr. Miranda's release pending a hearing.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Noriega Trial, Week 1: Hints of a Drama to Come
There have been tantalizing hints of dramatic disclosures yet to come. But the first week of the trial of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega offered more in the nature of historical detail than startling new facts about any involvement of the deposed Panamanian dictator in cocaine trafficking, money laundering and racketeering.
Prosecutors set that tone early by calling a political scientist who has written extensively on Panama, Stephen C. Ropp of the University of Wyoming, as the first of their 75 or so witnesses. Since then, the bulk of the testimony heard has been instructional, with the jury of nine women and three men assiduously jotting down a multitude of unfamiliar names, places and dates in the loose-leaf notebooks and shorthand pads issued to them.
The emphasis on background has been evident even in the testimony of Lieut. Col. Luis del Cid, who for 25 years was one of General Noriega's most intimate associates. Like General Noriega, Colonel del Cid surrendered in the American invasion of Panama in December 1989 and was spirited to Miami. He later pleaded guilty to delivering drug payoffs to his former boss and agreed to testify for the prosecution. 'Noriega's Errand Boy'
General Noriega, who contends he is a prisoner of war but has not otherwise protested the proceedings against him since the trial began, could be sentenced to up to 140 years in prison if convicted of all 10 of the charges he faces. Prosecutors say he allowed shipments of Colombian cocaine through Panama in exchange for some of the profits and helped the dealers disguise some of their own proceeds.
Colonel del Cid, who described himself as ""General Noriega's errand boy"" and bodyguard, is expected to provide some of the most damaging testimony, as he hinted in a brief explanation of his guilty plea.
""It was drug money,"" he told Assistant United States Attorney Myles Mahlman of the packages entrusted to him for transfer to his commanding officer. ""I pleaded guilty to charges of having delivered drug money to Noriega.""
The bulk of Colonel del Cid's testimony thus far, however, has dealt with the history of the Panamanian military, its organization and its relations with civilian politicians. Without mentioning any of the incidents included in the indictment, he has argued that little happened in the Panamanian Government without General Noriega's awareness and consent.
""Nothing came through the airport of Panama that General Noriega did not know about,"" Colonel del Cid testified. As head of military intelligence, he added, General Noriega ""controlled everything that was military or civilian, everything, everything"" from military assignments and promotions to ""the docks, labor unions and student movements."" Mysterious Briefcases
Colonel del Cid also said that when the general was Colonel Noriega, before mid-1983, it was common for Panamanian presidents and cabinet members to be summoned to his office to discuss matters of state, despite the fact they were his nominal superiors. He recalled one occasion in which the country's attorney general, who visited ""quite frequently,"" handed a briefcase over to Colonel Noriega.
What did the briefcase contain? prosecutors asked. ""It had to be money,"" Colonel del Cid said. But General Noriega's lawyer, Frank Rubino, objected, and the remark was stricken from the recor'd.
Colonel del Cid's testimony also appears to have broken through the reserve General Noriega had previously displayed in the courtroom. As his former subordinate was leaving court after his first afternoon on the witness stand, General Noriega called out his name three times. When the prosecution raised the issue later, Mr. Rubino said he had admonished his client to hold his tongue, but the incident also seems to have left a mark on Colonel del Cid. He now sits turned away from General Noriega as he testifies.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"For the Families Left Behind, A Holiday Comforted by Duty
LEAD: Snow robbed the church of one musician. War robbed it of another. As the two guitarists who remained beckoned Christmas with faltering hymns, the Rev. Phillip Leach spoke of the need for faith to overcome confusion.
Snow robbed the church of one musician. War robbed it of another. As the two guitarists who remained beckoned Christmas with faltering hymns, the Rev. Phillip Leach spoke of the need for faith to overcome confusion.
He spoke of the challenge of faith that the Virgin Birth had brought to Joseph and Mary. Near sprawling Fort Bragg, the challenge for the members of the Good Shepherd Catholic Church was the invasion of Panama, which had sent their friends and relatives to war at Christmas time.
Father Leach spoke of watching a young girl ask her mother, 'Why won't my Daddy be home for Christmas?'  'God Was in the World'
Because he's in Panama, the mother said, then hugged her child.
'Somehow that mother's embrace made sure God was in the world,' Father Leach said.
Like the 35-year-old priest, many people in the communities surrounding Fort Bragg spoke of simple things this week, as more than 2,000 local soldiers went to war. As many people here describe it, the invasion of Panama is not an adventure; it's a job.
Renae Hodge conveyed that sense of sober professionalism when she described her feelings this week at having her husband, Capt. James Hodge, parachute into a Central American war.
'I know that Jim is having a good time, to be honest with you,' she said. 'This may be the only time he ever gets to exercise those excellent skills that he's been preparing for 10 years.' No Sign of Swagger
Perhaps as important as the language invoked is the language omitted. No one mentions Rambo. Swagger, for the most part, is out.
And only a few soldiers or their families here emphasized the misdeeds of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega. But a more neutral pride, in simply carrying out orders, is more frequently stressed.
As the peacetime Army turned to war, there were other emotions being expressed here, too. Along with pride in professional soldiering, there was renewed - or, for the young, new - appreciation of its perils.
Many teen-agers here expect to inherit lives in the military, which seems to offer stability: a paycheck, a pension, privileges on the post. In Hope Mills this week, a military commitment offered something else: the death of Jerry Scott Daves, a 20-year-old private killed in Panama. 'You Can Get Killed'
'I had one teen-ager say to me this week: 'I've always thought of soldiering as a job, Father, but this is something you can get killed in,' ' Father Leach said before Mass.
'I wouldn't say it shatters their world view; that would be too melodramatic,' the priest said. 'But it does shake it.'
Rumors that the advent of Christmas would compete with the advent of war were circulating and the surrounding Fayetteville region the weekend before the American invasion.
But it was not until the soldiers reported to work on the morning of Monday, Dec. 18, that most of the them learned they had been placed in a state of emergency readiness that would keep them from returning home in the evening. No Chance to Call Home
With plans calling for phones to be guarded, many soldiers did not have the chance to call home. Mrs. Hodge said her husband, who did reach a phone, said simply: 'I'm busy working and I won't be home for supper.'
Readiness drills like these take place dozens of times a year at Fort Bragg, with troops loaded, lifted and dropped by parachute, sometimes right back onto Fort Bragg. But beginning Monday night and continuing through Tuesday, Army officials said, the troops were herded into secured areas and told of their destination.
Lieut. Col. William L. Hufham, the division chaplain, visited with the assembled paratroopers on Tuesday afternoon, as they waited in a North Carolina ice storm for their night drop into the tropics. How Word Was Spread
'The attitude was, 'We're trained to do the job and we'll go in and do it to the best of our ability,' ' he said. 'What I did not see was any bravado or macho displays.'
Once word of the invasion became official on Wednesday morning, it reached most families through a network of wives. Mrs. Hodge said she was called by the wife of her husband's commanding officer, passing along a brief official statement. She wrote it down, careful not to paraphrase, and in turn notified families of the soldiers under her husband's immediate command.
'I just said, 'Let me find out who's involved, and what's going on, and we'll go from there,' ' she said.
Support groups assembled on the post later that day. A family assistance center addressed problems like lost keys, and chaplains began distributing food to families caught short. Colonel Hufham, the division chaplain, said some soldiers had drawn advances for Christmas, leaving behind skipped paychecks for their families.
Caroline McElligott, an 18-year-old Fayetteville student, greeted the news of the invasion with less matter-of-factness than Mrs. Hodge did. 'What if He Dies?'
'I was shocked when I found out my boyfriend got deployed,' she said. 'We had just gotten in an argument and just made up, and I was like, 'Oh my God, what if he dies?' '
The news that carried one kind of meaning for the girlfriends and wives of the soldiers in battle carried another for the soldiers left behind, including regret over missed chances for glory or the simple opportunity to perform.
The First Battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment was enjoying the end of a two-week leave on Wednesday when news of the invasion reached them at scattered points across the country. The battalion was immediately recalled to Fort Bragg and placed on the Army's highest readiness status, meaning that if paratroopers are needed anywhere in the world, they will be the next to go.
In mess halls, offices and barracks this week, they talked of the frustration, and occasional fears, that come from being left behind.
Lieut. Ted Schjoth said that of the eight members of his infantry school class now stationed at Fort Bragg, he is the only one not in Panama. 'You're missing out on a lot of things,' he said. 'The ultimate test of an infantryman is combat. They're getting that test and we're not.'
In slightly different terms, Brian Pruitt, a 20-year-old private from Canton, Tex., echoed the feeling. 'It's like practicing all your life for a football game and never getting to play,' he said.
'They're going to get gold stars and all that good stuff,' he said.
As the week wore on, news of the war traveled home in greater detail, including phone calls from soldiers who had found their way to Panamanian phones.
At a post with a saying of 'Train the way you fight in order to fight the way you train,' most of the storytelling emphasized competence and calm. 'You Just Do Your Job'
Lieut. Patrick Fahy of the Air Force was a navigator aboard one of the personnel planes that flew low and slow over hostile fire while the parachutists jumped. 'You just do your job,' he told reporters at a news conference at Fort Bragg. 'We train around here every day, and it wasn't much more than a training mission.'
Sgt. Berry Kelly was one of 37 wounded men transported back to Fort Bragg by Saturday, and wearing a prized Purple Heart, he met reporters in a hospital conference room.
Sergeant Kelly said he went into a 150-foot free fall after another paratrooper passed over the top of his chute, causing it to collapse. The crash landing left the 23-year-old squad leader with torn ligaments in his ankle.
'I love the 82d Airborne Division,' he said. 'I live for the 82d Airborne Division. As a leader, I don't feel it's right for me to be back here and me to still have men back in Panama.'
As Sergeant Kelly was emphasizing duty and discipline in a Fort Bragg hospital, freer emotional rein was being given several miles away, at Cross Creek Mall. A Card From a Town
A local television station erected a huge makeshift Christmas card - a series of panels 4 feet wide and 8 feet tall, to be shipped to Panama - and invited the town to sign.
Lynn Carraway, the mall's marketing director, said 200 people were already in line to sign the card when the panels arrived Saturday.
Here was an impulse outlet, for bravado and sentiment alike.
'Kick Ass and Don't Bother Taking Names,' wrote 'Meathead and Annie.'
'I love you with all my heart, Shawn,' wrote 'Mom, Dad, Jen and Tim.'
But the card was also one of the few places in town that drew skeptics. 'It sets a bad example, because the Soviets are in the process of curtailing their military expenditures,' said Robert Lint, the 32-year-old manager of a jewelry store in the mall.
Such thinking is clearly a minority view here.
But for a community sending thousands of men to war, in a season of peace, the dutiful refrains now being sounded may disguise more complicated reactions to emerge later.
Father Leach, who says much of the counseling he does relates to events that occurred in Grenada and even Vietnam, takes this view.
The attempt to support men at war while celebrating the 'Prince of Peace,' he said, is at best 'a real conundrum.'
'What usually comes out is: 'My devotion to the Prince of Peace is what gives me the strength to do my job,' ' he said.
As the two guitarists at Sunday's Mass - both of them on active service - strummed the entrance hymn, they stopped before the second chorus: 'Comfort all my people; the time for war is gone.'
Just a coincidence, they said.
FIGHTING IN PANAMA",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"New Captain America Helps U.S. Move On
There was no need for a desperate finish this time against Panama, no threatening loss of control. The United States has become the dominant soccer power in the North American, Central American and Caribbean region, and it played with a forceful and businesslike urgency on Wednesday night.
With superior energy and speed, and a stifling defense, the United States defeated Panama, 6-0, before 19,793 at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium. The young forward Eddie Johnson scored three goals and the captain Landon Donovan scored two as the United States advanced to the final round of qualifying for the World Cup.
Six countries from the region will play a round-robin series beginning in February. The top three teams will advance to the 2006 World Cup in Germany, and a fourth will enter a playoff against an Asian team.
Panama (1-1-2) had relentlessly attacked the American defense in the second half of a match last month in Panama, and the United States needed a goal by Cobi Jones in added time to rescue a 1-1 draw. There was no suspense on Wednesday, and the final game in this round, next month against Jamaica, has been rendered inconsequential for the Americans.
Donovan, 22, has been exquisite with his timing, decision making and creativity in this semifinal qualifying round, threading passes, scoring goals, running ceaselessly at both ends of the field.
Johnson, 20, has made only two appearances for the national team but has scored four goals. His performance Wednesday was only the eighth hat trick for the national team and the first delivered by a substitute. Johnson entered in the 65th minute and delivered three goals in a blistering 17 minutes.
In the 21st minute, the United States (3-0-2) counterattacked, and midfielder Eddie Lewis sent forward Josh Wolff down the left flank. His career has often been interrupted by injury, but Wolff still possesses stirring pace, vision and anticipation. He drilled a low pass to the charging Donovan, who punched the ball into the net from 5 yards for a 1-0 lead.
In the 57th minute, the defensive midfielder Kerry Zavagnin pushed the ball to Donovan behind the Panamanian defense. As he was being taken down by defender Carlos Rivera, Donovan floated a shot under the crossbar from 12 yards.
Donovan has worn the captain's armband twice in four days in the absence of Claudio Reyna, who is injured. His performance has seemed to rise with the responsibility placed on him.
'The armband helps Landon realize who he is,' Coach Bruce Arena said. 'I stress to our younger players all the time they need to emerge a little bit, in particular Landon. Landon needs challenges. He's a fantastic player. When you challenge him and he responds, you see the kind of player he is.'
Johnson scored in his first appearance for the national team on Saturday night in a 2-0 victory in El Salvador, and he continued his remarkable efficiency on Wednesday.
Defender Carlos Bocanegra served a perfect cross from the left flank in the 70th minute, and Johnson headed it softly into the net.
In the 84th minute, Johnson scored again on a header after a splendid three-pass sequence in the penalty area. He redirected a pass from Lewis for the hat trick in the 87th minute. The final United States score came in the 90th minute on an own goal by Panama.
The Panamanian defenders were tired and forced to chase the ball in the final 25 minutes, and they were no match for Johnson's elegant speed and smart positioning.
'Eddie would be the first to tell you he benefited from his teammates these last two games,' Arena said. 'It's not like he carried the whole load himself. But there's a lot to be said for getting in goal-scoring position and sticking the ball in the back of the net.'
The United States has forged maturity out of the depression of losing all three games at the 1998 World Cup and the elation of reaching the quarterfinals in 2002. It is a team with an encouraging mix of youth and experience, one that has learned to play with great resolve, losing only once in 14 matches this year.
And now it is only one round away from a fifth consecutive appearance in the World Cup.
'If you're going to go in a lab and plan how to do it,' Arena said, 'this is how.'
SOCCER",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"DRUG CASE FIGURE SAYS HE IS GUILTY
LEAD: In an action that might help strengthen the Government's case against Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, a Panamanian jet pilot pleaded guilty today to charges that he transported hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal drug proceeds from Florida to Panama.
In an action that might help strengthen the Government's case against Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, a Panamanian jet pilot pleaded guilty today to charges that he transported hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal drug proceeds from Florida to Panama.
The pilot, Eduardo Pardo, 44 years old, is the first to admit wrongdoing among five co-defendants in the drug trafficking case against the deposed Panamanian leader. Mr. Pardo is to be sentenced April 25.
In Federal District Court, Mr. Pardo, who was captured by United States troops and Drug Enforcement Administration agents soon after the American invasion of Panama in December, assured Judge William M. Hoeveler in Spanish that his decision to concede guilt had not grown out of a plea-bargaining agreement with the United States Attorney's office here. Testimony Against Noriega?  But since Mr. Pardo automatically waived his Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination with his guilty plea, it is considered all but certain that prosecutors will seek to compel him to testify against the general and some other co-defendants.
The real question is whether Mr. Pardo has information that can shed new light on the links between the general, the other defendants and the drug operations in Medellin, Colombia.
Mr. Pardo's court-appointed lawyer, William A. Meadows Jr., a former United States Attorney, said he did not know whether his client had such information or if he would testify.
The chief prosecutor, Assistant United States Attorney Michael P. Sullivan, said Mr. Pardo had regularly received his orders to transport money from Floyd Carleton Cacerez, who has been identified as one of General Noriega's personal pilots.
Other Lawyers Discount Move
Mr. Pardo, a former captain in General Noriega's minuscule air force, was said to have been later employed as a pilot for Inair Airlines, a Panamanian air-freight company implicated in cocaine shipments. Prosecutors suggested that his real employers were the Colombians and General Noriega.
Lawyers for the other defendants characterized Mr. Pardo's plea as a practical decision by a low-level figure that would have little effect on their clients' prospects for acquittal. 'I don't think it affects our case in any way, shape or form,' the chief Noriega lawyer, Frank A. Rubino, said outside the courtroom, where he had watched the morning's proceedings as a spectator. 'If Mr. Pardo tells the truth, he can't hurt us.'
The prosecutor told Judge Hoeveler that in February 1983, Mr. Pardo flew from Executive Airport at Fort Lauderdale to Panama carrying $685,000 in cash, which the prosecutor said Mr. Pardo knew was the 'proceeds of narcotics trafficking by Colombians in South Florida.' Mr. Sullivan said the money was used to buy a Lear jet and outfit it with compartments to carry large amounts of cash.
Facing Up to 5 Years
Three months later, the prosecutor told the judge, Mr. Pardo and a co-pilot, Daniel Miranda, used the Lear jet to carry $800,000 of the drug ring's money from Fort Lauderdale to Panama.
Michael O'Kane, a lawyer for Mr. Miranda, said the plea of guilty 'doesn't mean anything at all to my client, who I can say categorically did not know that there was $800,000 aboard that plane.'
Mr. Pardo faces as much as five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. But officials said there was a good chance that he would spend only a year to a year and a half behind bars.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"BUSH AND REAGAN SEEM TO DISAGREE ON NORIEGA TALKS
LEAD: President Reagan and Vice President Bush seem to have agreed to disagree on how to deal with Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, and aides to both men say further disputes between them are likely as the political campaign accelerates.
President Reagan and Vice President Bush seem to have agreed to disagree on how to deal with Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, and aides to both men say further disputes between them are likely as the political campaign accelerates.
The White House today defended the Administration's negotiations aimed at ousting the Panamanian leader. But aides to the Vice President said he was trying to distance himself from the Administration's policy.
While Mr. Bush's associates said he opposed any deal with General Noriega, who faces American criminal charges of drug-running, it is not clear that the Vice President has ever given that advice directly to Mr. Reagan or attempted to dissuade him from pursuing the negotiations. What is clear is concern in the Bush campaign over polls showing that he trails Michael S. Dukakis and that the public sees the Democrats as handling the drug issue better than the Republicans. Conflicting Reports on Talks
Behind the political calculations today lay conflicting reports here that the negotiations with General Noriega, which might result in the dropping of the criminal charges against him, were either on the verge of completion or on the verge of failure.
The idea that Mr. Bush differs with Mr. Reagan on the issue arose from a remark in a speech in Los Angeles on Wednesday. 'Drug dealers are domestic terrorists, killing kids and cops, and they should be treated as such,' Mr. Bush said. 'I won't bargain with terrorists, and I won't bargain with drug dealers either, whether they're on U.S. or foreign soil.'
Mr. Bush did not mention General Noriega and would not elaborate, but both his aides and White House officials later cited the comment as a real break over negotiating with General Noriega. And today, Bush aides said, the Vice President continued to make his views known at the White House. Reagan Sees Misimpression
The negotiations have indeed been the subject of genuine dispute within the Administration, a fight that one official described as 'monumental.'
Today Mr. Reagan did not make an issue of the Vice President's remarks about negotiating with drug dealers and the apparent disagreement.
'I can see why the Vice President said what he said,' Mr. Reagan said in an interview with foreign journalists, 'because the impression has been given, based not on information from us, but based on rumors and news leaks and so forth, that we are in negotiations somehow with a participant in their drug trade and all.'
Mr. Reagan insisted that the talks with General Noriega had nothing to do with the drug trade. 'Our goal, what we're trying to achieve, is the restoration of democracy in Panama,' he said. 'This Is Hardball'
At one point today, Administration officials were expected to make an announcement about the negotiations, but officials differed about the content of that message.
Some Administration officials said the State Department would announce that a deal with the general had fallen through. Later, however, the same officials said the negotiations were continuing after Mr. Reagan and Secretary of State George P. Shultz decided that further talks would be worthwhile.
'It was going to fall apart, but now negotiations continue,' one Administration official said. 'This is hardball.'
Assistant Attorney General Charles J. Cooper, head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and one of the closest aides of Attorney General Edwin Meese 3rd, was in Panama secretly to aid in the discussions. But he returned to Washington in the last two days for additional consultations with Mr. Meese and State Department officials over the final terms, according to Administration officials. Question of Credibility
One official said that those inside the Administration who were critical of the negotiations include Treasury Secretary James A. Baker 3d, senior Justice Department officials and key political advisers within the White House.
The official said Mr. Bush believes that the negotiations are damaging his credibility and election prospects and that he opposes the negotiations on substantive as well as political grounds.
'George Bush can't make a speech these days with any credibility about drugs if we're dealing with the drug kingpin of the world,' said one senior Bush aide, The Vice President was named by Mr. Reagan in 1982 to head a Federal task force to coordinate efforts against the flow of drugs into South Florida, a role that was later expanded to cover the nation as a whole.
Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, insisted today that the disagreement was both normal and amicable and was causing no hard feelings in the White House.
Addressing the White House News Photographers' Association annual awards dinner tonight, President Reagan said he hoped Mr. Bush would be elected, because he would make an excellent President. Mr. Reagan then showed a slide depicting himself and his wife in an attitude of shock and horror, and the President said, 'Here Nancy and I are listening to one of his speeches.' Everyone laughed.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Fitzwater said of Mr. Bush: 'We will expect him to speak out in any number of issues. And we expect many of his ideas for future activities to be different from what we have been doing here in the past.'
As Peter Teeley, a spokesman for Mr. Bush, put it, 'I think this is an inevitable part of the 1988 campaign.' Playing Both Sides
Bush aides appeared to want to have it both ways. They told reporters that Mr. Bush's remarks amounted to a declaration of independence, while at the same time contending that the Vice President was merely stating his own views and was not directly criticizing the President.
Mr. Bush chose the Noriega issue to spell out his views in part because he had wide political cover. The Senate, including most Republicans, voted overwhelmingly this week for a resolution opposing the negotiations with General Noriega. In addition, the timing was right, because Mr. Bush had finally received the President's endorement and was the certain Presidential nominee of the party. Worry Over the Polls
Most importantly, recent public opinion polls had shown a sharp shift toward the Democrats, and Bush advisers decided that they had to act quickly. 'All of them are in shock,' said a Republican strategist with close ties to the White House. 'We could lose Senate seats, we could lose House seats. This Dukakis thing is starting to grab hold, and we've got a problem.'
Bush aides were at the White House this morning, working out a common public relations strategy for the day, and Mr. Fitzwater repeatedly declined to criticize the Vice President's remarks.
'If you want to drive a wedge between the White House and the Vice President, forget it,' he told reporters.
But despite his words significant disagreements continued to trouble the Administration policy toward Panama.
Foreign policy and national security officials, whose primary aim is to dislodge General Noriega, have argued that using the criminal indictments as leverage against him is a reasonable and defensible policy. Comparison to Marcos
One senior White House official compared the campaign against General Noriega to the successful effort to oust President Ferdinand Marcos from power in the Philippines. He described both leaders as 'pretty loathsome individuals' and noted that Mr. Marcos was allowed to leave his country and take up residence in Hawaii.
'In the next month, if Noriega moves to Switzerland, and democracy is restored to Panama, I don't think it will be viewed as a negative,' the official said.'
Law-enforcement officials have opposed dropping the indictments, on the ground that it would send a bad signal about the Administration's determination to prosecute drug dealers. Political advisers in the White House see the plan to drop the indictments as a public relations disaster and point to the overwhelming vote against the plan on Capitol Hill.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Modern Communications Muddy Rights of Criminal Defendants
While the sanctity of a defendant's relationship with his lawyer is well established, telephones and electronics have confused the issue in modern times.
In the drug trafficking case against Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, his lawyer, Frank A. Rubino, asserts that the Federal authorities improperly tape-recorded telephone conversations between the general and his lawyers. Mr. Rubino said Cable News Network told him it had obtained seven tapes of the general's telephone conversations from someone at the Federal Metropolitan Correctional Center near Miami.
Mr Rubino said at least one tape involved members of his firm and he called this ""a horrendous violation"" of the general's constitutional rights. The lawyer said he would seek to have the entire case dismissed.
But interviews yesterday with legal experts and with officials of the Federal Bureau of Prisons indicated that such claims might be very difficult to prove. For one thing, Federal prison regulations require all inmates to sign a bilingual form acknowledging that all telephones open to inmates are monitored.  'Very Hard to Prove'
For another, even in cases where Government informants sat in on lawyer-defendant meetings and then reported back to prosecutors, higher courts have required the defense to prove that its case was hurt or that prosecutors were aided by the information.
""This is going to be very hard to prove,"" said Prof. Yale Kamisar of the University of Michigan Law School, an expert on legal rights. ""Higher courts are very reluctant to dismiss a whole case.""
A criminal defendant's ability to confer with his lawyer free of interference is based on the Sixth Amendment providing the accused with counsel. In addition, constitutional rules provide that once legal proceedings like an indictment are under way, the government ought to have its case in order and allow the defense to prepare its response without interference.
Although over the years many defense lawyers have said that their conversations with clients on telephones or in visiting rooms were taped, few cases appear in legal literature or in higher court decisions. Experts believe prosecutors drop most such cases when the defense has merit. Court's Standard of Injury
Professor Kamisar cited a 1984 drug trafficking case in Boston, United States v. Mastroianni, in which a co-defendant attended a meeting with several defendants and their lawyers, The co-defendant then reported on the proceedings to the prosecution. After considerable investigation the trial judge ruled, and the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed, that the mere attendance and reporting was insufficient to dismiss the case.
The defense, the courts said, must show ""a realistic possibility of injury"" or ""a benefit to the state"" from the Government's intrusion. Such was not the case, the judges said, because the Government already knew all the information passed on.
To protect against potential claims by defendants, a number of Federal regulations have been instituted over the years, said Greg Bogdan, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons, which oversees the 58,500 inmates in the country's 72 Federal prisons. These include five Metropolitan Detention Centers, in New York City, San Diego, Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami, where accused are held near courthouses during their legal proceedings.
Although he has special quarters, General Noriega is being held in the Miami center along with 1,233 other Federal prisoners. Upon entry, all prisoners must sign a form in English and Spanish acknowledging they have been told that all phone conversations are monitored unless they involve a defense lawyer. This is to prevent plans for an escape or new crimes, Mr. Bogdan said.  Rules Apply to All Prisoners
Bilingual signs are by every phone, the spokesman said, warning of the tape recording. If a prisoner tells the person making the call for him that it is to his lawyer, standard procedure requires the guard to notify the monitor not to tape the next outgoing call. Once the parties are connected, the spokesman said, the monitor hangs up without taping.
Mr. Bogdan said the same phone rules apply to all Federal prisoners. They may not receive incoming calls, although lawyers known to prison authorities may send phone messages to have their clients call them.
Mr. Bogdan said the only limits placed on outgoing calls, which must be collect, are those imposed by limited facilities; at peak times in a crowded prison, for instance, all calls might be limited to 15 minutes, or a prisoner in maximum security might have to wait until a guard could bring a phone to a jack near his cell. If a prisoner used a phone to threaten someone outside, Mr. Bogdan said the prisoner's phone privileges might be restricted for some days.
Because of the volume, few conversations are monitored as they are in progress, though all tapes are screened later by a prison staff member, Mr. Bogdan said. Those appearing suspicious are referred to Federal investigators. Some criminal prosecutions have resulted such as when investigators deciphered the conversational codes used between imprisoned leaders of Chicago's El Rukns street gang directing colleagues on the outside in illegal activitiies.
Tapes are kept in the prison by the monitors for a period, typically 90 days, Mr. Bogdan said, and then reused. CNN has not disclosed the source of its tapes.
Additionally, all mail coming to prisoners is opened and read. At minimum- and medium-security prisons, outgoing mail is not scrutinized. At maximum-security prisons, it is.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"CNN Asks Judge to Ignore Its 1990 Report on Use of Noriega Tapes
Lawyers for CNN asked a Federal district judge today to disregard the network's newscasts and press releases four years ago that explained why it broadcast recorded telephone calls by Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega despite the judge's order not to do so.
The news reports and a statement issued by the network in November 1990 said the tapes were being made public because CNN had the right under the First Amendment. But in closing arguments in the network's trial on criminal contempt charges today, a lawyer for CNN, William B. Killian, said there was no intention of defy the judge, William M. Hoeveler, who is hearing the contempt case without a jury.
Judge Hoeveler said at the conclusion of arguments that he would not announce his verdict until he reviewed the evidence and read the legal citations. He also said the all-news network's lawyers had ""raised some very good points.""
Throughout the four-day trial as well as in today's closing arguments, CNN executives and lawyers have told the judge to ignore the network's own reporting in some instances. Those instances included introductory remarks made by an anchor, Bernard Shaw, as well as a live report by a network correspondent, John Zarrella, from the Federal courthouse here.
At one point Steven Korn, the chief counsel for CNN's parent company, the Turner Broadcasting System Inc., urged Judge Hoeveler to disregard the courthouse report, which said CNN was going to defy the judge by using the Noriega tapes.
""This is live on the fly,"" Mr. Korn said as he watched a videotape of the report, pointing to the ""live"" label in the corner of the screen. He called Mr. Zarrella's report an ""interpretation"" made by a nonlawyer.
Judge Hoeveler, who was preparing to preside over General Noriega's trial on drug charges in Federal District Court, had ordered CNN not to broadcast the tapes, which were recorded by Federal officials while the former Panamanian leader was being held in the Metropolitan Correction Center in Miami. The general was later convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison, which he is serving while appealing the verdict.
The independent counsel appointed to prosecute the contempt case, Robert F. Dunlap, argued that CNN's true motive was indeed found in the reports and the press release. ""They told the public that CNN was about to violate the orders of this court,"" he said. ""They believed that the court's order was an unconstitutional prior restraint of their First Amendment rights.""
That original argument had been rejected by higher courts, including the Supreme Court, and this week CNN's lawyers presented another justification for using the recordings. They said the network believed that General Noriega and his lawyers had implicitly waived their confidentiality when the lead lawyer listened to the recordings while being interviewed by CNN.
""That's a completely unreasonable, tortured interpretation of the court's order,"" Mr. Dunlap said.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Fear Drove Rivera to Relocate His Family Here
Mariano Rivera happily remembers opening his back door as a boy in Puerto Caimito, Panama, and being 100 feet from the beach. When the tide was low, Rivera said, it looked as if the soft sand stretched forever. The beach was Rivera's favorite baseball field, an endless playground.
Rivera guessed that he played baseball 340 days a year. On the beach, on the dusty streets of the fishing village, on fields he and his friends cleared by uprooting shrubs with machetes, anywhere. Although he used cardboard for a glove, Rivera said it had been a wonderful experience and added, 'I wouldn't change one moment.'
Still, a few years ago, something was nudging Rivera away from his beloved Panama. It was fear.
Rivera, who makes $10 million a year to close games for the Yankees, worried that having his salary publicized could make his wife and children targets for a kidnapping.
Rivera quietly moved his immediate family to the United States full time after the 2000 season because he felt it would be safer. Rivera, who had two children at the time and has three now, consulted with the Yankees, who helped coordinate the relocation. Now the Riveras spend more than 11 months a year here or in Westchester County.
'I love Panama,' Rivera said. 'Everybody is there. We are family people. We like to be around our families. But for safety, I had to look out for my kids and my family.'
Rivera stopped fiddling with a weighted baseball in front of his locker on Monday morning, tilted his head back and discussed the unthinkable.
'All it takes is one crazy, maniac guy who wakes up that morning with my name in their mind,' Rivera continued. 'And I can't tolerate that.'
General Manager Brian Cashman declined to discuss Rivera's move or the Yankees' involvement in it. Even after Cashman was told that Rivera had mentioned the Yankees' involvement in his little-known decision, he refused to discuss it. In addition, Rivera was coy about what, if anything, had caused him to complete the move when he did.
The 35-year-old Rivera, who has been married to his wife, Clara, for 13 years, has three sons.
'If I was here and was away from them for one week, I would worry,' said Rivera, referring to his wife and sons, Mariano Jr., 11, Jafet, 8, and Jaziel, 2. 'I couldn't do it.'
Kidnapping is not epidemic in Panama. But Tom Clayton, whose company, Clayton Consultants, specializes in helping people involved in kidnap-for-ransom incidents, said the Panamanian police told him five years ago about an increasing problem involving a neighboring country.
Colombia, which borders Panama, has more kidnapping cases than any country in the world, Clayton said. The Panamanian police reported that some of its richer citizens had been targets of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a leftist guerrilla group known by its Spanish acronym of FARC.
'The FARC has crossed the border into southern Panama and has been kidnapping wealthy Panamanians for the past few years,' Clayton said. 'In general, I'd estimate kidnaps in Panama aren't a big problem. But if I had $10 million a year income, I don't think I'd be there, either.'
Maura Villarreal, the mother of Detroit Tigers reliever Ugueth Urbina, was abducted from her home in Venezuela last September and held hostage for six months. The police learned that Venezuelans had abducted Villarreal and sold her to Colombians.
During the ordeal, Urbina received several calls on his cellphone from the Colombians, who demanded $6 million in ransom. The police rescued Villarreal last month from a drug-traffickers den in the Venezuelan jungle.
'It's not like the movies,' Urbina said after she returned home. 'This is real life.'
Life was simpler when Rivera was a skinny boy who loved baseball yet had no dreams of playing professionally. If he had not developed into one of the premier closers in the game, he said, he would have avoided becoming a fisherman like his father. A fishing boat Rivera was in capsized when he was 18.
Rivera speculated that he would have become a mechanic or a minister, and he would have been just as content as he is now.
Panama is not Rivera's residence anymore, but he gushed about it throughout a 45-minute conversation. 'I can't stay away from Panama,' he said. 'It's always with me.'
But Rivera has been there only once in the past year, to attend the funeral for his wife's cousins Victor Darío Avila and his son, Victor Leonel Avila, who died in a pool accident at Rivera's home in Puerto Caimito.
Rivera attended the funeral on the morning of Oct. 12, traveled 2,255 miles in the afternoon and saved the opener of the American League Championship Series against the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium that night.
'That was all God there,' Rivera said Monday. 'I don't know how else I did it.'
Rivera remembered the day, calling the funeral joyous because it celebrated the lives of his wife's cousins. As devastating as the deaths were, he said, the family believed that the father and son were together with the Lord, so that lessened the pain.
Alexander Cubilla, who investigated the deaths, said Avila and his son died because the water in the pool had been electrified to prevent dogs from entering it. Maity Alvarez de Correa, a lawyer for the Rivera family, said that the wires surrounded the pool, but that the pool itself was not electrified.
'The investigation is officially closed,' Correa said in Spanish during a telephone interview. 'It was ruled an accident. It was obvious that it was an accident since the beginning. There was no doubt.'
Rivera lamented how some people tried to blame him for the accident. The two-story colonial villa surrounded by a six-foot wall is for sale. The Riveras do not plan to live there again.
'We can't go back there,' Rivera said. 'Not with those memories.'
For the first time last December, Rivera was not in Panama for Christmas. Instead, he flew 40 of his and Clara's relatives to New York for the holidays. Rivera said everyone stayed at his house, so some slept on couches and on the floor.
The crowded scene reminded Rivera of 'how we used to live' in Panama, and he embraced every second of the visit. Rivera said he, Clara and their children cry for hours when they have to say goodbye to their family, and those tears flowed again when they parted two months ago.
Rivera, a boy who grew up playing baseball on the beach in Panama and a man who still becomes wistful talking about it, said he would not retire there.
Rivera smiled when he was asked to imagine being 65 and fishing where his father had fished, but he was uncertain about the potentially picturesque scene. As much as things pull Rivera back to Panama, some things keep him away. He will never leave there. He just might not stay.
'I will always have a place there,' Rivera said. 'But live there? I don't know. Maybe I'll be in both places. Maybe I'll do that.'
BASEBALL",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Noriega Is Transferred To Cell in U.S. Prison
LEAD: Manuel Antonio Noriega, the fallen Panamanian leader, was transferred from the Federal courthouse to a Federal prison south of Miami tonight, the warden said.
Manuel Antonio Noriega, the fallen Panamanian leader, was transferred from the Federal courthouse to a Federal prison south of Miami tonight, the warden said.
General Noriega, who faces drug charges, has been held in an underground detention unit at the courthouse in downtown Miami since being brought to the United States on Jan. 4 following the United States invasion of his country.
General Noriega was admitted to the prison shortly after 7 P.M., said Stephen Pontesso, the warden of the medium-security Metropolitan Correctional Center, 25 miles south of here. Mr. Pontesso refused to give details of Noriega's quarters, describing it only as a cell.
But an official who spoke only on the condition he not be identified said General Noriega was not placed in the general prison population.
Round-the-clock construction at the prison had generated rumors that General Noriega, who is scheduled to go to trial on 12 drug-trafficking charges on March 5, would be sent there.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Defense Is Likely to Portray Noriega as Foe of Drug Ring
After three months of testimony from more than 40 witnesses, Federal prosecutors are expected to rest their case against Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega early next week. Lawyers for the deposed Panamanian leader will then break a long silence and are likely to argue that their client was a victim and opponent of the Medellin drug cartel, not an ally or accomplice.
When General Noriega's trial on cocaine trafficking and racketeering charges began in mid-September, the defense lawyer, Frank A. Rubino, elected not to make an opening statement. Nevertheless, remarks made by Mr. Rubino that are on file in court records provide glimpses of some of the arguments that he is expected to make in the weeks to come.
One of Mr. Rubino's strategies, the court documents indicate, is to argue that unscrupulous people in the pay of the cartel, based in Medellin, Colombia, duped the United States and General Noriega. Mr. Rubino is expected to say that the Panamanian leader was actually a partner with the United States in covert operations to supply arms to the Nicaraguan contras, or rebels, who sought to overthrow the Sandinista Government.
""Our theory is very simply a piggyback theory,"" Mr. Rubino said in one such document. ""Certain contra individuals, certain drug pilots, took advantage of an arms pipeline, not with the sanction of the United States."" That position would represent a shift from arguments that Mr. Rubino made in the early stages of the case. Courtroom Conferences
""The Government is trying to show that the general allowed a haven for drug dealings in and out,"" Mr. Rubino also said. ""I can show, 'No, this was not true, but rather, it was to assist the United States Government to assist the contras.' ""
Mr. Rubino's remarks were made in courtroom conferences with Federal District Judge William M. Hoeveler and prosecution lawyers in October and November held out of the hearing of the jurors and spectators. These informal conversations on rules of law and evidence, known as ""sidebars,"" are transcribed by the court reporter and become part of the public record, although their contents remain unknown to the jurors.
Among the witnesses to whom Mr. Rubino and his associate, Jon May, have issued subpoenas are Oliver L. North, the former National Security Council aide who ran contra supply operations for the Reagan Administration, and Lewis Tambs, a former United States Ambassador to Costa Rica. Both are expected to be hostile witnesses, and Mr. Rubino's area of questioning is likely to be limited by rulings Judge Hoeveler has already made.
In the 18 months of hearings that preceded the Noriega trial, Mr. Rubino and Mr. May indicated several times that they were prepared to argue that while General Noriega may have permitted drugs and arms to be shipped through Panama, he did so at the behest of the United States Government.
It is now clear that the Noriega defense team plans to argue that there was no official American connivance with any drug-smuggling scheme. That was demonstrated by the lawyers' reaction to testimony last month by Carlos Lehder Rivas, a founder of the Medellin cocaine cartel who is now serving a life sentence in a Federal prison.
At one point Mr. Lehder testified that American officials had approached him with a proposal that would have allowed him to ship cocaine to the United States if he in turn would assist the Reagan Administration in supplying weapons to the contras. The defense, however, told Judge Hoeveler that it did not plan to make use of Mr. Lehder's claim.
""This is not our pipeline theory,"" said Mr. May, referring to Mr. Lehder's testimony. ""It has never been our position before the court that the United States knowingly permitted cocaine to come into the United States. That's his assertion. Our position has been that people took advantage of an arms pipeline.""
In another conversation with Judge Hoeveler, Mr. May said: ""We will make it very clear we are not contending that Noriega worked with the C.I.A. to import drugs into the United States. That is not our defense."" Contras Likely to Be Blamed
From the court transcripts, it appears that Mr. Rubino intends to pin responsibility for some of the drug flights on some of General Noriega's former associates, like the pilot Floyd Carlton Caceres, who testified earlier in the trial that he smuggled drugs and weapons with the general's knowledge and approval. But it seems likely Mr. Rubino will assign a large part of the blame to the contras.
""Just because you are a contra doesn't mean you cannot smuggle drugs,"" Mr. Rubino said in one conference. ""We allege they did.""
In fact, Mr. Rubino said he would regard some of the contra leaders and their associates as unindicted co-conspirators in the indictment against his client. ""I have a list of names, not many, about four or five,"" he said.
The only name he specifically mentioned was that of Mario Calero, who was in charge of supply operations for the contras. In a telephone interview last month Adolfo Calero, brother of Mario Calero and the former political chief of the contras, denied that anti-Sandinista forces were ever involved in drug-trafficking operations. Laundering vs. Banking
General Noriega has also been charged with money laundering, and several witnesses have already testified that the Medellin cartel paid him a percentage of their earnings for the right to deposit their drug profits in Panamanian banks. But Mr. Rubino said he could make the argument that his client was merely seeking to strengthen his country's banking system, not to flout American law.
""I'm not trying to get into an esoteric discussion, but is it a crime against the United States for a sovereign nation to allow the deposit of money into their banks?"" he asked. ""Say it was earned illegally. That doesn't measure up to the standard of laundering.""
To buttress his argument, Mr. Rubino seems ready to acknowledge that General Noriega accepted payoffs for favors and deals. But he also seems ready to argue that such behavior was customary in Panama and that the payments the general accepted had nothing to do with drug trafficking.
""The leader, be it the military leader or the leader of the entire nation of Panama, if you will, accepts a gratuity, at the worst a bribe, if you want to call it that,"" he said. ""How does that rise to the level of a crime against the United States?""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Banker Tells How Noriega Used B.C.C.I. Account
Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega and his family deposited at least $23 million into several secret numbered accounts at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, and then shifted the money from country to country to keep their mounting personal wealth hidden, a former banker for the deposed Panamanian leader testified today.
The banker, Amjad Awan, a 44-year-old Pakistani who ran the Panama branch of B.C.C.I. in the early 1980's, said General Noriega made individual cash deposits as large as $3.4 million into four secret accounts he maintained for personal use. Beginning with an initial deposit of $100,000 in January 1982, General Noriega made large deposits ""every two or three months"" until early in 1988, when he was indicted by two grand juries in Florida on charges of cocaine trafficking, racketeering and money laundering.
Sometime in the middle of 1983, Mr. Awan said, the general asked that his accounts be moved from Panama to B.C.C.I. branches in London. ""We thought we would maintain greater confidentiality in London,"" Mr. Awan said.
Mr. Awan, who continued to oversee the general's finances after he was transferred by B.C.C.I. to Washington and Miami, also said that in September 1984 the bank agreed to lend $400,000 to the general to help him buy an apartment in Paris. The loan was paid off in less than six months, mostly by the interest accruing in the general's four main accounts at B.C.C.I., he said.
As a colonel in the Panamanian armed forces in the early 1980's, General Noriega would have earned a salary of about $30,000 a year. Even after he became commander in chief of the Panama Defense Forces in August 1983, he would have been paid an official annual salary of about $50,000.
In questioning Mr. Awan, who is serving a 12-year sentence in a Federal prison for money laundering, Assistant United States Attorney Michael P. Sullivan did not try to link General Noriega's wealth to the cocaine trafficking and money laundering payoffs that witnesses in the trial have said they paid to him. In fact, the jury was provided with no explanation of how General Noriega got the money.
Frank Rubino, the general's chief counsel, suggested in court papers filed before the trial started in September that General Noriega had been paid at least $10 million by United States intelligence agencies and that some of the money found its way into his personal accounts.
After that indictment was handed down in February 1988, Mr. Awan said, General Noriega telephoned him and asked that the British accounts be closed and that the deposits, which at that time amounted to $19.3 million, be transferred back to Panama. Mr. Awan said he convinced General Noriega that he would be better off moving the money to the branch in Luxembourg because that country ""had more banking secrecy"" than Britain.
But six months later, General Noriega and his wife, Felicidad Sieiro de Noriega, moved all their B.C.C.I assets, a total of $23 million, to banks in Zurich and Hamburg, Germany. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Awan said, the money was shifted to a commodities and stock exchange brokerage in London that was run by a friend of the banker, and then to yet another bank.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"CNN Allows Transcripts to Be Made Public
The Cable News Network will allow court transcripts of tape recordings of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega in prison to be made public, the network said today.
Judge William Hoeveler of Federal district court here ruled on Tuesday that the transcripts could be released Thursday, unless the network decided to take the case to a higher court.
""CNN has decided not to appeal,"" said Terry Bienstock, a lawyer for the network.
Sanford Bohrer, a lawyer for four news organizations that asked for the transcripts of General Noriega's conversations with members of his legal team, applauded the network's decision.
""I think it was the right decision because Judge Hoeveler's was the right decision,"" he said.
The news organizations seeking the recordings were The Miami Herald, The Associated Press, television station WPLG-TV of Miami, and the Gannett Company, which owns USA Today. They argued the public had a right to examine the content of tapes that set off a free-speech controversy that went to the Supreme Court.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Judge Examines Truthfulness of Noriega Witness
The judge in the drug and racketeering trial of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega privately questioned an important prosecution witness this afternoon to determine whether the witness lied when he testified against the deposed Panamanian leader last fall.
Prosecution and defense lawyers were excluded from the hearing in the chambers of Federal District Judge William M. Hoeveler. The session was ordered after the witness, Gabriel Taboada, a convicted Colombian drug dealer, refused to allow the truthfulness of his testimony to be discussed in open court.
The issue was first raised by the defense lawyer F. Lee Bailey, who had represented Mr. Taboada in a previous drug case, in a letter to prosecutors last month that was made public by the defense on Tuesday. Mr. Bailey and one of his law partners were also questioned in the same closed session. Requested by Witness
The judge agreed to a closed hearing after Mr. Taboada said he was only willing to discuss his dealings with Mr. Bailey if the conversation was held in private.
In a briefing with reporters after court had recessed, the judge promised a ruling on Mr. Taboada's testimony no later than Monday, adding that, at most, he might permit the defense to reopen its case and present evidence to discredit Mr. Taboada.
Testifying as a witness for the prosecution last October, Mr. Taboada said he was present when four leaders of the Medellin cocaine cartel gave General Noriega a $500,000 bribe. But in his letter and in testimony in court here, Mr. Bailey indicated that Mr. Taboada had earlier told him he had no information that could implicate General Noriega in any illegal activities.
General Noriega has been on trial since September on 10 counts of cocaine trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. If convicted on all the charges, he faces more than 140 years in prison.
On the witness stand today, Mr. Taboada initially said he was willing to waive his rights under the attorney-client privilege and allow Mr. Bailey to be questioned in open court. But Mr. Taboada changed his mind after further questioning by Judge Hoeveler and consultation with his current lawyer, John Mattes.
Asked by Judge Hoeveler in open court if he had at any time told Government agents of any dealings with General Noriega, Mr. Taboada said that ""around May 1990 I indicated to the F.B.I. that I knew General Noriega."" But Mr. Taboada made no statement about what he may have said in 1989 when Mr.Bailey represented him in a separate drug case.
Mr. Bailey told Judge Hoeveler that he also wanted to discuss the events that led him to write the letter on Feb. 8 to the lead prosecutor, Michael P. Sullivan. Mr. Bailey's request led the Government to seek permission to sit in on the part of the closed hearing that did not involve attorney-client privilege. Emerging from the session, Mr. Bailey said he would not publicly discuss details until the judge had cleared him to comment.
Mr. Bailey did tell reporters, however, that he had notified ""someone in the Government"" of a potential discrepancy in Mr. Taboada's testimony on Oct. 4. That was several days before the Colombian took the witness stand and said he saw General Noriega and cartel leaders together at a secret meeting in Medellin in the summer of 1983. It was unclear how Mr. Bailey had learned the details of Mr. Taboada's testimony before the witness took the stand. Possible Misconduct
Mr. Bailey's version of events strongly implies misconduct by the Government. ""I took immediate action, and nothing happened,"" Mr. Bailey said before the hearing had started. Judge Hoeveler said later that while Mr. Bailey had telephoned someone in the judge's office, the lawyer ""never spoke to anyone of authority.""
In today's open session, Judge Hoeveler also interviewed all 13 jurors and alternates to determine if they had heard of the arrest here on shoplifting charges of Felicidad Sieiro de Noriega, the general's wife. All but one juror said they knew of the incident, which dominated the headlines here today. All said they could still be impartial.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Jurors in Noriega's Trial Say They're Badly Split
The jurors in the Federal trial of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega told the judge today that serious differences had developed among them in three days of deliberations, and he responded to their request for guidance by telling them that a mistrial on some counts was an option.
That exchange between the jurors and Judge William M. Hoeveler came after the jury's foreman, Lester C. Spencer, sent a note asking the judge to answer two questions.
Mr. Spencer first asked whether all 12 jurors ""must agree on each count listed in this indictment"" in order to return a guilty verdict, and then wanted to know what options ""other than returning a verdict of not guilty"" the jury could turn to ""if we can't agree.""
Mr. Spencer later amplified his concerns during a jury conference with Judge Hoeveler in open court this afternoon. His fellow jurors, who during pauses earlier in the trial had often teased and conversed among themselves, sat quietly and somewhat uneasily as he sought guidance on how to end the divisions that he said had emerged among them.  'Debating and Debating'
""If we deliberate for days and days and days and we do not reach a unanimous verdict on a count,"" what course of action is the jury allowed to take? Mr. Spencer asked. ""We've been debating and debating.""
Judge Hoeveler told the jury that it was not obligated to find General Noriega guilty or not guilty on all the counts, or even on any of them. Any combination of guilty, not guilty and deadlock verdicts is acceptable under the law, he said.
""If you can't agree on any particular count,"" he said, ""you can't agree on it. We will declare a mistrial on that count.""
Later Judge Hoeveler went into the jury room to talk briefly with the jurors. When he returned, he said that Mr. Spencer had indicated that the jury had another question, which will be submitted in writing on Wednesday morning, and that at the jury's request he had also agreed to put his own supplementary instructions in writing.
General Noriega, who was deposed as Panama's military ruler by American forces that invaded his country in December 1989, is charged with 10 counts of cocaine trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. If convicted of all charges, he could be sentenced to as much as 160 years in prison.
Judge Hoeveler and the lawyers on both sides of the case appeared uneasy at the notion that the jury might be unable to come to a verdict on even one of the counts. With the jurors out of the courtroom, General Noriega's chief counsel, Frank A. Rubino, told the judge, ""I wouldn't encourage them to come back hung.""
Judge Hoeveler said, ""I would like to tell them they cannot"" return without verdicts, but there ""must be an honest answer"" to their questions.
Lawyers not connected with the Noriega case said Judge Hoeveler still had many ways available to him to nudge the jury toward verdicts. In particular, they mentioned the ""dynamite charge,"" a supplemental jury instruction that, in its mildest form, reminds the jurors of the importance of reaching a verdict and asks each of them to reconsider individual positions to make sure they are not unreasonable.  Retrial Is Possible
If the jury is unable to reach a verdict on a given charge, the Government will have the right to try General Noriega again on that count. But Judge Hoeveler will do everything within his power to avoid that outcome, said lawyers not connected to the case.
This afternoon's exchange followed a request in which the jurors sought permission to examine transcripts of testimony by 10 prosecution witnesses.  Usually jurors are expected to rely on their memory and notes in their deliberations. But in granting their request today, Judge Hoeveler made clear that he thought the complexity of the Noriega trial, which began in September and has generated about 17,000 pages of testimony, required an exception to that practice.
""After six months, we can't say, 'You're on your own, we're not going to help you,' "" the judge said. ""I think that is unacceptable.""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Noriega Defense Runs Into Security Roadblocks
Prosecutors and defense lawyers clashed repeatedly today at the trial of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, as the defense sought, for the most part unsuccessfully, to introduce evidence supporting General Noriega's contention that he regularly performed secret missions on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency and its allies.
Among the items rejected by Judge William M. Hoeveler was a photograph taken at a December 1983 meeting in Panama between General Noriega and George Bush, who was then Vice President. The prosecution also blocked efforts by General Noriega's lawyers to question a former miltary aide of General Noriega about ties between the Panamanian military and Israel and about American involvement in Panama's 1984 presidential election.
The restrictions are a major setback for General Noriega, who went on trial at the Federal Courthouse here earlier this month on 10 counts of cocaine trafficking, racketeering and money laundering and faces a sentence of up to 140 years if convicted on all the charges. The defense has not yet presented its case, but General Noriega's lawyer, Frank A. Rubino, argued in pretrial hearings that while General Noriega may have allowed his country to be used as a drug and arms trafficking center, he did so only at the behest of the United States Government.
The admissibility and relevance of matters relating to national security was an area of conflict throughout the 18 months of hearings and other judicial proceedings that preceded the trial of General Noriega, who surrendered after the American invasion of Panama on Dec. 20, 1989.
But it has become a central issue in the trial only in the testimony of Lieut. Col. Luis del Cid, a Panamanian military officer who describes himself as ""General Noriega's errand boy"" and bodyguard. Military Training by Israel
Under questioning by Assistant United States Attorney Myles Malman last week, Colonel del Cid spoke in detail of the close relationship between the Panamanian military and Israel, acknowledging that he and other Panamanian officers were sent to Israel for special training by Israeli military and security forces. On Monday, Colonel del Cid also identified Mike Harari, an Israeli intelligence operative, as one of General Noriega's intimates.
But when Mr. Rubino sought today to question Colonel del Cid about services the Panamanian military may have peformed for Israel, prosecutors objected, and Mr. Rubino changed direction after a conference with the judge.  Mr. Rubino also was forced to abandon questions about the training General Noriega received from the C.I.A.
Prosecutors also stopped Mr. Rubino from offering the photograph of Mr. Bush and General Noriega and from questioning Colonel del Cid about the Reagan Administration's backing of General Noriega's hand-picked presidential candidate in Panama's 1984 election. On both occasions, Judge Hoeveler and lawyers moved to the side of the courtroom farthest from the jury and spectators and turned on a ""white noise"" machine that masked their conversation.
Judge Hoeveler did not refer in the presence of the jury or the news media to any specific ruling he had made limiting the defense's ability to question the witness about espionage or other aspects of national security. But prosecutors cited a ruling the judge made before the morning session in their objections to some of Mr. Rubino's questions. And Mr. Rubino himself abandoned several areas of inquiry after conferring with the judge and prosecutors out of earshot of the jury.
By mid-afternoon, Mr. Rubino was visibly frustrated, shaking his head at some of Colonel del Cid's answers and firing off sarcastic one-liners that drew laughter from spectators and smiles from some jurors. That led Judge Hoeveler to admonish him not to ask certain questions and to avoid entire areas of inquiry.
""Please don't argue with me,"" Judge Hoeveler said to Mr. Rubino after the defense lawyer tried unsuccessfully to ask Colonel del Cid about Mr. Harari's links to Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. United States officials say Mr. Harari, who left Mossad in 1980, set himself up as an arms dealer in Central America, becoming one of General Noriega's most trusted advisers.
A committee representing reporters covering the trial today requested a copy of the transcripts of the conversations Judge Hoeveler has held with defense and prosecution outside the jury's hearing. Such discussions are part of the trial record, but court officials said the transcripts would have to be sent to Washington to be reviewed by Justice Department officials for classified national security material before their possible release.
In the pretrial hearings, some documents submitted to that process were released, often with heavy deletions, only after delays of up to five months.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"U.S. Praises 30-Nation Anti-Drug Effort
LEAD: Attorney General Dick Thornburgh today announced the completion of a campaign to seize drugs that involved agencies from 30 nations, including Panama, whose de facto leader is under indictment in the United States on charges of narcotics smuggling.
Attorney General Dick Thornburgh today announced the completion of a campaign to seize drugs that involved agencies from 30 nations, including Panama, whose de facto leader is under indictment in the United States on charges of narcotics smuggling.
At his first formal news conference as Attorney General, Mr. Thornburgh said the monthlong drug operation that ended Sunday was the first time so many nations had cooperated in battling drug-trafficking.
The Justice Department's figures did not show whether the 1,200 arrests, seizure of 11 tons of cocaine and destruction of 244 tons of marijuana in the operation were more significant than would have been expected under regular enforcement activities. Political Motive Denied
In response to questions about Panama, Mr. Thornburgh repeatedly denied that the value of the operation had been undermined by the involvement of the regime of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega. The Panamanian leader is under indictment in Miami on charges that he assisted in the transport of Colombian cocaine to the United States.
The Attorney General also rejected any suggestion that the news conference was intended to assist Vice President Bush in the Presidential campaign, in which Federal drug policy has been a central issue.
Asked what role politics had played in today's announcement, Mr. Thornburgh replied: 'None. Drug abuse and a crackdown on smuggling have been a continuing concern of this Administration, and this represents another interval along the way in making that effort more effective.'
'I don't think you're going to find anybody running up the flag of success today,' he added. 'But what we are suggesting is that this cooperative effort, which is a first of its kind, is an important milestone toward the achievement of that success.' European Nations Joined In
The project was conducted under the auspices of the International Drug Enforcement Conference, a five-year-old organization made up of the United States, Canada and Mexico and the other nations of Latin America. Agencies from most of the governments of Western Europe also participated.
In joint operations that began Aug. 1, the 30 nations intensified border searches, increased patrols of highways and rivers used for illicit drug shipments and stepped up raids on drug laboratories.
According to the Justice Department, the operation, which was directed primarily at smuggling operations in Central and South America, led to the demolition of 13 cocaine laboratories and seven clandestine airstrips and the seizure of nearly $4 million in cash.
In Florida, Arizona and Texas, about 100 National Guardsmen helped to inspect more than 6,000 vehicles, leading to the seizure of large quanitites of marijuana.
Perhaps because of the lack of data comparing the project's results to what might have been expected in routine efforts, Mr. Thornburgh and other officials played down the figures. 'Signal to Drug Kingpins'
'The statistics are not as important as the signal that has been sent to the drug kingpins,' the Attorney General said. 'Henceforth, they will increasingly face the combined fury of law-enforcement agencies of all nations whose people they victimize.'
Under repeated questioning about Panama, Mr. Thornburgh was placed in the awkward position of defending a program in which the United States cooperated with a nation whose leader, General Noriega, has been identified by the Justice Department as a major narcotics trafficker.
The Attorney General said the United States did not share intelligence information with General Noriega or his associates. 'There was no direct activity between the United States law-enforcement officials and any Panamanians,' he said.
Officials said Panama cooperated in border operations with Costa Rica. Panama Off Drug List
Mr. Thornburgh's announcement of the operation came as the State Department released a semiannual report to Congress on foreign narcotics corruption that, despite the indictment of General Noriega, did not list Panama as a nation whose senior officials are involved in narcotics trafficking. The State Department said it did not include Panama because the United States recognizes the ousted President, Eric Arturo Delvalle, as Panama's leader.
Representative Charles B. Rangel, a New York Democrat who is chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics, described the report's conclusions on Panama as sophistry. 'Everybody knows that Noriega is running the country,' Mr. Rangel said in a prepared statement. 'Why is our Government using this subterfuge?'
Some of harshest language in the report accused the Government of Laos of promoting drug trafficking 'as a matter of policy.' It said Laotian leaders were directly involved in the processing of opium and marijuana, including at least four Government-sanctioned heroin laboratories.
The State Department said no sanctions had been sought against Laos because it had assisted the United States in searching for the remains of American soldiers killed in the Vietnam War.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Letter on Witness's Veracity Rattles Noriega Trial
The trial of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega was thrown into confusion today after defense lawyers presented a letter that appeared to question the credibility of a witness who had told of seeing the former Panamanian leader accept a bribe from drug traffickers.
Mr. Noriega's defense team told Judge William M. Hoeveler that F. Lee Bailey, the criminal defense lawyer, had sent them a letter telling of a possible inconsistency between the testimony of the witness, Gabriel Taboada, last October and a statement made to him as Mr. Taboada's lawyer in another case.
Mr. Bailey is not involved in the trial of Mr. Noriega on 10 counts of cocaine trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. Testimony Considered Crucial
The testimony by Mr. Taboada, a convicted Colombian drug dealer, is considered crucial to the prosecution because he is the only sworn witness who has said that he actually watched as the general was given a bribe by the leaders of the Medellin drug cartel.
Other witnesses have testified about meetings between General Noriega and cartel leaders or have said they were involved as intermediaries in the payment of bribes to Mr. Noriega.
In the letter, which was made public in Federal District Court here today, Mr. Bailey said that at various times he had represented Mr. Taboada and General Noriega. Mr. Bailey said that when he asked Mr. Taboada, in connection with a 1989 drug case in South Carolina, if he knew anything about the general that would create ""an ethical conflict on my part,"" Mr. Taboada gave him assurances that led him to believe he did not.
But in October, Mr. Taboada, testifying as a prosecution witness, said he saw the four top leaders of the Medellin cocaine cartel hand a briefcase stuffed with cash to General Noriega. He said he presumed that the valise contained $500,000 based on what he had seen and heard during the incident, which took place in Colombia just before the general took control of the Panamanian military in August 1983.
Addressing lawyers in the case today, Judge Hoeveler called the disclosure ""strange and interesting."" Defense lawyers immediately asked that Mr. Bailey be called, and Judge Hoeveler agreed, setting a hearing for Wednesday. 'Surprised' After Testimony
Mr. Bailey wrote to prosecutors in the Noriega case in February and also told them in a telephone conversation of the apparent discrepancy between Mr. Taboada's testimony and what he recalled Mr. Taboada as telling him earlier.
""Bailey said he was surprised that Taboada had information about this Noriega meeting in Medellin,"" the chief prosecutor, Michael P. Sullivan, told Judge Hoeveler today. ""He said he didn't know anything about that.""
Mr. Bailey telephoned the defense on March 13, and a week later sent to defense lawyers a copy of the letter he had sent to the prosecutors, the chief defense counsel, Frank A. Rubino, told Judge Hoeveler today.
Mr. Sullivan said that the Government had investigated whether ""there might have been prior inconsistent statements,"" and that it had determined there was no evidence of discrepancies.
Judge Hoeveler also ruled today that defense lawyers would be allowed a limited rebuttal of the Government's rebuttal, which is in its third week. He said that Mr. Rubino would be allowed to call one witness to provide an alibi for General Noriega when a Government rebuttal witness said Mr. Noriega was meeting with a cartel leader in Panama early in May 1984.
The prosecution witness, Felipe Pena, who is a former chauffeur for the Noriega family, testified earlier this month that he drove the cartel leader, Julio Cesar Correa, to a meeting with General Noriega and other Panamanian military officials at one of the General's homes. Defense lawyers protested that if allowed they could present a witness to account for the general's whereabouts on the weekend that the meeting was said to have occurred.
Also today, the police said Felicidad Sieiro de Noriega, the general's wife, was arrested and jailed for several hours over the weekend on a charge of theft. A police spokesman said Mrs. Noriega, who has been attending her husband's trial, and a friend were detained outside a Burdine's department store in a Miami suburb by store security guards on Friday.
The police said the women were arrested after being seen removing buttons valued at $305 from clothing in the store. The women were released after each posted a $1,500 cash bond.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Noriega Co-defendant Sentenced to 20 Years
A co-defendant of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega was sentenced today to 20 years in prison for his part in a guns-for-cocaine scheme.
The 47-year-old defendant, William Saldarriaga, a Colombian businessman, was convicted in March of conspiring with General Noriega to trade M-16 rifles from Panama to Colombian drug dealers for cocaine, which they then planned to smuggle into the United States. The plan unraveled when the Colombian authorities seized the cocaine.
The case was part of a broader indictment against General Noriega that accuses the ousted Panamanian leader of providing a safe haven in Panama to Colombian drug traffickers in exchange for money.
Mr. Saldarriaga stood alone before Judge William Hoeveler today because a man convicted with him, Brian Davidow, 29, agreed on Thursday to cooperate with prosecutors in the Noriega case.
Mr. Davidow, who like Mr. Saldarriaga had faced up to 40 years in prison, agreed to cooperate as part of a plea bargain that involves drug charges in another case as well, said his lawyer, Richard Sharpstein.
Mr. Sharpstein said that under terms of the bargain, Mr. Davidow would plead guilty, probably next week, to one of two counts in the second case, which also involves cocaine smuggling. Mr. Sharpstein said he expected that Mr. Davidow would now be sentenced after General Noriega's trial, whgich is to begin on July 22. Mr. Davidow, who remains free on bond, is the fifth Noriega co-defendant to agree to cooperate with the Government. He could be called to testify at the general's trial.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Noriega Lawyer Aided a U.S. Inquiry on Judges
Federal prosecutors today disclosed a longtime bribery investigation of state judges in South Florida and said a former top lawyer for Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega had worked undercover for the Government during the inquiry.
The prosecutors said that as part of the investigation Federal and state law-enforcement agents had posed as criminal defendants and that payoffs had been made to get their bail lowered, have evidence suppressed and gain confidential information.
People familiar with the case said the lawyer for General Noriega, Raymond Takiff, had been involved in the corruption and had begun working for the Goverment as an informer even while still representing the general.
Claiming health problems, Mr. Takiff left General Noriega's defense team shortly after the United States invaded Panama at the end of 1989. The invasion occurred two years after the general, then Panama's ruler, had been indicted on drug-trafficking charges by two Federal grand juries, and it resulted in his surrender to American forces in his country in January 1990.
One official said today that in a sealed agreement on Nov. 20, 1989, Mr. Takiff admitted income tax violations and other illegal activities. This official indicated that Mr. Takiff's involvement in the wrongdoing included serving as an intermediary between defendants and corrupt judges, and added, ""It was all about money, which he was paying."" It is unclear whether Mr. Takiff continued in the role of intermediary later for law-enforcement agents posing as defendants.
Prosecutors and one of General Noriega's current lawyers said today that they believed that Mr. Takiff's assistance to the Government would have no effect on the general's trial, now scheduled for Sept. 3.
The judicial corruption inquiry was first disclosed this morning at a news conference in Miami, where United States Attorney Dexter W. Lehtinen and the State Attorney for Dade County, Janet Reno, said they were announcing it because court-authorized searches were being conducted today at various locations, including the homes and chambers of ""several"" state judges. No 'Privileged Information'
A statement issued by the two prosecutors said, ""The United States Government never sought and never obtained privileged information regarding any criminal defendants who have been Mr. Takiff's clients, including Gen. Manuel Noriega.""
The prosecutors said that the Federal judge hearing General Noriega's case, William M. Hoeveler, had been informed of Mr. Takiff's role since January 1990, when the general, in American custody, was brought to the United States.
One of General Noriega's lawyers, Jon May, said the news of Mr. Takiff's cooperation with the Government had come as a ""total shock"" to him and his co-counsel, Frank A. Rubino. But Mr. May said Mr. Takiff had had no involvement in the preparation of General Noriega's defense, and added, ""The Government has given us assurances that no attorney-client confidences have been violated by Mr. Takiff, and we have absolutely no reason to doubt that that's true.""
Court documents filed by Mr. Lehtinen this week identify four judges whose homes and chambers were being searched today. They are Roy T. Gelber, Harvey N. Shenberg, Phillip Davis and Alfonso C. Sepe. None could be reached for comment. Nor could David Goodhart, a Fort Lauderdale defense lawyer whose office and home were also being searched.
Telephone calls to Mr. Takiff's office seeking comment were not returned.
It is unclear how many judges in all are targets of the inquiry. Diane Cossin, a spokeswoman for Mr. Lehtinen, described the case only as ""enormous.""
Mr. Lehtinen and Ms. Reno said fictitious cases had been put before ""a number"" of state judges, with Federal and state agents posing as defendants. The two prosecutors said the Chief Justice of the Florida Supreme Court had been notified of the operation.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"4 Men Convicted in Drug Case
LEAD: Four men were convicted today in a major drug smuggling operation, but 16 other defendants in the 2 1/2-month-long trial were found not guilty.
Four men were convicted today in a major drug smuggling operation, but 16 other defendants in the 2 1/2-month-long trial were found not guilty.
The same investigation that led to the trial also led to the 1988 indictment of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega of Panama in Florida on drug charges.
The defendants, mostly boat captains and truck drivers, had been charged with conspiracy and importation and distribution of illegal drugs. Federal prosecutors said the defendants smuggled 48,000 pounds of marijuana into North Carolina in 1982 and 280,000 pounds into Louisiana in 1983.
The prosecution's star witness was Stephen M. Kalish, the leader of the ring, who was arrested in 1984. Mr. Kalish, who said his organization operated between the late 1970's and 1984, is now in prison after pleading guilty to a charge of continuing criminal enterprise in Tampa, Fla., in 1987.
The men convicted today were Jerry Hughey, of Austin, Tex.; Steve Ellender of Houma, La.; Jim Swope, of Texas, and Max Wade, no address available.
Mr. Kalish testified he had given General Noriega $300,000 for helping to arrange a Panamanian banking network to launder drug profits.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Haiti Is Called Growing Hub for Drug Smuggling
LEAD: Haiti has joined Panama as a growing drug-smuggling center, and members of its secret police are forcing their way into the distribution of crack in Florida, witnesses told a special Senate hearing today.
Haiti has joined Panama as a growing drug-smuggling center, and members of its secret police are forcing their way into the distribution of crack in Florida, witnesses told a special Senate hearing today.
The drug connection reaches high into the Haitian government, including Gen. Williams Regala, who is both the Minister of Interior and Defense, and his liaison officer to the Drug Enforcement Administration, two Haitians testified.
'Our intelligence indicates that major Colombian trafficking organizations are using Haiti as a base of operations,' Tom Cash, heads of the drug agency in Miami, told Senators Alfonse M. D'Amato, Republican of New York, and Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida. Compared to Panama
Haiti sits astride a natural drug-smuggling route from Colombia, providing planes and boats with a staging area for the last leg of the run into the Bahamas and Florida, Mr. Cash said.
Mr. D'Amato compared Haiti to Panama as a drug menace, and noted that the military of the two nations had close communications. 'Birds of a feather flock together,' he said. Mr. Cash said the investigation that led to the indictment in Miami of Col. Jean-Claude Paul of Haiti in March for allegedly flying cocaine into Florida was continuing, but refused to say if higher Haitian officials were implicated.
Other witnesses said the army took in the secret police, the Tonton Macoute, after the overthrow of Jean-Claude Duvalier, the Haitian ruler, in 1986, and that soldiers and secret police now trafficked drugs in both Haiti and the United States.
Roger Biamby, director of the Haitian American Community Association of Dade, testified that the Haitian liaison to the drug agency's new office in Port-au-Prince was a drug dealer who personally supervised cocaine loading operations on one freighter bound for the United States. Raid on Jail Cited
General Regala, Colonel Paul and other officers 'have created an effective drug-smuggling network in Haiti and the United States,' Mr. Biamby said.
After the testimony, Mr. D'Amato said, 'We must find out whether the people we are working with are the devils themselves.'
Fritz Pierre-Louis, a former lieutenant in the Haitian army who later defected, said he personally turned over cocaine confiscated in raids to Colonel Paul only to have it disappear. He estimated that 70 percent of the colonel's powerful Dessalines Barracks forces are involved in the trafficking.
Earlier this year, Colonel Paul raided an army jail to free some of his soldiers arrested for receiving cocaine at an airstrip, said Mr. Pierre-Louis.
'This incident indicates that Colonel Paul has, if not the support, at least the acquiescence of army headquarters in his drug operation,' he testified.
Michael Lanfersiek, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said the Haitian connection reached into street distribution in Florida.
He said that an informant stated that much of Haitian crack cocaine distribution in this country 'was being directed by corrupt military officers' and the Tonton Macoute.nfersiek said.
Haitian immigrants now control distribution of the potent cocaine derivative crack throughout South and Central Florida, he said.
Eduoard Piou, charge d'affaires of the Haitian Embassy in Washington, disputed the testimony, saying his country supported any effort to end drug trafficking.
He acknowledged that Haitian law did not allow Colonel Paul to be extradited to the United States, and said charges against him by a Miami Federal grand jury 'are under review' by his government.
After Colonel Paul was indicted in March, the Haitian government vowed to redouble its efforts to fight drug traffic.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Lawyers for Noriega to Seek His Release on Bail
LEAD: In a reversal of legal tactics, lawyers for Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega said today that they would argue that their client be freed on bail.
In a reversal of legal tactics, lawyers for Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega said today that they would argue that their client be freed on bail.
The move suggested growing combativeness on the part of the defense lawyers, who have insisted since the general's arraignment on drug trafficking charges on Jan. 4 that they had no plans to seek bail.
Steven Kollin, a lawyer for General Noriega, said in an interview today that the decision was a response to the prosecution's request for a bail hearing for the ousted Panamanian dictator. The hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 26 at the Federal courthouse here.
'The Government has opened up their Pandora's box in requesting that this hearing take place,' Mr. Kollin said. 'And we will do what aggressive defense attorneys do, and we will request that our client not be kept in pretrial detention. Now that they've made their decision, we will pull all stops.'
Federal officials said the prosecutors requested the hearing to assure that General Noriega had every legal opportunity to seek bail, and so that his defense lawyers could not later claim that their client was being wrongly held because he had not received a bail hearing.
The United States Attorney's Office here was closed today for the Federal holiday. Efforts to reach the office spokeswoman, Diane B. Cossin, were unavailing tonight; her home telephone number has been temporarily disconnected.
To deny bail, the prosecution has to argue that General Noriega would be a danger to the community and would be at risk of fleeing the country.
In an interview last week, Mr. Kollin said the defense would not immediately seek bail because he did not think a defendant as well known and well connected as General Noriega had much chance of getting it. Another consideration, he said at the time, was that by seeking bail the defense would be admitting that the court had jurisdiction in the case.
But today Mr. Kollin said that the lawyers had changed their minds and that 'it's possible' for General Noriega to win bail. He said the defense was still developing legal arguments as to why the general should get bail.
On Friday a Federal magistrate set bail at $1 million for a Noriega co-defendant, Daniel Miranda, who is charged with flying $800,000 in laundered drug money from Fort Lauderdale to Miami. Because of prosecutors' objections, however, the magistrate delayed Mr. Miranda's release pending another hearing.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"72 Tons of Marijuana Seized
LEAD: The Coast Guard has seized a Panamanian-registered ship with more than 72 tons of marijuana, after firing on it 600 miles from shore. Officials said the converted oil-supply ship Encounter Bay, which was towed into port here today, refused orders to stop on Friday. The cutter Boutwell, with permission from the Panamanian Embassy to board her, fired 60 rounds from machine guns, then threatened cannon fire before the crew surrendered.
The Coast Guard has seized a Panamanian-registered ship with more than 72 tons of marijuana, after firing on it 600 miles from shore. Officials said the converted oil-supply ship Encounter Bay, which was towed into port here today, refused orders to stop on Friday. The cutter Boutwell, with permission from the Panamanian Embassy to board her, fired 60 rounds from machine guns, then threatened cannon fire before the crew surrendered. The 18 crewmen, including three Americans, were held for a court appearance.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Judge Orders Release of Noriega Transcripts
A Federal district judge ruled today that his court's transcripts of tapes acquired by the Cable News Network containing prison conversations of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega should be made public.
But the judge, William M. Hoeveler, said he would not release the transcripts until Thursday, allowing CNN time to appeal his decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta.
Terry Bienstock, a CNN lawyer, said he did not know whether there would be an appeal.
Judge Hoeveler's ruling was a response to four news organizations that asked for access to the transcripts last week, saying the public had a right to know the factual basis of a case that had tested the constitutional limits of prior restraint.
In opposing the request, CNN had argued that release of the transcripts would be an ""intrusion into the news-gathering and news-editing process.""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Americans Are Showing Some Resolve
During World Cup qualifying, the United States men's soccer team has developed a characteristic that is both reassuring and maddening.
Early promise falls to missed opportunities. A second-half letdown leads to an opponent's goal. Then a furious recovery near the end salvages a tie on the road.
On Wednesday night, on a dimly lit and soggy field that essentially created a bass pond in front of Panama's goal in the second half, the United States fell behind, 1-0, in the 70th minute. Panama, the country that developed the hands of Roberto Duran and the arm of Mariano Rivera, appeared on the verge of scoring a great triumph with its collective feet.
The Panamanian forwards put great pressure on the Americans, who were routinely outplayed in the second half, even bullied at times, according to goalkeeper Kasey Keller.
But, fortunately for the Americans, resolve lately has helped to mask inconsistency.
In the 92nd minute, a long pass from Greg Vanney was played into the penalty area and was deflected to the feet of Landon Donovan, who attempted a shot in the watery mess, but instead the ball squibbed to Cobi Jones. He trapped the ball and slid it under the Panamanian goalkeeper from about eight yards, and the United States had stolen a 1-1 draw to remain undefeated in this semifinal qualifying round.
Last month in Jamaica, Brian Ching delivered another late goal, this one in the 89th minute, to retrieve a 1-1 tie for the Americans. Nine times this year, the United States delivered a goal after the 75th minute. Five times, the Americans won or tied a game with a goal after the 87th minute.
'Give the U.S. team credit for passing the character test,' Coach Bruce Arena said. But he was not entirely pleased, knowing they had three chances perhaps to put the game away in the first half, but could not score on a Clint Mathis breakaway, a corner kick that Ching skidded just beyond the goal and a chip pass from Mathis that Carlos Bocanegra struck weakly in front of the goal.
Still, the United States, ranked 10th in the world, is undefeated in its last 10 matches and is first in its group with a 1-0-2 record in this round of qualifying for the 2006 World Cup.
The Americans play next on Oct. 9 against El Salvador in San Salvador.
How to account for these late-game emotional rescues? Determination, depth, professional fitness and Arena's knack for pushing the right buttons. Jones and Ching were second-half substitutes who delivered huge goals.
'That's a credit to this team, that we are as deep as we are,' Keller said. 'As we go later, we can bring people on that can make a difference.'
Qualifying games on the road in the North American, Central American and Caribbean region -- invariably played in harsh conditions -- become difficult if early chances are missed, Donovan said. Except for Honduras, the United States has never won a qualifying match in Central America, going 0-5-6.
'That's why you play the whole game, not 89 minutes, not 87 minutes, not 90 minutes,' Donovan said. 'You play until it's done. And we don't give up.'
Jones, a veteran of 163 appearances who has been a reliable second-half presence during qualifying, said he found something in the national character about the way the United States has played lately.
'I think it stems from our society, a national attitude, just never say die,' Jones said. 'So we're a team that's never going to quit.'
Keller said that the Americans need to learn to sustain their aggressiveness on the road. Yet, they remain in an encouraging spot, atop the group with two of their final three games at home in the qualifying round.
'You draw games on the road and win at home and you qualify for the World Cup easily,' Keller said. 'So far, we're on schedule.'
SOCCER",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Pentagon to Aid the Press in Coverage of Combat
LEAD: Responding to criticism that it impeded news coverage of the invasion of Panama, the Pentagon said today that it would take steps to make it easier for the press to cover military operations.
Responding to criticism that it impeded news coverage of the invasion of Panama, the Pentagon said today that it would take steps to make it easier for the press to cover military operations.
Pete Williams, the chief spokesman for the Defense Department, said he was at fault for the failure to get the Pentagon's news media pool - the specially designated correspondents who report for the entire press corps - to Panama in time to cover the opening hours of the invasion last Dec. 20. He added that the department would try to insure that reporters are able to cover the start of any future conflicts.
At the same time Mr. Williams tried to insulate Defense Secretary Dick Cheney from blame, saying Mr. Cheney's decision to delay calling up the news media pool was correct under the circumstances.
The spokesman's assurances came after the release of a report by Fred S. Hoffman, a former deputy spokesman for the Defense Department. The report, which was commissioned by the department, faulted Secretary Cheney, Mr. Williams and some public affairs officials in Panama.
'Because of a secrecy-driven decision by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, the pool was called out too late to cover the decisive U.S. assaults in the brief war,' Mr. Hoffman said in his report. 'Military leaders played no part in shaping that decision.'
The Hoffman report outlined 17 recommendations, including a proposal that all war plans drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff have an annex 'spelling out measures to insure that the pool will move with the lead elements of U.S. forces and cover the earliest stages of operations.'
Suggestions to Be Considered
Mr. Williams said the recommendations would be considered, but did not say whether they would be adopted.
In response to a question, he said the Defense Department had not yet determined which Pentagon official would have the main responsiblity for developing plans for news media coverage of military operations. 'I'm responsible for reviewing the plans once I know about them,' Mr. Williams said, adding that the matter had to be worked out with the Joint Chiefs.
The spokesman also said that the Pentagon agreed in principle with a number of other recommendations by Mr. Hoffman, including a suggestion that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs order commanders to make resources like helicopters available to reporters so that they will have 'ready access to the earliest action.'
In addition, Mr. Williams said the Pentagon was in basic agreement with Mr. Hoffman's suggestion that the news media pool be periodically called up and sent on military exercises involving airborne and other units most likely to see combat.
Another suggestion with which the Pentagon agreed in principle, the spokesman said, was a proposal that the Defense Secretary issue a policy directive that the military give its full support to the pool reporters.
Mr. Hoffman's report said lower military officials in the Panama invasion sometimes refused to cooperate with the pool. He said reporters were initially denied access to a detention area for Panamanian prisoners and were barred from taking photographs of damaged helicopters or of coffins of American servicemen killed in action.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"The Noriega Case: Defense Strategy;   Noriega and Lawyers Meet for 2 Hours
LEAD: Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega today plotted strategy with defense lawyers amid questions about the future of the defense team itself.
Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega today plotted strategy with defense lawyers amid questions about the future of the defense team itself.
After conferring with General Noriega for more than two hours under heavy security in the courthouse here, the lawyers disclosed few details about the conversation. But one of the lawyers, Steven Kollin, said the defense would argue that the General was illegally brought to this country as a political prisoner after being pressured to surrender on Wednesday.
'The general became concerned genuinely about people, the papal nuncio, the nuns and the staff, and his own personal safety,' Mr. Kollin said. 'He had no choice but to surrender.'
'No Choice But Surrender'
Mr. Kollin said arguments over General Noriega's surrender were one of many legal motions the defense would make and which could delay the trial for months.
The lawyers would not say much about General Noriega's spirits, except to quell rumors that he was disoriented after his surrender Wednesday in Panama and his court appearance here Thursday, when he was formally charged in a drug trafficking case. 'I'd say he's tired,' Mr. Kollin said, 'but I wouldn't say he's bewildered by far.'
The other defense lawyer, Frank A. Rubino, added: 'His demeanor is fine. He's cheerful and relaxed.' The authorities said General Noriega had been isolated overnight in a cramped basement cell.
While the defense strategy remained uncertain, President Bush said in Washington today that he believed the 'case is strong' and that prosecutors would not negotiate a plea bargain with General Noriega.
As the first foreign leader who has been brought to this country for trial on drug-trafficking charges after being toppled by the United States military, General Noriega was the talk of this city. Possibly preparing to airlift the general out of state, large military helicopters swooped around Miami all day. Mayor Xavier Suarez suggested that the case would become something of a cottage industry, telling a radio reporter, 'Miami has a great stake in the outcome of this trial.'
Case Is Called Weak
General Noriega's lawyers insisted that the Government case was weak, and cited numerous legal courses they could pursue, including the argument that it was impossible for the general to get a fair trial in Miami.
But asked if such a deal was out of the question, David Runkel, the chief spokesman for the Justice Department, was not as absolute. He said, 'As in any case, if a defendant has something to say, we have an obligation to listen.'
Despite the legal options, the defense appeared to be in disarray. Neal R. Sonnett, a nationally known defense lawyer, removed himself from the case last week, citing disagreements with the other lawyers. Another lawyer, Raymond Takiff, suffered two recent heart attacks and is no longer active in the defense, Mr. Rubino said. That left Mr. Rubino and Mr. Kollin, who specialize in drug cases but are solo practitioners who, legal specialists say, could find themselves outnumbered by a team of a half-dozen Federal prosecutors.
'They'll be overwhelmed if they try to do it alone,' said Theodore Klein, a leading defense lawyer here and a past president of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. 'This is such a specialized area that I don't think they can handle it without the help of some top-notch attorneys with Federal experience.'
Roger I. Abrams, dean of the Nova University Shepard Broad Law Center in Fort Lauderdale, said he, like Mr. Sonnett, was concerned that the other defense lawyers were too outspoken to the press. 'I have no reason to doubt their competence in the courtroom,' said Mr. Abrams, a member of the Florida Bar's Standing Committee on Professionalism. 'I can question how they conduct themselves out of the courtroom.'
'An Ethical Obligation'
It was by no means clear today that General Noriega would retain his current lawyers. Mr. Sonnett, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said in an interview that he met with the general for an hour on Thursday.
'I thought I had an ethical obligation to talk to him face to face,' Mr. Sonnett said, 'and explained why I pulled out of the case. I did not go over to solicit the case.'
But Mr. Sonnett said he did not close the door on taking the case, which he described as 'at the pinnacle of cases involving new and important legal issues.' He also said, 'This is not a case that I find intimidating at all. I'd be delighted to defend it in court.'
Mr. Sonnett said he was also told today that representatives of General Noriega had approached Barry I. Slotnick, a New York lawyer best known for representing Bernhard Goetz, who went to prison after shooting four men he thought were going to rob him on the subway. Mr. Slotnick has in the past represented at least one defendant linked to General Noriega.
In an interview, Mr. Rubino said he believed that he and Mr. Kollin were capable of handling the case, though he did not rule out expanding the legal team. Despite his client's notoriety, he said, the case was in many ways similar to others he had handled.
'It's still basically a Federal criminal case,' Mr. Rubino said.
Prosecutors here remained tight-lipped about the case, and Mr. Runkel, the Justice spokesman, said Federal officials were 'reviewing the evidence, going over documents which may be subject to discovery, preparing our legal argument.'
Although General Noriega would face a trial here first, Federal authorities held open the possibility that he would also be taken to Tampa to be formally charged on a separate drug trafficking indictment. But Mr. Kollin said, 'We don't think they're going to move him in the immediate future.'
Since the defense lawyers have declined to seek bail at this time, it was not clear when the next court proceeding would occur. The defense lawyers have not explained why they did not seek bail, but Jose M. Quinon, a well-known defense lawyer here, suggested that such an action would be 'admitting that the court has jurisdiction' in the case.
As the legal maneuvering continued, a Federal magistrate here ordered Daniel Miranda, who is accused of being a pilot for General Noriega, to be held without bond in pretrial detention. Michael O'Kane, Mr. Miranda's lawyer, had argued that his client was not a 'risk of flight,' as prosecutors contended.
Mr. Miranda is accused of flying $800,000 in drug profits from Fort Lauderdale to Panama in 1983.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Two Noriega Assistants Seek Haven in Embassy
LEAD: Two of Manuel Antonio Noriega's top associates have taken refuge in the Peruvian Embassy, Panamanian government officials said, and today United States troops ringed the embassy grounds.
Two of Manuel Antonio Noriega's top associates have taken refuge in the Peruvian Embassy, Panamanian government officials said, and today United States troops ringed the embassy grounds.
The two are former Capt. Gonzalo (Chalo) Gonzalez, commander of the company that provided security for Noriega's headquarters, and former Lieut. Col. Luis (Paxpo) Cordoba, identified by General Noriega's foes as one of the men who interrogated and tortured prisoners of the administration.
Captain Gonzalez and Colonel Cordoba are considered the most-wanted men among former Noreiga officials sought by the United States and by Panama's new Security Forces since the United States ousted General Noriega.
THE U.S. AND PANAMA",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"NORIEGA IS LINKED TO DRUG FLIGHTS
In testimony that for the first time directly links Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega to the export of drugs to the United States, a Panamanian diplomat and airline owner said this week that he and the ousted military strongman of Panama shipped tons of cocaine to Florida as part of a lucrative business arrangement with the Medellin cartel.
The diplomat, Ricardo Bilonick, an American-educated lawyer who in August surrendered to Federal authorities and pleaded guilty to drug trafficking charges, said he and leaders of the Colombian ring jointly bought a small airline called Inair, which was used to fly cocaine shipments of 1,000 pounds or more from an airport in the Panamanian capital to Florida.
He agreed to the scheme, he said, only after being assured that ""we have the protection of Panama and Noriega.""
Shortly after Mr. Bilonick was called to the witness stand on Thursday, Assistant United States Attorney Myles Malman asked him if he had ever flown cocaine in conjunction with anyone who was in the courtroom. Mr. Bilonick then pointed to the defense table, where General Noriega sat, wearing a dark leather flight jacket and an expression of indifference.
""Yes, I did it with General Manuel Antonio Noriega,"" he replied. A Central Contention
Mr. Bilonick's testimony is essential to the prosecution's case because he is the first witness to link General Noriega directly to shipments of cocaine from Panama to the United States. That contention is central to the 10-count indictment on which the General, who surrendered to United States military forces after the American invasion of Panama in December 1989, is being tried here.
Previous witnesses have testified that the general approved and was paid for a variety of other activities that are part of the cocaine trade: the purchase of chemicals like ether and acetone that are used to refine the drug, the shipment of cocaine from Colombia to Panama and the disguising of drug profits. But without solid proof that General Noriega was also involved in shipping cocaine to the United States, it would be more difficult for the prosecution to obtain a conviction on at least some of the charges.
Mr. Bilonick is scheduled to return to the witness stand on Monday. According to transcripts of conferences between Federal District Judge William M. Hoeveler and lawyers in the case, he will testify that his airline made 19 drug flights to Miami and Fort Lauderdale, bringing at least 15 tons of cocaine into the United States over two years in the early 1980's.
Mr. Bilonick was an adviser to Gen. Omar Torrijos, the Panamanian leader who was killed in a plane crash in 1981, at the time the Panama Canal treaty was being negotiated with the United States. Mr. Bilonick was later appointed ""ambassador at large"" with special responsibilites for relations with the United States. He testified that he first came in contact with leaders of the Medellin cartel in August 1981. At a meeting with one of the leaders, Jorge Ochoa, Mr. Bilonick said, he was invited to be the group's Panamanian partner in a operation to conceal the source of money that eventually handled as much as $60 million a week.
In that first meeting, Mr. Bilonick recalled this week, Mr. Ochoa was told by an employee that one of his planes had just gone down in the Caribbean Sea with $1.5 million on board.
""He had no reaction,"" Mr. Bilonick said of Mr. Ochoa. ""He didn't even blink. He said, 'That's a nice shirt you're wearing. Did you buy it at Burdine's?' ""
When the employee replied that the shirt had indeed come from the Florida department store, Mr. Ochoa said, ""You'll have to get me a couple like that the next time you go up to Miami."" 'I Don't Need to Get Paid'
Mr. Bilonick said Mr. Ochoa later lent him $1.5 million to help buy Inair, but then transferred the debt to Pablo Escobar, head of another drug-smuggling group that is part of the cartel. When Mr. Bilonick went to Mr. Escobar with an offer of repayment, he was rebuffed and was told that the cartel wanted to use Inair to transport cocaine from Panama to the United States.
Mr. Bilonick recalled Mr. Escobar saying: ""I don't want to get paid. I don't need to get paid. We have an arrangement to work Panama with Noriega.""
In conversations with Mr. Ochoa and Mr. Escobar, Mr. Bilonick said he learned that the ring's leaders ""had struck a deal with Noriega"" late in 1981, when Mr. Ochoa's sister was kidnapped by Colombian guerrillas and General Noriega agreed to serve as a mediator in obtaining her freedom.
Mr. Bilonick said he was told that the cartel's agreement with General Noriega involved ""free landing, free passage, and free transshipment"" of Colombian aircraft and cocaine cargoes through Panama on their way to the United States. It also meant that ""payments had to be made"" on a regular basis to the general, who at the time was head of Panamanian military intelligence.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: The Independent; Perot Assails the President On Foreign and U.S. Issues
Ross Perot kicked off the only extensive trip of his campaign today with a blistering critique of President Bush, charging him with ignoring the savings and loan crisis, permitting the rise of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega and propping up President Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Mr. Perot had harsh words for Gov. Bill Clinton as well, ridiculing the notion that his leadership in Arkansas had prepared him for the White House. But he made Mr. Bush his primary target. And while Mr. Perot continued to assert that he would defy the polls and win the election Tuesday, he seemed equally interested in making sure that Mr. Bush did not. Among the concerns of the Clinton campaign is that Mr. Perot will siphon off enough of the ""change vote"" to allow Mr. Bush to win a narrow victory.
Mr. Perot made it clear that he was not amused by Mr. Bush's use of the word ""crazy"" this week to characterize Mr. Perot's accusations of a Republican plot to embarrass his daughter.
""George Bush is on the circuit all day, every day,"" Mr. Perot told about 8,000 people in the Sun Dome on the campus of the University of South Florida. ""Says if you vote for Perot you're wasting your vote. Now that's the same man that every time he opened his mouth two weeks ago said, 'I agree with Ross.' And that's the same man that was praising my leadership and character a month ago that's now telling you that I'm crazy and anybody that supports me is crazy, too. Point is, we've got a lot of crazies out there, hadn't we?"" 'Soaking Up PAC Money'
His listeners, almost universally attired in Perot T-shirts, stomped and roared in approval, as they did repeatedly throughout the hourlong speech.  Mr. Perot's main assault on Mr. Bush was long and rambling. But it made his point. He began by accusing Mr. Bush of knowing that the banking industry was in trouble while he was Vice President. ""You sat there doing nothing until after you had been elected President in 1988, soaking up every piece of PAC money you could get from those crooks,"" he said.
He continued by blaming Mr. Bush, while Vice President, for losing control of Mr. Noriega in Panama and then having ""to send down American troops to fight and die to take him out."" He also said the White House had spent ""billions of dollars in yours and mine hard earned money to create Saddam Hussein.""
""Now then, he's a good man and he's a decent man,"" Mr. Perot said of Mr. Bush, ""but all he knows is politics and he doesn't know how to create jobs or manage money, and those are our problems.""
Regarding Mr. Clinton, Mr. Perot asked: ""Have you heard Governor Clinton night after night on television tell you about that we can fix every problem in this country the way he fixed the problems in Arkansas? 'Now here's the way we did it in Arkansas. One, two, three, four, five.' And everybody says, 'Whoo, wow, right?' "" Look of Real Campaign
For the first time since he rejoined the race on Oct. 1, Mr. Perot's day had the look and feel of a real campaign. The sound and lighting at the rally were professional. Perot supporters found red, white and blue placards waiting on their chairs, along with tiny American flags.
There was no Lawrence Welk music, of course, but the Bill Norman group warmed up the crowd with some country, jazz and rock and roll. It played ""The Yellow Rose of Texas"" more than once, apparently unaware that Mr. Perot had been labeled ""The Yellow Ross of Texas"" after he withdrew from the race in July.
Mr. Perot, who has campaigned primarily by television, was trailed by what he likes to call ""a motor cavalcade"" of three press buses. His campaign arranged for a press plane for the first time. Reporters wore press credentials, produced by a Time magazine photographer, describing the trip as ""the two-minute drill tour,"" a reference to the football term used by Mr. Perot to describe his last-minute sprint to the goal line.
In perhaps the surest sign that he had arrived, Mr. Perot was heckled by an AIDS demonstrator, who interrupted him mid-speech with screams of ""What about AIDS?"" Mr. Perot took the opportunity to call for faster approval of experimental drugs by the Food and Drug Administration.
As with other recent speeches, Mr. Perot's address was only secondarily about the country's need to make the difficult choices needed to eliminate its indebtedness. Its main purpose was to decry the corruption of American government, and to present himself as the antidote to packaged politics. Favorite Anecdotes
Like any country politician worth his salt, Mr. Perot used favorite anecdotes like a newly sharpened Buck knife, particularly when describing preparations for Presidential debates.
""You got your stray dog that nobody's sure has ever been vaccinated,"" he said, referring to himself. ""Then we got the two registered dogs over here. And believe me by the time they got through blow-drying their hair and pasting them all up they looked like they'd just been to a kennel show.""
If he is elected, Mr. Perot predicted, ""most of those congressmen and senators will be having ear jobs.""
With polls showing him trailing far behind Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bush, Mr. Perot encouraged his supporters to guarantee that poll takers had to start looking for work on Wednesday morning. And he urged them to grasp a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, saying the country might never again see a similar combination of grass-roots populism and an independent candidate with the financial capacity to compete.
""Seize the moment,"" he screamed. ""You can't just let drift continue. You've got to go do it."" Crowds in Kansas City
In Kansas City, Mo., Mr. Perot' second stop of the day, he kept up his strident attack against the President and Mr. Clinton. Indeed, he was much harder on the Arkansas Governor that he had been during his speech in Florida.
""I hitch-hiked all over Arkansas as a boy,"" he said. ""The license plate said it was the land of opportunity. After 12 years of Clinton, most of that opportunity is still waiting to happen.""
But Mr. Perot also raised an issue he has hardly addressed since the early days of his campaign last winter: gun control.
""Everybody keeps nibbling around these gun law things, right?"" Mr. Perot told a wildly cheering audience in Bartle Hall, a convention center in downtown Kansas City. ""Everybody keeps coming up with the wrong answers to the problem. I'll tell you what the answer to the problem is, on weapons. Let me just tell you what you can't do. You can't take weapons away from honest law-abiding people, particularly on the hard side of town."" Lusty Cheers
The crowd, which was nearly all white and did not fill the room's 10,000-person seating capacity, was made up of Perot backers from Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Colorado -- states where gun control is anathema to many voters. They cheered lustily when Mr. Perot called gun registration a ""timid step"" and when he advocated stiffer jail sentences for those who use a gun to commit crimes.
""As far as I'm concerned, if any human being uses a gun to intimidate others, like in a hold-up, or ever uses a gun to inflict violence on another person, we ain't going to see him on the street anymore, ever.""
Like many of Mr. Perot's infrequent campaign rallies, the Kansas City affair mixed touches of a country picnic with that of a political event. Before his appearance, the crowd was entertained by a video of Willie Nelson singing several songs. Before her husband spoke, Margot Perot led the crowd in singing ""Happy Birthday"" to Adriane Caggiano, whose birthday is in three days.
Miss Caggiano is the Kansas girl who wrote Mr. Perot a letter urging him to re-enter the race. At his news conference on Oct. 1, when he announced his return, Mr. Perot read the letter and held up a picture of her.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Noriega's Ex-Pilot Tells Of Medellin Drug Links
Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega's former pilot testified today that the Panamanian leader personally authorized him to tell leaders of the Medellin cocaine traffickers that they would be allowed to ship cocaine through Panama to the United States, an arrangement he said that eventually earned General Noriega at least $5 million.
In his second day on the witness stand, Floyd Carlton Caceres said two of the principal organizers of the cocaine traffickers, Pablo Escobar and Gustavo Gaviria, approached him through an intermediary in 1982 and asked him to ""go and talk with Noriega"" about an arrangement that would allow Mr. Carlton to fly cocaine from Medellin to airstrips in Panama with General Noriega's protection. After several weeks of negotiations, Mr. Carlton said, General Noriega agreed, but with one condition.
General Noriega ""told me he didn't want his name involved in this type of problem, and that if something happened, he would know nothing about it and have nothing to do with it,"" Mr. Carlton told the jury of nine women and three men. But Mr. Carlton said General Noriega also warned him that ""nothing is to be done without notifying me."" A Tense Relationship
As Mr. Carlton described it, the relationship between General Noriega and the Colombian cocaine group was a tense one, with the traffickers being forced at one point to pay a $500,000 bribe to gain the freedom of some of their men who had been imprisoned and tortured in Panama.
But the bad feelings and lack of trust, Mr. Carlton said, did not prevent the traffickers from paying General Noriega $4 million in 1984. That money specifically went to provide the drug traffickers with a safe haven after gunman they had hired assassinated the Attorney General of Colombia.
From the start, both the defense and prosecution have regarded Mr. Carlton as probably the most important of the 70 witnesses the Government is expected to call. Prosecutors hope that Mr. Carlton's role as the middleman between General Noriega and the drug traffickers will provide the decisive link they need to obtain a conviction.
General Noriega, who surrendered to American troops after the invasion of Panama in December 1989, is being tried on 10 counts of cocaine trafficking, money laundering and racketeering and faces up to 140 years in prison if convicted of all charges.
Mr. Carlton said the leaders of the Medellin group initially sought to pay General Noriega $30,000 to $50,000 for each flight of about 400 kilograms of cocaine. But when Mr. Carlton said he informed General Noriega of the offer, the Panamanian leader reacted with indignation.
""Either they're crazy or you are,"" Mr. Carlton recalled General Noriega as saying. ""Not for that kind of money. I won't allow it to happen for less than $100,000 a flight.""
Mr. Carlton said that when he returned to Medellin, a city in northwest Colombia which is the headquarters for the group, and told Mr. Escobar and Mr. Gaviria that ""my partner"" was demanding more money, they too showed irritation. ""This guy always goes for the high side,"" said Mr. Carlton, quoting the traffickers, who eventually agreed to General Noriega's terms.
Mr. Carlton also said that when he first met the leaders of the traffickers at their office in Medellin, they complained about the terms of an earlier deal they had made with General Noriega. As Mr. Carlton recalled the incident, the traffickers said they had been forced to pay General Noriega about $1 million to ransom crew members aboard a freighter carrying cocaine in coffee sacks, seized by the Panamanian military in Panamanian waters.
Mr. Carlton said that General Noriega became ""exceedingly upset"" when he first raised the possibility of doing business with the traffickers during a flight the two men were making together. ""He told me I should be grateful that on grounds of friendship he did not send me to jail,"" said Mr. Carlton, who served a four-year sentence on drug charges and now lives in the United States under an assumed identity as part of the Federal witness protection program.
But while attending a party at General Noriega's beach house a few weeks later, Mr. Carlton said, General Noriega pulled him aside and ""asked what about that business I had brought up."" Mr. Carlton said he was ""surprised,"" but contacted Mr. Escobar and Mr. Gaviria, telling them, ""I had talked with the person previously named and had been given permission to proceed.""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Bribe Alleged For Testimony On Noriega
A Colombian cocaine cartel may have paid $1.25 million to a witness in the trial of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega possibly in exchange for testimony against  the deposed Panamanian dictator, Federal prosecutors have learned.
An informer told the Drug Enforcement Administration that the Cali drug cartel paid the witness, Ricardo Bilonick, to testify about General Noriega's ties to the rival Medellin cartel, with which Mr. Bilonick had worked, according to papers filed by Government prosecutors in Federal District Court here. The testimony of Mr. Bilonick, a Panamanian lawyer and former diplomat, helped lead  to General Noriega's 1992 conviction for drug trafficking, on which he is serving a 40-year sentence in Federal prison here.
The bribery accusation, which the Government says it first heard about in September, became public this week when prosecutors replied in writing to General Noriega's request for a new trial. Prosecutors said that two months ago  the informer told Federal drug agents that as a condition of Mr. Bilonick's testimony he had paid $250,000 directly to Mr. Bilonick and that another $1 million worth of certificates of deposit were placed in a safe-deposit box at a  Panamanian bank.
The informer, whom prosecutors have not identified, said the payments were made the day before Mr. Bilonick surrendered to United States authorities as an  indicted co-defendant in the Noriega drug case. He also said no Government agents or prosecutors knew about the payments, which prosecutors said was also confirmed a few weeks ago by a second informer who said he had overheard a conversation about the deal.
Federal prosecutors said the possible $1.25 million bribe was not sufficient  to merit a new trial for General Noriega. ""The Government emphasizes that these
allegations are simply that -- allegations,"" they wrote in the court papers which include affidavits by Mr. Bilonick and his lawyer in which they denied that the payments had occurred and Mr. Bilonick called the suggestion ""idiotic."" Had such payments been revealed at trial, prosecutors said, they would have only served to impeach Mr. Bilonick's credibility as a witness, which they contended  ""was not the linchpin of the Government's case.""
Lawyers for General Noriega had requested a new trial based on another aspect of how Mr. Bilonick surrendered to United States authorities. They said that Mr. Bilonick had surrendered and testified in a secret deal made between the Government and the Cali cartel that was never disclosed to the defense or the jury.
Under that arrangement, acknowledged by prosecutors this week in their new court filings, Mr. Bilonick was persuaded by the brother of a Cali cartel leader to surrender to the authorities and testify. In exchange, the cartel leader's imprisoned brother, Luis Santacruz Echeverri, won a reduced prison sentence -- to 14 years from 23 years -- in an unrelated case. General Noriega's lawyers said the secret deal came to light two months ago when a person they would not identify provided them with letters exchanged by the United States Attorney's office in Miami and a lawyer for the Cali drug cartel.
The Government said in court papers that it did not disclose the terms of the nine-year reduction in Mr. Santacruz's sentence because it ""had no influence whatsoever on Bilonick's decision to surrender, cooperate and testify in the Noriega case."" Prosecutors wrote that the decision not to disclose the deal was  ""made in absolute good faith"" and that it ""does not undermine confidence in the  outcome of defendant Noriega's trial."" Mr. Bilonick was sentenced to four years  in prison and is now free.
But General Noriega's lawyers contend that the jury should have known his testimony came as part of the larger deal. They say the cartel might have compelled Mr. Bilonick to testify with an offer of ""silver or lead"" -- rich reward or violent punishment -- in exchange for his testimony that General Noriega had allowed cocaine to be shipped through Panama by the Medellin cartel.
Frank A. Rubino, a lawyer for General Noriega, said the Government made a political ""deal with the devil"" by taking any measures necessary to convict General Noriega in an effort to justify the invasion of Panama by United States  troops.
General Noriega was apprehended in January 1990 after the American invasion of Panama, and defense lawyers have argued that the Bush Administration overstepped the law because it could not afford to see the toppled dictator go free. General Noriega is serving a 40-year sentence at a Federal prison in Miami, and his conviction is under appeal.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Crash Kills Witness in Noriega Case
A crucial Government witness in the drug conspiracy case against Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega was killed Wednesday night in a single-vehicle car wreck in Miami, a few days before the witness was to testify in the trial of two of the General's co-defendants.
The death of Ramon A. Navarro, a 41-year-old paid informer for the Government, threw the trial into turmoil and appeared to weaken the case against the General, who will be tried separately in June.
Mr. Navarro was killed about 11:30 P.M. Wednesday after he lost control of the car he was driving in alone on a two-lane road southwest of Miami, the Metro-Dade police said.
Today, traffic homicide investigators were reviewing the circumstances surrounding the crash. Although such inquiries are routine, a police spokesman said the police were investigating the crash because the victim was a Government witness in an important drug prosecution. An assistant United States Attorney in Miami, Robert Mueller, was quoted by The Associated Press as saying that his office would ""look into the circumstances"" of the crash.
A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Miami said today that the agency had not been asked to investigate the crash. A spokesman for the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration in Miami, which conducted the investigation that led to the Noriega indictment, declined to comment on Mr. Navarro's death.
Prosecutors said the death of the witness would not interrupt their case. ""Full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes,"" said Michael P. Sullivan, the lead prosecutor.
Mr. Navarro's vehicle swerved across the highway, striking a fence and electrical transformer but causing no explosion, the police said. The accident occurred in an affluent area where Mr. Navarro lived, one police official said. He said the cause of the crash had not been determined, adding that there was no immediate indication that Mr. Navarro's death was suspicious.
Mr. Navarro had been expected to be a crucial witness in the trial of Brian Alden Davidow and William Saldarriaga, which began on Monday in Federal District Court in Miami, on charges that they tried to smuggle 322 kilograms of cocaine in March 1986 into the United States aboard a luxury cabin cruiser, the ""Krill.""
Each is accused of two narcotics violations: conspiring to import drugs as well as aiding and abetting in the importing of drugs. If convicted, each faces a maximum penalty of 40 years in prison and fines of up to $500,000. Both men have pleaded not guilty.
Mr. Sullivan charged in his opening statement on Wednesday that Mr. Davidow and Mr. Saldarriaga had operated under the ""protection"" of General Noriega, who Mr. Sullivan said personally approved the cocaine shipment. The prosecutor said the shipment was bartered with the Medellin drug organization for 1,000 M-16 rifles removed from an arsenal of the Panamanian Defense Force, which is now defunct.
The prosecutor acknowledged in the statement that Mr. Navarro was himself a ""notorious drug smuggler"" who took part in the deal, and he said that he would directly implicate Mr. Davidow and Mr. Saldarriaga. Court documents filed previously in the case show that the Government paid Mr. Navarro $170,000 for information about drug-trafficking activities and granted him immunity for a number of narcotics-related crimes in return for his testimony in the Noriega case.
Mr. Sullivan said Mr. Navarro had taken part in a meeting in the Bank of Boston building in Panama City in March 1986 in which Mr. Saldarriaga and Mr. Davidow met with several other people to arrange the Krill deal. Noriega Role Alleged
The prosecutor said General Noriega spoke to the group by speaker phone, discussing the guns-for-cocaine deal. He added that the group agreed that ""Noriega would get a portion of the profits after the cocaine was sold.""
Mr. Sullivan acknowledged in court today that the Government had lost an important witness. But defense lawyers, as well as other lawyers in Miami, said the prosecutors could rely on others to duplicate part's of Mr. Navarro's testimony. One expected witness is Amet Paredes, the son of Gen. Ruben Dario Paredes, a former Noriega associate who later became a bitter enemy. Amet Paredes, who had been accused of taking part in the Krill deal, recently pleaded guilty and agreed to testify for the Government.
This afternoon, Janice Burton Sharpstein, one of Mr. Davidow's lawyers, filed a motion seeking a mistrial on the ground that the defense had prepared its case assuming Mr. Navarro would be a central witnesses. In addition, she said the defense planned to use Mr. Navarro to discredit the testimony of other witnesses.
Judge William M. Hoeveler, who is presiding over the trial, denied the motion, saying Mr. Navarro's death affected both the prosecution and defense equally. He added that the jurors in the case would not be prejudiced by learning that Mr. Navarro he had died.
Frank A. Rubino, General Noriega's lead defense lawyer, said today in an interview that Mr. Navarro's death removed one of the more important witnesses from a list of about 25 people expected to testify against the General. ""There may a group of six or eight who are probably stronger witnesses,"" he said. ""He was was one of the more substantive.""
But Mr. Rubino said Mr. Navarro's knowledge was limited to the events surrounding the Krill shipment while the indictment against the General accuses him of taking part in a broad array of separate drug trafficking activities from 1981 to 1986.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Judge Chides CNN in Contempt Trial Over Noriega Conversations
In a criminal-contempt case against CNN, defense lawyers said today that the network believed it was not defying a Federal judge when it broadcast prison phone calls by the former Panamanian strongman, Manuel Antonio Noriega.
But that defense appeared not to impress Judge William M. Hoeveler of Federal District Court, the judge who barred the broadcasts in 1990. He told CNN's lawyers that they had not completely understood his ban or the issues surrounding it, at one point asking, ""Have you read the law recently on that subject?""
Defense lawyers also admitted that they were dismayed when the CNN anchor, Bernard Shaw, introduced a report by saying, ""And just a little bit later, on 'The World Today,' those very tapes CNN has been ordered not to broadcast.""
One lawyer, Stuart Pierson, said that Mr. Shaw's remarks were not part of any script that CNN's lawyers had reviewed, and that when the legal team watched the broadcast live on Nov. 9, 1990, ""there was an audible groan in the room.""
The nonjury trial, which began on Tuesday, arises from reports CNN made in November 1990, when General Noriega was at the Metropolitan Correction Center here awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges. In its first report, CNN said it had obtained copies of tape-recorded conversations between General Noriega and his lawyers.
Under Federal law, the telephone calls of prisoners in Federal jails are routinely and legally taped to prevent their plotting crimes behind bars. But calls between an inmate and his lawyers may not generally be taped, to protect the inmate's right to prepare a defense in confidentiality.
When the Justice Department said the Government had not made improper recordings of General Noriega's conversations, CNN broadcast a second report, playing excerpts of the tapes, though Judge Hoeveler had ordered it network not to do so.
At the time, executives at CNN argued that the ruling was an unconstitutional prior restraint of its First Amendment right to disseminate the news. But higher courts, including the Supreme Court, upheld Judge Hoeveler's ruling, saying he could issue a temporary ban in an effort to balance the free-press rights of the news media against General Noriega's right to a fair trial.
The question in the contempt trial is, did the network knowingly violate Judge Hoeveler's order? If convicted, CNN could be fined up to $100,000.
Today, lawyers for the network said they had interpreted the judge's order as only barring the broadcast of confidential conversations between General Noriega and his lawyers or their staff. They said they believed the general's lawyer, Frank A. Rubino, had implicitly waived the right to keep the tapes confidential when he listened to them in an interview with CNN before the broadcast.
But Judge Hoeveler asked Mr. Pierson if he was aware that the privilege of keeping conversations between lawyers and clients confidential could only be waived by the client. ""Have your read the law recently on that subject?"" he asked Mr. Pierson, an authority on media law who helped guide CNN in the development of the story. With an impatient tone, the judge also said, ""Did it occur to anyone that a lawyer may not waive a client's privilege?""
Mr. Pierson said he believed this case was an exception to that rule. But the prosecutor, Robert F. Dunlap, said, ""CNN knew of the court's orders and CNN acted willfully in defiance of this court.""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"BUSH AIDES ADMIT A U.S. ROLE IN COUP, AND BAD HANDLING
LEAD: Senior Administration officials said today that the American military had played a greater role in the Panamanian uprising than it had previously acknowledged.
Senior Administration officials said today that the American military had played a greater role in the Panamanian uprising than it had previously acknowledged.
White House officials also said the Bush Administration's team performed badly in a major test, noting that the top foreign policy and military officials were never called together to discuss the attempted coup against Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the Panamanian leader. John H. Sununu, the White House chief of staff, ordered a study of how the Panama coup was handled.  [ Page A11. ]  Moreover, there was continued criticism on Capitol Hill of the Administration's decision not to help the rebels more. That led to mutual recriminations between the Administration and members of Congress, like Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina. Noriega Was Believed Captive
Although many facts remain in dispute, officials said it was now accepted that General Noriega was in fact held prisoner by the rebels for between two and four hours during the coup Tuesday. On Wednesday, officials in Washington said they were not certain he had been a prisoner. Senator Helms said the United States lost its chance at getting the general because of the confusion and because it did not respond to a rebel appeal for military support in apprehending him.
In Panama tonight, armed men attacked the opposition party headquarters hours after General Noriega signaled a sweeping crackdown and opposition figures were detained.  [ Page A10. ]  One important new disclosure surrounding the coup was that two days after President Bush declared publicly that it was not an American operation, Administration officials said United States Army troops in Panama had moved at the request of the rebels to block two routes that the rebels suspected would be used by forces loyal to the general. In earlier reports of the roadblocks, American officials had said the intention was merely to protect American lives and property.
The officials said the roadblock failed because a third road eventually used by General Noriega's loyal troops was not blocked.
The White House was on the defensive today as Senator Helms derided the Administration as 'Keystone Kops' who displayed a 'total lack of planning.'
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, in an interview in his office, said, 'That is crazy, in my humble opinion.'
Mr. Cheney said the White House had 'made a conscious decision' not to confront the Noriega forces actively because officials did not see any circumstances under which they would have seized General Noriega without going to war with an element of the Panamanian Defense Forces.
Earlier, Mr. Cheney called Senator Helms's account 'a bunch of hogwash.'
Since Mr. Bush earlier this year had publicly invited Panama's military to oust General Noriega and turn him over to the United States, the accusations of bungling, if true, could lead to the Administration's first major foreign policy embarrassment.
In assailing the Administration, Mr. Helms provided an account of events that sharply conflicted with virtually every statement by Administration spokesmen in the last two days.
Although Mr. Cheney and other officials disputed Mr. Helms's account, several Administration policymakers acknowledged that there was some validity to his general point that the White House had not handled the rebellion properly.
White House officials said they lacked sufficient procedures to manage the fast-moving crisis, and they noted that at no time did all top national-security officials meet in one place to discuss strategy. Feverish Round of Meetings
The accusations by Mr. Helms, presented in a speech on the Senate floor, plunged the White House into a feverish round of meetings, and Mr. Sununu met with senior aides to Mr. Helms.
The principal issue in dispute between Senator Helms and the White House is whether the rebels ever offered to turn General Noriega over to the American authorities. Mr. Helms asserted that at 9 A.M. Tuesday, the rebel officers told an American general that while they lacked the firepower to deliver the general, they invited the United States to fight its way into the compound and apprehend him.
The Administration, with Mr. Cheney as its spokesman, has said the rebels refused to turn over General Noriega and wanted instead to permit him to live peacefully in internal exile in Panama. According to the Administration version, that exchange took place later in the coup, about 11:30 P.M. Panamanian time on Tuesday. Panama is one hour behind Washington.
An Administration official with access to extensive reporting on the issue said the discrepancy probably stemmed from missed communications among the military, intelligence and diplomatic officials in Panama. 'Won't' Became 'Want'
That official said the rebels had told military officers in the Army's Southern Command that they 'won't' turn General Noriega over. That was accurately relayed to Pentagon officials in Washington. Meanwhile, the Southern Command told the embassy in Panama of that information, which was misunderstood as their suggesting that the rebels 'want' to turn him over.
That fact was reported to the State Department and Central Intelligence Agency simultaneously, prompting the State Department to call a hurried meeting with Government lawyers to consider such a step. Minutes later, the coup collapsed. One official attributed the confusion to the fact that most of the communications among American officials were by telephone, and that connections were poor because Noriega loyalists intermittently interfered with the lines.
A few hours later, C.I.A. representatives were in Congress briefing members of the Congressional intelligence committees with the agency's version of events, which was that the rebels were prepared to hand over General Noriega.
Officials said the C.I.A. briefings, which contradicted the White House version of events, contributed to the storm of outrage from Mr. Helms and other Noriega critics, such as Senator David L. Boren, Democrat of Oklahoma and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. Acting on Helms Pressure
The pressure prompted Administration officials to elaborate on their actions before the coup. Administration officials said American representatives in Panama City were tipped off late Sunday night that the rebels planned a coup on Monday morning.
Officials said the leaders of the coup asked that the United States block the gate to Fort Amador, a Panamanian-American base that is home to the Panamanian Defense Forces' Fifth Company, and a road near Howard Air Force Base that it was believed the Seventh Company would cross if they sought to reinforce the rebels.
An Administration official said the rebels had been asked whether such American help was a prerequisite to undertaking a coup. 'They said no, we'll go ahead anyway, but this would be helpful,' the official said. No Aim to Seize Noriega
The plan, as related by the rebel officers, was to declare a coup and then wait to see how many units rallied to each side. 'They said their objective was not to capture Noriega,' an Administration official said.
'They were just planning to announce that various senior officers had been retired,' the official said. 'This is traditional Panamanian coupism -you make announcements, then look at who has the most units. Whoever has the most wins, and the losers take refuge in the Canal Zone. Unfortunately, Noriega wasn't playing by these rules.'
According to Mr. Cheney, senior American officials had been prepared on Sunday to put the American forces into position to cut the two roads but did not decide to go ahead until Monday.
Early Tuesday, American forces moved into position at Fort Amador and Howard Air Force Base. The coup began at 7 A.M. Panamanian time, and the Fifth Company, in Fort Amador, made no move to mobilize its forces. At 11 A.M., the United States Army blocked the Amador gates.
An American official said that though the plan had not called for General Noriega's capture, the rebels 'fortuitously' seized him in the Defense Forces headquarters and held him for several hours.
The Pentagon said the road near the Air Force base was blocked at 12:59.
Mr. Helms insisted that in a conversation at 9 A.M. the rebels invited the Americans to take General Noriega off their hands. At 9:30, Senator Helms said he received a call from Panamanian opposition figures who wanted Washington to block the road from the Tocumen Airport to the General Headquarters, where the general was being held.
Senator Helms said he called the White House and was told that high-level officials were all involved in meetings with visitors like Dmitri T. Yazov, the Soviet Defense Minister, or President Carlos Salinas de Gortari of Mexico.
Within hours, General Noriega had flown his forces to the airport, then had them move over the bridge the rebels had asked to be blocked.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Rivera Is Doing His Part For Children's Hospital
Mariano Rivera met Yordano Alvarez a year ago at a telethon in Panama, two heroes of their country. Rivera is the closer for the Yankees, the pitcher who finished three straight World Series championships before failing last month. The 11-year-old Yordano is the poster boy for the 20-30 Teletón, an annual fund-raiser for children in Panama.
'He is as much a star in Panama as Mariano,' Dr. Hillel Ephros said.
Ephros and a team of doctors from St. Joseph's Children's Hospital in Paterson, N.J., joined the two Panamanians yesterday at the Children's Museum of Manhattan. The hospital's Craniofacial Center paid for and performed corrective surgery on Yordano.
As the boy held a microphone while Rivera was being interviewed by a Spanish-language television station and then gestured to photographers to take his picture, Rivera's smile showed how far removed he felt from his ninth-inning failure in Game 7, when the Arizona Diamondbacks scored twice to end his streak of 23 straight postseason saves.
Rivera sounded as he did Nov. 4. He was here for Yordano and to help the hospital raise money for its program, not to dwell on the past. Rivera made a throwing error, then allowed a game-tying double to Tony Womack and Luis Gonzalez's game-winning bloop single.
'I tell you what, the World Series was something very good,' Rivera said. 'I can't take nothing away from that. It was a great Series. Unfortunately, we lost. But, hey, life moves on. When you see kids like Yordano, life is not too bad.'
In a rare speech before Game 7, Rivera told his teammates they would win. When they took an eighth-inning lead, Manager Joe Torre brought in Rivera and Yankees fans had to sense the Series was theirs.
Torre was having Rivera try for another two-inning save, necessitated by a bullpen thinner than in the past. Rivera and Mike Stanton should have more help next season, especially if the Yankees sign Steve Karsay as a right-handed setup man. Still, Rivera said he would not second-guess Torre or himself for his two-inning appearances.
'We did our best,' Rivera said. 'I feel good. I feel great. We tried our best and didn't finish it. We have to move on and be ready for next year.
'It was going to happen and I was the guy who did it.'
Yesterday Rivera's concern was Yordano, whose precociousness shows the hospital's work has helped. Yordano was born without a right eye, and after receiving treatment in Panama most of his life, he was chosen by St. Joseph's as a patient. He has spent the past two months living with a Montville, N.J., family while undergoing surgery to correct the bones in his skull as specialists cared for his brain.
'Yordano feels very happy,' Lury Alvarez, his mother, said. 'He's different. He looks handsome. He's even a little conceited.'
Yordano is known as El Presidente at St. Joseph's 'because with his personality, it is anticipated he will one day be the president of Panama,' Ephros said.
Rivera is aware of a parent's strain. He saw it in the eyes of catcher Jorge Posada the past two seasons, as his son Jorge IV had three brain operations. Posada's son had craniosynostosis, the premature fusing of the bones in the skull. It requires similar specialists to those who operated on Yordano, Ephros said.
Rivera returned to Panama after the Series and will go back for New Year's, but he is a New Yorker. Rivera now spends the bulk of his winter at home in Westchester County, his children in local schools.
Yordano will return to Panama on Saturday and will be back in New Jersey in 9 to 12 months to have more surgery. Rivera hopes to celebrate by having him go to a Yankees game. If the timing is right, that may mean another Yankees World Series.
BASEBALL",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Coach Changes Panama for Better
When José Hernández arrived from Colombia to coach Panama's national team, his players refused to practice in the rain. Not a good sign in a country with a tropical climate.
'Always a permanent battle in Panama,' Hernández said through an interpreter on Saturday, the day before his team lost to the United States in the Gold Cup final. (His interpreter was Chico Borja, a former player for the Cosmos who is from Belleville, N.J.) 'It was totally crazy that they wouldn't play in the rain.
'I told them that every single day you need to be at work, and to assume that is what they have to do. I am the equipment manager, the bus driver, I give the players their checks. When I got there, we had only one field available. Now we hope to turn some of our baseball fields into soccer fields.
'Of course there are times when I ask myself, 'What am I doing here?''
Hernández has taken Panama to the final stage of regional qualifying for the World Cup. Panama is last in the six-nation group with five games left, but Hernández said he believed he had changed the conversation in a country of 3.1 million people that absorbed a passion for baseball and boxing during the United States' stewardship of the Panama Canal.
'We simply don't have the experience to be competitive in the last stage of qualifying,' he said. 'Most of my team is simply satisfied that we went to the next round. The Gold Cup has given me a chance to get my players to concentrate, away from their families.'
In the tournament, Panama gave its coach a rare gift -- two victories over his native country, in the first round, then in the semifinals.
'I like to say we've beaten Colombia three times, twice in this tournament and in 1903,' Hernández said, referring to the year Panama, with support from the United States, seceded from Colombia.
After its unlikely run to the Gold Cup final, Panama must now concentrate on World Cup qualifying. Panama, which has 2 points from five games, must win at Guatemala on Aug. 17. Mexico and the United States, which are first and second in the group, are nearly certain to qualify for Germany 2006. Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Guatemala and Costa Rica are competing for the third automatic berth.
The fourth-place team will play a home-and-away series against either Uzbekistan, Kuwait or Bahrain for a place in the World Cup.
'For Panama, it feels like something has opened up,' Hernández said. 'Now we believe we can compete.'
UNITED STATES
Living Like Royalty
It has been said that a man's home is his castle. For Kasey Keller, a castle is his home.
Keller, the No. 1 goalkeeper for the United States men's national team, will soon head back to Germany to play for Borussia Mönchengladbach and live in a thousand-year-old castle near Dortmund, where he now lives with his family.
'My wife found it online,' Keller said last week. 'They were renting it out for weddings, but wanted to rent it full time. It's been a great experience. My kids are enjoying it.'
Keller led the United States to its third Gold Cup title, stopping three penalty kicks by Panama, and he is the clear first choice of Manager Bruce Arena as the United States team wraps up World Cup qualifying and prepares for next year's World Cup in Germany.
'Kasey has a burning desire to excel and cap off his career at the World Cup,' Arena said. 'He has made some bold moves to assure that he keeps playing, and that has helped because he has picked up valuable experience and a volume of knowledge.'
Although Keller holds nearly every individual goalkeeping record for the national team, he was relegated to the bench in 2002, when Brad Friedel helped the United States advance to the quarterfinals. At 35, Keller has matured into a steady and solid presence in goal after having played professionally in Spain (Rayo Vallecano), England (Milwall, Leicester City, Tottenham and Southampton) and Germany.
'I've been with the national team for 15 years,' Keller said. 'And playing in the Gold Cup got me out of preseason training. My team just got back from running in the Austrian mountains for eight days.'
Now Keller gets to go home to his own castle.
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
Lalas Is Fined for Comments
Alexi Lalas, the president and general manager of the MetroStars, was fined $2,000 by M.L.S. for his recent comments to The New York Times in which he said the club would like to acquire Freddy Adu from D.C. United.  The MetroStars are expected to announce the signing of Eric Quill soon. Quill, a 27-year-old left-sided midfielder, is coming back from a leg injury. He has been with the MetroStars, playing in reserve games, and has played for Tampa Bay, Kansas City and Dallas.  The MetroStars missed out on signing the 34-year-old midfielder Alfredo Cascini from Boca Juniors in Argentina when he went to Lanús.
FC DALLAS -- Two weeks after the complete list of M.L.S. salaries became public and showed that Eddie Johnson was the second-highest-paid player in the league, FC Dallas officially announced last week that it had signed Johnson, 21, to a multiyear contract extension. Johnson, who has been sought by European clubs, has a base salary of $750,000, which could grow to $875,000 with bonuses and incentives.
TRIP TO SPAIN -- An M.L.S. all-star team has been invited to play Real Madrid on Aug. 23 in Spain in the club's annual curtain-raiser, the Trofeo Santiago Bernabéu game.
Corner Kicks
GERMANY -- Benny Feilhaber, a star at U.C.L.A. and for the United States at last month's world youth championship in the Netherlands, has signed a contract with Hamburg SV. Feilhaber, who was born in Rio de Janeiro and was not on scholarship at U.C.L.A., will initially play with Hamburg's reserve team.
LIVERPOOL -- The winner of the European Champions League title in May has gained 10 million new fans and is now the third-most popular club in Europe, according to a report from Sport+Market, a research company based in Cologne, Germany. Real Madrid is No. 1, according to the report, followed by Barcelona, Liverpool, Juventus, A.C. Milan, Manchester United, Arsenal, Bayern Munich and Chelsea.
SOCCER REPORT",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Ruling on Tapes Clears the Way for Noriega's Trial
A Federal judge refused today to dismiss the drug charges against Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, saying that defense lawyers had failed to show that they were seriously harmed by the Government's taping of the general's telephone calls.
The ruling by Judge William M. Hoeveler of Federal District Court clears the way for General Noriega's trial to begin June 24.
Judge Hoeveler criticized Federal prosecutors for improperly subpoenaeing the tapes, which were made by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, without informing the defense. But he said the defense had failed to prove that General Noreiga's case had been compromised. The judge said he would reconsider his ruling if General Noriega's lawyers could prove in the future that the Government had gained an unfair advantage by its access to the tapes.
""I am going to follow the law, which says that dismissal is too extreme a sanction,"" Judge Hoeveler said at today's hearing. Court Appoints Counsel
The judge also discussed the Government announcement on Friday that Austria would release $1.6 million from one of General Noriega's frozen bank accounts in that country. The release of the money appears to have settled a long dispute over how the deposed Panamanian leader would pay his legal expenses.
In the proceeding today, General Noriega's team of lawyers formally withdrew from the case and then allowed Judge Hoeveler to name two of them as court-appointed counsel.
It was agreed that the $1.6 million would be applied toward paying defense counsel and legal expenses owed over the last year since the general was brought to this country to stand trial. As of this month, the two defense lawyers, Frank A. Rubino and Jon May, are to be paid at slightly above standard rates for court-appointed lawyers: about $75 an hour, plus expenses.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Ex-Noriega Aide Testifies on Drug Payments
A Panamanian military officer who was one of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega's closest aides for 25 years testified today that he had delivered drug payoff money to the Panamanian dictator and that later, on General Noriega's instructions, he denied to judicial investigators that any such payments had been made.
In his third day on the witness stand at a Federal Courthouse here, the officer, Lieut. Col. Luis del Cid, said he had also accompanied his commanding officer, later deposed as dictator in the American invasion of Panama, to a meeting with President Fidel Castro in Cuba. The meeting is said to have been called so that the two leaders could discuss a drug trafficking dispute.
But most of Colonel del Cid's testimony focused on what he described as large, secret payments of cash and gifts, including the services of prostitutes, that were delivered to General Noriega at his military headquarters. He described himself as General Noriega's ""errand boy"" and bodyguard. 'It Might Be a Bomb'
Colonel del Cid said drug money was inside a heavy envelope given to him on one occasion by one of General Noriega's personal pilots, who has admitted acting as a courier for drug money for the cocaine manufacturing and trafficking cartel based in the Colombian city of Medellin. ""I told him to watch out, it might be a bomb.""
General Noriega, who surrendered to American military forces after the invasion in December 1989, has been charged with 10 counts of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering and faces a maximum sentence of 140 years if convicted on all charges. Colonel del Cid was also captured in the invasion and later pleaded guilty, as prosecutors told the jury, to acting as ""General Noriega's bagman.""
Colonel del Cid said that on other occasions General Noriega ordered him to go to Panama's main international airport, armed and with an escort, to meet other Noriega associates arriving on commercial flights from abroad. The associates' suitcases were also filled with cash that he presumed to be payoffs for allowing Panama to be used as a drug shipping point or for money laundering by Colombian drug traffickers, Colonel del Cid added. An Earlier Investigation
In his testimony today, Colonel del Cid said that after he and General Noriega were indicted by two Florida grand juries in February 1988, the Panamanian Government began its own investigation, which led to his being called to make a statement. He said he was approached by another officer who said he had been instructed by General Noriega to tell Colonel del Cid ""that I was to say no, that I had not received anything"" from agents of the traffickers for delivery to General Noriega.  Colonel del Cid said that he obeyed the order, and that the investigation went nowhere.
For the first time since the trial began, the jury heard testimony about a 1984 meeting in Havana in which Mr. Castro is said by the prosecution to have mediated a quarrel between General Noriega and the Medellin cartel. That dispute broke out after the Panamanian military raided a cocaine-processing laboratory that the Colombian traffickers had paid $6 million to a Noriega subordinate to protect.
Colonel del Cid acknowledged that he had not participated in the Havana meeting with General Noriega and Mr. Castro. But he said that he saw Mr. Castro arrive and that he also saw another Panamanian military official go into the meeting carrying videotapes made of the drug laboratory.
In the most unusual moment of the trial so far, Colonel del Cid said that Panama's Ambassador to France, Gaspar Whitgreen, brought four French prostitutes to Panama Defense Forces headquarters after General Noriega was promoted to commander-in-chief in 1983. When asked what the women did after they arrived, he replied: ""They went to visit the general.""
General Noriega's lawyer, Frank A. Rubino, angrily demanded a mistrial. Judge William M. Hoeveler called Mr. Rubino and prosecutors to the bench for a conference out of the hearing of the jury, and he did not grant the defense's request.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Bush's Critics Say He's Crossed the Line, But Public Still Sees Him as Presidential
LEAD: A new buzz word has shoved aside 'ethics' and 'credibility' in the endless political chatter that lubricates life in the capital.
A new buzz word has shoved aside 'ethics' and 'credibility' in the endless political chatter that lubricates life in the capital.
The word is 'timidity,' and the man it is used about, on Capitol Hill and in lawyers' offices and at Georgetown dinner parties, is the big man in town, President Bush.
Is Mr. Bush merely 'prudent,' as he himself said on Friday in describing his response to the attempted coup in Panama? Or is he as fearful as suggested by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, who also described the Administration's response to the coup attempt as worthy of the Keystone Kops?
Is the President really as passive as he was painted on Thursday in the syndicated column of George Will, a leading conservative who is closely followed in official Washington? Mr. Will accused Mr. Bush of conducting 'an unserious Presidency' and said tartly that its symbol 'should be a wetted finger held up to the breezes.'
Is Mr. Bush 'facing the political realities,' as an aide said this week, in refusing to contemplate higher taxes as part of a debt-reduction deal with Congressional Democrats? Or has he forgotten, as a visiting European minister commented, 'that the purpose of politics is power, the purpose of power is to govern, and the purpose of governing is to show the way forward, even when it is unpopular'? Washington vs. the Country
Washington seems to have made up its mind, at least for the moment, that George Bush is too timid, and the President seems sure to be dogged by such questions into the New Year, but the verdict in the country as a whole is much more positive, partly because the Democrats have had difficulty in making the opposition case effectively.
For weeks now, the President has been taken to task here for not moving far enough fast enough to help the Eastern European countries that are seeking to reshape their destinies, free of domination by Moscow; for not condemning with sufficient vigor the repression of Chinese liberals; for talking about improved education and a cleaner environment but failing to explain where the money will come from, and for continuing to lack what he described, during a moment of irritation during the 1988 campaign, as 'the vision thing.'
But the Panama episode greatly intensified the criticism and caused the critics to find other signs of shortcoming in an Administration that only a few weeks ago was bragging about its 70 percent public approval rating. Liberals and conservatives have joined, on occasion, in voicing sharp complaints.
In a typical comment on the Hill, Representative Dave McCurdy, an Oklahoma Democrat who sits on the House intelligence committee, recalled the days when the United States seemed unable to free the hostages held in Teheran and said that the Panama episode 'makes Jimmy Carter look like a man of resolve.' Panama Was 'Fiasco'
A senior diplomat based in Washington, a friend and usually a fervent supporter of the President, said Panama constituted 'a total fiasco.'
The Bush-bashing has been no less severe in the news media. Newsweek magazine's cover this week, to cite just one example among dozens, carried the bold legend, 'Amateur Hour.'
Politicians, bureaucrats and commentators are beginning to argue that the problem is a lack of Presidential instinct for the bold stroke. Gerald R. Ford's explanation of his order to recapture the cargo ship Mayaguez with the simple phrase, 'I felt something had to be done,' and countless quick decisions by Ronald Reagan are cited in contrast to Mr. Bush's deliberation, even though some looked better in the heat of the moment than in retrospect.
There seems little doubt that among politicians the President has been hurt by Panama and by public disputes within his inner circle - one week, Richard G. Darman, the budget director, versus Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, over health benefits to cover the catastrophic costs of extended illnesses; the next week, John H. Sununu, the White House chief of staff, versus William K. Reilly, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, over clean air proposals.
Nor has Mr. Bush been helped by the shift in the political winds on abortion. His 1980 position supporting it in several circumstances now seems to represent the position of the majority, but that is not his position any more. He showed his discomfiture at an informal news conference on Friday where he seemed to be seeking a way out of a damaging political fight while still appearing to stick to his guns. Popular Outside Beltway
Yet, for all the flak he is taking, Mr. Bush manages to remain a highly popular figure outside the Beltway. Indeed, according to early polls, more Americans thought the United States did what it should have done in Panama than thought the Administration had done too little, although according to one survey about 3 people in 10, a significant number, favored bolder action against General Manuel Antonio Noriega and his corrupt regime.
Like matrimonial honeymoons, political honeymoons end, and George Bush's appears to have done so, considerably later than those of most recent Presidents. But Speaker Thomas S. Foley, who has clashed recently with the President over the capital gains tax as well as other issues, warns that 'the public has a great desire for Presidents to succeed, and that sentiment continues to benefit this one.'
The Speaker, a Democrat from Washington, said over breakfast one day this week, 'Once things have calmed down, you will see a lot of people saying, 'The King was badly advised by his ministers on this.' It takes a lot of mistakes over a long period to cause a president real, lasting harm.'
In addition, Mr. Foley added, Mr. Bush has a special knack 'for closing the expectations gap with rhetoric' -listening to demands for more action in this area or that, and then, not unlike the Little Prince in Antoine de Saint-Exupery's story, urging Congress to do what it already intends to do, and thus earning a reputation for reasonableness that disarms the critics who have been proclaiming him too timid.
PRUDENT MEETS TIMID",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"U.S. Is Given More Time on Noriega Evidence
LEAD: A Federal magistrate today rejected a motion by a lawyer for Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega that would have compelled Government prosecutors to provide 'forthwith,' instead of in the next week or so, a complete inventory of evidence seized by American troops at homes and offices of the deposed Panamanian military leader.
A Federal magistrate today rejected a motion by a lawyer for Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega that would have compelled Government prosecutors to provide 'forthwith,' instead of in the next week or so, a complete inventory of evidence seized by American troops at homes and offices of the deposed Panamanian military leader.
The attorney, Steven Kollin, who is helping to defend the general against charges of drug trafficking and money laundering, had earlier accused Federal prosecutors of 'trying to sabotage our defense' by failing to obey a court order two weeks ago to produce the list.
General Noriega was not present today for the hourlong hearing, which was convened in Federal District Court here.
Mr. Kollin also said that he was concerned about the handling of the evidence, saying he had been informed by one of the prosecutors, Michael Sullivan, that American troops had recently handed over control of one of the general's homes in Panama, a beach house in the Pacific coastal town of Rio Hato, to Panama's new civilian Government.
'This is the first time that I have heard that Panama had taken over' any piece of evidence, including buildings once controlled by the general, Mr. Kollin said. He said he was concerned that material vital to the defense might be stolen, lost or mishandled.
But the Federal magistrate, William C. Turnoff, denied Mr. Kollin's motion to force prosecutors to produce the inventory, saying he had seen 'no indication that the Government was acting in anything but good faith' in assembling the list. He added that he hoped it would be made available to the defense team for General Noriega in time for a new hearing next Wednesday.
Still, the magistrate said the defense had every right to worry about the delay and about who had custody of the evidence and he ordered prosecutors not to turn over anything to the new Panamanian Government without first allowing defense lawyers to examine it.
The magistrate characterized his order today as an adjunct to a ruling he issued Jan. 19 that barred the Government from destroying any evidence relevant to General Noriega's defense.
On Thursday, General Noriega is expected to be in court for another hearing, this time before Judge William M. Hoeveler, at which defense lawyers plan to introduce new motions challenging the right of the Government to try their client.
Those arguments are expected to revolve around the legality of the United States invasion of Panama.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"The U.S. and Panama: The Trial;   Lawyers for Noriega Spurn Deals and Assail Witnesses
LEAD: Lawyers for Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega today ruled out any plea arrangement with prosecutors and attacked expected Government witnesses as lacking credibility.
Lawyers for Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega today ruled out any plea arrangement with prosecutors and attacked expected Government witnesses as lacking credibility.
'If you're innocent, you don't plea bargain,' said Steven Kollin, a lawyer for General Noriega, the fallen Panamaian dictator who was brought here last week for trial on drug-trafficking charges.
Asked if there was any condition in which he would agree to a deal for his client, Mr. Kollin replied, 'It will never happen.' He also said there had been no discussions with prosecutors about a plea arrangement.
On Friday, President Bush said the Government was 'not seeking a deal' with General Noriega, but would not categorically reject that possibility.
Lawyers Criticize Witnesses
In separate interviews, Mr. Kollin and Frank A. Rubino, General Noriega's other lawyer, said they were confident about the strength of their defense because they believe they can discredit the testimony of the general's former associates who may be the main witnesses.
Both lawyers have met for several hours in the last four days with General Noriega, who has been stripped of his rank and dismissed from the military by the new civilian Government in Panama. The meetings were at the United States courthouse in downtown Miami, where the general is being held under tight security.
Referring to possible prosecution witnesses, Mr. Kollin asked: 'Would you have these people baby-sit for your children? Even one night?.'
The lawyers were particularly critical of Jose I. Blandon, a former political adviser to General Noriega who, in testimony before a grand jury here provided important information for the indictment, including an account of a dispute between General Noriega and the cocaine drug ring based in the Medellin region of Colombia over protection of a laboratory in Panama.
'There's no question the man is a liar,' Mr. Rubino said. Noting that Mr. Blandon was once a defender of General Noriega, he added: 'He said one thing in Panama and changed his tune here in America. It seems whoever feeds him in the person he cheers on.'
'Cream on Top of the Case
Mr. Kollin said that 'with Blandon in particular, we have to look at each and every aspect of his testimony.'
Mr. Blandon's telephone number has been changed and is unlisted, and he could not be reached for comment today. Atlee Wampler, a Miami lawyer who has represented him, also has an unlisted home number and could not be reached for comment.
But Richard D. Gregorie, a former Federal prosecutor here who helped prepare the case against General Noriega, today defended Mr. Blandon as a credible witness. 'He was sort of the cream on top of the case,' he said. 'He gave us some interesting stuff.' The defense lawyers also cited Steven Michael Kalish, a convicted drug smuggler who was the main witness in a separate indictment against General Noriega in Federal court in Tampa and whose testimony may be sought in the Miami case. Mr. Kalish has testified he paid General Noriega large sums so he could smuggle marijuana through Panama and launder drug money there.
Sarcastic Comments
In clearly sarcastic comments, Mr. Rubino said the Government's attitude about Mr. Kalish is that 'his morality is such that he'll smuggle dope - but he's got his morals, he won't lie, we don't have to worry about his honesty and veracity and the fact that he's in prison.' Continuing to mock the possible witness, he added: 'Steve Kalish got a sentence of 12 years. What does Steven Kalish have to gain by incriminating the General?'
Alan Ellis, a lawyer who has defended Mr. Kalish, was not at his office today and a reporter's telehpone calls to his home were not answered.
In addition to Mr. Blandon and Mr. Kalish, Mr. Kollin said he expected the other chief prosecution witness to be Floyd Carlton Caceres, a convicted drug smuggler who was a pilot for General Noriega.
'We know the motives of witnesses who are past drug dealers: to get cushy deals,' Mr. Kollin said.
David Runkel, the chief spokesman for the Justice Department in Washington, responded today by saying he would not 'publicly argue the Government's positions.' He also said it was too early to discuss witnesses because 'the Government's case is not going to be known until the proceedings are under way in court.'
Asked to respond to the defense lawyers' assertions, Diane B. Cossin, a spokeswoman for the United States attorney's office here, said: 'Defense counsels always try to attack the witnesses called by the prosecution.'
Motions in a Month or Two
Government officials have been tight-lipped about whether General Noriega would be moved from a jail cell in downtown Miami to more secure facilities. But they suggested privately that he would be kept in South Florida, and Mr. Kollin said he has received assurances from officials that his client would remain in close proximity to his lawyers.
The lawyers said it was unlikely they would file any legal motions for 30 to 60 days. When they did, they said, they would argue that the court has no jurisdiction over the former Panamaian strongman and they would seek secret intelligence documents relevant to the case.
Mr. Kollin said the defense did not ask for a bail hearing because it would have been fruitless. 'It would be incompetent for us to request a bail hearing when we obviously know the anwswer to the question,' he said.
General Noriega, Mr. Kollin added, has taken a serious interest in plotting defense strategy and is in good spirits. 'He's an active participant,' he said. 'He's alert, and the first things he asked for were writing instruments and legal pads.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Ruling on Noriega Documents
A Federal judge today ordered the Government to turn over classified documents at the heart of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega's efforts to show that he worked with American intelligence agencies in Central American drug deals, the Panamanian general's lawyer said.
The sealed ruling by Federal District Judge William M. Hoeveler followed a week of closed hearings in July attended by prosecutors, defense lawyers and attorneys for the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department.
""It is now not going to be what the Government wanted it to be -- a garden-variety, run-of-the-mill drug case,"" the general's lawyer, Frank Rubino, said after reading Judge Hoeveler's opinion. ""It's going to be in the context of what was really happening in Central and South America involving the intelligence communities.""
Diane Cossin, spokeswoman for the United States Attorney's office, would not comment on details of the ruling but said, ""We will abide by any order Judge Hoeveler issues in this case.""
The Government can appeal Judge Hoeveler's decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta.
A person involved in the case, who spoke only on the condition of not being named, said Judge Hoeveler agreed that the following issues were relevant to General Noriega's defense:
*Documents regarding C.I.A., Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies' operations allowing safe passage to drug planes in Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua.
*Panama's involvement in the training of United States-backed rebels in Nicaragua.
*Joint drug interdiction efforts by the United States and General Noriega.
On another aspect of the Government's prosecution of General Noriega, The Washington Post reported in its Thursday issue that the United States Customs Service had opened an internal investigation of the circumstances under which a convicted drug smuggler returned to Colombia.
The Post said the smuggler, Boris Olarte Morales, had been expected to testify against General Noriega but prosecutors now feared he would not return for the trial.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"NORIEGA'S LAWYER PRESSES EX-PILOT
The lawyer defending Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega hammered away at the prosecution's star witness for the second consecutive day today, accusing him of ""shaking down"" the cocaine-trafficking ring based in Medellin, Colombia, for $500,000 in bribes by ""trading on the general's name.""
The chief defense counsel, Frank Rubino, also coaxed from Floyd Carlton Caceres, General Noriega's former personal pilot, an admission that the general ""did not know the details"" of four drug flights from Colombia to Panama that Mr. Carlton had previously testified to having flown. In fact, Mr. Carlton said, General Noriega took no action to protect the cocaine shipments, limiting his role to giving his permission for them to take place.
""General Noriega was paid $150,000 in advance to do absolutely nothing?"" Mr. Rubino asked in a tone of incredulity, referring to one flight.
""That is correct, sir,"" replied Mr. Carlton, who served four years in prison after being convicted on drug charges. He now lives under an assumed identity as part of the Federal Government's witness protection program. A Very Important Witness
Because he is probably the only person who can directly link General Noriega to cocaine shipments and payoffs, Mr. Carlton is regarded as perhaps the most important witness in the trial of the deposed Panamanian dictator, who surrendered to the American authorities on Jan. 3, 1990, two weeks after United States forces invaded Panama.
Mr. Carlton maintained today, as he has in the past, that he acted as a courier, transporting bribes from the Medellin drug ring to General Noriega and asserting that all the money that the general was supposed to receive was actually delivered to him.
In Mr. Rubino's effort to discredit Mr. Carlton's account of private conversations with General Noriega and leaders of the Medellin ring, the defense lawyer had asked several times earlier if other witnesses could corroborate Mr. Carlton's account, only to be told that those witnesses were now dead or that no one else had been present. Finally, Mr. Carlton lost his patience with the lawyer's insistence on that point.
""Mr. Rubino, this was a cocaine deal,"" Mr. Carlton said, describing a bedroom meeting with General Noriega during a party at the general's beach house. ""We weren't talking about cookies here. I couldn't tell him about these things with all those people there."" Uncertainty on Flights
In the two days of cross-examination, Mr. Carlton also testified that although he had flown cocaine from Colombia to Panama he had no direct knowledge that the drugs were then flown on to the United States, a point the prosecution must establish if it hopes to convict General Noriega on 10 counts of cocaine trafficking, racketeering and money laundering.
Mr. Carlton also acknowledged that the general was unaware of a money-laundering flight he made, and became angry when he learned of it later.
Mr. Rubino was less successful in his efforts to advance his thesis that General Noriega was an unwitting accomplice in a guns-for-drugs smuggling network established with the knowledge of the Reagan Administration for the benefit of the Nicaraguan rebels who were seeking to overthrow their country's Sandinista Government.
On several occasions Federal District Judge William M. Hoeveler cut the defense lawyer short, saying, ""We needn't go into that area any further,"" or, ""Just stay away from it.""
Among the questions Mr. Rubino was not allowed to ask Mr. Carlton was, ""Did you ever fly arms at General Noriega's instruction for Col. Oliver North?""
Mr. Carlton dropped brief but tantalizing hints of his involvement in a number of clandestine operations with political overtones. On one occasion, he acknowledged he had smuggled to left-wing guerrillas in El Salvador arms that had been bought, in Mr. Rubino's words, ""from our allies, Taiwan and Israel.""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Bush Travels To Florida, But He Sticks To the Script
President Bush set foot in Florida today for the first time since taking office but brushed off questions about the state's role in the bitter election dispute that narrowly gave him the presidency.
'Some of the Democrats here want to keep re-voting the election, but if they would listen to America,  they would find that Americans want to move forward,' Mr. Bush told reporters who raised the election controversy.
The president was touring a small home at Tyndall Air Force Base, drawing attention to his plan to improve military housing.
His narrow election victory in Florida, coupled with his loss of the popular vote nationwide, present a challenge to the president as he pushes an ambitious legislative agenda.
Presidential aides debated whether Mr. Bush should raise the 36-day election struggle in his brief visit to Florida. In the end, advisers chose to limit his remarks to the subjects of taxes and military morale.
The site of Mr. Bush's visit was far removed from the ballot-counting conflicts of South Florida. Here in the Florida Panhandle Mr. Bush outpolled former Vice President Al Gore by a healthy margin. Statewide, he won by only 537 votes, according to the final tally.
'What an honor it is to represent you all and what an honor it is to be the president of the greatest country on the face of the earth,' Mr. Bush told a large gathering of Rotary Club and Chamber of Commerce members.
The president briefly interrupted his remarks to offer a moment of silence for the American soldiers killed in Kuwait today in a training exercise.
Still, there were some reminders that not so long ago the country was unsure whether it would be Mr. Bush or Mr. Gore flying around the country in Air Force I.
Gov. Jeb Bush, a player in the election dispute and Mr. Bush's brother, gave the president a bear hug as he bounded down the steps of the plane this morning. 'The president of the United States -- that sounds good,' the governor said in introducing Mr. Bush.
Some members of the State Legislature who voted to give Florida's 25 electoral votes to Mr. Bush sat in the front row of the Marina Civic Center.
A small group of protesters outside the speech site sought to question Mr. Bush's legitimacy, but they were greatly outnumbered by the Bush backers who lined the roadway along the motorcade route.
'His so-called victory was grand theft,' said Bob P. Kunst, a supporter of Mr. Gore who was staging his 79th protest since Election Day.
Before the president arrived, Mr. Kunst stood beside two banners, a few fellow protesters and a brown dog named Cocoa.
'We're only at the beginning stages of rallying the forces nationwide,' he said.
More protesters turned out in other parts of the state, and Democrats in the Panama City area greeted Mr. Bush with a full-page advertisement in the local newspaper.
'Isn't it simply unfair to win by breaking the rules?' the Bay County Democratic Party asked Mr. Bush in an open letter.
But White House aides said that the dispute over the Florida vote had long passed, and that Mr. Bush and most of the country had moved on.
'The president believes that virtually all Americans, except the most partisan, are looking forward,' said Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman.
At the military base, Mr. Bush stepped inside the small brick home of Donnie G. Bryant, a senior airman, and spoke of the need to renovate military housing nationwide.
'I do think we need for a troop to be able to house his family,' the president said. 'That's an important part of building morale in the military.'
Later, as Mr. Bush offered his arguments for tax cuts, he introduced two Florida lawmakers on stage with him, Representatives Joe Scarborough, a Republican, and Allen Boyd, a Democrat. 'It's out of the House,' the president said of the tax-rate reduction plan approved by the House last Thursday. 'Come out of the Senate, and I'll sign it.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Cheney Blamed for Press Problems in Panama
LEAD: A report commissioned by the Pentagon has concluded that an excessive concern for secrecy on the part of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney prevented reporters from covering crucial engagements in the invasion of Panama.
A report commissioned by the Pentagon has concluded that an excessive concern for secrecy on the part of Defense Secretary Dick Cheney prevented reporters from covering crucial engagements in the invasion of Panama.
The report, to be made public Tuesday, also asserts that the Defense Department failed to develop a detailed plan for news coverage because a preliminary plan was locked away in a safe to avoid its disclosure.
The Pentagon's arrangements for reporting of the Dec. 20 invasion have been roundly criticized by news organizations, which have said they were not able to cover the critical battles in the invasion.
Pete Williams, the chief Pentagon spokesman, has acknowledged that the arrangements were deficient, and he commissioned a study of the matter by Fred S. Hoffman, a former Pentagon correspondent for The Associated Press who until recently served as the Pentagon's deputy press spokesman.
Mr. Hoffman's report is based on interviews with a wide range of military and civilian officials, including Secretary Cheney.
Two Main Problems Cited
The report says there were two main problems with the operation of the news media pool. For one, the pool reporters arrived too late to cover the opening attacks. Dispatched from Washington, they arrived in Panama at 5 A.M. on Dec. 20, about four hours after the invasion began.
Another big problem was that the military did not have helicopters ready to take the journalists around Panama.
According to the report, parts of which were described by Pentagon officials, Mr. Cheney personally decided not to activate the press pool until after the evening television news on Dec. 19, which prevented the media from covering the start of the invasion.
The report says Mr. Cheney's decision reflected an 'excessive concern with secrecy.' In addition, the report says Mr. Cheney was wrong to reject a plan by public affairs officials at the United States Southern Command in Panama to organize a pool using reporters who were already in Panama, which could have enabled the press to cover the opening hours of the invasion.
In addition to criticizing Mr. Cheney, the report faults Mr. Williams's performance. The report says the spokesman should have tried to persuade the Secretary to dispatch the pool earlier and should have asked Gen. Colin L. Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for help in making helicopters available to the press after the invasion began.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"The Capital
LEAD: No one can accuse President Bush of timidity in his dealings with Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, who has replaced Muammar el-Qaddafi as the dictator Americans hate best.
No one can accuse President Bush of timidity in his dealings with Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, who has replaced Muammar el-Qaddafi as the dictator Americans hate best.
Mr. Bush has not only called upon the Panamanian Defense Forces to overthrow General Noriega; he has also dismissed suggestions that his remarks were inflammatory with the brusque comment, 'I would add no words of caution,' and insisted that a good, old-fashioned coup d'etat, a Latin America specialty for decades, would be just the thing to put things right in Panama.
'The problem is Noriega,' Mr. Bush declared flatly. 'If Noriega were to leave, we'd have good relations with the Panamanian people.'
Mr. Bush gets high marks in Washington for his handling of the crisis so far, and not just because of the natural tendency to give the new boy a break as he grapples with his first big test. He has done two of the things that people faulted Ronald Reagan for not doing by consulting closely with Congress before acting, and by seeking the counsel of the leaders of Latin American countries.
In what he has done, as distinct from what he has said, the President has also managed to avoid looking like the swaggering gringo imperialist who looms so large in the perfervid Latin imagination. The dispatch of 2,000 more American troops was a skillful bit of political minimalism, not the act of a jingo.
He may even manage to conjure a victory of sorts, especially if the foreign ministers of the Organization of American States, who are to meet in Washington on Wednesday, screw up their courage and call for the ouster of General Noriega rather than issuing a mere ritual condemnation.
But Mr. Bush is paying a price, in Panama as in Europe, for his slow start in assembling a foreign policy team. He has no special envoy for Latin America, the sort of person who might have been crisscrossing the region, building relationships in preparation for troubled times, and he has no Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs to act as a point man. Bernard Aronson, nominated for that pivotal job, still awaits confirmation.
Now the President may be opening himself to two other dangers with his blunt talk, dangers that he might have avoided by harking back at the experiences of his predecessors.
As Sol M. Linowitz, a former ambassador to the O.A.S., remarked this week, Mr. Bush 'may have inadvertently given the impression, in encouraging an uprising, that we will support it with troops and other means if it gets into trouble.' That was the impression - incorrect, as things turned out - that the Hungarians got in 1956 from Dwight D. Eisenhower's talk about freeing the 'captive nations.' And that was the impression - also incorrect - that the Cuban rebels got in 1961 from John F. Kennedy & Company.
'We aren't going to intervene in that way, so this kind of loose talk can only create bitterness for the long term,' Mr. Linowitz said.
Ambler Moss, a former ambassador to Panama, discerned another peril in the President's eagerness to equate the problems of Panama with the person of General Noriega while ignoring the role played by all of the other corrupt, brutal, drug-dealing Panamanian officers.
'He didn't do all this by himself,' Mr. Moss said, 'so it doesn't necessarily follow that all of it would end with Noriega's departure.'
The analogy that springs to mind is that of Ngo Dinh Diem and his family in South Vietnam in 1963. If only they could be deposed, American officials said in those days, everyone could get on with winning the war. So a coup was duly staged with American complicity, and precisely nothing of significance changed.
In fact, the Panamanian problem goes much deeper than General Noriega. It may well be, as a onetime National Security Council staff member said today, that 'the solution starts with throwing him out.' What no one has figured out yet is where the solution ends - how to make sure that the others don't simply take up where he leaves off.
WASHINGTON TALK",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Noriega Co-defendant Guilty
A co-defendant of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega pleaded guilty to drug charges today and agreed to testify against the former Panamanian leader at his own drug trial this summer.
The 29-year-old defendant, Amet Paredes, the son of a former prominent general in Panama, pleaded guilty before Federal District Judge William M. Hoeveler to conspiracy to distribute and import 732 pounds of cocaine into the United States in 1985 or 1986.
Mr. Paredes's lawyer, Joel Rosenthal, said his client would testify that General Noriega was directly involved with a cocaine shipment aboard the Krill, a Panamanian pleasure boat.
""He will testify about direct contact with Noriega concerning the Krill,"" Mr. Rosenthal said of his client.
In return for a guilty plea by Mr. Paredes, prosecutors agreed to recommend no more than a 10-year minimum sentence and dropped four other counts against him, including racketeering and distribution of cocaine. Sentencing was scheduled for July 15. Third to Plead Guilty
Prosecutors said Mr. Paredes's plea bolsters a case they have been building against the deposed Panamanian leader since his 1988 indictment. General Noriega's trial is scheduled to start on June 24.
Mr. Paredes is the third co-defendant to plead guilty and agree to testify against General Noriega. The others, Eduardo Pardo, a Panamanian pilot, and Lieut. Col. Luis del Cid, a Noriega military aide, pleaded guilty last year.
General Noriega surrendered to the United States authorities in January 1990, a few weeks after his government was toppled in the American invasion of Panama. He is being held in a Miami jail, and faces drug charges stemming from a February 1988 indictment by grand juries in Miami and Tampa for allowing international drug traffickers to use Panama as a drug transshipment point and launder money through its banks.
Mr. Paredes's father, Ruben Dario Paredes, was a Panamanian military commander in the early 1980's.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Witness Says Noriega Got $10 Million in Drug Bribes
The Medellin drug cartel paid $10 million in bribes to Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega for his permission to ship 20 tons of cocaine to the United States from Panama, a former Panamanian diplomat who says he was a go-between in the deal testified here today.
The witness was Ricardo Bilonick, who has admitted supervising the cocaine shipments aboard an airline he owned in partnership with Colombian drug traffickers. He also said today that Pablo Escobar, leader of one of the most powerful arms of the cartel, once boasted to him that when General Noriega flew to the United States on an official visit late in 1983 he did so aboard a plane ""loaded with cocaine.""
Previous witnesses in the trial of General Noriega, who has been charged with 10 counts of cocaine trafficking, racketeering and money laundering, have already testified that Mr. Escobar owned the plane, a Lear jet, that brought Mr. Noriega to the United States, and that the general knew of the plane's ownership at the time. Mr. Bilonick said today that he did not know if General Noriega was ever aware that cocaine had been packed into secret compartments installed in the plane on Mr. Escobar's order. Direct Tie to Shipments
Mr. Bilonick is the first witness in the trial, now in its third month, to tie the general directly to cocaine shipments to the United States. The $10 million in bribes that he says were paid to the deposed Panamanian leader eclipses all the other illegal payments that have been mentioned by the 25 witnesses who preceded him on the stand.
The United States visit to which Mr. Bilonick referred began Nov. 14, 1983, when General Noriega left Panama with a group of Panamanian officials and an American military escort. The general flew first to Miami and then to Washington, where he met with William J. Casey, who was then the Director of Central Intelligence; Caspar W. Weinberger, the Secretary of Defense, and officials of the State Department and the National Security Council. He then returned to Panama via Las Vegas and Miami.
Mr. Bilonick, who surrendered to the American authorities in August as part of a plea agreement, provided no further details about Mr. Escobar's account, which appears to conflict with statements made by other witnesses in the case. Steven Kalish, a convicted marijuana smuggler who testified this month that he was the general's partner in another trafficking scheme, also said he lent a Lear Jet to General Noriega for the Washington visit.
But a Panamanian law-enforcement official, reached by telephone today, said the general and his group traveled to Washington on more than one plane. He said records in Panama did not indicate whether the Noriega party had landed at Andrews Air Force Base or National Airport, and he said that if any cocaine was aboard one of the planes it would probably have been removed in Miami.
In other testimony, Mr. Bilonick said he supervised 19 cocaine flights to the United States from Panama in 1983 and 1984, with cargoes from 1,100 pounds to more than a ton. The General received a bribe of $500,000 ""every time, every flight,"" he said, to allow the cocaine to be flown on planes owned by Inair, a small commuter and cargo airline that Mr. Bilonick operated, with Mr. Escobar as his silent partner.
The payments to General Noriega were intended, Mr. Bilonick testified, to ""buy a secure landing strip, secure transit through the streets, roads and highways of Panama and secure entry to the airport."" Most of all, the Colombians were paying for ""complete silence in Panama,"" he said.
Usually, Mr. Bilonick said, the cocaine was flown to Florida from Panama in large containers in which the cocaine was surrounded by freezers, irons, television sets or other appliances. In Miami, the cocaine was extracted from the containers.
When one outgoing shipment was mistakenly confiscated by customs officials at Panama's main airport, Mr. Bilonick testified, the head of the national police told cartel representatives they would ""have to pay another $500,000 to Noriega"" to recover it. That done, he said, blue jeans were substituted for the seized cargo of cocaine in an operation supervised by officers of Panama's military intelligence.
In May 1984, Mr. Bilonick said, Mr. Escobar ""asked me whether Inair could also fly to Nicaragua."" Mr. Bilonick said Mr. Escobar went on to say that ""he had reached a similar agreement with the Sandinistas, the introduction having been made by General Noriega.""
Earlier in the trial, a Panamanian pilot, Floyd Carlton, testified that he had flown to the Nicaraguan capital to deliver a large amount of cash to Mr. Escobar, who was hiding there.
Despite the large bribes paid to General Noriega, he wanted more for his acquiescence, Mr. Bilonick testified. He recalled a party held in honor of the general's birthday in 1984. ""You have to give me a very big present, because you are making a lot of money,"" he said General Noriega told him.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"OFFICIALS SAY BUSH HEARD '85 CHARGE AGAINST NORIEGA
LEAD: Vice President Bush was told nearly three years ago by the American Ambassador to Panama of allegations that Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega was involved in drug trafficking, according to Reagan Administration officials.
Vice President Bush was told nearly three years ago by the American Ambassador to Panama of allegations that Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega was involved in drug trafficking, according to Reagan Administration officials.
Mr. Bush has said repeatedly that he knew of no clear evidence that the Panamanian leader was involved in drugs until this February, when General Noriega was indicted on drug traficking charges by two Florida grand juries.
At a campaign stop Thursday in Los Angeles he went further. After saying that the United States had prosecuted General Noriega as soon as it had 'clear, definable' evidence, Mr. Bush was asked whether he had ever been told of 'reports' of General Noriega's drug ties before the indictment. 'Not that I was ever aware of,' he replied. Cables and Staff Memo
However, in December 1985 Mr. Bush, who has led President Reagan's efforts to slow the flow of drugs into0the United States, met in Washington with a strong Administration critic of General Noriega, Edward Everett Briggs, then the Ambassador to Panama.
In the weeks before the meeting, Mr. Briggs had cabled the State Department recounting allegations of General Noriega's drug involvement and his possible role in the murder of Dr. Hugo Spadafora, a political opponent.
Although the Vice President said he did not see or hear of the cables, the Administration officials, in responding to reporters' questions, said the ambassador related the substance of those dispatches to Mr. Bush in the December meeting. A previously undisclosed memorandum that Bush aides prepared for the Vice President before the meeting said that its purpose was to 'discuss U.S. relations with Panama and narcotics matters.'
At the time, other senior officials were already concerned about General Noriega's activities. Six days before the meeting, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, then the national security adviser, went to Panama and sharply warned General Noriega about the country's official drug corruption, according to present and former officials. Classified Study Cited
In addition, the Poindexter mission, along with evidence collected by American intelligence agencies of General Noriega's involvement in drug activities, were reported seven months later in The New York Times. The June 1986 article cited a highly classified Defense Intelligence Agency study that concluded that General Noriega was involved in drug activities.
Craig Fuller, the Vice President's chief of staff, said in an interview on Friday that Mr, Bush did not know Mr. Poindexter was making the trip to Panama. The Vice President is one of four statutory members of the National Security Council, a group for whom the National Security Adviser and his staff work.
Asked about Mr. Bush's saying he was not aware of any 'reports' that General Noriega might be involved in drug trafficking, Mr. Fuller said Friday: 'I don't think the Vice President is trying to suggest that he didn't know that Panama had a narcotics problem and that Noriega, as a key player in Panama, might have had some involvement. What he's really saying is that certain knowledge didn't come until after the indictment of Noriega.'
Asked why the Vice President had not clarified this distinction earlier, Mr. Fuller said that Mr. Bush had not been asked to do so. 'I am perfectly comfortable saying he had an awareness of the nature of some of the problems and an awareness Noriega might have been associated. The issue is the point at which that became certain.'
The Noriega issue could play a role in the fall election campaign. Both Gov. Michael S. Dukakis and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the potential Democratic opponents to Mr. Bush, have raised questions about how much the Vice President knew of allegations about General Noriega's activities, particularly accusations that he was involved in drugs. In addition, Mr. Bush has stressed that his experience in foreign policy matters is among his chief selling points as a candidate.
Mr. Briggs, now the United States Ambassador to Honduras, pushed unsuccessfully in late 1985 for a change in American policy toward General Noriega, many Administration officials said. Inside the Government he was one of the Administration's earliest and most vocal critics of the Panamanian leader. A spokesman for the Ambassador, reached in Honduras, said Mr. Briggs declined to comment on the meeting with Mr. Bush. 'Disturbing Events' Noted
The memorandum outlining that meeting that had been prepared in advance for the Vice President was released by Mr. Bush's staff in response to a request from reporters. The longest section of the memo, labeled 'background,' said: 'There have been disturbing events in Panama of late and Ambassador Briggs, a long-term observer of the scene, will be in a good position to interpret them to you. Of particular interest will be: political developments following the resignation of President Barletta - drug interdiction.' Nicholas Ardito Barletta resigned as president of Panama in 1985 after General Noriega arrested him and threatened his family.
Mr. Fuller said Mr. Bush did not recall whether the issue of General Noriega's role in the drug problems of Panama had been mentioned at the Dec. 16, 1985, meeting with Ambassador Briggs. He said the Vice President would not have been surprised if it had been discussed because he and his staff were aware at the time of unconfirmed allegations that General Noriega was involved in corruption and drug dealing.
Mr. Fuller said that the briefing memo suggested to him and the Vice President that drugs would have been discussed in the context of Panama's role in drug interdiction. But he added that he had no recollection at all of the meeting, which the briefing memo said he was scheduled to attend.
The Vice President has also said that he never saw or was told of the cables sent by Ambassador Briggs. Mr. Bush said in Cincinnati a week ago: 'You hear all kinds of allegations from the former ambassador that a cable was sent to the White House. I asked around and nobody ever saw it. I didn't and these allegations are pure politics.'
Speaking of General Noriega, Mr. Bush continued, 'There are a lot of people around the world who don't pass the perfection saliva test. But in terms of did we know he was smuggling drugs - no.'
Two former White House officials and a former senior State Department official said they had read the cables. 'They were extremely strong.' recalled one of these officials. 'They said the United States should take action against this man, that this was a man who had a history of all these things: drug dealing, gun running, technology transfer, and now he's murdered one of his opponents and nobody seems to be interested.' Actions Viewed as Threat
Mr. Briggs's ire at that time was provoked by General Noriega's toppling of Mr. Barletta, present and former officials said. Administration officials said that Mr. Briggs viewed General Noriega's actions as a threat to the Reagan Administration's policy of promoting democracy in Central America.
More information about the Vice President's role in Panama policy became publicly available recently when Lieut. Col. Samuel J. Watson 3d and Donald Gregg, Mr. Bush's two senior foreign policy advisers, turned over to a Federal court several years of their calendars and telephone logs. They did so in response to a civil lawsuit brought by the Christic Institute, a Washington-based group that charges the Iran-contra affair is part of a long-running racketeering conspiracy.
Mr. Fuller said that the Vice President had no illusions about the character of General Noriega. 'He's been very realistic that there's a dark side to him, that this was not somebody who has ever been viewed as a world class leader.'
A review of Mr. Bush's lengthy government career shows there have been several occasions in which the Vice President was confronted with evidence of General Noriega's misconduct.
In 1976, when Mr. Bush was Director of Central Intelligence, American officials learned that General Noriega had recruited several American Army sergeants as spies and was buying highly sensitive material from them, including reels of tape from American eavesdropping equipment.
The C.I.A. continued to use General Noriega as a source of information on Cuba and elsewhere after this incident, the officials said.
Mr. Fuller said that Mr. Bush would not discuss any matters that arose during his one-year tenure at the C.I.A., even though a declassified account of the security breach had been made public in 1978 in a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The C.I.A. also had no comment.
Correction:  May 10, 1988, Tuesday, Late City Final Edition
He is Everett Ellis Briggs. Later developments in the situation are reported on page D24.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"New Prosthesis for One-Legged Player
TOMAS MURRAY, who with one leg helped carry Panama's basketball team to a gold-medal round at the Special Olympic World Games, is being fitted for a new prosthesis, compliments of Newington Children's Hospital in Hartford. Murray, who is 20, lost his left leg near the hip in a train accident when he was 7.
The device is expected to get him walking without crutches for the first time in four years. ""I'm very happy this is going to happen,"" Murray said yesterday through an interpreter during his first visit with the doctors who will create the new limb. ""I didn't expect it. I can't tell you how happy I feel."" (AP)  SPORTS PEOPLE: SPECIAL OLYMPICS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Noriega Aide Gets Softened Penalty
Heeding an appeal for leniency, a Federal district judge has sentenced the former banker of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega to 12 years in prison for helping launder $14 million in cocaine profits.
The defendant, Amjad Awan, former head marketing officer for the Latin American and Caribbean division of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, was one of five people sentenced to prison Friday in a case resulting from a two-year Government investigation.
Mr. Awan, who was also fined $100,000, could have been sentenced to 19 1/2 years, but the judge, W. Terrell Hodges, noted that Mr. Awan had not profited from the scheme, that he had no criminal record and that he showed remorse.
United States Attorney Robert Genzman refused to say whether the former banker would testify against General Noriega, the deposed Panamanian dictator who is being held in Miami awaiting trial on drug-trafficking charges. Medellin Drug Syndicate
The others sentenced Friday were Akbar A. Bilgrami of the bank's Miami branch, to 12 years; Syted Aftab Hussain, who worked for the Panama branch, 7 years, 3 months; Ian Howard of the Paris branch, 4 years, 9 months; Sibte Hassan of the Paris branch, 3 years, 1 month, and Rudolf Armbrecht, a Colombian aircraft broker, 12 years, 7 months and a $200,000 fine.
The six were convicted in July of conspiracy and laundering drug money.
In the trial, prosecutors told how Federal Customs Service agents had infiltrated a drug syndicate based in Medellin, Colombia, picked up cocaine profits from United States middlemen and asked the bankers to hide the source of the cash through a series of international wire transfers and loans.
The six were arrested in October 1988 after Federal agents had chauffeured them by limousine to a fake bachelor party and wedding that had been arranged to lure them to Tampa.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"G.I.'s Who Fought in Panama Are Counseled to Ease Stress
LEAD: The Army, which has long denied that going into combat can cause long-term psychological stress for some soldiers, is providing counseling to try to avert such problems for troops who recently returned from Panama.
The Army, which has long denied that going into combat can cause long-term psychological stress for some soldiers, is providing counseling to try to avert such problems for troops who recently returned from Panama.
The sessions at Fort Bragg, N.C., conducted by specially trained teams of mental health professionals and soldiers, are intended to prevent or detect symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder like nightmares, feelings of guilt, extreme sensitivity to loud noises and irritability.
Psychiatrists and clinicians say such symptoms, normal reactions to combat stress, can also be signals of more serious and lingering conditions.
'Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later'
'Our aim here is to take a pre-emptive strike against the impact that the stress might have on our soldiers,' said Maj. Scott Fairchild, director of clinical psychology at Fort Bragg's Womack Army Community Hospital. 'We realize that there will be the whole range of stresses and tolerance to the stresses and that there will be those who stuff those emotions without dealing with them. But our brains bring them back to us and, like the commercial says, 'Pay me now or pay me later.' '
The effort, which will eventually be offered to nearly 6,000 soldiers at Fort Bragg and their families, has been applauded by psychiatrists and clinicians.
Dr. Harry Holloway, chairman of the psychiatry department at the Defense Department's Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md., said an effort like the one at Fort Bragg was long overdue.
Small Counseling Teams
'To those Vietnam-era vets who question doing this now because Panama seemed so much milder, my answer to them is: 'So we screwed up with you guys. Why should we continue to screw up?' ' said Dr. Holloway, who treated Vietnam combat veterans.
Major Fairchild said the counseling at Fort Bragg involved small trained teams that often included an enlisted man, an officer and a chaplain or mental health specialist. When the troops returned to Fort Bragg after the invasion of Panama on Dec. 20, team members joined them as they took part in routine activities on the base, rather than meet them in hospitals or auditoriums. The team members talked informally with the soldiers about what happened to them and what they saw.
Major Fairchild said the hope was to get the soldiers to talk about their experiences among themselves as well because 'the best healing goes on right there in the unit and in small groups.'
Dr. Tom Williams, executive director of the Post Trauma Treatment Center at Centennial Peaks Hospital in Boulder, Colo., who served as a consultant in Fort Bragg's counseling program, said many soldiers at Fort Bragg told him of guilt about the fate of civilians and of the powerlessness they felt as they watched members of the Dignity Battalions loyal to Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega hack the civilians with machetes when they tried to reach sectors controlled by the Americans.
Twenty-three members of the armed forces and three American civilians were killed, and 324 military members were wounded. Military spokesmen say 314 Panamanian military members were killed and 124 wounded. The count of Panamanian civilians killed or injured in the invasion has not yet been officially determined.
Soldier's Nightmare Recalled
One of the first counseling sessions, which focused on the wounded, alerted Major Fairchild to a 19-year-old soldier with a leg wound who seemed sullen and sad. The clinical psychologist said he looked in on the soldier one night and found him in the midst of a nightmare. After gently waking him, Major Fairchild said the soldier told him of dreaming of intense combat with the sounds of explosions and helicopters and at first feeling invincible and then realizing that he could not return fire because he could not see his adversaries.
'The idea was to bring him back to the present, let him know that this was normal and it was all right to talk about,' Major Fairchild said. 'As we were talking we heard a helicopter taking off, and he realized that it was hearing the sound of the helicopter's landing that helped trigger his dream. He saw that it was normal and separated out what was real and what wasn't.'
Before the Vietnam War, what is now called post-traumatic stress disorder was known as 'shell shock' or 'battle fatigue.' In 1921 Freud wrote about the phenomenon, calling it 'war neurosis.'
Dr. Charles Marmar, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco, who is director of the stress disorder program at that city's Veterans Affairs Medical Center, said that Incidence of Combat Stress It was only in 1980 that the American Psychiatric Association recognized the existence of a specific condition produced by combat and termed it post- traumatic stress disorder, said Dr. Arthur Blank, director of Vietnam veterans' outreach programs for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
At that time the Veterans Administration began offering counseling specifically aimed at treating the disorder and was able to provide disability benefits for those diagnosed as suffering from it. Before that, according to Dr. Emil Tanay, professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University in Detroit and a former consultant to the Veterans Administration, veterans had to be diagnosed as schizophrenic to be eligible for benefits.
Until the program at Fort Bragg, the military has not offered counseling to soldiers right after they engaged in combat.
Many experts on post-traumatic stress disorder said it was still too early to tell whether debriefing approaches like those used at Fort Bragg worked well in preventing more serious symptoms.
'I don't want to make too much of this because trauma and the potential of trauma is not removed by this, nor are the memories turned into vanilla ice cream,' Dr. Holloway said. 'The horribleness of some experiences will still be there, but they will become comprehensible for some and there is some good news in that.'
Dr. Holloway, who was involved in approving the Fort Bragg effort, and others said that there were no indications that soldiers who had gone to Panama were any more susceptible to the disorder than other combat veterans. #27,000 Troops Involved The military action in Panama, which involved 27,000 troops, was the largest military action by the United States since the Vietnam War.
On the surface, the extent of casualties and the duration of combat in Panama pale next to combat in Vietnam, the Korean War and World War II. Most soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg were in Panama no longer than two weeks; the average Vietnam veteran had 300 'combat days,' military officials say.
But Dr. Williams said studies showed that 'how long the shooting lasts' made little difference in the potential for post-traumatic stress syndrome in those who had particularly 'horrendous experiences.' Of course, the longer a soldier serves in combat the more likely he is to encounter such an experience.
The Panama invasion provided other differences that would probably lower the actual numbers and severity of 'psychological casualties,' said Dr. Williams, who served two tours of duty in Vietnam.
'For one thing this was, unlike Vietnam, a popular action,' he said. 'That makes a difference in how they feel about it afterward. It was a highly defined operation with a clear objective, and they knew when they had won. That was not the case in Vietnam, which was a jungle war where there were no clear lines.'
But he said, and others agreed, that some experiences had undoubtedly been so horrible that they would necessarily lead to severe problems.
Dr. Blank said studies suggest that as many as 15 percent of the 3.1 million American soldiers who served in Vietnam suffer from the disorder.
Support From Base Commander
The sessions at Fort Bragg have focused so far on medical units, personnel who deal with the dead and some combat units. Major Fairchild said that because of strong support for the effort from Lieut. Gen. Carl W. Stiner, the commanding officer at Fort Bragg, requests for the sessions were coming in from scores of commanders of other units involved in the fighting, as well as from support units.
So far only a few sessions have been held as an option for the soldiers' families, but they had been well attended, Major Fairchild said.
Commanders' sensitivity to the subtle psychology and issues involved in combat stress was one of the keys to instituting the Fort Bragg program, both Dr. Williams and Major Fairchild said.
'The process actually began with General Stiner's decision to have the returning troops parachute triumphantly back to Fort Bragg,' Dr. Williams said, referring to a parachute jump by nearly 2,000 members of the 82d Airborne Division on Jan. 12. 'They weren't coming in through the back door, and that was important.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Noriega's Lawyers Say He Aided Anti-Drug Effort
Lawyers for Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega said today that documents seized by the United States armed forces in the invasion of Panama would show that the former dictator helped law-enforcement authorities in combating drug trafficking.
At a hearing in Federal court today, defense lawyers also asked for other documents that they asserted would show evidence of assassination plots by unidentified Government agencies against General Noriega and his predecessor, Gen. Omar Torrijos Herrera, whose death in a plane crash led to General Noriega's rise to power.
After the hearing, Frank A. Rubino, the General's lead counsel, declined to elaborate on his assertions about the contents of the documents and he said he would not discuss the assassination attempts because one of the documents has been classified as top secret by the Government. Federal agents have been barred by executive orders since the 1970's from taking part in or recommending the assassination of officials of rival governments. The order has been reissued by each President beginning with Gerald R. Ford.
Mr. Rubino said in the hearing, before Federal District Judge William M. Hoeveler, that the defense needed access to the tons of documents under the Government's control.
General Noriega is accused of conspiring with Colombian cocaine dealers in the illegal shipment of drugs to the United States.
Prosecutors said they would resist efforts by the defense to obtain many of the documents because, they said, the papers include classified information.
Many documents requested by the defense are files assembled by Mr. Rubino in the period after General Noriega was indicted, in February 1988, but before the invasion, in December 1989. ""Not only are these the General's files but also my files,"" Mr. Rubino told Judge Hoeveler. ""I didn't know we were going to have an invasion or I would have brought them back. We are not asking for secret documents in Washington. We are asking for access to our documents."" Emerging Legal Battle
Today's hearing provided the first glimpse into the legal battle over classified information that is getting underway in preparation for the General's trial, scheduled to begin July 22. Defense lawyers have long contended that the Government has been unwilling to turn over documents that are embarrassing to the United States.
If the defense succeeds in convincing Judge Hoeveler that the documents must be introduced as evidence in order to assure a fair trial for the General, the Government could be forced to disclose the secret material or face the prospect of dropping some of the drug charges against him.
Another file that the defense is seeking includes General Noriega's notes of previously disclosed meetings he held with President Bush, when he was Vice President, and two former officials in Panama, Gen. John R. Galvin, who was commander of United States forces in Central America, and Ambler Moss, who was Ambassador to Panama.
In court today as Mr. Rubino began cataloguing the documents the defense is requesting, the prosecutor who handles classified information immediately raised a number of objections.
""I move to have the hearing closed,"" said James McAdams, an assistant United States Attorney, who said the discussion violated the Classified Information Procedures Act, which regulates the use of secret information in criminal trials. 'Area That Presents Problems'
Judge Hoeveler, who did not rule on any of the defense requests for documents, agreed with the prosecutor. ""We may be dipping into an area that presents problems,"" he said.
While the Government objects to handing over many of the files seized in the invasion, Michael P. Sullivan, lead prosecutor, said today that the Government has already provided the defense with more than 7,000 pages of material.
The assertions by defense lawyers at the hearing suggested how their strategy is designed to show that the General's drug trafficking activities were, at least in part, an effort to help law enforcement authorities battle the Colombian cocaine traffickers.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Examiner's Murder Case Becomes a Tangled Tale
As the medical examiner here for more than 10 years, Dr. William Sybers had to look into every unexpected, unexplained or violent death. Three or four times a week, Dr. Sybers said, he had an appointment with a corpse.
Homicides were easy. 'Most of them are shots or knife wounds,' he said, 'and the cause of death is pretty obvious.'
In 1991, Dr. Sybers's wife, Kay, died mysteriously at their home here. She was 52 years old, and she had needle marks in her arm. Her death was not one of the easy ones.
Some people in this tourist town in the Florida Panhandle had theories, though, most of them linked to an affair Dr. Sybers began a few months before his wife died. They say that a rich philandering doctor who could have been facing an expensive divorce had both the motive and the means for killing his wife.
That made sense to a special prosecutor, Harry Shorstein, who pursued Dr. Sybers for five years before bringing him to trial on a murder charge. In March 2001, a jury sided with Mr. Shorstein, accepting medical testimony from an expert witness that Dr. Sybers had killed his wife with a sudden-death poison called succinylcholine. The next month he was sentenced to life in prison.
But two years later, the case has turned into a tangle of twists and reversals that demonstrate how -- despite expert scientific testimony, a relentless prosecution and an adulterous suspect with a shaky alibi -- things may not be what they seem.
An appeals court reversed Dr. Sybers's conviction in February, saying the evidence about the poison was based on testing too novel to be accepted science. The court ordered a new trial. Instead, Dr. Sybers pleaded guilty to manslaughter in May, in exchange for a sentence of the time he had served, two years.
In early August, Mr. Shorstein notified the trial judge that his evidence had not only been novel but wrong. 'Though believed to be accurate at the time of the testimony,' he wrote, the evidence 'can no longer be relied upon.'
On Aug. 29, Gov. Jeb Bush appointed another special prosecutor, this one to assist a grand jury investigating Mr. Shorstein's conduct in the Sybers case.
Mr. Shorstein, who is the state attorney in Jacksonville, 240 miles from here, said in a recent interview that the case against Dr. Sybers was not about the particular poison so much as the assumption of risk. 'If you're going to have a mistress,' he said, 'you better hope your wife doesn't die of unexplained causes with two syringe marks in her arm.'
Judy Ray Sybers was the other woman and is now Dr. Sybers's wife.
'Bill and I had an affair,' she said. 'That I will not deny. But an adulterer is not a murderer.'
On Aug. 6, flawed evidence from the same expert witness caused a prosecutor in Columbia, Mo., to free Richard Allen Williams, a nurse who had been charged with capital murder, accused of poisoning 10 patients in a veterans hospital there with succinylcholine in 1992. Mr. Williams spent 14 months in jail awaiting trial and could have faced the death penalty if convicted.
Mr. Shorstein denies any wrongdoing, but he did not sound happy about the developments of the last several weeks.
'It's bad for me,' he said. 'I've got an election next year. But I am relatively certain that nothing will come of it because the prosecutor the governor has appointed is an honest prosecutor.'
John Daniel, who defended Dr. Sybers at his trial, talked about the case in his office overlooking the Massalina Bayou. Mr. Daniel said Mr. Shorstein had relied on 'bogus, junk, voodoo science' in claiming to find residue of a particular poison in Mrs. Sybers's corpse.
The Sybers case was different, he said, from the sort of thing he usually handles, particularly in the early summer. 'Spring break down here,' he said, 'is a criminal defense lawyer's dream.'
He said he was still baffled by Mr. Shorstein's conduct in the Sybers case. Three prosecutors had declined to pursue it before Gov. Lawton Chiles appointed Mr. Shorstein to have another look in 1995. The Syberses' children and Kay Sybers's family, including her mother and siblings, all opposed the prosecution.
Dr. Sybers maintained that the syringe marks were on his wife's arm because he drew blood for tests on the morning she died. She had complained of headaches, allergies and chest pains, he said. His daughter, Jennifer, testified that he often drew blood from family members for tests. Dr. Sybers said he threw the syringe into a trash bin across the street. It was never recovered.
Nor did he, citing his wife's wishes, call for an autopsy when she died. Instead, he sent her body to a funeral home that same morning, and her body was promptly embalmed.
In a recent telephone interview from his home in Vancouver, British Columbia, Dr. Sybers, now 70, said he had been distraught that day and not thinking clearly.
'If I had truly killed my wife,' he said. 'I would have ordered a cremation.'
The scientist who said he had discovered evidence of poisoning in the two cases was Dr. Kevin Ballard, the director of research development at National Medical Services, a Pennsylvania laboratory. In the cases of Dr. Sybers and Mr. Williams, he said he had found succinylmonocholine, the chemical succinylcholine breaks down into, in the corpses he examined. Dr. Ballard said only poisoning could account for the presence of the chemical.
Recent retesting by the Pennsylvania laboratory and the Federal Bureau of Investigation showed that the chemical is present in many corpses. In a letter to prosecutors last month, Dr. Ballard said he had been wrong to assume that the chemical 'is necessarily a foreign substance, that it does not occur naturally in tissues from decedents.'
Neither Dr. Ballard nor a spokesman for the laboratory returned calls seeking comment.
Nathan Z. Dershowitz, a New York lawyer who represented Dr. Sybers in his appeal, said evidence is routinely misused in criminal trials.
'The core problem,' Mr. Dershowitz said, 'is that jurors will simply accept the opinion of a scientific expert who is a good witness regardless of whether the substance of what they are saying makes any sense.'
Mr. Daniel, for his part, said he was eager to assist the grand jury investigating his former adversary.
'He needs a dose of his own medicine,' Mr. Daniel said. 'No pun intended.'
Mr. Shorstein replied.
'You can accuse me, if you want, of a crime punishable by life in prison, which is what you get for perjury in a capital case,' he said. 'But you really should have some evidence.'
Mr. Shorstein said he remained convinced that Dr. Sybers poisoned his wife with something that was meant to be hard to detect.
'I could retry him even without the science,' he said.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Efficiency Makes A Cameo
IN a sport gone mad with noise and improvisation and tediousness, it is always refreshing to see good old-fashioned competence at the ballpark.
There they were, side by side, two masters of the mound, working fast, working expertly, Ramiro Mendoza and Dan Cunningham, reliever and groundskeeper.
With drizzle falling, dark clouds scudding in from the northwest, rain delay looming ominously, separate team planes waiting at the airport, suppers being planned at home for fans, the scene was set for yet another long day's journey into night.
But then sanity took over yesterday at Yankee Stadium. Cunningham, the head groundskeeper, dumped bright beige sand on the damp, dark mound and deftly distributed it with a wooden rake.
Cunningham surely knew that the modern time-study men, the umpires who are under pressure to move these unwieldy games along, would give him precious few seconds to apply his art.
Feet dancing as he circled the mound, Cunningham applied the rake with long and loving strokes, the most graceful and purposeful use of an elongated device since I saw Rafael Kubelik conduct the New York Philharmonic many years ago. I think it was Smetana's 'Ma Vlast,' but don't hold me to it. I just remember the old master at work.
Yesterday, while another master plied the rake, Mendoza stood behind the mound, flipping the ball with his hand, a model of poise and patience. 'Tranquilo,' Mendoza agreed later.
Mendoza was more than calm. He was a veritable labor-saving device in a striped uniform. He needed only nine pitches in the bullpen to get warmed up and only 20 more pitches to deliver seven outs, surely a great ratio in these days of the dawdlers.
In the middle of a sloppy 14-8 victory by the Yankees over the Tigers, Mendoza helped keep the game down to 3 hours 13 minutes, which these days is considered normal.
Mendoza also helped keep his manager tranquilo. Before the game, Joe Torre talked about the changes in his sport since he came along in the early 60's.
Noise is one change. The manic marketers of baseball are doing their very best to destroy the hearing and the thinking of every poor dolt who comes to the ballpark without earplugs.
'We got it turned down a little bit,' Torre said, nodding at the sadistic speakers behind the outfield. 'But it's everywhere. It's right next to you when you stop for a red light.'
A second change is collegiality. Torre said teams used to 'hate each other,' but that has changed because players have 'the same agents' and 'move around more.' He didn't deplore the civility. He just said it was different.
A third change is that in the old days, umpires had honest differences in their strike zones, but when Richie Phillips was running their association, they went haywire.
'I've had umpires tell our players they were calling strikes two balls off the plate,' Torre said, meaning the width of two baseballs. 'I couldn't believe it.'
Now Major League Baseball is attempting to get umpires on the same page by clumsily monitoring pitch counts. Woe to the umpire who gets stuck in a game full of wild pitchers. Meanwhile, the games still lumber along.
A fourth change, Torre said, is that pitchers used to throw fastballs for strikes. 'They don't challenge people as much,' he lamented.
His words came to mind in the fifth inning when the rookie Randy Keisler self-destructed with a 4-1 lead. He had a good shot at a victory with three more outs, but couldn't come close.
'He caught me off guard,' Torre said.
While hits rocketed all over, Torre reluctantly had to goose up the bullpen earlier than anticipated. Mendoza, who has had arm problems and is not gaited for the long haul, started to warm up. Nine pitches later, he was ready.
'That look in his eye is so comforting,' Torre said later. 'He tells you he's all right.'
Mendoza coaxed a double play from his first batter, Wendell Magee. He gave up a harmless single in the sixth. Torre does not want to overwork Mendoza, but the quiet man from Panama was ready for more in the seventh -- as soon as Maestro Cunningham yielded the mound. Feet secure on the new sand, Mendoza got two more outs before Torre finally went out and got him.
'He was unreal,' the manager said.
The Yankees got slipshod again as soon as Mendoza was gone, but they survived for their fifth straight victory. Mendoza was the winning pitcher. The groundskeeper deserved a save for his fast hands and his footwork.
Sports of The Times",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Noriega Lawyer Derides U.S. Case in Closing
His voice dripping with sarcasm, the chief lawyer for Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega today derided the drug-trafficking, money-laundering and racketeering charges against the deposed Panamanian leader as a crude political vendetta built on the dubious testimony of ""admitted liars and convicted felons.""
""This indictment stinks,"" the main defense lawyer, Frank A. Rubino, told jurors during the second day of closing arguments in the trial that began last September. ""It stinks like a dead fish. It smells from here to Washington.""
Mr. Rubino began the defense summation, which is scheduled to continue Thursday, by criticizing the prosecution's description of General Noriega as a ""classic military dictator."" As he spoke, his client, who was arrested after the United States invaded his country in December 1989, sat expressionless on the other side of the room dressed in his military uniform.
""Is that a crime in the United States?"" Mr. Rubino asked. ""Is that what this indictment is about?"" He later acknowledged that subordinates of General Noriega had smuggled weapons to guerrilla forces hostile to the United States, but argued that they had every right to do so.
""I don't deny that one bit,"" he said of arms deals with left-wing guerrilla groups. ""After all, Panama is an independent, sovereign nation. Who they deliver arms to is their affair.""
The case against General Noriega, Mr. Rubino said, was based entirely on the theory that ""if you throw enough mud against a wall, some of it will stick."" But he added that there were ""too darn many things in this case that just don't make sense,"" including contradictory testimony by prosecution witnesses and witnesses whose motives were questionable at best.
Prosecutors want ""you to crank up your Ouija boards,"" Mr. Rubino said, to make sense of what he described as gaping holes in their case. But he added: ""It is not your job. The burden of proof is with the Government."" Disagreement Among Jurors
Mr. Rubino pointed out to jurors that prosecution witnesses had disagreed about whether bribes to General Noriega were paid in shoeboxes or envelopes and whether such payments were made at the airport or military headquarters. Two important witnesses, he also said, could not even agree about what airports and airstrips the Medellin cartel was allowed to use to shipcocaine to the United States.
In sharp contrast to the quiet, conversational tone used by Myles Malman, the Assistant United States Attorney who made the Government's closing argument of five and a half hours, which concluded earlier today, Mr. Rubino was often theatrical. He mocked the prosecution case as illogical and made emotional appeals to the jury, which has one Hispanic member, along with nine blacks and two whites. At one point he even invoked the homeless and the urban poor to support his argument that Government money had been misspent to build a case against his client.
But Mr. Rubino reserved most of his scorn for the witnesses the prosecution used in three months of testimony. Again and again, he reminded jurors that many of those who took the stand against General Noriega were convicted drug dealers who were testifying in the hope of receiving reduced sentences or being allowed to keep profits earned from drug smuggling.
""They are the scum of the earth,"" Mr. Rubino said indignantly of a score of prosecution witnesses whose records he reviewed on a series of charts. ""These people are disgusting,"" he said, asking, ""What kind of morals do these people have?""
Mr. Rubino was particularly critical of the Government's reliance on the testimony of Carlos Lehder Rivas, a former leader of the Medellin cocaine cartel who testified in November that General Noriega had given the Colombian drug group free run of Panama in exchange for large payoffs. Mr. Rubino described Mr. Lehder, who is serving a term of life plus 135 years in a Federal prison, as ""the Charles Manson of this case,"" and suggested that his history of drug use made him an unreliable witness.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Dozens Arrested in Raids on a Capital Drug Ring
LEAD: Federal law enforcement officials said today that they had broken up a major Washington narcotics organization run mainly by Panamanians.
Federal law enforcement officials said today that they had broken up a major Washington narcotics organization run mainly by Panamanians.
The early morning raids resulted in two dozen arrests in cities as diverse as Washington, New York, Los Angeles and Colorado Springs, and culminated a seven-month investigation, the officials said.
More than 150 law enforcement officers, ranging from United States marshals and agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to local narcotics detectives and state troopers, carried out the raids.
The officials described the organization as one of the larger drug operations in the Washington area, although not as large as one broken up a month ago by a raid that resulted in 18 arrests. Temporary Effect of Raid
The earlier raid was at first hailed as a major breakthrough in halting Washington's cocaine epidemic, one of the worst in the nation and the subject of not only local police action but also action by numerous Federal police agences. But within days of the raid, cocaine was as plentiful on the city's streets as ever, and narcotics agents said the best hope was that the raid would serve notice that there would be more raids, and that eventually the police would gain the upper hand.
The Federal agents said the two major figures in the organization raided today were Marcos Loinas Anderson and Gabriel Ruperto Davis-Munoz, both Panamanian nationals living in the Washington area who were arrested on drug-trafficking charges.
The agents said it appeared that the organization, which was subjected to electronic surveillance, got its cocaine in Colombia, shipped it through Panama and then moved it to Washington with the help of Panamanian and Jamaican immigrants. The members of the organization arrested beyond Washington were said to have been involved mainly in helping filter cocaine toward the city and were not distributors. Possible Life Imprisonment
The drug trafficking charges filed against most of those arrested thus far carry maximum penalities of life imprisonment without parole.
Narcotics experts say most cities the size of Washington have several drug organizations, some run by foreign nationals, others by American citizens. The organization raided here a month ago was run by Americans.
Federal officials would not comment on whether any of the Panamanians arrested today had connections to the Panamanian leader, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega. The general was indicted last year by two Florida grand juries on charges that he was involved in drug trafficking. He has refused to appear to answer the charges.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Judge in Noriega Trial Bars Records on Bush
The Federal district judge presiding over the trial of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega has ruled that the deposed Panamanian dictator will not be allowed to introduce discussions he had with George Bush as evidence in an important aspect of the case.
But the judge, William M. Hoeveler, has said he will permit General Noriega's lawyers to ""introduce evidence of an ongoing relationship with Fidel Castro"" in which the Panamanian acted on behalf of the United States.
In a court order issued a month ago but made public only today, Judge Hoeveler ruled that classified records of a 1983 meeting between General Noriega and Mr. Bush, who was then Vice President, were ""irrelevant"" to the charges that Panama's former ruler faces here.
General Noriega went on trial Thursday on 10 counts of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. If he is convicted on all of the charges General Noriega could face up to 140 years in prison.
Defense lawyers have argued that while the general may have permitted shipments of arms and drugs through Panama, he did so at the request of the United States Government.
According to the heavily censored document made public today, the defense lawyers are trying ""to prove U.S. Government involvement in the importation of narcotics to the United States in connection with"" efforts to supply Nicaraguan rebels, or contras, seeking to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista regime.
""Though defense counsel argue that this information concerns the 'contra pipeline' defense, there is nothing in the notice provided which suggests that these events have any connection to contra operations,"" Judge Hoeveler wrote of General Noriega's November 1983 visit to Washington and his meeting one month later in Panama with Mr. Bush. ""The defense will therefore be precluded from raising these matters at trial.""
But the judge also ruled that the Central Intelligence Agency must give General Noriega's lawyers any information indicating that the agency was working secretly with drug traffickers to supply the contras. Intermediary Role Claimed
""Evidence that persons alleged to have engaged in narcotics activities with Noriega were employed by the C.I.A. relative to contra operations appears to be important to Noriega's defense,"" he wrote.
In addition, Judge Hoeveler said he would allow the defense to use evidence that General Noriega ""regularly acted as an intermediary between the United States and Cuba, often meeting with"" Mr. Castro, the Cuban leader,""at the behest or with the approval of the United States.""
General Noriega has acknowledged several such meetings, which he has said dealt with foreign policy issues, including aspects of Cuban-American relations.
One of the counts against the former Panamanian dictator involves a meeting in Havana in July 1984, when Mr. Castro is said to have mediated a dispute between General Noriega and leaders of a cocaine-trafficking ring in Medellin, Colombia. The Noriega defense team has argued that if only the 1984 visit is considered, it ""will stick out as an isolated event with sinister overtones."" Judge Hoeveler agreed.
""Within certain limits, Noriega must be permitted to introduce evidence of an ongoing relationship with Castro which sometimes inured to the benefit of the United States,"" the judge wrote. ""Whether or not this evidence is ultimately persuasive, Noriega is entitled to have the jury consider the July 1984 meeting within the broader context of his relationship with Castro.""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"NORIEGA IS CALLED DRUG 'GODFATHER'
Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega promised to act as ""a godfather"" who would protect the Medellin ring's cocaine-manufacturing and money-laundering operations in Panama, a former business associate of the deposed Panamanian dictator testified today.
Ending three days of testimony here, the witness, Enrique Pretelt, a Panamanian jewelry store owner and pilot who was General Noriega's favorite drinking and partying companion for nearly 20 years, also said he and the general went into business with an American drug smuggler who asked their permission to use Panama as a transshipment point for a 400,000 pound load of marijuana bound for the United States.
Mr. Pretelt, now serving a prison sentence in Florida after pleading guilty to involvement in the marijuana-smuggling scheme, said the American drug trafficker, Steven Kalish, first approached him late in 1983 about laundering $80 million in drug profits in Panama. When he told General Noriega about the proposal, Mr. Pretelt said, the general was delighted.
""The general told me he thought this gringo was going to be a good one,"" Mr. Pretelt testified. He said that when he speculated that so large an amount of money could only come from drug trafficking, General Noriega replied: ""That's O.K. So what?"" He later invited Mr. Kalish to join him and Mr. Pretelt in a deal to buy aircraft for the Panamanian Air Force, Mr. Pretelt testified. Approval and Warning
Mr. Pretelt also said that early in 1984, when he sought General Noriega's approval after Mr. Kalish proposed shipping 200 tons of marijuana from Panama to the United States, assent was immediately given, with but one warning. ""Noriega said he thinks this could work, and he mentioned we have to be careful and inform him of everything we are doing,"" Mr. Pretelt testified.
The marijuana-smuggling scheme, which involved issuing false papers indicating that a Panamanian freighter had a cargo of bananas, was not carried out because Mr. Kalish was arrested in Tampa, Fla., in the summer of 1984. He later pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and racketeering charges, agreed to testify against General Noriega and was called to the witness stand this afternoon.
General Noriega, whose trial entered its third month today, has been charged with 10 counts of cocaine trafficking, racketeering and money laundering. If he is convicted of all charges, he could be sentenced to up to 140 years in prison.
The marijuana-trafficking charges are part of a separate indictment handed down in Tampa in February 1988 for which General Noriega, who surrendered early in January 1990 after American troops invaded Panama, has not yet been tried. Raid on Cocaine Lab
Mr. Pretelt said the general made his remark about serving as godfather for the drug-trafficking group based in Medellin, Colombia, to Mr. Kalish, who had been acting as intermediary in a long-running dispute with the Colombian organization. According to previous testimony here, the drug traffickers were angry because Panamanian soldiers had first intercepted a shipment of ether and then raided a cocaine-processing lab in the Panamanian jungle despite payment of a $5 million bribe.
At that point, Mr. Pretelt said, relations between the Colombians and the Panamanian military were so frayed that an emissary of the Medellin group complained to two colonels who headed military intelligence and to the police that General Noriega ""had double-crossed the family."" The emissary also said the Colombians were openly debating whether ""they should kill Noriega.""
The emissary was jailed shortly thereafter, but was then released on General Noriega's orders, Mr. Pretelt said.
Mr. Pretelt also testified that he accompanied the general to Havana for a meeting with President Fidel Castro that prosecutors contend was intended to mediate the dispute with the Medellin group.
Informed of the cocaine laboratory crisis while on a trip to Israel and France, General Noriega quickly flew to New York, arriving ""very nervous, very stressed"" at the notion that he was under pressure from ""both the gringos and the Colombians,"" Mr. Pretelt said.
On the flight to Havana, for which Mr. Pretelt said he filed a misleading flight plan, General Noriega blamed one of his senior officers, Col. Julian Melo, for the situation. Colonel Melo had received the bribe money from the Colombians and, according to prior testimony, failed to distribute it properly. Conference in Havana
Mr. Pretelt testified that General Noriega ""was out of control"" at the thought that Colonel Melo ""couldn't handle the business in the right direction."".
He also testified that he later saw General Noriega and Mr. Castro conferring in Havana, but did not take part in their discussion. He said that on the return flight to Panama two days later ""Noriega was more settled down and relaxed"" and said that he had found a solution to the crisis.
""He mentioned to me they would put all the blame for the raid on the lab on Melo,"" and that Colonel Melo ""will be the scapegoat,"" Mr. Pretelt said. The colonel was cashiered, but no criminal charges were brought against him.
Mr. Pretelt testified that General Noriega also agreed to return $1 million of the bribe to the Medellin cartel, along with aircraft, laboratory equipment and workers who had been arrested in the raid. Mr. Kalish, he recalled, told the general that ""the people from the cartel were pleased with what had been done.""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"NORIEGA'S DEFENSE DENIES DRUG BRIBES
Defense lawyers assailed Government attempts to show a paper trail from Colombia's cocaine lords to the bank accounts of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega after a week of testimony by financial analysts in the ousted Panamanian leader's drug trial.
They claimed in a counterattack on Thursday that he got his money from the Central Intelligence Agency, Israeli arms deals and his wife's income, and not drug barons.
""Can you say that any of this is drug money?"" Frank A. Rubino, General Noriega's lawyer, asked a financial analyst for the Drug Enforcement Administrtation.
""No,"" said the analyst, Lenore Sowers, who had traced $23 million through a maze of banks, numbered accounts and credit card summaries. No Clear Record
She could not, for instance, find any record of a $5 million bribe the Government contends General Noriega received in 1984 to protect a Medellin drug cartel lab being built in Panama.
The defense asserted that a scrawled note about ""cocaine"" and ""$50,000 Kg"" found on General Noriega's dresser during the December 1989 invasion of Panama was about confiscations, not sales.
When Mr. Rubino asked whether Ms. Sowers could show C.I.A. payments going into General Noriega's intelligence service account at the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, Federal District Judge William M. Hoeveler stopped him.
The C.I.A. and military intelligence have acknowledged paying General Noriega $320,000 during his rise to power in Panama. The defense claims the figure is closer to $10 million.
At least one payment of $226,000 into General Noriega's account came from an entity known as Iarco. Mr. Rubino said that stood for Israeli Arms Company, once again prompting objections from prosecutors. The check was drawn on Banco Leumi de Israel, one of that nation's largest banks.
More than $2 million of the money came from the accounts of General Noriega's wife, who is from a wealthy family and had a $35,000-a-month income, the defense showed.
During earlier prosecution questioning, Ms. Sowers said $7.1 million of the deposits that went into the account was in cash and $7.5 million more could not be traced because it went through Panama's B.C.C.I. branch.
The prosecution is expected to rest by Monday, after finishing the financial testimony. The defense will make its delayed opening statement Tuesday.
The judge said he would rule later on admitting into evidence a July 1991 letter Mr. Rubino wrote to a bank where General Noriega's money was briefly held. Prosecutors say the letter shows General Noriega claimed the money belonged to him, not the Panamanian intelligence service.
The defense said it shows only that they made every effort to obtain whatever money might be available to pay back the Federal court, which is subsidizing General Noriega's estimated $6 million defense.
General Noriega, who surrendered to United States troops during the invasion of Panama two years ago, faces up to 140 years in prison if convicted on all 10 drug and racketeering counts.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"To Stem Widespread Extinction, Scientists Airlift Frogs in Carry-On Bags
Of all the things airport security screeners have discovered as they rifle through travelers' luggage, the suitcases full of frogs were a first.
In a race to save amphibians threatened by an encroaching, lethal fungus, two conservationists from Atlanta recently packed their carry-ons with frogs rescued from a Central American rain forest -- squeezing some 150 to a suitcase -- and requested permission from airlines to travel with them in the cabin of the plane.
The frogs, snuggly swaddled in damp moss in vented plastic deli containers big enough for a small fruit salad, were perhaps the last of their kind, collected from a pristine national park that fills the bowl of El Valle, an inactive volcano in Panama.
In many parts of the world, habitat loss is thought to be the biggest driver of amphibian extinctions, but the frogs in El Valle are facing a more insidious threat.
A waterborne form of chytrid fungus is marching down the spine of the mountain range where they live. Scientists aren't exactly sure how the fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, kills, but it seems to break down a protein in the skin called keratin that may be important for respiration. The skin of infected animals sloughs off in layers, and within two weeks, they die.
The chytrid fungus is thought to play a large role in the worldwide disappearance of amphibians, a trend terrifying to experts, who say it would be the first loss of an entire taxonomic class since the dinosaurs.
Joseph R. Mendelson, curator of herpetology at Zoo Atlanta, who has discovered some 50 new species of frogs only to watch half of them become extinct in the last 15 years because of the fungus, was tired of watching helplessly as salamanders, newts and frogs were eradicated from one patch of forest after another.
With the help of new data published on Feb. 28 in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Karen R. Lips, a zoologist at Southern Illinois University who spent years tracking the chytrid fungus, scientists were able to predict where it would next strike.
'When you can make predictions with respect to catastrophic population declines and extinctions, we all agreed you have a moral and ethical responsibility to do something about it,' Dr. Mendelson said.
Dr. Lips called Dr. Mendelson and Ron Gagliardo, the amphibian conservation coordinator at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, because the men have a reputation for being especially good at catching and taking care of frogs, and proposed an idea that would seem reckless to most biologists.
She wanted them to collect as many frogs of as many different species as they could and move them out of El Valle before the virus hit. She estimated they had only weeks to carry out the mass frog evacuation.
'We are going to over-collect hundreds of animals,' Dr. Mendelson said. 'That flies in the face of all conservation logic.'
There was no time to do the meticulous studies of behavior, reproduction, eating habits and habitat that zoologists try to conduct before moving any endangered species from its natural environment.
There was not even time to figure out where to keep hundreds of frogs.
'Years and years of work go into moving one species out of the environment,' Dr. Mendelson said. 'We decided that can't happen. There's no time for that. We had to figure out what could be done quickly and, of course, legally.'
They went into the forest at night, since most frogs are nocturnal, slogging down a river in hip waders and carrying powerful flashlights. After four separate trips, some lasting only 48 hours, the two men, along with a native guide who possessed stealth and fast hands, managed to gather 600 frogs, shooting for 20 males and 20 females of each species to ensure good genetic variation in their breeding colonies.
To feed them, they rented a house and left piles of rotting fruit in the corners to attract flies. 'It was pretty stinky,' Mr. Gagliardo said.
Then there were those trips through airport security.
A guard in the Panama City airport was not satisfied with the letters of explanation the biologists presented, even though they included permission from the Panamanian government to collect the frogs.
He had them open a container that held the Michael Jordan of jumpers, a species the biologists liked to call rocket frogs.
'I open it and, sure enough, the frog goes bing!' Dr. Mendelson said.
Fortunately, Mr. Gagliardo caught it before it landed on anyone in the amazed crowd that had gathered.
Many of the species they brought home to their respective institutions in Atlanta have never before been kept in captivity.
But Mr. Gagliardo, who has been bringing frogs home since he was 4 years old, has developed a fine touch for their husbandry and for recreating environments for them to thrive and breed.
He quickly realized, for example, that a translucent species of frog collected from a cloud forest wasn't breeding because it needed, well, clouds.
With a cool-misting humidifier he bought on eBay and some plastic pipe, Mr. Gagliardo filled the glass frogs' tank with a steady whisper of white water vapor. Once the tank, which sits in a corner of a behind-the-scenes room at Zoo Atlanta, was bubbling over with a creeping mist like a witch's caldron, tadpoles followed in short order.
'It's a bit of a Noah's Ark, in some ways,' Mr. Gagliardo said. 'But it gives these species that are predicted to go a new lien on life.'
Not all experts, it should be noted, are fans of what has come to be called the rapid response protocol.
Dr. David Wake, an integrative biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, said the strategy felt too much like triage.
'I am alarmed at the apparent disappearance of so many amphibians in Central America,' Dr. Wake said. 'But if the situation is so bad then much organized thought should be given to a plan for captive breeding that is not responsive to emergencies only, but that looks at all amphibians worldwide to decide where limited funds would be best spent.'
Not all species are equally valuable, he noted, and not all are equally at risk.
Still, in an apparent validation of their tactics, Dr. Mendelson said the chytrid fungus had recently been found in El Valle, as predicted, and he estimated 90 percent of the frogs there would be gone within 90 days.
'You won't hear scientists say this too often,' Dr. Mendelson said. 'But I wish we were wrong.'
Correction:  June 8, 2006, Thursday  An article in Science Times on Tuesday about an airlift by conservationists from Atlanta to save a population of Central American frogs referred incorrectly at one point to the disease that is threatening them. It is a waterborne form of chytrid fungus, not a virus.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Order Against CNN Broadcast Is Upheld
A Federal appeals court in Atlanta tonight upheld an order barring Cable News Network from broadcasting what it said were tape-recorded conversations between Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega and his legal team.
The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta ordered the network to turn over the tapes immediately to Judge William M. Hoeveler, who is presiding over the Noriega case in Miami.
Judge Hoeveler issued the order that the network defied on Friday night when it played excerpts from a conversation between the general and a secretary for one of his lawyers.
The unanimous decision by the three-judge panel was a startling legal rebuff to CNN, whose lawyers said tonight that they would immediately file an emergency appeal to the United States Supreme Court.
A spokesman for the Court said tonight that CNN had not filed papers requesting an expedited hearing. Such a request to the Court would first go before Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who hears appeals from the 11th Circuit. Unlike Previous Cases
CNN's lawyers seemed stunned by the decision. ""It completely ignores virtually all the prior restraint cases,"" said Terry S. Bienstock, a lawyer in Miami for the network. ""They have shifted the burden of proof, requiring CNN to justify its actions and its editorial decisions on whether or not to broadcast by producing those materials for a court to act as a review panel.""
CNN's lawyers had argued that Judge Hoeveler's ban was an unconstitutional prior restraint on its right to broadcast the news. Lawyers for the general have said they were told by the network it had seven tapes of General Noriega's conversations, but the network has not said who the conversations were with.
CNN did not broadcast any more tapes today, but representatives said the network might do so at any time.
Frank A. Rubino, General Noriega's lawyer, who had asked the appellate court to uphold the ban, expressed elation over the court's decision. ""It will prohibit them from broadcasting the portion of the one tape they have broadcast and further prohibit them from broadcasting any of the additional attorney-client privileged tapes they have in their possession.""
In its order, the appeals court said the network had shackled the district court by refusing Judge Hoeveler's request to turn over the tapes to a Federal magistrate to determine whether they damaged General Noriega's right to a fair trial. Balancing Constitutional Rights
""The First Amendment interest of the press and the public will be best served by the immediate production of the tapes held by CNN so that the district court can conduct the difficult balancing of constitutional rights required under these circumstances, an obligation which the district court is required to discharge.""
The appeals court expressed irritation that CNN played one of the tapes at issue while it appealed the order prohibiting such broadcasts. ""No litigant can continue to violate a district court's order and attempt to have that district court's order reviewed at the same time,"" the ruling said.
The decision was unexpected because the restraints on broadcasting or printing have rarely been imposed and have almost always been overturned when appealed, even when national security issues were at stake.
The leading Supreme Court precedent on prior restraint in the context of a claim that a defendant's right to a fair trial may be jeopardized is the 1976 case Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart.
In that case the Court overturned an order issued by a Nebraska trial judge prohibiting reporting on a preliminary hearing in a mass murder case until the jury was selected. The judge's purpose was to insure that an impartial jury could be found.
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger wrote in that case that ""prior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment Rights.""
The appeals court's ruling in Atlanta came several hours after lawyers for General Noriega asked Judge Hoeveler to cite CNN for contempt and to fine the network $300,000 each time it broadcast the conversations.
The defense lawyers sought the fines as a contempt sanction against the network after the Friday broadcast. CNN played the tape moments after Judge Hoeveler told the network's lawyer he would fine CNN if it violated his order barring the broadcast.
The contempt issue was left unresolved when the network's lawyer asserted that the judge had disclosed his views on the matter to a CNN reporter before today's hearing and asked the judge to disqualify himself from considering the contempt issue. Judge Hoeveler said he would seek a ruling on CNN's motion from the chief judge of the district court.
In their contempt brief, the lawyers for General Noriega contended that they did not know the extent to which their conversations with the General had been disclosed to prosecutors. The chief Government lawyer in the case, Myles Malman, has said that none of the Government's lawyers know the contents of the tapes. Prosecution Asks CNN to Stop
The Justice Department also filed a motion with the appellate court today asking CNN to stop broadcasting conversations between General Noriega and his lawyers, saying it threatened his right to a fair trial.
The department's brief also asserted that Government lawyers do not know the contents of the tapes. ""The Government cannot at this point be more specific with respect to the possible harm that could flow from publication of the tapes because the Government, like the district court, does not know the contents of the materials CNN has in its possession,"" the legal paper said.  A Troubled Case
The brief conversation that the network broadcast Friday evening suggested that the General was concerned about the arrest of two men in Panama, identified as Alfredo Sanchez and Felipe Camargo, who the General feared might testify against him.
The existence of the tape-recorded conversation between the General and his lawyers was another serious embarrassment for Federal prosecutors in a case that some legal experts said was weak from the start. Defense lawyers have already said they would seek the dismissal of the drug trafficking charges against General Noriega because of the taping.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons routinely monitors telephone calls made by detainees, but officials at the agency have said they did not record conversations between inmates and their lawyers if asked not to tape such calls. General Noriega's lawyers have said that he asked prison officials not listen to his calls to his attorneys.
Prosecutors in the case have had problems since Federal drug agents brought General Noriega to Florida after a United States invasion last December toppled his regime.
In the weeks after General Noriega's arrest, Federal agencies squabbled over access to documents seized by United States forces in Panama. Defense lawyers complained about unusually strong remarks by United States Attorney Dexter Lehtinen concerning one of the general's co-defendants and the release of General Noriega's mug shot to the media.
The Government's freeze on the General's overseas bank accounts has enabled his lawyers to assert that he was being denied access to money he needs to finance an adequate defense. And after the taping was disclosed, Judge Hoeveler expressed doubt that the General could receive a fair trial. Source of Tapes Unknown
The brief conversation broadcast by CNN was between General Noriega and a person identified as a legal secretary acting as a translator for one of the lawyers' investigators. CNN displayed an English translation on the television screen and a narration in English, so that the original conversation in Spanish could not be heard.
Federal investigators, who have begun a criminal investigation to determine how the tapes were obtained by CNN, said today that they did not know who provided the tapes to the network.
On Friday, Mr. Rubino asserted that the tapes were obtained by the State Department, which in turn supplied them to unidentified high officials of the government of Guillermo Endara, Panama's president. The lawyer said that Panamanian officials turned the tapes over to CNN.
CNN has said that the reporter who obtained the tapes works primarily for Noticiero Telemundo/CNN, a nightly news program in Spanish. CNN produces the program for Telemundo, an independent Spanish language television network. In Latin America, Telemundo's programs are broadcast by CNN.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Panama Disclosure a Setup, Some in Congress Say
LEAD: Leaders of Congress, stung by a charge that they had disclosed covert plans to unseat Panama's leader, have accused the Reagan Administration of setting up Congress for blame in the episode.
Leaders of Congress, stung by a charge that they had disclosed covert plans to unseat Panama's leader, have accused the Reagan Administration of setting up Congress for blame in the episode.
Marlin Fitzwater, the White House spokesman, declined to respond today to Congressional assertions that the Administration itself had disclosed the plans for covert action against Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, which were reported in Wednesday's issue of The Washington Post. Mr. Fitzwater said he did not want to get into a confrontation with Congress.
The Democratic and Republican leaders of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said on Thursday that the disclosure had come from the executive branch, not the Senate. A day earlier, Jim Wright, the Speaker of the House, insisted that the House had not been the source. Political Motives Suggested
Congressional leaders suggested that partisan politics and rivalry between the Administration and Congress might have been behind the disclosures. They mentioned embarrassment to Vice President Bush over the Administration's failure to oust General Noriega, who United States officials have said is connected to the drug trade.
Senator William S. Cohen, Republican of Maine and vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said at a news conference, 'Frankly, we were chagrined and surprised to find such a heavy-handed approach by the executive branch to embarrass members of the Hill.'
Mr. Cohen said that members of the committee were receiving inquiries from reporters about the Noriega plans even before the Administration told the committee of the plans.
Both Mr. Cohen and Senator David L. Boren, Democrat of Oklahoma, the panel's chairman, answered affirmatively when asked whether it appeared to them that the Administration was trying to 'set up' members of Congress by portraying them as the source of the leak.
'Clearly, the leak came from the executive branch,' Mr. Boren said.
Asked why they believed they were being set up, Mr. Cohen answered, 'One can get Machiavellian,' and Mr. Boren said, 'The political season puts great stress on the relationship between the two branches.' Notice of Covert Plans
The rivalry issue concerns a bill that has been approved by the Senate and that is to come before the House soon. The bill would require the Administration to give Congressional leaders 48 hours' notice when it plans to undertake a covert intelligence operation. This theory suggests that the Administration, which is trying to defeat the bill, would like to blame Congress for the Noriega leaks to show that members of Congress cannot be trusted with secrets.
When the Administration's plans against General Noriega, who has been indicted in the United States on charges that he was involved in drug trafficking, were disclosed Wednesday in The Post, the newspaper attributed information about them to Administration and Congressional sources.
The Post said today the reporting of the story 'began when a Post reporter discovered that a previously scheduled Senate Intelligence Committee meeting on Tuesday probably concerned Panama.'
Asked Thursday whether he was angry over disclosure of the plans, President Reagan replied, 'I'm usually angry at Congress, yes.'
At today's White House briefing, Mr. Fitzwater refused to be drawn into the fray. 'It's just that I'm not going to get into an argument with Cohen and Boren, that's all I'm trying to avoid,' he said.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Babies Used In Drug Ring, Officials Say
Federal officials today charged 35 people with running an international cocaine and heroin smuggling ring that used women traveling with infants -- some of them 'rented' from poor families -- to transport drugs in cans of baby formula.
'This operation preyed on the great respect that we as human beings all afford mothers and babies -- and betrayed that respect brazenly,' Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said in announcing the indictments here this morning. 'Renting babies for the purpose of allowing drug dealers to smuggle cocaine is truly a new low.'
According to indictments unsealed today, over the last two years female couriers flew on 34 occasions with 20 different infants from Chicago to Panama, where they picked up formula cans injected with liquefied cocaine, and then returned. Others smuggled cocaine into the United States from Jamaica inside rum bottles, the handles of their suitcases or injected into their body cavities.
Most of the drugs were distributed in Chicago and New York, but some were sold in London and Birmingham, England, officials said.
Scott Levine, an assistant United States attorney, said parents in the Englewood neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago were paid $200 to $2,000, plus marijuana in some cases, to send their babies on the trips, which lasted from two days to two weeks. One child, the daughter of Keith Moore, 35, and Marisa Hardy, 22, made six trips, the first when she was 3 weeks old, the indictment says.
'On that trip the baby was crying and looked sickly,' Mr. Levine said in an interview. 'The baby was crying a lot, so Catrina Martin left her in an empty bathtub and closed the door.' On a separate trip, he said, 'That same baby was crying so much that the courier, Shanae Reed, left her alone in the hotel room and went out for a beer.'
Ms. Martin was arrested in London with the baby and about 18 baby-formula cans containing six kilos of cocaine, Mr. Levine said. Mr. Moore and Ms. Hardy, who are among four Chicago parents charged with loaning or renting their children to the operation, have had their parental rights terminated and the baby, now more than 2 years old, has been adopted.
'These drug dealers used the most depraved way possible in which to import and export their commodity,' Mr. Levine said. 'There are people who are willing to do anything and come up with any imaginable way of smuggling cocaine and heroin into the United States and out of the United States.'
Of the 35 people indicted, three were arraigned today, and four others are in custody on previous charges. Nineteen other people the authorities say were connected to the ring have previously been charged, and all but one of them convicted, over the past two years.
The operation was exposed when a customs inspector in Newark stopped a woman traveling to London in January 1999 and discovered six formula cans filled with liquid cocaine, officials said. Separately, Chicago police also received a call from a frantic mother when her baby failed to return from a smuggling trip after a week.
According to the indictment, Clacy Watson Herrera, who is in custody in Panama, and Byron Watson of Montego Bay, Jamaica, supplied the drugs. They liquefied the cocaine in a blender with hot water, officials said, squirted it with a syringe through holes in the cans made with a hammer and nail, soldered the holes and reattached the baby formula labels.
Each 16-ounce can held up to $700,000 worth of cocaine, which was later turned into crack for sale, the authorities said.
The suspects include parents of the 'rented' babies, women who acted as couriers, people who fraudulently obtained free airline tickets and false passports, and those who orchestrated the scheme. One of the ringleaders, officials say, is Selena Johnson, 29, who recruited Mr. Moore and Ms. Hardy's baby. The indictment says that Orville Wilson, 38, a New Yorker, came up with the scheme of having female couriers travel with babies and cans of formula.
A total of 20 kilos of cocaine was seized on four trips. The authorities believe the ring may have made as many as 45 such trips. The suspects face penalties ranging from five years to life in prison, with fines up to $4 million. The charges are all drug-related.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"The Noriega Verdict; 'Appalling Chapter' Ends for Panama
President Guillermo Endara of Panama said today that the conviction of Panama's former strongman, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, on drug-trafficking charges ""closes an appalling chapter in the history of Panama.""
But many other people here gave only passing attention to the outcome of the trial in Miami.
President Endara, who was sworn in as President hours after the United States sent troops to Panama on Dec. 20, 1989, to capture General Noriega, also said today's verdict in Miami was ""a call to reflection.""
""The only way to govern is according to the law and in favor of the people,"" he continued. ""Those who don't follow that path will encounter the fate of the Noriegas."" 'Crime Doesn't Pay'
As news spread here of the outcome of the seven-month trial, radio interviewers began to gather comments from a number of people who played a role in the events leading to the trial.
The Rev. Javier Villanueva, the priest who picked up General Noriega after the general decided to seek asylum in the Vatican Embassy on Christmas Eve 1989, said the verdict was evidence that ""crime doesn't pay.""
Several public figures expressed anger that the murder and corruption charges still pending here against General Noriega in about 30 cases had not moved forward with the same speed as the Miami trial even though Panamanian law permitted trial and conviction in absentia.
The Panamanian cases that have received wide publicity involve accusations that General Noriega ordered the 1985 killing of Dr. Hugo Spadafora, a prominent political opponent, and the executions of about a dozen members of the Panamanian Defense Forces who tried to overthrow him in the rising political tensions here in 1988-89. 'Various Cases' Pending
Attorney General Rogelio Cruz said in an interview on Wednesday that some of the pending cases were still being investigated while others were already in the courts. He said that ""various cases"" would be resolved before the end of the year.
While Panamanians widely accept that it is unlikely General Noriega will ever be brought back here to stand trial or to serve a sentence, political leaders and legal experts said convictions here would help to amass information to use against his collaborators and to demonstrate that the justice system in Panama was improving.
While Panamanian news organizations -- now freer and more informative than at any time in modern memory -- have given daily coverage to the Noriega trial, with several sending correspondents to Miami, most people appear to view General Noriega and his era as being over and done with.
Although President Endara said last week that if General Noriega was acquitted of all charges in the United States, Panama would bring him home and prosecute him, most Panamanians saw that as unlikely.
Ricardo Arias Calderon, the Christian Democrat who leads the opposition to Mr. Endara but who was his ally in opposition to General Noriega, said having General Noriega here for trial and possible imprisonment would ""stir up things"" while Panama is trying to rebuild the economy and build democracy.
""Panama today is concerned with the present and the future,"" he said. ""Noriega being here would mean having to worry with the past.""
Mr. Cruz, noting that General Noriega had made the decision to give himself up to the United States for trial instead of the new Panamanian authorities after he sought asylum in an embassy, said the former strongman ""didn't want to confront the ire of the people.""
""Up there, in Miami, he was allowed to dress as a military man,"" the attoreney general said, ""and wrap himself in the flag of nationalism and pretend to be a war prisoner. Here, he wouldn't have been allowed to do that.""
Other people today generally praised the outcome, but some complained about the fact that he had been removed from Panama for trial. Thoughts Under the Sun
A group of construction workers near one of the numerous high rise buildings going up in Panama City paused under the intense afternoon sun and one of them said that while he had not approved of the way General Noriega ran Panama he wondered ""why, if a Panamanian does something wrong here, they have to come get him and send him up there to be tried.""
The Endara Government, which has said it believes that most of General Noriega's wealth is deposited or invested outside of Panama, has also initiated a number of civil suits in the United States and one in London in an effort to recover some of that wealth.
One seeks to recover $20 million estimated to be impounded in Florida from the bankrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International, where General Noriega is said to have deposited many millions of dollars.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"U.S. May Tell What It Paid for Noriega's Services
LEAD: Under the pressure of subpoenas, the United States Government is likely to disclose for the first time the amount of money it paid Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega of Panama in the years he worked for American intelligence agencies, two Justice Department officials involved in the case say.
Under the pressure of subpoenas, the United States Government is likely to disclose for the first time the amount of money it paid Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega of Panama in the years he worked for American intelligence agencies, two Justice Department officials involved in the case say.
Release of the information would be part of the pretrial sparring in an increasingly complex and politically charged case that may include videotaped testimony by President Fidel Castro of Cuba and the appearance of American intelligence officials, as well as the perusal by lawyers and the trial judge of hundreds of classified documents.
'Fidel said he wants to help and is willing to do whatever he can to show Noriega is innocent,' Frank A. Rubino, General Noriega's chief defense lawyer, said in an interview.
Several lawyers say the trial, scheduled for next year, may set new guidelines defining the extent of the American Government's power to seize a suspected criminal abroad and establish new ground on the use of classified information in court.
The Government has not yet sought to block, on national security grounds, the introduction of classified material. It is by no means clear what would happen if the Government did raise such objections. A decision to try to withhold material on national-security grounds would have to come from Attorney General Dick Thornburgh himself, and a Justice Department official said no such decision was pending as of today.
Defendant in 'Good Spirits'
Mr. Rubino said the former Panamanian dictator maintained that he had received $11 million in payments from the American Government and $7 million from intelligence agencies of several foreign governments for his services over the years. He said General Noriega was in 'good spirits' and ready to go to trial.
A Government official involved in the case scoffed at the $11 million figure. He said the Government planned to declare at a hearing on Monday in Federal District Court here 'a far lower amount' that it says it paid to General Noriega.
The Government's move toward disclosure appears to have been prompted by Mr. Rubino's subpoenaing virtually every major American intelligence, defense and foreign policy agency, demanding that they relinquish records showing payments to General Noriega in the years that he is reported to have worked as an informant and agent for the United States Government.
The subpoenas form part of a broad defense strategy that Mr. Rubino said is intended to concentrate on the political implications of American Government actions in Panama, rather than the narrower legal issues of the Government's case charging General Noriega with being a drug dealer.
After supporting General Noriega for years as a paid American agent, the United States invaded Panama last December to arrest General Noriega. The General was indicted by two grand juries in Florida in 1988 on a dozen counts of cocaine trafficking and racketeering involving shipments of drugs into the United States.
A Prisoner of War
In effect, Mr. Rubino is trying to put the Government on trial. He has already forced the Government to grant General Noriega status as a prisoner of war, rather than as a common criminal. As a prisoner of war, he is visited regularly by an American Army officer and is allowed to wear a uniform in court.
Mr. Rubino has also argued it would be morally intolerable for an American court to recognize the killing of more than 200 people and the destruction of millions of dollars of property in an invasion to seize one person. Mr. Rubino argues that the law should not grant such broad power to the Government to seize a criminal suspect.
Mr. Rubino says he hopes to show that General Noriega carried out many apparently illegal activities with the compliance, and at times the participation, of American intelligence agencies. He said he intended to subpoena an array of current and former American intelligence officials, as well as classified documents, to make his case.
'I will show that, sure, he did some not-nice things, but that he did them as part of operations that he was carrying out for our Government,' Mr. Rubino said.
A Flight to Cuba
In pursuit of that strategy, Mr. Rubino has already taken some unusual steps. He said he flew to Cuba last month, where Mr. Castro gave him documents that will 'greatly help' General Noriega's defense. He added that Mr. Castro is 'eager' to assist the defense and may well testify for General Noriega in a videotaped deposition. It is not clear whether or how Mr. Castro could be cross-examined.
A Justice Department official contended that the Government's case had grown stronger since the invasion of Panama because several additional witnesses and documents have been found to support the prosecution.
'The case rests on our being able to argue it as a criminal case against a drug-dealer, instead of a political case against the Government,' the Justice department official said.
Mr. Rubino has denied repeated requests for an interview with General Noriega. He described General Noriega as calmly preparing himself for his trial from a small cell in the local Federal prison. Mr. Rubino said General Noriega had access to a telephone and mail and that he had made calls to Panama. Threats to Witnesses?  United States officials have contended that General Noriega has used the calls to threaten some potential witnesses, but Mr. Rubino said he had no information to support such an accusation. He contended that General Noriega had resisted talking about some of his most controversial and secret intelligence activities because he feels reluctant to reveal the names of sources and agents.
'But I keep telling him - you're in jail, you've got to defend yourself,' Mr. Rubino said.
The two sides will face off in Federal court on Monday before Judge Judge William M. Hoeveler, who is hearing the case. The hearing was called to resolve an impasse over the Government's decision to freeze all of General Noriega's known bank accounts, contending they contained the illegal profits of drug sales. General Noriega's lawyers replied by asking to withdraw from the case because General Noriega cannot pay them nor mount an adequate defense while his accounts are frozen.
Mr. Rubino said he had subpoenaed the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council, the Secretary of State, the National Security Agency and the Drug Enforcement Administration, demanding that they reveal any payments made to General Noriega over the years.
Spokesmen for several agencies said they could not confirm that the subpoenas had been received. But spokesmen for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the C.I.A. said their agencies had received subpoenas. The spokesmen refused to comment further on the case.
No Replies From Agencies
Mr. Rubino said the subpoenas were intended to help demonstrate that General Noriega had received 'millions' of dollars from activities other than his suspected drug-dealing - and that the Government had no right to freeze all of his accounts. The bank funds are estimated to total $20 million to $50 million, lawyers in the case say.
Mr. Rubino said that so far no Government agency had replied to his subpoenas. Judge Hoeveler said in an interview that the Government would have to reply to the subpoenas at the hearing on Monday.
A Justice Department official said the Government would take the unusual step of asking Judge Hoeveler not to unfreeze General Noriega's bank accounts while at the same time permitting the Government to pay an especially high fee for General Noriega's defense. Public defenders normally receive between $40 and $60 an hour, but under the Government's proposal, the American taxpayer would in effect pay General Noriega's lawyers a much higher rate.
That could be costly, since General Noriega's lawyers have estimated that adequate preparation and presentation of his defense could cost $5 million. U.S. Justice on Trial?  But Judge Hoeveler might be sympathetic to such a step. He said he was particularly concerned about assuring that General Noriega was treated in such a way that there would be no doubt that the Panamanian military commander had received as fair a trial as possible. He has commented that he thinks the American system of justice is on trial, and that the world is watching to see if General Noriega is fairly treated.
Judge Hoeveler added that the trial was likely to set precedents because never had the United States invaded a country to seize its leader and bring him back to the United States to face criminal charges.
Though the trial will not begin until next year, two Federal officials say the Government is already making special preparations for what is expected to be a long process.
Those steps include assigning an expert on classified documents to assist Judge Hoeveler and constructing special reinforced and ultra-secure vaults to hold the highly classified Government documents that are expected to play a central role in the trial.
Mr. Rubino said General Noriega had told him he will not seek a plea bargain.
'He wants to go to trial,' Mr. Rubino said. 'He wants his day in court.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Noriega Tape Case Reviving Clash Over First Amendment
In the Noriega tapes case, broadcasters and the press find themselves fighting a battle they thought they had won long ago: their right not to be stopped in advance from printing or televising the news.
For more than a decade, the law was easy to understand. If news organizations had the information, they could spread it. While they could be sued for libel or invasion of privacy, or even face criminal charges after the fact, it was up to them to decide whether to publish. Prior restraint of broadcasters or the press was all but unconstitutional because it turned news decisions over to the Government or the courts, thus creating what news organizations considered an intolerable conflict with the Constitution's First Amendment guarantees. Lawyer-Client Relationship
But the issue was revived on Friday, when the Cable News Network played a scratchy tape of a conversation between the former Panamanian leader, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, and a member of his defense team, thereby violating a trial judge's order forbidding them to do so. The case is expected to find its way to the United States Supreme Court within days, setting the stage for the Court to clarify the conflicts that may exist between the First Amendment guarantees of press freedom and a defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial.
Criminal defense lawyers see the case as a possible test of the protective shield around the privacy of lawyer-client conversations, a common-law right that they consider fundamental to a person's ability to receive a fair trial.
But many lawyers specializing in First Amendment issues express fear that an appeals court's decision on Saturday upholding a Federal district judge's ban on televising the tapes could open the way for other judges to prevent the broadcast or publication of different kinds of information. These experts said the ruling against CNN was particularly alarming because the network, by playing the tape, was alerting the public to possible Government misconduct -- the secret recording of privileged conversations between a defendant and his lawyers.
""I think it's an ominous decision because it indicates a willingness we have not seen to tolerate prior restraints and the existence of a mindset among judges that's different from the mindset that's existed during the last 15 years,"" said Burt Neuborne, a former legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union who teaches First Amendment law at New York University.  Speaking Openly With Lawyer
Criminal defense specialists, however, say the lawyer-client privilege must remain sacrosanct, not merely because potential jurors may be tainted by the release of such confidential communications, but because defendants must know that they can speak to their lawyers without the content of their conversation leaking out.
""If the relationship between an attorney and a client is ever breached, you'll never again have a client who will ever want to talk to an attorney,"" said Leonard Esquina, the executive director of the California Trial Lawyers Association. ""If you can't guarantee confidentiality, the defendant may not be candid, and if he's not candid, you may not be able to represent him effectively.""
Previous attempts at prior restraint have involved government efforts to keep information secret or have hinged on specific information that trial judges thought would affect a defendant's ability to receive a fair trial. While those have been overturned, legal experts said the Supreme Court could decide that the lawyer-client privilege is so essential that the press can be prevented from breaching it.
""What makes this case different from others is it goes to the harm that could come from interfering in a relationship,"" said Robert Post, a historian and professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley. ""That's more generic and more far-reaching.""  Ability to Report News
News organizations view the appeals court's decision in the case as a potential threat to their ability to report the news.
""The principle at stake here is fundamental,"" said William A. Niese, senior vice president for law and human resources at The Los Angeles Times. ""Whether it will lead to a flood of other efforts to enjoin the media is anybody's guess, but it is clearly a breaching of the First Amendment dike that has heretofore been impregnable.""
But while news executives publicly sought to present a united front behind CNN on the constitutional issues, some privately questioned the wisdom of the network's tactics. They wondered why CNN announced that it had the tapes before it televised them, a move some characterized as a virtual invitation to prior restraint.
At the same time, some news executives questioned why CNN decided to press a constitutional test over a tape recording that did not appear to contain much news. In a short conversation, General Noriega and a person apparently acting as a translator for his lawyers discussed the arrest in Panama of two men who General Noriega thought might testify against him.
""Bad cases make bad law,"" said Professor Neuborne of New York University. ""The Noriega case was a bad case from the day they had an invasion to seize him and then seized his assets. Now he's justified the illegal taping of conversations between a lawyer and client, and a prior restraint. Noriega is going to do more damage to the U.S. Constitution than he ever did as a dictator of Panama."" Existence of Tapes
CNN's First Amendment counsel, Stuart F. Pierson, said the network reported that it had the tapes before playing them because it initially believed their existence was more important than the information on them. ""But when the Government then said it had done nothing wrong in taping the conversations, we had to address what was on the tapes,"" he said. ""Noriega is talking about witnesses and defense strategy with his counsel. If the prosecution heard that, that's a serious question of taint and that's newsworthy.""
First Amendment lawyers say the appeals court's ruling violated what they have considered a virtual ban on prior restraint of news organizations established by the Supreme Court in a 1976 case, Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart. In that case, a trial judge ruled that local newspapers could not publish the fact that a defendant accused of murder had confessed to the crime. Even though the information had been introduced in open court, the judge feared that printing it would prejudice potential jurors against the defendant. In striking down his ruling, the Supreme Court called prior restraint on speech and publication ""the most serious and least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.""
Since then, there have been several highly publicized efforts by judges to inhibit news organization's ability to broadcast or print news about trials, and all have been overturned at the appellate level. In 1984, for instance, the Federal district judge in Los Angeles hearing the Government's cocaine-trafficking case against the automobile maker John Z. DeLorean tried to prevent CBS News from broadcasting a videotape that appeared to show Mr. DeLorean purchasing drugs. The network showed the tape anyway, and a Federal appeals court said it was within its rights. Mr. DeLorean was later acquitted. Effect on Jurors
Floyd Abrams, a leading First Amendment lawyer in New York, said the Supreme Court's decision in the Nebraska Press Association case required lower courts to establish that the televising or publication of certain information would irredeemably taint all potential jurors, preventing the court from finding an impartial jury to hear the case. Time and again, he said, the courts have found ways to impanel a fair jury without shackling the press, among them changing the location of a trial and questioning potential jurors carefully to establish whether they had heard or read the potentially damaging information.
""We found jurors in DeLorean, where they had seen on TV the very crime he was accused of committing, and we found them in Watergate, when there was a jury poll,"" Mr. Abrams said. He is preparing a brief in support of CNN that eight major newspaper organizations, including The New York Times Company, The Washington Post Company and the American Newspaper Publishers Association, are planning to file.
Jurors are not the only ones who might be tainted by the release of conversations between clients and their lawyers. Prosecutors, for instance, could learn about the defense's strategy. But Mr. Abrams and other First Amendment experts said the issue here was the making of the tapes, not their televising. If the Government erred in recording General Noriega, and its misconduct justified the dismissal of the case against the former Panamanian leader, that provided one more reason CNN should not be prevented from airing the tapes, Mr. Abrams said.
The media are not completely free to broadcast or print any and all information with impunity. Certain property rights, like copyrights, are inviolable. Courts have also held that there are certain rights to privacy that the press cannot violate without peoples' consent. For this reason, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, the state's highest court, has prevented most showings in the state of ""Titticut Follies,"" a 1967 documentary about a Massachusetts prison for the criminally insane. Families of some patients objected and the patients themselves were unable to give informed consent.
Nonetheless, Vincent Blasi, a professor of law at Columbia University Law School, said exceptions to the virtual ban on prior restraint ""are so rare as to be almost nonexistent."" He called the presumption against prior restraint of the press ""one of the hidden absolutes of the First Amendment.""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Judge Rules Noriega Trial Must Proceed
LEAD: A Federal district judge declared today that Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega must stand trial on drug-trafficking charges. In so doing, the judge rejected defense lawyers' arguments that United States courts have no jurisdiction over the fallen Panamanian leader.
A Federal district judge declared today that Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega must stand trial on drug-trafficking charges. In so doing, the judge rejected defense lawyers' arguments that United States courts have no jurisdiction over the fallen Panamanian leader.
The judge, William M. Hoeveler, said he was not qualified to rule on the defense argument that General Noriega was a prisoner of war as defined in the Geneva conventions and that he should be moved to a neutral third country. But he said the general's possible status as a prisoner did not affect whether he could stand trial.
'I don't find that under the Geneva convention I must divest myself of jurisdiction,' Judge Hoeveler said as General Noriega watched quietly, wearing an open shirt with the four stars of a general on his sleeves. At one point in the court session, the general sat hunched over a Spanish-language edition of the 1949 Geneva parleys.
Once it was clear the case would proceed, a defense lawyer raised objections to a proposal by prosecutors on how classified documents should be handled in the case and, for the first time, indicated that the defense would seek computer files compiled by the National Security Agency of conversations that intelligence officials had with and about the general.
Issue of Security Clearances
The lawyer, David L. Lewis, objected to a proposal by the prosecutors seeking a protective order requiring lawyers in the case to be subject to security clearances. Mr. Lewis, a New York lawyer who specializes in classified documents and recently joined the case, said the proposed restrictions were so harsh they might even affect lawyer-client conversations.
He said the Government was suggesting that statements by the general to his lawyers might include classified information that would have to be screened by Government security specialists. The Government says the order is necessary to protect national security.
Mr. Lewis said that while 'we have no objection' to requiring defense lawyers to undergo routine background security checks, like fingerprinting, the defense objected to a lifetime requirement that they submit all future writings, even works of fiction, for screening by the Government before publication. He also objected to proposed Government rules that he said would make it diffcult for the co-defendants' lawyers to confer with one another.
'We're asking you to control the rights of the defense in this case,' Mr. Lewis told the judge.
The defense proposed its own protective order in a motion filed today, and Judge Hoeveler immediately put it under seal. But in open court, Mr. Lewis discussed elements of the motion and for the first time suggested what sorts of documents would be sought as evidence by the defense.
Mr. Lewis indicated that in addition to seeking National Security Agency documents, the defense would probably seek records of General Noriega from 20 other countries with which he had dealings as Panama's leader, including France, Israel and Libya.
Mr. Lewis argued that such material should not be kept from public view under the Classified Information Procedures Act, which sets guidelines for protecting secret information in court cases, because they have been cited publicly in news reports and elsewhere and because the act often does not cover records from outside the United States.
James McAdams, an assistant United States attorney, insisted that the prosecution was not trying 'to drive a wedge between defense attorneys' and that the Government was only following established guidelines in handling classified documents.
Frank A. Rubino, another lawyer for General Noriega, said in an interview that he was considering several courses of action in response to the judge's ruling that the court had jurisdiction in the case. He said two possibilities were to appeal to the United Nations or to file a motion with the Supreme Court, contending that his client was being illegally held.
'I ain't going to take it sitting down,' Mr. Rubino said. In a motion filed today, Mr. Rubino contended that the general was a prisoner of war after he surrendered to American troops Jan. 3 and that his trial in a court here would violate the Geneva Conventions and other treaties.
The motion said, 'The plain and simple truth is that no prisoner of war has ever been brought before a nonmilitary tribunal of the detaining power to be tried for a crime that was allegedly committed prior to the armed conflict.'
Mr. Rubino told the judge he was not asking that his client be dismissed from the indictment but that he be sent back to Panama or another country that could then try 'fair and square' to get him back to the United States by extradition.
William C. Bryson, the Deputy Solicitor General of the United States, argued that the Government had agreed to treat General Noriega as if he was a prisoner of war but that this had no bearing on whether he could be tried here. 'This court has no right to transfer this case to some place that would be very surprised to receive him,' he said.
Agreeing with the prosecutors, Judge Hoeveler said: 'I've got to decide this by the law. I don't make international policy.'
Judge Hoeveler opened the hearing this morning by saying he intended to set a trial date that was more realistic than the March 6 target date. But a dispute between the defense and prosecution over how much time is needed to prepare for the case kept him from setting the date today.
For the first time today, General Noriega was joined in the courtroom by the five other defendants who are in Miami and were named in the drug trafficking indictment returned in February 1988.
Moves for Separate Trials
Lawyers for some co-defendants told the judge they wanted their clients to be tried separately from General Noriega, but the prosecution argued that they should be tried together. The judge has not yet ruled on the matter.
Defense lawyers said they needed months to prepare not only because of the sensitive documents but because they expected to call many witnesses. Mr. Lewis said in an interview that the defense was 'examining the option' of serving a subpoena on President Bush, who had contacts with General Noriega beginning when he was Director of Central Intelligence.
The defense lawyers today also began reviewing thousands of documents that the Government has made available in the case, including financial records, passports, hotel records and address books. The Drug Enforcement Administration has also filed an affidavit asking Judge Hoeveler to approve a search warrant that would allow it to inspect information on 34 computer diskettes seized during the United States invasion of Panama. The diskettes were found by the Army at the home of Carlos Wittgreen, a business associate of General Noriega. The affidavit says that the diskettes might provide more information that 'Wittgreen has assisted Noriega in the laundering of large sums of drug monies.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Panama City Journal; Fact of Life: Many Here Carry Guns
LEAD: Guns have always been a part of life in this Panhandle town, even before a new Florida law seemed to invite pistol-packing on city sidewalks.
Guns have always been a part of life in this Panhandle town, even before a new Florida law seemed to invite pistol-packing on city sidewalks.
The Police Department here regularly sponsors a 'Handguns for Housewives' training course, regularly oversubscribed. The closest thing to a big-city traffic jam comes on opening day of the hunting season, as pickups clog normally desolate roads to the wooded north country.
So the new statewide gun licensing law, which temporarily lifted restrictions on carrying unconcealed weapons and turned many Floridians aghast and embarrassed, left Panama City's 36,000 residents unfazed. People here kept doing what they always did: carrying weapons in cars, purses and otherwise out of sight. There was little confusion about the lenient statewide licensing rules for concealed weapons - the real intent of the new law - because officers here had never really enforced the old county licensing procedure.
Dennis Cress, a clerk at Bear Arms, a gun store just north of town, said no one wanted to scare 'a little old lady with blue-tinted hair' by carrying a gun openly. That is simply a matter of good manners, he said.
But he allowed, wryly, that chances are the little old lady would be packing a gun as well.
Of course a visitor shouldn't come away with the impression that everyone in Panama City keeps a .44 in the glove compartment. People here in North Florida aren't that much different from people everywhere else. But the fact remains that guns are comfortably accepted here.
As the Police Chief, Roger C. Haddix, put it, 'This isn't Florida, this is the South.' Politically, Panama City may be tied to the polyglot urbanity of Miami and the Sun Belt boom of Orlando, but sociologically and geographically it is akin to the rural cotton and peanut farming country of Alabama and Georgia to the north, the bayou country to the west.
And guns are ingrained in the social rhythms.
Gloria Lind calls herself a 'plinker,' someone who shoots .22-caliber pistols at paper targets and who 'just has fun and feels relaxed doing it.'
'I can just stand there and plink away,' she said blissfully of her trips to the target range. But the 51-year-old Ms. Lind also carries a gun when she rides horses, to protect herself from the rattlesnakes. And she says she wouldn't hesitate to use it to protect herself from a human rattlesnake, or her country from invasion.
Gun ownership, she says, is a 'whole spiritual, moral and ethical thing' for which she finds ample philosophical basis in the Constitution and the Bible. 'This is freedom, and the right exists for me to defend myself or my country,' she said while buying ammunition and a new gun at Bear Arms.
The new gun law, which took effect Oct. 1, resulted in part from a five-year effort by the Unified Sportsmen of Florida to get a statewide system for licensing instead of having it in the hands of 67 diverse counties.
Some counties exercised little control, while others imposed stiff requirements that amounted to banning of gun ownership for all but a few 'elites,' said Marion Hammer, the sportsmen's lobbyist.
One frustrated opponent of the new law, which makes it much easier for most Floridians to get a gun permit, attributed its passage in part to how the 4-foot-11-inch Ms. Hammer dressed up the gun lobby's usually rough-hewn image. 'But she's no different,' he insisted. 'Scratch her, and she's a good ol' boy in a skirt.'
Sponsor of the bill was State Representative Ronald Johnson of Panama City. He said that he believed it had ample provisions banning open and reckless display of weapons but that anti-gun forces had 'blown it up and created panic' - by summoning up images of plainly armed K-mart shoppers, handgun foes could play on fears of national ridicule and tourist reluctance. But at the real heart of the clamor, he said, were traditional political rivalries: rural northern Florida against the urban south, conservatives versus liberals.
The language that was missing in the new gun law, a nearly 100-year-old prohibition against the open carrying of such weapons as 'Winchester rifles,' was archaic and unnecessary, in Mr. Johnson's view. But after law-enforcement officials said the loophole might be a problem, and after all the attention it got, he led the effort to close it, an action the Legislature took this week.
The restored provision had its roots here in North Florida, in the lumber and turpentine industries at the turn of the century. A 1941 decision by the state's highest court noted that at the time, there had been 'a great influx of Negro laborers,' and the purpose of the act was to disarm them and 'give white citizens of the sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security.'
'It was never intended to be applied to the white population,' the court said, 'and in fact never has been so applied.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Excerpts From Noriega's Statement Before His Sentencing in Federal Court
Following are excerpts translated from Spanish from a statement read in Federal District Court in Miami today by Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the former Panamanian leader, before he was sentenced to 40 years in Federal prison on charges of cocaine trafficking, racketeering and money laundering. The excerpts include sections that Judge William M. Hoeveler would not allow to be read in open court. STATEMENT BY GENERAL NORIEGA
My prosecution was orchestrated by those who fear me, men who sought to discredit me through accusations or kill me by means of an invasion. Since they were unable to kill me previously, not with the commando group that was trained in the Caribbean, not with two military coup attempts, not with the invasion, when 15,000 American soldiers were looking for me and a price of $1 million was offered for me dead or alive, since they were unable to kill me yesterday, they bring me here today so that you can do them the favor of killing me alive.
. . .
Panama was not invaded because its canal was threatened. Panama was not invaded because the lives of American citizens were in danger. Panama was invaded because I was an obstacle and damaged the historical souvenirs of your President George Bush, who preferred me dead!
. . .
Yes, your honor, there is a strong political odor that can be felt in the development of this case. The Chinese Wall of the Government, the national security hearings, the conferences and permanent consultations with Washington, these are ""political overtones"" before, during and after.
. . .
How can you explain that among the 250,000 photographs captured in the invasion there exists not a single one of me with the heads of the Medellin cartel in the supposed meetings that have been spoken of so much in this chamber?
. . .
Of the mysterious trip to Cuba, it was not permitted to say that this included a request for a visit by a high emissary of the Reagan-Bush Administration, and that after my visit he went to Cuba to open a channel of conversation. But it is not convenient to the Administration that this be known, because the Cubans in exile would criticize it. And here it was not permitted to say the name of this high official sent by Reagan and Bush and received by Castro after my intervention.
. . .
Did you know, Your Honor, that from the beginning of May 1988 until October of 1989, these two Administrations were prepared to agree to the cancellation of all the criminal charges against me in exchange for my handing the country over to them so they could impose their government, courts and administrator of the Panama Canal? The question is: Why weren't the real drug traffickers offered this? The answer is simple. Besides being criminals, they weren't Panamanians and couldn't offer anything of interest in exchange. They couldn't offer territory for military bases, nor could they offer the canal beyond the year 2000.
[ The following was not allowed to be read in open court. ]
The agreements that were addressed in a very detailed way involved the development of events. And the elements are these: suspension of sanctions on our part, in anticipation that General Noriega would give a speech in which he would make a series of declarations, among them the announcement of his intention to step down as Commander in Chief of the Panama Defense Forces on Aug. 12 and the summoning of the Legislative Assembly to immediately approve legislation that would limit the term of any Commander in Chief of the P.D.F. to five years, retroactive to Aug. 12, 1983. In summary, your term should end on Aug. 12 as a result of a change in the law.
. . .
It is contemplated that you would go on a trip. It is expected that you would finish off some small personal affairs during the period immediately following your retirement, but in September you would leave the country until the period of the elections in May 1989, except for a short visit to your family at Christmas time.
. . .
[ The following is a continuation of General Noriega's statement in open court. ]
For my part, I accuse George Herbert Walker Bush of exercising his power and authority to influence and subvert the American judicial system in order to convict me. I accuse George Herbert Walker Bush of genocide for having ordered the massive bombardment of the civilian population of Panama and causing the deaths of more than 5,000 people.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Prodigy Heads for New York
In Panama, where he has won all seven starts by an average of 12 lengths, they call him El Bakan, ""the big shot."" He won one race by 20 lengths, another by 25. And in his last race, the track refused to accept wagers on him.
So, he was already one of those mystery horses from abroad when Robert Perez, the New York horse owner from Argentina, bought him last week. The colt, a Kentucky-bred 3-year-old son of Yukon and grandson of Northern Dancer, was assigned for training to Alfredo Callejas, Perez's friend and Argentine countryman, who has trained Senor Speedy, Agincourt and other star horses.
El Bakan was being flown from Panama to Florida today and will be placed in quarantine. Perez said that he would send his prodigy to New York to race at Aqueduct on March 27 in the Gotham Stakes. But he would not say whether the Big Shot's agenda also included the big race, the Kentucky Derby on May 1.
""For now,"" he said, ""we're going to run him in the Gotham and see what happens.""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"U.S. Attorney in Miami to Take No Active Role in the Noriega Trial
LEAD: Dexter Lehtinen, the United States Attorney here, announced today that he would not take an active role in the prosecution of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, ending days of speculation over whether Bush Administration officials thought Mr. Lehtinen was qualified to handle the case.
Dexter Lehtinen, the United States Attorney here, announced today that he would not take an active role in the prosecution of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, ending days of speculation over whether Bush Administration officials thought Mr. Lehtinen was qualified to handle the case.
The Federal prosecutor insisted at a news conference that he would have the 'ultimate responsibility' for the Government's case, but that he never wanted to be the lead prosecutor.
'I don't want to be the individual that spends months in court full time and 18 months preparing the case,' Mr. Lehtinen said. 'There's never been a statement to the contrary.'
But, in an interview a few days before General Noriega, the ousted Panamanian leader, was brought here on drug-trafficking charges, Mr. Lehtinen's spokeswoman, Diane B. Cossin, said that Mr. Lehtinen would be the leading attorney. 'Dexter is the lead,' she said at the time, and went on to defend him as a strong trial lawyer. #2 Assistants Are Named Mr. Lehtinen was flanked at the hastily called news conference this afternoon by the two assistants he said would lead the prosecution team, Michael P. Sullivan, a senior litigation counsel in the office who will be the main prosecutor, and Myles H. Malman, the Deputy First Assistant United States Attorney.
Mr. Sullivan, 42 years old, has 18 years of experience as a Federal prosecutor, and Mr. Malman, 43, has been a prosecutor for 15 years and has obtained convictions against members of the Cali cocaine drug ring.
Mr. Lehtinen said a third person who will play a pivotal role in the prosecution is William C. Bryson, the deputy United States Solicitor General, who will be coming from Washington. The 44-year-old Mr. Bryson joined the Justice Department in 1978 and for the past four years has supervised the briefing and argument of all criminal cases before the United States Supreme Court. He wrote the Government's arguments last year for abortion restrictions and played a role in Justice Department efforts to keep classified information from being disclosed in the Iran-contra trial of Lieut. Col. Oliver L. North.  David Runkel, the chief Justice Department spokesman, acknowledged in an interview that it was unusual for someone from the solicitor's office to be brought onto a criminal trial. But he said Mr. Bryson will use his appellate experience to advise the Noriega trial team and appear in court on issues that could be subject to appeal, like the legality of the General's arrest.
Both Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Malman have been working on the case for months, Mr. Lehtinen said. In the two public courtroom appearances of General Noriega so far, Mr. Lehtinen has been the main prosecutor who has addressed the court. He said he doubted he would play any further role in the courtroom in the Noriega case.
Days of Speculation
Mr. Lehtinen's news conference ended days of speculation over exactly who would try the case. Until today, the United States Attorney's office had refused to make any substantive statements about the case since General Noriega's arrival.
Federal officials had privately raised questions about whether Attorney General Dick Thornburgh wanted Mr. Lehtinen to try the case. He has had limited trial experience in recent years and is known for an explosive temper. The concerns were fueled further by the fact that though Mr. Lehtinen was chosen United States Attorney here in June 1988 by Edwin Meese 3d, President Ronald Reagan's Attorney General, Mr. Lehtinen has yet to be formally nominated by President Bush. The office also requires confirmation by the Senate.
Asked today to respond to possible concerns in the Justice Department that he was not capable of handling the case properly, Mr. Lehtinen said: 'I don't respond to those concerns at all. I'm very happy with the Justice Department.'
Mr. Lehtinen said that he and Mr. Thornburgh had discussed the case by telephone and that they both have long agreed that the proper course was for Mr. Lehtinen's deputies to take on the trial. 'The ultimate responsibility is mine,' Mr. Lehtinen repeated. 'The Attorney General phoned me personally and said that. I never said any different.'
'Some people say if it's the most important case in the district, then why doesn't the United States Attorney do it?' he continued. 'The simple point is, we have senior litigation counsel. I am pleased that I have not been ordered to handle the case any differently.'
Other Cases Are Demanding
Mr. Lehtinen, a former Florida state legislator, also said he was concerned with other major narcotics case, white collar crime and public corruption cases and asserted that 'I could not devote the time to the Noriega case that would be needed for its proper presentation to the court.'
The defense team is also shaping up, with the announcement Friday that General Noriega's lawyers here, Frank A. Rubino and Steven Kollin, had hired David Lewis, a New York lawyer who is experienced in cases involving classified Government documents. The lawyers said they may add as many as six other lawyers, but that General Noriega had ruled out two prominent lawyers, Richard Haynes of Houston and Barry I. Slotnick of New York. Mr. Slotnick said Friday he was not interested in the case.
In an interview today, Mr. Kollin would not comment on why he thought Mr. Lehtinen was not leading the prosecution. 'Dexter is a fine lawyer,' he said. 'There is no reason to get into a personality attack.'
General Noriega was accused in an indictment returned here in February 1988 of protecting cocaine shipments to the United States from Colombia and assisting in the laundering of drug money, among other charges.
He has been confined to a cell in the basement of the Federal courthouse here as his defense lawyers have fought efforts by prosecutors and other Federal authorities to move him to a Federal prison, possibly out of state, for security reasons.
The trial judge, William M. Hoeveler, had ordered lawyers not to discuss a possible move with reporters. But one person involved in the case said that today that at a closed meeting before the judge on Friday, the defense succeeded in their efforts to delay General Noriega's transfer. It was not clear how long that delay would be.
THE U.S. AND PANAMA",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"BOND HEARING HELD FOR NORIEGA ALLY
LEAD: A former Panamanian military commander charged in the drug trafficking case of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega was portrayed by character witnesses at a bond hearing today as a family man who deserves bail.
A former Panamanian military commander charged in the drug trafficking case of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega was portrayed by character witnesses at a bond hearing today as a family man who deserves bail.
The hearing at Federal District Court here for the former military commander, Lieut Col. Luis del Cid, was marked by colorful testimony and sharp exchanges between the defense and prosecution lawyers.
At another bond hearing here today, a Federal prosecutor disclosed that General Noriega and a co-defendant, Eduardo Pardo, who was accused of being one of General Noriega's pilots in drug smuggling operations, are under investigation for smuggling illegal aliens into the United States.
Samuel I. Burstyn, the defense lawyer for Colonel del Cid, sought to challenge the prosecution's assertion that the colonel was a drug trafficker by calling his wife, Tilsa, and two friends to the stand.
Growing Feathers to Fly
At one point in the three-hour hearing Mr. Burstyn asked Mrs. del Cid whether her husband would flee to Panama if he was released on bond pending a trial.
'Only if he grows feathers to be able to fly,' she replied, speaking in Spanish through an interpreter.
Mr. Burstyn then turned to Federal District Judge William M. Hoeveler and said with a smile, 'A judicial notice that he's not likely to grow feathers.'
The Government called no witnesses. Myles H. Malman, speaking for the prosecution, asserted it was 'extraordinary' and inappropriate for the defense to call character witnesses.
By the end of the session Mr. Burstyn said he had several other possible character witnesses he might call, and Judge Hoeveler said he would reconvene the hearing on Wednesday.
Linked to Secret Police
Prosecutors contend that Colonel del Cid headed General Noriega's secret police, and the February 1988 indictment accuses the colonel of being a liaison between General Noriega and Colombian narcotics traffickers.
At times the lawyers tossed barbs at one another, with Mr. Burstyn saying it was 'very bizarre' that the Government had not submitted evidence of its allegations, and Mr. Malman contending that the defense lawyer was engaging in an 'evidentiary tennis match.'
Lawyers for General Noriega, the former Panamanian dictator, sat in the front row of the spectators' section, watching the proceedings carefully as they prepare for their client's bond hearing on Feb. 26. Colonel del Cid sat silently throughout the proceedings.
The possibility of new charges aginst General Noriega became apparent in a hearing held by Federal Magistrate William C. Turnoff, who refused to release Mr. Pardo on bail. He described the Panamanian pilot as a risk who could jump bail.
'The Government's investigation indicates this defendant was involved in alien smuggling,' Mr. Malman said. He told the judge the Government expected to file additional charges stemming from the alien smuggling operation, but did not provide any details about General Noriega's involvement.
William Meadows, Mr. Pardo's lawyer, urged the judge to set bail for his client, saying the charge against him on one drug trafficking count carried a maximum penalty of five years in jail. Mr. Meadows said this was insufficient to prompt him to flee.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Prosecutors Seek More Time to Prepare Noriega Case
LEAD: The Government today asked for more time to produce documents in the drug-trafficking case of Manuel Antonio Noriega, an action that defense lawyers derided as evidence that the prosecution was unprepared.
The Government today asked for more time to produce documents in the drug-trafficking case of Manuel Antonio Noriega, an action that defense lawyers derided as evidence that the prosecution was unprepared.
In another motion filed today with the Federal District Court here, the Government argued that secret classified documents in the case should not be made public because they would harm national security.
'The unauthorized disclosure and uncontrolled dissemination of such information would cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States,' the prosecution said.
Some defense lawyers said in interviews that they viewed the Government's motion involving sensitive documents as an overly strict interpretation of Federal rules guiding classified documents. But the lawyers were most critical of the effort to delay the producing of both sensitive and unclassified documents.
Raising of Legal Questions
Once defendants are formally charged, the court gives the prosecution and defense two weeks to come forward with documents that could be relevant to the case.
But the prosecution asked the court to delay that step until the court rules on whether it has jurisdiction over defendants like General Noriega. The former Panamanian dictator's lawyers contend that he was illegally forced to come to the United States to face drug charges. Questions over jurisdiction raise many new legal questions and it could be several days or weeks before the court rules on that issue.
General Noriega was indicted by a grand jury here nearly two years ago on charges that he was paid to protect cocaine shipments from Colombia through Panama to the United States. Other charges included money laundering and involvement in the production of cocaine.
In the motion seeking more time, the prosecutors suggested that the mounds of documents being uncovered in Panama have made it impossible for the Government to follow the Government's timetable on producing evidence.
'Due to the recent events in Panama,' the motion stated, 'evidence is still being gathered and analyzed.'
But Steven E. Kreisberg, a lawyer for co-defendant William Saldarriaga, was one of several defense lawyers who complained about the Government's motion.
'My guy's been sitting in jail since Oct. 1 and now they're procrastinating,' Mr. Kreisberg said. 'It's hard for us to prepare for trial without getting the discovery. This is just a further example of their unpreparedness to go to trial.'
Officials from the United States Attorney's office here did not return telephone calls today for comment on the motions.
In the motion on classified documents, the prosecution cited the Classified Information Procedures Act, which sets guidelines for protecting sensitive information in court cases.
Hearing Is Sought
The Government requested a hearing on its motion for a protective order that would establish specific rules on how classified documents would be handled by lawyers in the case. It specifies, for example, how lawyers be given security clearances or granted access to classified information.
Defense lawyers in the case say they will seek classified documents to defend their clients, and they have noted that such materials could prove embarrassing to the American Government. These documents, for example, could shed more light on President Bush's contact with General Noriega when Mr. Bush was Director of Central Intelligence.
While some defense lawyers said the Government's motion on sensitive documents simply followed the guidelines of the act, others contended that the prosecutors were going too far in seeking to prevent disclosure of Government information.
'They're taking the broadest application of CIPA to gain strategic advantage,' Samuel I. Burstyn, a lawyer for Luis del Cid, a co-defendant, said of the classified-information law. 'It's very, very insidious.'
Michael J. O'Kane, who represents Daniel Miranda, another co-defendant, said he was particularly concerned by the Government's request that defense lawyers seeking access to classified information in the case sign a 'nondisclosure' agreement with the agency from which the information was obtained. 'I have a problem submitting to the C.I.A. for clearance,' he said. 'I think that's overkill.'
Mr. O'Kane, who was criticized by the Government for being the first defense lawyer in the case to openly request sensitive records from the Government, also objected to a request in the Government's motion that defendants be prohibited in most instances from disclosing matters involving classified information to other defendants in the case. He said that would make it impossible for the six defendants in custody to work on a joint defense.
The Government's motions today were only the latest action in what is emerging as a fight over how documents should be used in the case. On Friday, a United States magistrate acted on a request by General Noriega's lawyers and prohibited the Government from destroying any documents belonging to the Panamanian that were seized in the invasion of Panama. The magistrate, William C. Turnoff, also ordered the Government to list everything taken from General Noriega's homes and military offices.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Text of Noriega's Statement At Federal Court in Miami
Following is the text of a statement prepared for delivery yesterday by Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega in Federal District Court in Miami, as provided by his lawyers. A full transcript of his remarks as delivered, made in Spanish, was not available.
When I was brought to the United States I mistakenly believed that I would be able to receive a fair trial. In order for this to come true I also believed that I would be able to use my money to hire the lawyers of my choice. It is painfully obvious that the United States Government does not wish me to to be able to defend myself and have done everything possible to deprive me of a fair trial and due process.
They have taken my money, deprived me of my lawyers, videotaped me in my cell, wiretapped my telephone calls with my lawyers and even given them to the Endara Government and to the press. The Government of the United States has ignored my status as a prisoner of war and violated the Geneva Convention.
Worst of all, they have not acted in a humanitarian manner. Despite repeated request by the International Red Cross, they have violated my human rights by denying my wife and children visas so that they may come to the United States to visit with me. To deprive a woman and children of the basic human right to visit their husband and father is shameful and a violation of international law.  Virtual Army of Prosecutors
I am a military man and I understand a good fight. I never expected a fair fight from the Government of the United States.
I never expected an equal fight from the Government of the United States, but I also never expected to face a virtual army of prosecutors and investigators on such an uneven field of battle.
The United States Government wishes me to engage in combat in the courtroom with them, but my army is to consist of only three unpaid soldiers whose loyalty is unquestionable, but are only allowed to be armed with handguns and no support staff while the prosecutor's office has nuclear weapons.
This they call a fair fight.
Obviously, it is to the benefit of the Government that I cannot defend myself, for they fear what I know.
The battle I face ahead is very similar to when the United States invaded my country. That was one-sided and unfair, and so is this battle. Praise for Judge
The one shining light through this legal nightmare has been Your Honor, Judge Hoeveler.
You have acted as honest and fair as any one could hope for.
You have done your very best to protect me and my rights from the overreaching and oppressive conduct of the Government.
You have ordered the Government to release my funds to pay my lawyers. It is not your fault that the Government went behind your back to deprive me of my chosen attorneys. Many Forces Are at Work
I realize that this case has implications to the highest levels of the United States Government, including the White House, and I also realize that many forces are at work beyond Your Honor's control.
I know you have done your best for me, and I thank you.
I thank my lawyers for their diligence, hard work and unending loyalty to me and this case. They have worked for 10 months with no remuneration whatsoever, and for this I will always be in their debt. I cannot and do not expect them to go on to the point of bankruptcy.
It pains me to know that I am being deprived of their services when the solution to the problem is so simple. When I was the leader of the Republic of Panama, the United States would ask many different things of me. They would ask me to arrest people, to allow the search of Panamanian flag vessels, to send people to the United States for trial and to freeze bank accounts. I know that when the United States seriously requests something of a foreign government, they get it.
The purported efforts of the United States Government to unfreeze certain of my funds to pay my lawyers and finance my defense was a sham. If the United States Government sincerely wanted those accounts unfrozen they would have been unfrozen.
I am now at the mercy of a totally unfair and unjust system who chooses my prosecutors and now chooses my defense lawyers.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Panama's Operation
LEAD: THE UNITED STATES faced a similar problem in Korea in the 1950's: if only the Congress can declare a war, what was the military struggle that the U.S. conducted in the name of the United Nations to be called? President Harry S. Truman liked police action; the Congress, which had to appropriate money to pay veterans' claims, settled on an official short-of-war moniker: the
THE UNITED STATES faced a similar problem in Korea in the 1950's: if only the Congress can declare a war, what was the military struggle that the U.S. conducted in the name of the United Nations to be called? President Harry S. Truman liked police action; the Congress, which had to appropriate money to pay veterans' claims, settled on an official short-of-war moniker: the Korean conflict.
What took place recently in Panama? Let me tell you about our operation.
When the decision was made to name the action 'Operation Just Cause,' the effect was to cause others to use the first word as a description of the event. The harsh word invasion was used by many newscasters - and a military invasion it indisputably was, though the invasion was invited by the elected Government - but the White House and Defense Department held to operation. The State Department floated out consented intervention, but that sank rapidly. Nobody tried incursion, a term for hostile but temporary entry into another's territory, because of its use to explain our penetration into Cambodia in 1970. The size of the force that was put into the field inhibited the use of raid or foray.
By far, the preferred term was operation, as the Administration had hoped; thus was a war avoided.
What military jargon was churned up by the shooting engagement? A verb tossed about a great deal was reduce. 'The headquarters has been reduced,' said Gen. Colin L. Powell, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in his initial briefing. This is correct military terminology; according to the strategist Edward N. Luttwak, 'You raze walls, you slight fortifications, you reduce fortresses.'
Although the most widely understood sense of reduce is 'to diminish, lessen' (just as the desperately intransitive 'I gotta reduce' is well known to dieters), a more destructive sense has long existed. 'To bring to (or into) order, obedience, reason, etc., by constraint or compulsion' is an Oxford English Dictionary definition with a citation for 1490, and 'to pulverize, to grind down to powder' entered the scientific language about a century later; this sense led to the cliche 'reduced to rubble.'
The military adopted reduce to describe the 'busting' of a noncom: to reduce to the ranks meant 'to degrade a noncommissioned officer to the rank of private.' In 1951, Frank Gaynor's New Military and Naval Dictionary defined the verb as 'to wipe out enemy resistance at a certain point.'
Lieut. Gen. Thomas W. Kelly, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took this meaning a bridge too far in his briefing: he said that our forces had 'engaged the cavalry squadron and reduced it' and that 'the naval infantry company . . . has been reduced.'
No; speaking with military precision, one does not reduce people, either individually or in companies or armies. You kill, destroy or wipe out the enemy, but you reduce places and things. You overcome, subdue, overwhelm or force the surrender of troops or small units, and defeat, conquer or vanquish a larger conglomeration of people - but you demolish, annihilate, bring to ruin and reduce enemy positions, weapons, cities.
The distinction between people and places in the target of reduce is worth preserving; the phrase to reduce casualties means 'to lessen the number likely to be killed or wounded,' not 'to wipe out the already wiped out.'
This postcard came from Robert Gibson of Thornville, Ohio: 'General Powell talked about the critical nature of the Panama military operation using the word criticality. Later, in responding to a question about when the American troops would return to their bases in the U.S., he said when the operation was concluded they would be retrograded back home. Did General Powell catch this language from General Haig?'
Don't be critical of criticality. The state or quality of being critical - not in the sense of offering criticism, but in the sense of approaching a point of crisis - has been used by atomic scientists for a generation. The noun is preferred to criticalness, much as specificity is preferred to specificness. As Al Capone might have said, ness has had it.
Retrograde, if the general used it as a transitive verb, was a mistake. In Latin, retro means 'backward' and gradi means 'to go or to step.' In synonymy, retreat implies withdrawal while retrograde implies a movement that just happens not to be forward; in the military, however, a retrograde movement has long been a euphemism for retreat. Gen. George B. McClellan took much derision when he used such a word and 'a change of base' to describe his withdrawal from the neighborhood of Richmond. General Powell probably meant rotate, in the sense of 'bring home' without the imputation of replace.
Was any euphemism used? When The Washington Post reported that a Stealth bomber had been used in Panama, it added that the plane had missed its target. 'Pentagon spokesmen confirmed that the plane had been used,' wrote William Branigin and Joanne Omang in a follow-up story, 'but said its mission was to bomb a field near Panamanian military barracks, rather than the barracks itself, to disrupt and confuse any would-be defense against invading Americans.'
The reporters added that 'a senior military officer, who asked that his name not be used, told The Post that bombing a field is a euphemism for missing the target.'
I am unable to locate an Air Force official who will confirm that the phrase used for a Gross Bombing Error is bombing a field, but mock-jocular descriptions of minor disasters are traditional in military lingo: artillerymen who shell their own infantry troops have been known to shrug off the horror with variations of 'Too bad they can't take a joke.'
Press and Congressional criticism of the operation was muted; success has a thousand fathers (as John F. Kennedy said, quoting 'an old proverb' that nobody has traced). However, during a news conference a few days before the move into Panama, President Bush was being criticized for sending two envoys to China despite a continued crackdown on dissidents by Beijing.
'To those suggesting that I have normalized the relationship with this power because of one visit,' the President said - an earlier, secret visit by the same envoys had not then been revealed - 'they simply are wrong, off the reservation on this point.'
He made an arm gesture accompanying the phrase off the reservation to emphasize how far away from the truth the critics were.
This suggests that the President has a tin ear when it comes to colloquialisms. Off the reservation - grounded in a reference to Indians who leave their assigned space - was given an extended sense by George Ade in 1900 to mean 'beyond acceptable limits.'
In politics, to go off the reservation has a specific meaning: to refuse to support a party's candidate without taking a walk or bolting the party. To use an ecclesiastical analogy, it means in schism but not in error; the political phrase has more to do with organizational loyalty than factual accuracy.
To use off the reservation as a synonym for wrong is incorrect; in this, the President was off base, which was probably the phrase he meant.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"The U.S. and Panama: Noriega;   JUDGE POSTPONES MOVING OF NORIEGA
LEAD: A Federal District Court judge today ordered the Government to delay moving Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega from a jail cell in downtown Miami to a more secure site out of town after defense lawyers demanded assurances that they would have adequate access to him.
A Federal District Court judge today ordered the Government to delay moving Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega from a jail cell in downtown Miami to a more secure site out of town after defense lawyers demanded assurances that they would have adequate access to him.
The judge, William M. Hoeveler, ordered that the Government notify him when and where it wanted to move General Noriega so that the judge could first discuss the move with the defense and prosecution.
As General Noriega sat at the defense table listening intently, Judge Hoeveler said, 'I'm going to direct that the defendant not be moved until such time that I'm notified.'
An Apparent Change in View
The judge's order contrasted with his statement in an interview Monday in which he said he was 'not really concerned' about the details of General Noriega's move so long as his representation was not impeded. The judge had said it was not his responsibility to involve himself with moving the defendant.
General Noriega, the ousted Panamanian dictator, is being held in the basement of a Federal court building here. Federal authorities have said the Metropolitan Correctional Center, a Federal prison south of here, lacks adequate security for a prisoner as well known as General Noriega. Officials had discussed the possibility of transferring the General to one of three prisons rated more secure than the Florida institution: Atlanta; Leavenworth, Kan., and Marion, Ill.
The hearing was called today not to discuss the move, but because the prosecution petitioned the court for a bail hearing for the general. Prosecutors said they wanted to prove that the general had been given every opportunity to make a bail request before being transferred to another jurisdiction. When General Noriega was formally charged last week, his lawyers waived an immediate bail hearing.
Judge Hoeveler scheduled a bail hearing for Jan. 26. It was not clear whether General Noriega would be kept until then in the courthouse cell, or in a relatively more secure site like the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
Lawyer Says Move Was Set
'They want to move him and they can't move him until they give him that opportunity to ask for bail,' said Richard D. Gregorie, the former prosecutor here who brought the indictment of General Noriega on drug trafficking charges in 1988.
Frank A. Rubino, a lawyer for General Noriega, said in an interview after the hearing that he had been told earlier by Federal authorities that his client would be moved tonight to a Federal penitentiary, probably Atlanta. But after the hearing was unexpectedly scheduled today, he said, the defense decided to ask the court to delay any move.
At the hearing, Dexter Lehtinen, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, who is prosecuting the drug-trafficking case against the general, repeatedly indicated to the court that officials were about to move General Noriega. He said he was telling the court of plans for an imminent move in case the defense had objections.
Steven Kollin, another lawyer for General Noriega, said he interpreted Mr. Lehtinen's comments as 'a warning on the horizon from the United States Attorney's office.' He also asserted that 'we're going to object strenuously if our client is not in the southern district' of Florida.
Judge Hoeveler then said General Noriega should not be moved until the judge is notified and has been involved in discussions with the defense and prosecution lawyers.
When Samuel I. Burstyn, a lawyer for a co-defendant, Lieut. Col. Luis del Cid, asked the judge if the United States Marshals Service, which is responsible for guarding General Noriega, should be notified, the judge replied jokingly, 'If there's anything we don't lack in this courtroom, it's a marshal.'
The packed courtroom, where the presence of Federal marshals was obvious, broke up in laughter.
Noriega Is Impassive
General Noriega sat impassively during the proceedings as he listened to a Spanish translation through headsets. He appeared in a light blue cotton shirt opened at the collar, black pleated trousers and new white slip-on sneakers and white socks.
He said nothing to the court. Mr. Rubino spoke to him only once, whispering in his ear at the end of the appearance as the general nodded in agreement. Federal marshals escorted the defendant into the modern courtroom shortly after the hearing began and accompanied him out as soon as it was over.
General Noriega's lawyers said they did not request a bond hearing themselves because they did not think an internationally known figure like General Noriega would get bail, and because they thought a bail request would be an admission that the court had jurisdiction in the case. To get bail, the lawyers would have to prove that General Noriega was not a danger to the community and not a risk to flee.
Documents to Be Under Seal
Judge Hoeveler also ruled that any classified documents in the case would be kept under seal, an action that came at the request of the prosecution and defense lawyers. Secret Government documents are expected to play a major role in this case since for years General Noriega was an informer to national security agencies in the United States.
General Noriega was indicted by a grand jury here in 1988 on charges that he received $4.6 million in bribes from leaders of the Medellin cocaine drug ring in exchange for turning Panama into a haven for drug traffickers and money laundering. He was indicted on separate charges in Tampa but will be tried here first.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Diplomacy
LEAD: Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the Panamanian leader, comes back to haunt the Bush Administration this week as the Organization of American States wrestles again with the question of his ouster.
Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the Panamanian leader, comes back to haunt the Bush Administration this week as the Organization of American States wrestles again with the question of his ouster.
To date, the diplomacy of the O.A.S. has been no more effective than the bellicose threats of the Reagan Administration in persuading General Noriega to step aside.
Having committed itself to multinational diplomacy, the United States cannot easily back away from that course, although so far it has produced few results, and much frustration for the Bush Administration.
'There is great hope that the O.A.S. mission will succeed, although not high expectations of that success,' said J. Brian Atwood, president of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, which sponsored a team of observers sent to Panama for the May 7 elections.
Juan B. Sosa, the Panamanian Ambassador to the United States, who opposes General Noriega, said that talks between the Noriega regime and opposition parties had not made any significant progress, and he said bluntly that the O.A.S. 'does not have the will' to take strong action against the military strongman.
Asked if the negotiations were making progress, Michael G. Kozak, a State Department lawyer who has been entangled with Panama in one way or another for 18 years, said, 'I'm not going out and buying any champagne.'
The Administration's experience with the O.A.S. is not likely to encourage American officials to turn to the 31-member hemispheric group again any time soon. At the first meeting of foreign ministers to consider the situation in Panama, on May 17, the United States had to struggle just to get the name of General Noriega included in the resolution condemning electoral abuses.
If experience is any guide, the O.A.S meeting, scheduled for 3 P.M. Wednesday, will begin around 7:30, adjourn for consultations over dinner and then reconvene around 11 P.M. for inconclusive action.
Invariably in O.A.S. resolutions, calls for General Noriega to give up power are balanced with admonitions to the effect that no nation may intervene in the internal affairs of another.
Official American interest in Panama seems to ebb and flow, for reasons unrelated to any change in the situation there. Merely by denouncing General Noriega or dropping a hint that he might be kidnapped to face trial in the United States, the White House or the State Department can revive an atmosphere of crisis. The sense of crisis quickly dissipates, even though the general continues to violate the civil liberties of his people and continues to harass American servicemen in Panama.
Guillermo Quijano, a Panamanian opposition leader, lamented the fact that General Noriega had minimized his conflict with the Panamanian people and focused worldwide attention instead on his confrontation with the United States. Mr. Quijano predicted that General Noriega would install another 'puppet government' on Sept. 1, when the constitutional mandate of the current Noriega-backed regime expires.
President Bush and Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d will be on vacation when O.A.S. foreign ministers meet here Wednesday. In a stunning acceptance of what seems obvious and inevitable, American officials said they would no longer insist that General Noriega leave Panama, only that he surrender power.
To the distress of some opposition leaders, the United States has also acquiesced in the idea that Panama should hold a new Presidential election. The opposition leaders see no reason for a new vote because they contend that they won the May 7 election by a margin of at least 3 to 1, and observers, including former President Jimmy Carter, agree.
Opposition leaders fear that the Noriega regime may crack down on them as Panama goes through an uneasy political transition in the next two weeks. 'Noriega will embark on a campaign of brutal repression against opposition leaders,' Mr. Quijano warned.
WASHINGTON TALK",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Washington at Work; Helms Keeps the Capital Pot Boiling
LEAD: As well-mannered as a church-going schoolboy, as full of homespun charm as a Chamber of Commerce president, Senator Jesse Helms is the kind of guy who fetches coffee for his aides and allows misguided tourists to use the special elevator reserved for senators.
As well-mannered as a church-going schoolboy, as full of homespun charm as a Chamber of Commerce president, Senator Jesse Helms is the kind of guy who fetches coffee for his aides and allows misguided tourists to use the special elevator reserved for senators.
He also routinely holds foreign policy initiatives hostage, puts ambassadorial nominees in limbo, paralyzes Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings and undercuts treaties. He is, people in Washington say, a spoiler Secretary of State.
'Oh mercy, of course not,' the 67-year-old Republican Senator says in response. 'I just have my opinions and my agenda. I just take a swipe at the ball when it comes over the plate, and I do the best I can.'
This month, Senator Helms seemed to be doing his best to outdo himself. Criticism and Fire
Racing to the Senate floor the day after the collapse of the attempted coup in Panama, he criticized the Bush Administration for incompetence with the same oratorical fire that back home earned him the honor of Grand Orator of the Grand Lodge of Masons of North Carolina. Using information gathered by his staff, the Senator asserted that the United States had failed to respond to pleas by Panamanian rebels for crucial help.
Senior officials at the White House seethed. At a White House meeting, Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser, and John H. Sununu, the chief of staff, railed at two of Mr. Helms's aides who refused to disclose their sources.
'My personal feeling is that the Senator was badly misserved by his staff,' said one senior White House official. The Senate speech, the official said, was 'so factually inaccurate that I suspect the Senator will feel uncomfortable when it is analyzed.'
Not so, Mr. Helms insisted. 'I've got no apologies to anybody,' he said. 'I wouldn't take back one syllable.' Courtship by Baker Incidents like the Panama crisis have helped give Mr. Helms an importance out of proportion to his position as the ranking minority member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Conscious of Mr. Helms's power to wreak havoc on carefully planned policy, Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d has courted him, seeking his advice and assistance in frequent telephone conversations or at lunch at the State Department.
'There's not a separate Jesse Helms strategy,' said a senior official at the State Department, 'but it's fair to say that the Secretary has a strong desire to keep the Senator in the loop on things.'
As for the President, those who know Mr. Helms well say he and Mr. Bush are like oil and water. To Mr. Helms, who quit college to become a newspaperman, the President represents the kind of privilege that he disdains.
'There are certain philosophical and cultural views that Jesse doesn't share with the President,' said Richard S. Williamson, a former Assistant Secretary of State who has known Mr. Helms since they worked together on the 1976 Republican Party platform. 'Worse than being a liberal is being a pragmatist, and worse than that is being an Eastern Establishment Ivy League WASP.'
Publicly, Mr. Helms remains a Bush loyalist. He was not happy with Ronald Reagan's choice of Mr. Bush as a Vice Presidential candidate in 1980 and made that clear. But when Mr. Bush asked Mr. Helms to show up at a North Carolina campaign stop last year, Mr. Helms drove himself there despite the fact that he was recovering from a hernia operation.
As evidence of his friendship with Mr. Bush, the Senator told of a recent visit to the Oval Office when the President offered to help when Mr. Helms is up for re-election next year. ' 'I'm ready and we'll work it out if you're ready,' ' Mr. Helms quoted the President as saying. 'I told him that's one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me.' Bad Feelings Are Denied
Similarly, the White House insisted there were no bad feelings because of Panama. 'I certainly don't feel that the Senator has any specific feelings against the Administration,' Mr. Sununu said in an interview. 'I don't think the President feels that. I've considered the Senator a friend for a long time and feel very comfortable talking with him about issues and asking him for help.'
Mr. Helms listens to cassettes of Winston Churchill's speeches in his 1984 Oldsmobile and unwinds by playing along with 'Jeopardy' and 'Wheel of Fortune,' two of his favorite television programs.
A two-finger typist, he uses an old Royal typewriter and pecks out dozens of letters every week to his constituents. And he puffs half-heartedly on unfiltered Lucky Strikes, which sits well with the tobacco lobby back in North Carolina.
But if he is a cocker spaniel in his personal life, Mr. Helms is a pit bull in the Senate. Not Trying to Get Along
'If you don't have a set of principles and you try to be popular, that's when you go nuts,' Mr. Helms said, 'and I have no intention of going nuts.
'I didn't come to Washington to be a yes man for any President, Democrat or Republican. I didn't come to Washington to get along and win any popularity contests.'
Indeed, people who have known the Senator for years say his tactics -large doses of anti-Communism and lectures often served up with filibusters and last-ditch amendments, all of them time-consuming, many of them tiresome - have left him few friends among his colleagues.
'He is a true believer who's often out in left field all by himself,' said Tom Ellis, a lawyer in Raleigh, N.C., who ran Mr. Helms's first Senate campaign in 1972.
Mr. Williamson, the former Assistant Secretary of State and a fellow conservative, put it this way: 'Jesse is the skunk at the garden party, and he doesn't mind it one bit.' A Classic Performance
A classic Helms performance came recently when he sharply cut off Senator Claiborne Pell, the courtly Rhode Island Democrat who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. In an effort to accommodate the Administration's request to move a proposal to send $9 million in election aid to the Nicaraguan opposition without a committee vote, Mr. Pell explained, 'We are trying to accommodate the President. We felt at that point --'
An angry Senator Helms interrupted, 'You felt that you were going to snooker us is what you felt.'
The exchanges in last year's Senate debate on the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty were even more vitriolic. At one point, Senator Richard G. Lugar, an Indiana Republican who supported the treaty, accused Mr. Helms of gratuitous attempts to modify the treaty, calling his stalling tactics 'ridiculous.'
'I want to challenge you on the business of being ridiculous,' Mr. Helms responded to Mr. Lugar, who had supported economic sanctions because of South Africa's apartheid policies. 'We could go back to South Africa and some of your stands, and we can talk about what's ridiculous.'
It was a position that Mr. Lugar had promoted when he was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee from 1984 to 1986. Mr. Helms had chosen to be chairman of the Agriculture Committee, a North Carolina necessity, but when the Democrats won a majority in the Senate, Mr. Helms insisted on exercising the seniority principle and displacing Mr. Lugar as the ranking committee Republican. Staff Is Independent
Mr. Helms, who gets much of the ammunition for his arguments from his committee staff, a committed group that includes former journalists who know how to get their views across. It was Mr. Helms's staff that amassed data on the Panama situation, telephoning Administration officials and Panamanian exiles in contact with the coup leaders and even phoning members of the Panamanian military while the coup attempt was in progress.
But some staff members are so independent that they have been known to make decisions without informing their boss. When Senator Lugar tried to pass a resolution congratulating South Korea for successfully holding the Summer Olympics last year, a member of Mr. Helms's staff said it could not be done. Mr. Lugar telephoned Mr. Helms for an explanation, and the Senator not only agreed to support the resolution but also to co-sponsor it.
In terms of concrete results, Mr. Helms's record is not particularly impressive. This year he delayed but did not stop the confirmation of Richard R. Burt as President Bush's negotiator for the strategic arms limitation talks. He was unable to push through an amendment limiting the Administration's contacts with the Palestine Liberation Organization. And his attempt to block the Administration from aiding the Presidential campaign of the Nicaraguan opposition seems doomed.
Back home, his tactics - which also applied to blocking the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday or to trying to stop Federal money for what he called 'obscene' and 'indecent' art - have earned him the sobriquet 'Senator No.' The Democrats, who are having trouble finding a candidate to run against him next year, are expected to argue that Mr. Helms spends too much time on issues irrelevant to North Carolina.
'The Senator knows how to manipulate the rules to his advantage, to slow things down and to grandstand on the issues,' said Mark Helmke, a private consultant who served as press secretary to Senator Lugar. 'But eventually he loses. People point to the fact that he screams and shouts, but forget that in the end he doesn't win.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Bush Aide Invokes Privilege On '85 Session About Panama
LEAD: A top aide to Vice President Bush invoked executive privilege today when asked what was said about narcotics when Mr. Bush met with the United States ambassador to Panama in 1985.
A top aide to Vice President Bush invoked executive privilege today when asked what was said about narcotics when Mr. Bush met with the United States ambassador to Panama in 1985.
In a three-hour deposition, Col. Samuel J. Watson 3d, deputy national security adviser to Mr. Bush, did answer some questions posed by Lewis Pitts, the attorney for a group of plaintiffs in a private civil lawsuit. Colonel Watson's lawyer, Richard Stearns, later said the privilege applies because it covers conversations of the President and Vice President.
Colonel Watson said he had prepared a memorandum to set up Mr. Bush's Dec. 16, 1985, meeting with Ambassador Everett Ellis Briggs in Mr. Bush's office. Mr. Briggs wanted to discuss a situation involving Nicolas Ardito Barletta, who had been ousted as Panama's president by Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, and the subject of narcotics, Colonel Watson said. Bush and Top Aides at Session
Colonel Watson testified in the sworn deposition that he was present at the meeting along with Mr. Bush's top national security aide, Donald P. Gregg, and an official from the State Department.
But when asked what Mr. Briggs told Mr. Bush on the subject of narcotics, Mr. Stearns objected and instructed Colonel Watson not to answer on grounds of executive privilege.
Mr. Bush has repeatedly denied that he was aware of any clear evidence of such involvement by Mr. Noriega before last February, when the general was indicted by two grand juries in Florida on drug charges. Mr. Bush's Democratic opponents in the Presidential campaign have questioned how much the Vice President knew about Mr. Noriega's alleged drug involvement.
Mr. Pitts asked Colonel Watson whether narcotics was discussed at all in the meeting in Mr. Bush's office.
'I don't recall specifically whether they were or not,' Colonel Watson said. 'I could make that assumption, but I will not state it as a certainty.' He added that he had since searched for any memorandum summarizing the meeting but could find no such a document.
The New York Times reported on May 8 that Mr. Briggs told Mr. Bush at the 1985 meeting of allegations that General Noriega was involved in the drug trade, with that information attributed to senior officials of the Reagan Administration, whom the newspaper did not identify. Mr. Briggs later disputed the account. 'Vague, Unsubstantiated Rumors'
Colonel Watson said at the deposition that he had only a vague knowledge of narcotics issues involving Panama at that time. 'There were vague, unsubstantiated rumors around,' he said, that people in the Panamanian Defense Forces 'were facilitating trafficking of drugs.'
Colonel Watson's statements came in a deposition for a $24 million damage and racketeering lawsuit charging that a group of defendants supplied the Nicaraguan rebels with weapons in exchange for cocaine. The suit also accuses the group of planning the May 1984 bombing that injured the rebel leader Eden Pastora in southeastern Nicaragua near the Costa Rican border.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"The Noriega Case: Television;   President Complains About TV's Use of Split Images
LEAD: President Bush complained yesterday that by juxtaposing pictures of him in a jocular mood during a news conference last month and the arrival of the bodies of American soldiers killed in Panama, some television news organizations had made him appear insensitive to the deaths.
President Bush complained yesterday that by juxtaposing pictures of him in a jocular mood during a news conference last month and the arrival of the bodies of American soldiers killed in Panama, some television news organizations had made him appear insensitive to the deaths.
Mr. Bush asked the networks for advance warning the next time they plan to use split-screen technique. 'I would respectfully request that if the urgency of the moment is such that that technique is going to be used, if I could be told about it,' Mr. Bush said at his news conference yesterday, 'and we'll stop the proceedings.'
Network news executives said yesterday that the use of the technique had generated heated debate at the networks along with letters from viewers, many of whom said they felt the coverage had been intended to put Mr. Bush in a negative light.
While some executives sympathized with Mr. Bush, they said the White House had to share some blame for what proved to be an embarrassing situation. But they stopped short of saying they would notify the President in advance if such a situation were to arise again.
Letters to President
The President's news conference on Dec. 21 took place within moments of the arrival of the bodies of four American soldiers at the United States Air Force base in Dover, Del. Mr. Bush said that because ABC, CBS and the Cable News Network showed what he characterized as 'my frivolous comments at the time' side by side with the return of American dead, viewers had written him saying they felt that 'their President, in a solemn moment like that didn't give a damn.'
'And I do, I do,' the President said. He was not aware at the time that the events in Washington and Dover were being shown side by side.
But some network executives asserted that while they understood the President's embarrassment, they had been surprised by his casual demeanor during the news conference.
Few Options, Networks Say
While the news conference had been scheduled before the Panama invasion on Dec. 20, the executives said, the time was not set until hours before it took place, leaving the networks with few options for covering both Mr. Bush and the arrival ceremony.
'CBS News had planned live coverage of the arrival ceremony long before the White House announced the press appearance in the White House briefing room,' the president of CBS News, David W. Burke, said through a spokesman yesterday. 'It was our judgment that we had the responsibility to broadcast live a brief portion of the arrival ceremony, which occured simultaneous with the President's briefing.'
Ed Turner, the executive vice president for news gathering at CNN, said: 'We began with full screen of the President in the White House briefing room. Shortly thereafter, the live pictures came up from Dover, the caskets being moved from the belly of the airplane to a hanger. We then created the two-box look, with the President talking and the silent picture of the caskets moving with an honor guard. That went on pretty much for the duration.'
'I supported the technique because oddly, you had a confluence of events,' Mr. Turner continued, 'the President discussing the dead and the injured in Panama, with the eerie coincidence of being able to cover the return live. I know it was not done with editorial intent, to make the President look bad. But I believe it was a fair and honest treatment of two major events.'
When he saw the split image, Roone Arledge, the president of ABC News, called the broadcast control room and ordered the return to a full picture of the President. The ABC News anchor, Peter Jennings, explained to viewers that Mr. Bush did not know the technique was being used. When the news conference was over, Mr. Jennings apologized to viewers for the use of the technique. Through a spokesman, Scott Richardson, Mr. Arledge said yesterday that he agreed with the President's assessment.
Lloyd Siegel, the executive producer of news coverage at NBC News, said his division determined not to use a split screen specifically because of fears that the coverage might cast the President in a negative light. But NBC News, like the other news organizations, said it would not alert the White House in advance of a future decision to use the technique.
'Today, President Bush, as is his right, called our judgment, but not our intent, into question,' Mr. Burke, of CBS News, said. 'That right strengthens all and is beneficial not only to news organizations but to the workings of our free society.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Dukakis Makes Sharpest Attack On Administration's Drug Policies
LEAD: Gov. Michael S. Dukakis denounced the Reagan Administration's drug policies today as 'criminal' and 'absurd,' making his strongest statements yet on an emotional issue that has been central to the 1988 Presidential campaign.
Gov. Michael S. Dukakis denounced the Reagan Administration's drug policies today as 'criminal' and 'absurd,' making his strongest statements yet on an emotional issue that has been central to the 1988 Presidential campaign.
The Democratic Presidential nominee continued what campaign aides said was a new effort to focus his attacks more directly on Vice President Bush, by ridiculing Mr. Bush's campaign pledge to put his own Vice President in charge of anti-drug programs.
'President Reagan tried that, and it didn't work,' Mr. Dukakis said, adding that on his first day in office he would appoint a Cabinet-level official to direct all anti-drug programs Using the Drug Issue Speaking in Cleveland before he flew to Pittsburgh for a campaign rally and a tour of a steel mill. Mr. Dukakis said he would devote more foreign aid to other nations' efforts to stop drug production and trafficking. But he said he would also use the threat of withholding aid as leverage to win those governments' help in stopping drug shipments to the United States.
Mr. Dukakis, Governor of Masssachusetts, has used the drug issue to attack the Reagan Administration and to display toughness on law and order and national security. Both are issues on which he has been regularly attacked by his opponents.
Dayton Duncan, Mr. Dukakis's press secretary, said the candidate was trying to personalize his attacks on Mr. Bush by focusing on programs in which the Vice President played a specific role, like trade with Japan and the war on drugs. Mr. Dukakis spoke about trade with Japan on Wednesday in Washington and Grand Rapids, Mich.
Much of what Mr. Dukakis has said about drugs recently has focused on cutting domestic consumption. In today's speech, he dealt primarily with stopping drug production abroad and ending imports to the United States. Cuts in Aid Are Questioned
'The drug cancer is eating away the foundation of fragile democracies throughout this hemisphere,' Mr. Dukakis said in the cavernous rotunda of the Cuyahoga County Courthouse. 'It's corrupting governments, destroying economies, ravaging communities, spawning terror and crippling lives. It's the single greatest cause of violence in the Americas today.'
He said, 'The first responsibility of the President, under our Constitution, is to provide for the common defense.' But he said Federal aid to state and local drug law-enforcement agencies had been cut by two-thirds 'while Mr. Bush wants to spend tens of billions of dollars over the next eight years on Star Wars.'
'Why,' he asked, 'after seven years of task forces and policy boards and grandiose claims, have cocaine imports tripled, drug-related deaths doubled, and heroin imports risen by 50 percent?' Ties With Noriega
Mr. Dukakis said that last year, the United States spent 'almost twice as much trying to overthrow the government of Nicaragua as we did in the war against drugs in all of Latin America.' 'My friends, that's absurd,' he said. He called the withdrawal of American drug agents from Honduras in 1983 'ridiculous' and added, 'For years, while General Noriega of Panama was actively involved in the drug business, we were doing business with General Noriega.'
'My friends, that is criminal,' Mr. Dukakis said.
'How can we ask our neighbors in Latin America to crack down on drugs when we have an Administration that's in bed with one of the biggest thugs on the continent?' he asked.
Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, Panama's leader, is under Federal indictment in Florida on drug trafficking charges. Earlier this year, the Reagan Administration attempted to negotiate a plan with General Noriega to step down, but the plan collapsed.
In his speech today, Mr. Dukakis called for 'a leadership that understands Latin America, leadership that cares about stopping the flow of drugs into our country, leadership that can forge a new Pan-American alliance against drugs.' Hemispheric Meetings Proposed
Mr. Dukakis said that soon after taking office, he would begin arranging the first of a series of hemispheric summit meetings on drugs and other issues.
The Governor said: 'We're going to use a bigger piece of our foreign aid to fight the war against drugs - to eradicate and substitute crops, to gather intelligence information, to strengthen the police and the courts, to carry out joint law-enforcement operations and to protect the Latin American officals and judges and lawyers who have the guts to join us in this war.'
He did not say how much money would be earmarked for such efforts.
Mr. Dukakis said he would press for extradition and mutual legal assistance treaties where they do not exist, and crack down on money-laundering operations.
He also said he would 'sign an executive order to prohibit the payment of C.I.A. or other intelligence agency funds to any person engaged in drug trafficking' except as part of a 'sting' operation.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"With Millions Frozen in Banks, Noriega Might Be Tried as Pauper
A Federal judge said today that he would order Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega to be tried as a pauper, entitled to only two defense lawyers, unless his lawyers and the Government succeed by Friday in obtaining access to the millions of dollars in the deposed Panamanaian dictator's frozen overseas bank accounts.
The Federal district judge in the case, William M. Hoeveler, announced his intentions at a hearing conducted in the aftermath of last week's broadcast by Cable News Network of what it said were taped conversations between the general and members of his defense team.
The general now has three lawyers, who said they might be forced to quit rather than work for the money they would have to accept as court-appointed lawyers.
At the hearing today, the tape issue spread another layer of confusion over the Government's increasingly tangled drug trafficking case against the general and attracted more than two dozen civil and criminal lawyers to a session originally scheduled as a routine conference on the status of the case.  Judge Wants Quick Resolution
Judge Hoeveler told the lawyers that his desire to resolve the issue of lawyers' fees quickly was motivated at least in part because he wanted to accelerate the pace of the case to avoid future disruptions like the looming constitutional battle provoked by CNN's use of the taped conversation between General Noriega and a member of his defense team.
""The need for this case to go to trial has never been made more clear as it has in the last three or four days,"" said Judge Hoeveler. ""This case has got to get to trial.""
CNN has agreed not to play any more taped conversations between General Noriega and members of his defense team until the Supreme Court decides whether to hear the network's appeal of Judge Hoeveler's order barring their playing. The recordings were of telephone calls the general made from the Florida prison where he is being held.
At one point at the hearing today, Samuel I. Burstyn, a lawyer for Luis Del Cid, one of the general's co-defendants, demanded the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate who made the tapes and whether any Government agency had eavesdropped on the conversations between General Noriega and his lawyers, or the discussions between other defendants and their legal advisers. Judge Hoeveler denied the request.
In addition, lawyers for the current Government of President Guillermo Endara of Panama, which has filed a $6.5 billion lawsuit against General Noriega and associates, announced at the hearing that they were acting separately to obtain a restraining order to prevent the general from moving some of his money. This was despite his lawyers' problems in obtaining the money for legal fees.  Doubts About Moving Money
The motion by the lawyers in the civil case came after one tape broadcast by CNN suggested that the general was trying to transport millions of dollars through an unidentified courier. But the judge said, ""If they are moving money, it is not being moved in this direction.""
The general also attended today's session, in his first appearance in public since the tape issue surfaced. He wore the crisply pressed uniform of a four-star general in the now defunct Panamanaian Defense Force, with dark brown trousers and a tan short-sleeved shirt.
The former leader, pale from his months of confinement, listened to a simultaneous Spanish translation of the proceedings through earphones. He stared straight ahead or into his lap, at times closing his eyes or tapping the earpiece of his headset.
After the hearing, General Noriega's lawyers said that since his arrest they had received no fees and might be forced to withdraw if the general is only allowed two lawyers who would be paid $75 an hour. This is the amount allowed under the Federal law that establishes procedures for legal representation of indigent defendants, said Jon May, one the general's lawyers.  Lawyers to Make Proposal
But at the hearing scheduled for Friday, they said that they planned to present Judge Hoeveler with two proposals to get more money for the general's defense. They declined to explain how those funds might be obtained.
In addition to the three lawyers, the general has legal support personnel. The Government has a far larger team, and six prosecutors were present in court today.
The fee issue arose in June when the judge directed the Government to lift its freeze on $6 million in foreign bank accounts owned by the general. Since then the Government has said it has sought to obtain funds from five accounts, three in France and one each in Switzerland and Austria.  Foreign Countries Resist
At the hearing, Drew C. Arena, a lawyer in the Justice Department's criminal division, said that judicial authorities in each country had resisted the department's request to lift the freeze on General Noriega's accounts.
The accounts were frozen last December and January at the request of the United States after its invasion of Panama. But Mr. Arena said that since then the authorities in each of the countries had invoked their own laws to block access to accounts that might contain proceeds from drug trafficking. Now, these officials are unwilling to rescind those actions unless the United States asserts that the money was not tied to drug trafficking, Mr. Arena said .
""Thus,"" said Judge Hoeveler, ""you have no idea when if ever we will ever be able to secure those assets.""
""I believe that's a fair characterization,"" replied Mr. Arena.
Frank A. Rubino, General Noriega's chief defense lawyer, expressed irritation over the Government's professions of helplessness. ""They sure have been letting us waste a lot of time and a lot of energy trying to unfreeze bank accounts that they have no ability to unfreeze.""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"COURT GETS PLEAS ON NORIEGA TAPES
Asserting that ""the First Amendment is part of the rule of law, not above it,"" the Justice Department today urged the Supreme Court to permit a lower court's order barring the broadcast of tapes of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega's conversations with his defense team to remain in effect temporarily.
In a 20-page brief filed with the Justices this morning, the Government forcefully disputed the assertion by Cable News Network that a restraining order issued in Miami last week by Federal District Judge William H. Hoeveler is unconstitutional.
Rather, the department's brief said, the ""carefully crafted"" 10-day order is ""both sensible and consistent"" with Supreme Court precedents as a way for the judge to review the tapes and determine whether the more drastic measure of a permanent order barring the broadcasts might be justified to protect General Noriega's right to a fair trial.
CNN asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift the order, which was upheld by a Federal appeals court panel in Atlanta. Last week, the network broadcast a portion of one tape recording of a telephone conversation between the deposed Panamanian leader and his legal defense team, and it is asserting a right under the First Amendment to broadcast others it says it has obtained.  U.S. Violation Is Asserted
The network asserts that the recordings, made by the Bureau of Prisons from General Noriega's telephone at the Federal prison in Florida where he is awaiting trial on narcotics charges, are evidence of Government interference with General Noriega's right to private communication with his defense lawyers.
Lawyers for General Noriega also filed a brief with the Supreme Court today opposing CNN's request to the Justices to lift the restraining order. The Supreme Court had requested the unusual Saturday filing from the Government and the Noriega defense alike. But there was no indication of when the Court might act.
The briefs from the Justice Department and General Noriega's lawyers differed in one notable respect. The general's lawyers, Frank A. Rubino and Jon May, said that the case ""presents fundamental questions concerning the balance between the First Amendment right of freedom of the press and the Sixth Amendment right of the accused to a fair trial and the effective assistance of counsel."" Full Hearing Is Sought
For that reason, the lawyers said, the Justices should accept CNN's appeal for full briefing and argument, while keeping the restraining order in effect in the meantime.
By contrast, the Government's brief said that the case at this point ""is quite narrow"" and does not present fundamental issues that the Court needs to resolve now. The brief, signed by Solicitor General Kenneth W. Starr and three other Justice Department lawyers, told the Justices:
""There will be time enough for the lower courts and this Court to consider whether a lasting prior restraint over publication of privileged attorney-client communications is permissible to insure a fair trial, when we know whether petitioners' tapes contain such communications, and whether -- given their contents -- such an injunction would be the only effective alternative. We do not yet know that. Review by this Court is thus, at the least, premature.""
The Government said it agreed with CNN that ""under the First Amendment, a lasting prior restraint on publication may be justified only in the most extraordinary circumstances.""
But the department's brief continued: ""But the rule of law requires permitting a court to determine if those circumstances exist. This may or may not be the rare case in which a lasting prior restraint is justified. The district court entered the challenged orders to find out.""
The Government said that in its precedents invalidating prior restraints, the Court had ""at least a sufficient description of the material sought to be published"" from which to conclude that the asserted reasons for blocking publication were inadequate. In the Supreme Court's leading precedent on the unconstitutionality of prior restraints, a 1976 decision called Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, the Court overturned a trial judge's order that barred the press from reporting on courtroom testimony about an accused murderer's confession. 'Informed Decision' Questioned
The Government's brief today emphasized that, by contrast, Judge Hoeveler had no basis on which to make an ""informed decision"" on whether broadcast of the tapes would jeopardize General Noriega's rights, because CNN refused to permit him to listen to the tapes.
In the brief it filed Thursday, CNN said that the fact the Court in the Nebraska case found that even ""highly prejudicial"" information about a sensational murder case could be published indicated that Judge Hoeveler was unjustified in barring broadcast of the tapes when there was only speculation that any information on them could hurt General Noriega's defense.
Judge Hoeveler issued an order restaining the network from playing the tapes for 10 days so that he could review their contents. Later, CNN played a portion of the taped conversation between the general and a member of his defense team. At a hearing in Miami on Friday, General Noriega's lawyers asked Judge Hoeveler to dismiss the charges against their client on several grounds.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Judge Asks Noriega Jurors About Pressure
The judge who presided over the trial of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega today interviewed three people who served on the jury to determine whether one had been improperly pressured to reach a verdict earlier this spring.
The inquiry was at the request of Mr. Noriega's lawyers to investigate assertions that prayer sessions were held to change the mind of a female juror who had wanted to acquit the deposed Panamanian ruler. The lawyers have said that the sessions could be the basis of an appeal, but today they said that no appeal on those grounds was planned.
After a hearing this morning, the judge, William M. Hoeveler, of Federal District Court, said he would not make any further inquiry into the deliberations, but he told General Noriega's chief counsel in the trial, Frank A. Rubino, that the defense had 15 days to file an appeal based on possible irregularities in jurors' conduct.
General Noriega was convicted April 9 after a seven-month trial on eight counts of cocaine trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. He is scheduled to be sentenced July 10. He faces a maximum of 120 years in prison.
Several jurors have told how deliberations were slowed by a single holdout juror who they said had her mind made up that Mr. Noriega was not guilty. They described Ms. Cooper as a religious, saying that on several occasions she had joined other church-going jurors in praying for guidance.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Washington Talk: The Pentagon; What Terrifies the Toughest Soldiers? A Civilian Military Plan
LEAD: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior military officers, long wary of their civilian superiors' penchant for making what they see as ill-considered plans for employing the armed forces in crises, have had their mistrust renewed by recent proposals to deploy combat troops to Panama.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff and other senior military officers, long wary of their civilian superiors' penchant for making what they see as ill-considered plans for employing the armed forces in crises, have had their mistrust renewed by recent proposals to deploy combat troops to Panama.
In private conversations, military officers were emphatic in denouncing a State Department plan to send several thousand American soldiers to Panama to establish President Eric Arturo Delvalle, who has been in hiding, in office on an American base there. A staff officer called it a 'cockamamie scheme.'
Betraying a sentiment that bordered on scorn, the officers cited the death of 241 marines, sailors and soldiers in the truck bombing of a Marine billet at the Beirut airport in Lebanon in 1983. The officers asserted that vague instructions from political leaders had contributed to that disaster. Emotional Scars of Vietnam
Even deeper-seated among today's military leaders is the belief that the politicians, the press and public of the Vietnam era hung them out to twist in the wind without support, without clear-cut objectives and without permitting them to win.
This mistrust of political leaders, not only of the Reagan Administration but of both political parties, will continue into the next administration regardless of who is elected in November because it is pervasive and embedded in a whole generation of officers.
Most officers ranking from lieutenant colonel to full general today served in the Vietnam War and carry the emotional scars of that conflict. They are not only the present but the future leaders of the armed forces, which means that the nation's political leaders will be confronted with their reluctance, sometimes known as the Vietnam Syndrome, for many years.
'Why don't we want to go to Panama?' a young general asked. 'Because of Vietnam, pure and simple. We've been in that stuff before.' But all were quick to add that if political leaders ordered feasible and carefully defined military missions, they would salute and move out. The Joint Chiefs, for instance, supported the decision to invade Grenada in 1983, even though the mission was revised several times in the making. They also readily agreed to the bombing of Libya in 1986. Weinberger's 6 Criteria
'There is not a reluctance to use military force when there are clearly defined reasons,' said a staff officer, 'when there is something military for them to do.'
Many officers referred to six criteria for applying military power set out by former Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger in November 1984, as part of a running debate with Secretary of State George P. Shultz over the use of force as an instrument of national policy.
Mr. Weinberger said troops should be committed only when 'vital to our national interest' and 'with the clear intention of winning.' He said the United States 'should have clearly defined political and military objectives' and the forces must be commensurate with those objectives.
'There must be some reasonable assurance we will have the support of the American people and their elected representatives in Congress,' Mr. Weinberger said. Finally, combat forces should be used only as a last resort.
In case after case in recent discussions on this issue, military officers echoed the remarks of an officer who said, 'Deploying combat troops to Panama met none of those criteria.' Or, as several others said, repeating each other almost word for word, 'If we go to Panama, what is it you want us to do?' Plan to Send Troops
Mr. Weinberger's successor, Frank C. Carlucci, subscribed to most of what Mr. Weinberger had said but, in his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee last November, entered a caveat: 'I don't know that it's always feasible to have full political consensus before you go ahead with a military operation. There are times when the President needs to move military forces in advance of total agreement of the body politic.'
The current wariness toward political leaders and the ease with which they envision using military force was triggered by a plan that Pentagon officials said had been drawn up by the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Elliott Abrams.
It called for dispatching two brigades of about 3,000 soldiers each to Panama, where they would bring Mr. Delvalle out of hiding and under the protection of an American base as he sought to regain control of the Panamanian Government. Kidnapping Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, Panama's military leader, was also contemplated, the officers said. 'Implications Are Frightening'
'Can you imagine what that would have done to our base rights and negotiations elsewhere - the Philippines, Greece, Turkey, Spain - if we had set up a dissident government on a U.S. base?' asked an officer. 'The implications are frightening.'
Another officer expressed anxiety over the safety of American civilians who are dependents of the 10,000 American military people there, or who are working for the United States or on the Panama Canal, or who are in business there.
'We're looking at 13,000 dependents who would be hostage bait,' said a general.
Still another said that General Noriega was preparing for guerrilla war against the United States by 'stacking Cuban arms in the hills.' Officers said they doubted that the American public, remembering Vietnam, would support a long counter-insurgency operation.
When President Reagan deployed 3,500 troops to Honduras in a show of force against Nicaragua last month, the officers noted, there were scattered protests around the United States. Some were specifically directed against military recruiting stations. 'Kidnapping Is a Crime'
Many officers said that political sentiment in Panama was certain to turn against the United States if combat troops intervened there. 'Any move like that,' said a general, 'would be seen as an effort by the United States to renege on the treaty.' He referred to the pact under which Panama is to assume full control of the canal on Dec. 31, 1999.
Concerning the plan to capture General Noriega, an Army officer was vehement: 'Kidnapping is a crime. Under what international law would you have us do that?'
But it was the deployment of American forces in Beirut to which the officers repeatedly returned.
'We lacked clearly defined objectives there,' said one officer. Marines were sent in to guarantee the evacuation of troops of the Palestine Liberation Organization after their defeat by Israel in 1982.
After being pulled out, the marines were sent back to Beirut to keep warring factions apart and to support the Lebanese Government. But Marine Corps officers have long asserted that the rules of engagement, which governed the way they operated and when they could shoot, were never clear. Memories of Vietnam
Even more than Beirut, the officers brought up Vietnam. Several years ago, William J. Taylor, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization here, and David H. Petraeus, an Army officer, published a paper in which they concluded:
'The military has traditionally regarded their politicians and political appointees with some apprehension. Vietnam heightened this feeling, leaving America's senior military leaders with a more deep-seated suspicion of their civilian leaders.'
During a conversation last week in the Pentagon an Army officer, nodding toward the State Department across the Potomac River, was less elegant. 'They're always ready to send us out to get our butts shot off,' he said.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Parkland Route of Pan-American Highway Sets Off Storm
A NEW effort by Colombia to complete the Pan-American Highway as part of an economic development program has reopened a longstanding conflict with local residents and environmentalists.
The 16,000-mile highway was conceived at the International Conference of American States in 1923 to provide an uninterrupted roadway from Argentina to Alaska. It is complete except for a 70-mile stretch that crosses two national parks, one on either side of the Colombia-Panama border.
As currently planned, the highway would cross the southwestern tip of the 172,800-acre Los Katios National Park and some private land in Colombia, and run through the middle of the 1.3-million-acre Darien National Park in Panama.
The Colombian Government, seeking to modernize the economy and develop free-trade pacts and foreign investment, has embarked on a $6 billion, four-year plan to improve the road system. But preservation groups object to completing the highway through Los Katios, and even the Government's Environment Ministry opposes the plan.
""I think it is outrageous that in this day and age there is still no road to connect the Americas,"" Juan Gomez, the Transportation Minister, said in a recent interview. ""I am going to keep pressing the issue because it is a necessity. To say it can't be done is easy. We have to say, let's find a way for the road to be built without damaging the environment.""
The Government is planning a two-year, $1 million study of the environmental impact of the road before it makes a final decision.
The residents of Puente America, one of the many poor fishing hamlets that border Los Katios, say the road will destroy their pastures but will bring no benefits to them.
""We need someone to explain to us what advantages and disadvantages the road will bring,"" said Juvenal Cuesta, a 50-year-old farmer. ""Before polluting us, the Government should find a source of jobs for our children.""
The Government predicts that the highway would cost $118 million to complete, $85 million for the difficult construction, some of it over swampland, through the 34 miles on the Colombian side of the border. Panama has agreed to complete its part but faces the same conflicts.
Mr. Gomez has proposed adding a research center and a corps of trained guards to protect both parks. Environmentalists dismiss this suggestion.
""Who is going to stop the deforestation once the highway is built?"" asks Claudia Leal, a researcher at the Bio-Pacific Project, an internationally backed center overseen by the Environmental Ministry. ""That is impossible.""
The Bio-Pacific Project has studied a 23-mile stretch of the highway that ends 20 miles from the park and was the most recent segment completed, in 1983. It found that by 1992, 60 percent of the forest on both sides of the road had been lost.
Environmentalists worry about other threats to the park.
The area has had a heavy influx of settlers over the last 30 years, and there is illegal logging in areas outside of the park. The border has also become a route for drug traffickers, smugglers and Colombian guerrillas.
Irenio Doria, 61, a farmer who supported building the nearby stretch of highway, objects to completing the highway across Los Katios. Mr. Doria moved to the area 30 years ago and cleared 240 acres of land for farming.
""I moved here because of the promise of the new road,"" he said of the part completed earlier. ""Transportation is easier now, but if the rest of the highway were built, big business would come and buy us out. It would bring more problems, more violence and more crime.""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Military Erred in Cocaine Report
LEAD: The Pentagon today retracted claims made after the Panama invasion that United States soldiers had found a large cache of cocaine in a guest house used by Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega.
The Pentagon today retracted claims made after the Panama invasion that United States soldiers had found a large cache of cocaine in a guest house used by Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega.
'It was not cocaine,' said Bob Hall, a Pentagon spokesman.
Mr. Hall said he could not identify with any certainty what the substance was. He said he had been supplied with 'less than satisfactory' information by United States military officials in Panama.
One Pentagon official, who spoke on condition that he not be identified, said the substance had been found wrapped in banana leaves and 'has something to do with voodoo.'
Mr. Hall said officials were seeking further clarification on the matter.
The Washington Post reported today that the substance amounted to tamales used in voodoo ceremonies. Capt. Art Haubold, a spokesman for the Southern Command in Panama, said experts had told the command that the substance was used in voodoo ceremonies, but he denied that the command had identified it as tamales.
Pressed about why unchecked claims had been allowed to be made, Mr. Hall said, 'Clearly the guys who first saw this stuff did not know what cocaine was. When the experts checked, they said it wasn't.'
Mr. Hall said that because of 'legal implications' he could not provide any details about any other drugs that might have been found in the invasion.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Links to Noriega Bought Freedom For an Informer
Ramon A. Navarro, a main prosecution witness in the case against Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, led a precarious double life as a Colombian cocaine dealer and Government informer who bartered his contacts in the drug underworld for a life of freedom in the United States.
On Wednesday night, the 41-year-old Mr. Navarro died in a car crash shortly before he was expected to testify in the Federal drug trafficking trial of two of the General's co-defendants.
He was killed when his red 1989 BMW skidded across a street, struck a fence and smashed into an electrical transformer. Witnesses said a red Camaro had been seen fleeing the crash scene, but the police have not confirmed that report.
Although local investigators say they have uncovered no evidence of foul play, the Justice Department is examining the crash, and people who knew Mr. Navarro say they have doubts. ""When the Government's chief witness becomes a cadaver on the eve of trial, yes, that's suspicious,"" said Stephen A. Glass, who was Mr. Navarro's lawyer. Gold Watch and a Ferrari
Mr. Navarro's life spanned a wide arc from poverty to wealth since his birth in Medellin, Colombia, the home of one of the country's dominant cocaine rings.
Years later, he embodied the ethos of the South Florida cocaine culture. ""He was big time,"" said Mr. Glass. He wore a gold Rolex watch, $300 shoes with no socks, linen trousers and Givenchy shirts. When he was on a roll, he drove a Ferrari. ""A real macho guy,"" Mr. Glass said. ""He was right out of Miami Vice.""
Mr. Navarro was expected to be a crucial witness next week in the trial of Brian Alden Davidow and William Saldarriaga, who are charged with conspiring to smuggle 322 kilograms of cocaine into the United States in 1986 aboard a yacht.  Both defendants have pleaded not guilty, and their lawyers said Mr. Navarro had fabricated evidence against them.
Prosecutors said Mr. Navarro helped buy the yacht for the deal and could have directly implicated Mr. Davidow and Mr. Saldarriaga. The prosecutors said he would have testified that General Noriega, the deposed leader of Panama, personally approved the deal and that the defendants met with other drug traffickers in Panama to arrange the transaction under the general's protection. Prosecutors said Mr. Navarro's death seriously undercuts their case against the two men, but say they have other witnesses who can provide similar testimony. Knowledge Was Leverage
In a recent hearing in Federal District court, Michael P. Sullivan, the lead prosecutor, admitted to Judge William M. Hoeveler that Mr. Navarro had taken part in a large number of drug shipments.""He's said quite frankly he's committed hundreds,"" Mr. Sullivan said.
In 1987, Mr. Navarro was jailed on a weapons charge but negotiated for his freedom with a powerful bargaining chip, his knowledge of General Noriega's activities at a time when the Drug Enforcement Administration had begun an intensive investigation into his possible involvement in drug trafficking, said lawyers in the case.
He had been convicted in absentia in Colombia on drug charges and later testified that the Medellin drug ring held him responsible for the seizure of the yacht shipment by Colombian police, said Richard Sharpstein, a lawyer for Mr. Davidow. Trapped between his fear of being deported to Colombia and the threat of prosecution in the United States, Mr. Navarro agreed to cooperate with the Government. 'He Needed an Out'
""He couldn't stay in jail because he thought he would be killed,"" Mr. Sharpstein said. ""He couldn't go back to Colombia. He needed an out.""
In exchange for his cooperation, Mr. Navarro received ""absolute total immunity"" for his crimes and payments that Government prosecutors say total $170,000.
The generous terms seemed to reflect Mr. Navarro's importance to the Government's case against the general. ""To give someone a complete free ride is phenomenally beneficial,"" said Mr. Sharpstein. ""Here was the first cartel-level drug dealer who could give them Noriega."" The general is to be tried separately in June on broad drug conspiracy charges.
Mr. Sharpstein said that Mr. Navarro cooperated with the Government in dozens of cases, helping to set up drug arrests and later testifying before grand juries.
Mr. Sharpstein contended that Mr. Navarro did not stop trafficking in illegal drugs while an informer. ""He was free on the street, plus he continued dealing,"" Mr. Sharpstein said. ""He had the best of both worlds.""
But Mr. Navarro's lawyer disputed that assertion. ""He was absolutely trying to change his life,"" Mr. Glass said. ""He was near destitute when he died.""
He said Mr. Navarro never expressed fear that his former associates would seek revenge. Instead, ""he was worried about whether the Government could be trusted,"" he said. ""He was afraid of getting double-crossed.""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Arts, Briefly
Timely Jazz Tribute
When the Panamanian-born pianist Danilo Pérez created the Panama Jazz Festival last year, he wanted to celebrate the homegrown talent that gets little notice outside that country. For the second annual festival, to begin in Panama City on Jan. 20, Mr. Pérez planned a tribute to Victor Boa, a pianist Mr. Pérez has called 'the Latin Art Tatum' and an innovator who blended jazz with native Panamanian rhythms to create a style known as tambo jazz. But last Monday, a few weeks after Mr. Pérez announced the festival, Mr. Boa died at 79, apparently of a heart attack. 'He was one of those unsung heroes,' Mr. Pérez said yesterday by phone before boarding a plane to Panama. 'He never got exposure outside Panama, but he was part of a really important movement in our history.' Mr. Pérez said the three-day festival would include a musical tribute to Mr. Boa and might include a video program of Mr. Boa's life and music.
Pop CD's in Release
In the final weeks of the all-important holiday shopping season, the music industry is limiting the number of new releases that will hit the stores. There are few new releases this week, but among them are two hip-hop albums that could be big sellers: 'Concrete Rose' (Def Jam) by Ashanti and 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' (Columbia) by the Los Angeles rapper Xzibit, right, an angry political statement from a performer who has come to be known mainly for 'Pimp My Ride,' his show on MTV about jazzing up humdrum vans and S.U.V.'s. Among the other albums released tomorrow are the soundtrack to the new Martin Scorsese film 'The Aviator' (Sony) about Howard Hughes, with songs by Artie Shaw, Vince Giordano, Rufus Wainwright, Loudon Wainwright III and David Johansen (the film opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday); and the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's new film 'The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou' (Hollywood), with songs by Devo and David Bowie, among others.
Footnotes
A new chamber opera by Michael Nyman will get its American premiere this week, but don't look for it in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles. Instead, head to Montclair, N.J., where 'Man and Boy: Dada' opens on Wednesday at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University. The opera, a fictional episode in the life of the Dada collage artist Kurt Schwitters, will play in Montclair through Sunday and is not scheduled to have any other performances in the United States. It is part of a new arts program at the university programmed by Jedediah Wheeler. Tickets and information: (973) 655-5112.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"OBSERVATORY
Ancient Morsels
Researchers digging in the remains of an ancient settlement in Panama have uncovered microscopic buried treasure: tiny grains of starch that they say are the earliest direct evidence of the cultivation of root crops in the Americas.
The researchers, from Temple University and the Smithsonian Institution, found the starch grains, which are generally less than 30 microns long -- less than half the width of a human hair -- at an archaeological site near the Pacific coast of Panama. The grains were identified as coming from manioc, yams and arrowroot and were found on milling stones in sediments that date from 5,000 to 7,000 years ago.
By comparing the size and other characteristics of the grains to those from modern domesticated and wild versions of the same root plants, the researchers were able to determine that the ancient grains came from domesticated plants. The researchers, who described their work in the journal Nature, also found maize starch at the archaeological site, meaning that these ancient peoples were cultivating seed plants along with root plants.
Whether tropical forest areas like this site were early centers for domestication and cultivation has been a subject of debate. Given that forests are home to wild versions of these plants, it would seem to make sense that domestication began in or near forests. But evidence has been hard to come by, because remains of roots and tubers easily decompose in the humid tropical environment. The relatively few grains obtained by the researchers in Panama were found by scraping them from nooks and crannies on the stones, where they had been able to beat the heat and humidity.
Flying Robot, Part II
The team of engineers responsible for the first trans-Atlantic flight by a robotic aircraft plans to try a similar trip across the Pacific.
The engineers, at the University of Washington and a private company, the Insitu Group, are developing a new aircraft for the flight, planned for next summer or fall. The 5,000-mile journey, from west to east to take advantage of prevailing winds, should take about two days.
In 1998, a small pilotless aircraft developed by the researchers flew 2,000 miles from Newfoundland to the Outer Hebrides in Scotland in a little under 27 hours, using a gallon and a half of fuel. The plane took off from a special cradle attached to the roof of a speeding car.
The new plane can take off from a car or be launched using a small pneumatic catapult. The plane is about the same size and weight as the model that flew the Atlantic, with a fuselage that is about 4.5 feet long, a 10-foot wingspan and a weight of about 30 pounds. Both models use rear propellers, but the new one lacks the old one's tail, which was shaped like an inverted V. Like the old model, the new one will navigate autonomously, using an onboard Global Positioning System unit.
The Pacific flight is intended to demonstrate the plane's potential for use in remote weather observation or reconnaissance.
Saturn Recaptures a Lead
There's a new kind of space race going on, and it doesn't involve the United States and Russia. Rather, it's a struggle between two solar system superpowers, Saturn and Uranus, for the title of Most Moons.
Saturn had led for a long time, with 18 to Uranus' 17, but 1999 was not a very good year for the ringed planet. That year, astronomers discovered first one new moon around Uranus and then three more, giving it a 21 to 18 lead.
Now, however, the same team that discovered all those Uranian moons has discovered four more around Saturn, nudging it back into the top spot.
Like most other moons discovered in recent years, these newfound objects are very small,  about 6 to 30 miles in diameter, and in irregular orbits millions of miles from Saturn.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"In Heartland, Bush Savors His Victory On Tax Cut
The movie 'Fargo' featured a debt-ridden Minnesota salesman whose plan to kidnap his own wife went desperately astray. In the real Fargo today, a different salesman came tromping through the snow. He was awash in surplus money and optimistic that his plan to slash taxes would meet a far better fate.
President Bush took his tax-cut road show to North Dakota this afternoon, part of a swing through the heartland intended to capitalize on tonight's House vote, which moved the core of Mr. Bush's tax cut proposal to the Senate but also highlighted a deep partisan divide.
As he hopscotches across the country in the coming days -- after Fargo, he plans stops in Sioux Falls, S.D.; Lafayette, La.; and Panama City, Fla. -- Mr. Bush is trying to squeeze Democratic senators to break with their party and support his tax cuts.
'I wasn't sure how many people would show up to hear a budget speech,' he told several thousand people today at a rally at Bison Arena at North Dakota State University. 'If you like what you hear today, maybe e-mail some of the good folks from the United States Senate from your state.'
There was plenty of applause. But one focus of Mr. Bush's offensive, Senator Tim Johnson, Democrat of South Dakota, said in an interview that, e-mail messages or not, he still had reservations about the president's approach.
'The voters of South Dakota didn't elect me to rubber-stamp anybody's proposal,' said Mr. Johnson, who is up for re-election next year. 'I think there ought to be a significant middle-class tax cut, and I want to work with the president to make that happen. It will involve some give-and-take on both sides. Up to now, President Bush hasn't indicated much interest in give-and-take.'
Senator Tom Daschle, the minority leader, is trying to drum up some give-and-take when Mr. Bush, who arrived in South Dakota late tonight, begins his pitch there on Friday. Mr. Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, used campaign funds for television advertisements in the state criticizing Mr. Bush's plan.
'I want to thank President Bush for coming to South Dakota to hear firsthand the concerns of our state,' Mr. Daschle says in one advertisement, according to a transcript distributed by his office. 'I am sure he'll hear, as I've heard, of your desire for us to set aside partisan differences and work together.'
Mr. Daschle continues in the advertisement: 'President Bush and I both support a tax cut. We differ on the details, yet I'm confident that we can agree on a plan that benefits all Americans, not just the wealthy.'
Mr. Bush told reporters here that the House vote, although close and largely along party lines, had already proved his critics wrong.
'I want you all to remember, when we were campaigning last summer, everybody was saying, 'Now's the time to abandon your tax-relief plan, isn't it?' Remember that?' Mr. Bush said. 'Not only did we not abandon it, but we just got a major hurdle crossed.'
Mr. Bush had been tipped off about the vote but received official word in a telephone call here. His chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., handed him a phone in a holding room at the university, as Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and other Republican leaders gathered on the other end in the Capitol. But the phone cord fell out of the president's handset, momentarily disrupting the event.
Once it was reattached, Mr. Bush listened to the vote count, 230 to 198, and responded, 'It's a win.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"NORIEGA DEFENSE REQUESTS RECESS
Lawyers for Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega today asked a Federal judge in the trial of the former Panamanian dictator to order an immediate recess, saying they needed time to analyze documents about a secret intelligence operation by the United States Drug Enforcement Agency that was disclosed to them only last week.
General Noriega cooperated with the drug enforcement investigation, Federal prosecutors acknowledged today at a hearing before Judge William M. Hoeveler of Federal District Court here. The covert American operation, called Operation Negocios, was carried out for several years in the mid-1980's and relied in part on information supplied by the Panama Defense Forces, which General Noriega then commanded.
Without a recess, the defense would ""not be able to go forward with our defense at this time,"" Jon May, co-counsel for General Noriega, told Judge Hoeveler. Mr. May said that the defense had been ""severely prejudiced"" by the Government's belated discovery of files on the operation and that relevant material on the extent of General Noriega's cooperation with the D.E.A. had been sought since June. Prosecutors 'Surprised'
But Michael P. Sullivan, the lead prosecutor in the trial, said he did not learn of the secret operation until Dec. 6, during interviews with drug enforcement agents who had received subpoenas to appear as witnesses for the defense. After prosecutors examined four volumes of material on the investigation and culled relevant documents, he said, two separate packages of information were provided to General Noriega's lawyers this past weekend.
""We were surprised,"" Mr. Sullivan said of his reaction when he and other prosecutors learned of the covert operation. He blamed D.E.A. headquarters in Washington for the failure to inform lawyers for both sides, saying that the D.E.A. archives contained ""thousand and thousand of documents that might relate to P.D.F. cooperation"" with the United States, but that ""there is no way to go through them.""
D.E.A. officials did not return telephone calls seeking comment on the matter.
Mr. May described the material as having ""extremely significant testimony to offer concerning Panamanian cooperation with the D.E.A. during the period covered by the indictment"" against General Noriega. Once integrated into the defense case, he said, the information would prove that General Noriega had tracked millions of dollars in drug profits earned by the Medellin cocaine cartel of Colombia and other drug traffickers.
Mr. Sullivan, however, minimized the importance of the General Noriega's role, saying the secret operation included ""quite a bit more that did not include Panama Defense Forces cooperation."" He also said that comments made by Frank A. Rubino, chief counsel for General Noriega, earlier in the trial suggested that the material now surfacing came as no surprise to the defense. Critical Juncture in Trial
""There is good reason to believe the defense has long known of this particular intelligence gathering operation,"" he said. Mr. Sullivan pointed to two bench conferences at which Mr. Rubino spoke of incidents related to a secret operation that was not then known to prosecutors.
Today's hearing comes at a critical juncture in the trial of the deposed Panamanian leader, who has been charged with 10 counts of cocaine trafficking, racketeering and money laundering. Federal prosecutors said they would rest their case on Tuesday, which would normally mean that Mr. Rubino would immediately present an opening statement and call the first witnesses for the defense.
But the trial is scheduled to recess on Thursday for the rest of the year, with proceedings beginning again on Jan. 6.
Judge Hoeveler said he would reserve judgment on the defense motion until Tuesday, saying he needed time to read the file on the secret operation.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Washington Talk; Instincts to Be Cautious With Panama Prevail
LEAD: Brent Scowcroft, the White House national security adviser, spoke Sunday about 'the fog of war' as one element that had sorely complicated the Bush Administration's reaction to the attempted coup last week in Panama.
Brent Scowcroft, the White House national security adviser, spoke Sunday about 'the fog of war' as one element that had sorely complicated the Bush Administration's reaction to the attempted coup last week in Panama.
He meant the disorder that always attends fast-breaking events on the battlefield, but in this case the clouds of confusion stretched all the way to Washington and the decision-making process in the American Government.
Mr. Scowcroft and other officials, resentful of what the security adviser described as the 'micromanagement' of foreign policy by Congress, argue that the Administration's response was severely limited by the precedent set in July 1988, when the Senate Intelligence Committee objected to Reagan Administration proposals for supporting a coup plotted by a group of dissident Panamanian officers.
Congress, Mr. Scowcroft asserted, 'has, by its actions and its demeanor, certainly leaned on us against the kinds of things they're now saying that we should have done.'
Senator David L. Boren of Oklahoma, the intelligence committee's Democratic chairman, and Senator William S. Cohen of Maine, a Republican who is vice chairman, both say that is nonsense. A senior White House official sided with them today, asserting, 'Scowcroft and the rest of them don't really have any business saying that, because that clearly wasn't the major issue around here last week.'
What is undisputed, indeed obvious, is that few senior officials in the executive branch have much appetite any more for small-scale wars involving American troops. That is as true of Gen. Colin L. Powell as it was of his predecessor as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. The Vietnam War, a ranking officer said, 'has made us wary of places like Panama and Colombia.'
Likewise, the Central Intelligence Agency, which would once have been the obvious organization to get rid of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, the Panamanian strongman, has been reluctant to become involved, fearful that if anything went wrong, it would be accused of mounting an illegal assassination plan.
Conversations with a wide range of people this weekend suggest that the prevailing mood in Washington, from President Bush on down, has become profoundly anti-interventionist - so much so that however strongly many responsible officials may have felt impelled to make an exception for General Noriega, it was hard for them to overcome the cautious instincts that have taken hold.
In that context, several White House aides said, the absence from the Administration's top-level deliberations of Ted Briggs, the National Security Council's leading expert on General Noriega, may have been a decisive handicap. Mr. Briggs, a former Ambassador to Panama, who has advocated tougher action against General Noriega, has been relieved of his security council duties, reportedly at the behest of Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d. Mr. Briggs might have been able more accurately to evaluate the confused information that spurted into Washington in the crucial hours a week ago.
But even that is questioned by White House officials not involved in the political damage-limitation exercise and thus more likely to apportion some of the blame to Administration policy makers rather than placing it wholly on the shoulders of others.
'The intelligence wasn't good, and it wasn't made good use of,' one aide said. 'But that isn't really the point, is it? There wasn't a clear idea of exactly what we wanted to do in case of a coup, so we didn't ask the right questions, and without the right questions, intelligence doesn't help.'
So what now? In addition to trying to remedy the structural problems that hampered coordination within the Administration, top officials see a number of perils against which they must guard in the coming weeks.
The list includes, but is certainly not limited to, somehow assuring the remaining Panamanian officers with rebellious tendencies that the United States is not a paper tiger; extending similar assurances to the Colombian Government, lest it let up on its war against the drug lords; and at the same time avoiding the temptation to make some flashy, but futile, show of force in Central America - all while repairing tattered relations with Capitol Hill.
They said Mr. Bush's honeymoon couldn't last forever, and it hasn't.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"2nd Autopsy in Youth Boot Camp Death Fails to End Questions
Martin Lee Anderson was buried a second time this week, more than two months after he died following a confrontation with guards at a boot camp for teenage offenders in the Florida Panhandle. But questions about his death, and whether the state should close all its boot camps in the aftermath, are very much alive.
After supervising a second autopsy of Martin's body on Monday, a special prosecutor appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush disputed the findings of the original pathologist in the case: that the youth had died from complications of sickle cell trait, an undiagnosed blood disorder. But the prosecutor, Mark Ober, would not say more until his broader investigation of the case was finished.
The guards at Bay Boot Camp in Panama City kneed, kicked and hit Martin, 14, after he stopped running during an orientation drill on Jan. 5. He had been sent to the camp for violating probation after stealing his grandmother's car. In a videotape, which the state released after news organizations sued for it, the boy appears limp throughout the encounter.
He died early on Jan. 6, and when the original autopsy report came out a month later, his parents, lawmakers and civil rights groups expressed outrage. Even after Mr. Ober said through a spokeswoman that Martin 'did not die of sickle cell trait, nor did he die of a natural cause,' the medical examiner who made those findings, Dr. Charles Siebert of Bay County, stood by them.
'I am appalled at the baseless and mean-spirited accusations from special interest groups with little or no knowledge of the evidence in this case,' Dr. Siebert said in a statement on Thursday, 'who are calling for everything from the revocation of my license to criminal charges.'
Dr. Michael Baden, a pathologist who attended the second autopsy on behalf of Martin's family, told a legislative committee in Tallahassee on Friday that Martin had most likely suffocated during the incident and was brain dead by the time an ambulance carried him away.
'There was a time when there were hands over Anderson's mouth,' Dr. Baden said in an interview, noting that the guards held ammonia capsules under the boy's nose several times during the incident. 'There may have been ammonia capsules blocking his nose, hands blocking his mouth -- that could contribute to asphyxia.'
The boot camp, run by the Bay County Sheriff's Office, will close next month. In a letter to state officials, Sheriff W. Frank McKeithen said he was closing it because the program had been 'virtually paralyzed' after Martin's death.
The seven guards in the incident remain on the job -- though not working with young offenders, who have already been cleared from the camp -- while Mr. Ober decides whether they should face criminal charges.
Meanwhile, Governor Bush and his Department of Juvenile Justice are reviewing policies for the state's five other boot camps, as the Legislature debates whether they should remain open. Many states have closed military-style boot camps for teenagers in recent years, but Mr. Bush said Thursday that they have 'yielded a good result,' and Anthony Schembri, his juvenile justice secretary, affirmed that assessment in an interview Friday.
'I think the remainder are good options that we can use for certain kids,' Mr. Schembri said of the five surviving boot camps, though he said every camp should have education and therapy components.
Martin's parents, Gina Jones and Robert Anderson, said they were appalled to hear that Dr. Siebert had not changed his assessment of Martin's death after the second autopsy, which he attended. In an interview, they said every guard involved in the incident should be arrested immediately, as should a nurse who stood by during the confrontation.
'My baby passed away from the beating,' said Ms. Jones, who said her son was an honor student who liked basketball, chess and video games. 'It's not only the guards to blame; it's the sheriff, the doctor, the governor. It's time for the governor to step in.'
In an interview, Dr. Siebert said Dr. Baden, a former chief medical examiner for New York City, was biased because Martin's parents had sought his involvement.
'I'm charged with coming to a truthful and unbiased manner of death, and I feel that's what I did in this case,' he said. 'I have nothing to gain by conspiring with anybody.'
During a meeting on Friday of the Criminal Justice Appropriations Committee of the Florida House of Representatives, Mr. Schembri's chief of staff, Chris Caballero, said the Juvenile Justice Department might require young offenders to get electrocardiograms and drug tests before entering boot camps.
Mr. Schembri, who would not discuss the Anderson episode except to call it tragic, said he would also revise use-of-force policies at boot camps, which in Florida are for 'moderate risk' young offenders.
Representative Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat on the Criminal Justice Appropriations Committee, said the video suggested that guards at the Bay Boot Camp were following an established use-of-force protocol.
'I just was shocked that the officers seemed to think this was what they were supposed to do,' he said. 'They clearly were inflicting substantial force on somebody who was not threatening them or himself.'
Mr. Gelber added: 'They knew the camera was there, they knew they were being filmed, they weren't trying to hide anything. But the notion that you could inflict pain to get somebody to run or say, 'Yes, sir' -- that is just un-American.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Panama,"Awaiting Trial on Drug Charges, Noriega Says He Has Found Jesus
While awaiting trial on Federal drug trafficking charges, Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega has declared himself a born-again Christian, a Southern Baptist newspaper reported yesterday.
""I received Jesus Christ as my Saviour the 15th May of 1990 at 11 A.M.,"" the deposed Panamanian leader wrote in one of several letters about his conversion that were quoted by The Florida Baptist Witness, a weekly published by that state's branch of the Southern Baptist Convention.
In an interview yesterday with The Associated Press, General Noriega's lawyer confirmed that the general, who is being held at a Federal prison outside Miami, had been regularly visited there by the two Texas evangelists who brought about his conversion and was receiving weekly religious instruction from a Baptist layman.
One of the evangelists is the Rev. Clift Brannon of Longview, Tex., who began corresponding with General Noriega after seeing him carrying a Bible under his arm as he surrendered to American forces in Panama in January 1990. Mr. Brannon, a 77-year-old former lawyer, recruited the Rev. Rudy Hernandez of San Antonio, who is fluent in Spanish, and together they arranged to visit the tightly guarded General Noriega in prison last May 15, the date on which he says he was born again.  Conversion Called Authentic
For evangelical Christians, being born again involves a strongly felt, clearly identifiable moment of accepting Jesus as Saviour and consciously committing oneself to following Him. The two evangelists told the Baptist newspaper that they had witnessed thousands of such conversions and considered General Noriega's authentic.
The evangelists said that in a three-hour session on that day, the general, nominally a Roman Catholic but with a reputation for dabbling in Eastern religious beliefs and the occult, testified to his new faith and prayed for forgiveness. The newspaper account did not identify the transgressions for which the general sought that forgiveness, but it quoted letters that he sent to the two ministers as saying that he had suffered from ""illusions of grandeur and a heart hardened to the Gospel.""
General Noriega's lawyer, Frank Rubino, told the newspaper that he expected that word of the conversion would be met with suspicion that it was nothing more than a ploy to win public sympathy or judicial mercy. ""There are people who are just cynical about everything,"" he said.
But Mr. Rubino said the conversion would have no effect on defense strategy as he continues to prepare for the general's trial, which is scheduled for June.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"RAICH GOES INTO OLYMPICS WITH VICTORY
Benjamin Raich of Austria handled the terrain well yesterday in Adelboden, Switzerland, winning the final World Cup giant slalom before the Olympics.
Raich finished his two runs in a combined 2 minutes 23.25 seconds. He was 0.49 faster than Fredrik Nyberg of Sweden and 1.22 faster than Stephan Görgl of Austria and Kalle Palander of Finland. Nyberg, 36, became the oldest skier to finish on a World Cup podium.
Raich took over the lead in the overall World Cup standings from Daron Rahlves of the United States, who crashed during his second run yesterday.
Ted Ligety was the top American finisher, placing 13th. He probably clinched the fourth and final spot on the United States team for the Olympic giant slalom.
Bode Miller finished 14th, 2.27 seconds back, despite a major mistake on his first run. He refused to speak to the news media, angry about recent reports that a '60 Minutes' profile of him, scheduled to be broadcast tonight, insinuates that he has skied under the influence of alcohol.
NATHANIEL VINTON
WINTER SPORTS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Winter Games Are Left On Slippery Slope
IN their fake mustaches, with their phony identities, the antidoping masters of deception have turned the Winter Olympics into the spy game that Major League Baseball players feared.
Impostors are lurking in athletes' villages. Disguised as fans and journalists, they approach Olympians before pulling Dixie cups from their trench coats and demanding samples on the spot.
Moles are embedded in this winter fest, on the watch for unscrupulous trainers and coaches who may be carrying vials of ACME Hi-Speed Tonic to bring out the inner roadrunner in their athletes.
And on Saturday night, based on information that the International Olympic Committee received on the dope chief Dick Pound's tipster hot line, the Italian police raided the residences of Austrian cross-country and biathlon athletes in search of a link to Walter Mayer, the accused blood-manipulation artist to the stars.
This isn't the Olympics. It's a James Bond knockoff.
'Yes, I feel like a criminal now, but I am not a criminal,' Martin Tauber of Austria said yesterday. 'I'm a cross-country skier.
'For me, it's not a problem if there comes one person or two persons to test me; they can have all they want from me. I'm not a person who is secret. I am not secret. There were more than 10 people who came in.'
The athletes weren't allowed to make telephone calls or an exit as the police plundered their belongings until 1 a.m., nine hours before the start of the 4x10-kilometer cross-country relay.
'Nothing, not one second,' Tauber said, detailing his sleep. 'It was impossible.'
The sleep deprivation was evident as the Austrian team fell so far behind, it was lapped. The Austrians were in need of NoDoz -- quite possibly on the I.O.C.'s list of banned substances -- after enduring the excessive force of an inquiry that began with the World Anti-Doping Agency, led by Pound.
In January, agency sleuths discovered blood-doping equipment connected to Mayer, a Nordic team coach for Austria who was barred from attending the Winter Games through 2010 after he performed blood transfusions to increase the endurance of two athletes at the 2002 Salt Lake Games.
A sloppy housekeeper, Mayer left transfusion bags, needles and tubing for the cleaning ladies to find at his Salt Lake City digs.
A careless traveler, Mayer was spotted by informants at a sleepover last week with Austrian athletes.
The Austrian athletes are not as innocent as their 'Sound of Music' legacy might indicate -- and they may well be in cahoots with Mayer, as their blood samples may soon tell -- but the Olympic custodians of a fair playing field are becoming undercover experts at deceit.
'This isn't playing fair,' said Michael Straubel, a professor at Valparaiso's School of Law, who is in Turin to provide legal aid to athletes on the wrong side of the antidoping agency. 'It's the opening for them to take it further and further without respecting privacy. It's a little dangerous. The I.O.C. and W.A.D.A. make the rules.'
There is a place for the agency, but there is no excuse for an abuse of power. An overreach on its part will serve only to validate the concerns of baseball players -- as well as members of all pro leagues -- over the potential for privacy infringement.
For the past year, politicians have rightly insisted on an independent body to conduct drug testing for professional athletes in every league. Take it out of league hands, they said, and place it in the unbiased charge of the United States Anti-Doping Agency. Transparency will reign, they have argued.
The United States agency is not known for deceptive practices, but the world agency and, by extension, the I.O.C. are not helping the credibility among antidoping authorities by applying a cloak-and-dagger, Jennifer Garner-as-Sydney Bristow in 'Alias' approach to catching drug cheats.
'It's the old slippery slope,' Straubel said.
Imagine if the world agency's drug-testing logic was applied to pro leagues.
If the trainer Greg Anderson, a Balco culprit, is spotted with Barry Bonds, does that give the police the right to raid the Giants' clubhouse?
If a drug tester disguised as a milkman arrives at the home of Jason Giambi, should Giambi trust the man who pulls a badge out of a dairy crate?
Forcing athletes into a game of 'I Spy an Impostor' is beneath the I.O.C and the antidoping agency. Sending the police to descend on Austrian athletes when the object of the search is Mayer is an example of how free the international officials are to wield their power.
'According to Italian law, it is how the police can act,' Heinz Jungwirth, secretary general of the Austrian Olympic Committee, said at a news conference yesterday. 'For us, it's a little sad when it is done late at night just before an event the next day. We have to think about the athletes first. And I think this is a little unfair.'
That was the only cogent statement Jungwirth uttered. Otherwise, his 'I know nothing' responses on the issue of Mayer sounded like an effort to distance the Austrians from the controversy. And his cooperative spirit toward the I.O.C.'s antidoping efforts made him sound like an Olympic official hoping to ease any sanctions that might be forthcoming.
So something may be awry. The world antidoping agency may feel the high of an Austrian gotcha, but it will be at the expense of an idea the Olympics are supposed to represent: fair play.
Sports of The Times E-mail: selenasports@nytimes.com",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Austrian Wins Gold in the Downhill Without Any Distractions
Two years ago, his World Cup season was ended by a spill in a race in this very resort village. A year ago, a teammate died while attempting to qualify for a downhill race in Wengen, Switzerland. This afternoon, Patrick Ortlieb of Austria won the gold medal in the Olympic downhill and complained that the mountain had not been dangerous enough.
""You don't have to overcome any inhibitions within yourself on this track,"" Ortlieb said after the first downhill victory of his career. ""It was just too slow, not spectacular enough.""
Ortlieb finished 5-hundredths of a second faster than Franck Piccard of France, and a 10th of a second ahead of his Austrian teammate, Gunther Mader.
The United States' medal hope, A. J. Kitt, skied what he called a ""mediocre"" 1:51.98, finishing ninth and setting the tone for American performances this first full day of competition at the XVI Winter Olympics. Tough Outings
Duncan Kennedy virtually blew his chance at a medal in the luge by finishing the first day of competition in 10th place, and Robert Pipkins of Staten Island started badly and was 26th.
The United States pairs skating champions -- Calla Urbanski, a waitress in Wilmington, Del., and Rocky Marval, who owns a trucking company in New Egypt, N.J. -- were seventh after the original program, the result of Marval touching the boards coming out of a double axel. Natasha Kuchiki and Todd Sand, ranked third in the world, were sixth.
As for the downhill, in which less than a half-second separated the first five finishers, the assessment that it was too slow came from a credible source.
With the exception of one competitor -- himself -- the 24-year-old Ortlieb witnessed as much of this race as any journalist or fan. Drawing the No. 1 position, he charged down the long and winding road, La Face de Bellevarde, in 1:50.37.
From 1.9 miles below the start, he watched as the world's best downhillers, under sunny skies and with a race-time temperature of 41 degrees, failed to beat his time.
Franz Heinzer of Switzerland, the favorite, could do no better than sixth, in 1:51.39. The leader in two of the three training runs, Markus Wasmeier of Germany, appeared to have claimed the bronze in 1:50.62, until Piccard, from nearby Les Saisies, emerged from a winterlong slump in 1:50.42.
The winner of a gold medal in the super giant and a bronze in the downhill during the 1988 Calgary Olympics, Piccard unlike Ortlieb, admitted that the death of 19-year-old Gernot Rheinstadler in January, 1991, sapped him of his verve until it was time to train for the Games.
""Seeing that affected me,"" said Piccard, who by chance witnessed the accident in which Rheinstadler severed an artery in his leg.
Ortlieb acknowledged the painful loss of a close friend, but nothing more. In the downhiller's mind, how could there be room for anything that might create fear and doubt?
Despite never finishing better than second in a World Cup downhill, Ortlieb said he has always considered himself a traditional downhill racer. He spoke of a passion for hurtling himself down a straightaway, with little tolerance for a course with as many tight turns as the La Face de Bellevarde, designed by Bernhard Russi.
""After this success, I am not going to change my opinion,"" Ortlieb said. ""It is not a downhill track. I hope there will be no more races like this one."" 'I'm Satisfied'
This was a common pre-race complaint from racers like Heinzer and Kitt, the leaders in this season's World Cup downhill standing.
Kitt reiterated his disappointment that today's event ""wasn't real downhill,"" that it catered to skiers who usually specialize in events like the super giant slalom and the giant slalom. Still, he said he was ""more satisfied than disappointed,"" despite being hailed in the United States as the country's potential medal beacon in a dark wasteland of a men's Alpine program.
Kitt, a 23-year-old from Rochester, N.Y., in December became the first American man to win a World Cup race since 1984, by winning in Val d'Isere though that event was run on the old, less windy course on the other side of the mountain.
""My expectations, considering the kind of hill, was to be somewhere in the top 10, so I'm more satisfied than disappointed,"" he said, finding the proper political spin.
Though he is an improving technical skier, Kitt's split times today indicated that he was strong at the start, but already nearly a second behind by the third split, never able to make a serious run. A Bit Ragged
""There wasn't one major mistake,"" he said. ""I was just kind of ragged.""
On his way to meet his parents, Nancy and Ross, Kitt was asked if he might yet wonder what the outcome would have been had the race been held on the other course. He laughed and said, ""What's the point?""
His point being: La Face de Bellevarde was the chosen course, the first man down posted the golden time, and now it was time to look ahead.
""Only two years to the next Olympics,"" he said. MEDALLIONS
KYLE RASMUSSEN of Angels Camp, Calif., turned in the most surprising run by an American, finishing 16th in 1:52.71. Also finishing were TOMMY MOE (20th) and REGGIE CRIST (28th). . . . There were only 31 finishers, with 15 skiers disqualified for going off course and nine who failed to finish. . . . PATRICK ORTLIEB said he knew he had the race won after PAUL ACCOLA of Switzerland, the 27th man on the course, dropped out of the race.  ALBERTVILLE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Maier Is Still the Man to Beat on the Slopes
When Lance Armstrong came back from cancer, he applied a focused rage to his cycling. Hermann Maier, on the other hand, thrived on aggression to become the greatest Alpine ski racer of the 1990's but emerged mellow and stoic after his brush with mortality.
But after winning a giant slalom race Sunday, Maier, a 32-year-old Austrian who was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in 2001, was screaming with joy, throwing his equipment all over the glacier.
His 51st World Cup victory had moved him into second place on the career list behind Ingemar Stenmark, who won 86.
'He's getting a little bit old for such a reaction,' Bode Miller said after watching Maier's celebrations. 'He's going to give himself a heart attack.'
Miller, 28, was the last skier down the mountain, but he was 0.07 seconds slower than Maier, finishing second.
After the race, Maier praised the skier he had passed on the career list, Alberto Tomba of Italy. 'He was a great skier,' Maier said. 'He was a perfect skier.'
But not as perfect as Maier, who is known as the Hermannator and has won more or less everything in the sport. In February, he will try to win an Olympic downhill gold medal, virtually the only victory that has eluded him in his career.
Maier was the favorite to win that event at the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan, but instead he flew upside-down off a jump and onto the cover of Sports Illustrated. In 2002, he was recovering from the motorcycle accident and depressed by the possibility that he may never ski again.
Many Austrians, who followed his surgery and rehabilitation closely, suspect that their hero will retire if he finally wins a downhill gold at the Games in February in Turin, Italy.
But Maier says he will compete until 2007.
In some ways, he acts as if he is already retired. This summer, a philanthropic mood led him to adopt Benno, a 26-year-old rhinoceros at the Salzburg zoo. Maier said he fell for the 8,000-pound rhino because they shared a similar temperament of tightly reined aggression.
'If it's possible to do some charity, I'm always there,' Maier said. 'A lot of people, they are thinking that only in other countries there are problems, but we have people in need in Austria, too.'
Miller was competing in his 115th consecutive World Cup race. He has not missed a race since 2002, and he said he would not skip one this year, either. Miller, who last year skied most of the world championship downhill course on one ski, has the potential to win every Alpine event at the Winter Games.
His coaches want him to skip some World Cup races before Turin, to rest and retreat from the news media that he finds so tormenting. It used to be coaches that Miller complained about; they disapproved of his recklessness and backward-leaning technique.
'Now people are arguing with him about who he is and what he represents,' said Bill Rogers, a documentary filmmaker who has followed Miller from obscurity seven years ago; his film 'Flying Downhill' will have its premiere next month. 'So he's replaced his coaches with the media, making himself the underdog.'
Miller thrives on subversion. Last week, he created a furor by arguing that anti-doping rules should be liberalized. He said that in certain situations, the blood-boosting drug EPO and steroids might be beneficial to an athlete's health.
He did not back away from that Sunday. 'Right now, the process that's there is really ineffective at accomplishing the goals,' he said.
Miller said he was particularly angry that his friend Hans Knauss, an Austrian downhiller, was suspended for 18 months last year after testing positive for traces of the steroid nandrolone.
Knauss, who retired in July, recently hired Howard Jacobs, a Los Angeles lawyer, to sue the Connecticut-based company Ultimate Nutrition, which he says provided him with tainted nutritional supplements.
Jacobs, who also represents the sprinter Tim Montgomery and the cyclist Tyler Hamilton, won a jury award of $578,635 from Ultimate Nutrition this year in the case of the swimmer Kicker Vencill.
Maier has joined other athletes (including Knauss) and international skiing officials in denouncing Miller's arguments as immature and embarrassing to a sport with a clean image.
'He's coming to terms with being the main figure in the big times,' said Sarah Lewis, the secretary general of the International Ski Federation. 'And of course, it takes time to learn coming from a quiet town to being one of the biggest ski stars in the world.'
Miller also has an autobiography, 'Bode: Go Fast, Be Good, Have Fun,' to sell. The book, which draws a direct line between the attitudes of his hippie parents and his success as a ski racer, is scheduled for release this week. In it, Miller writes that any skier who doped would be admitting a shortage of confidence and would be no threat to win.
'He doesn't believe his personal aversion to performance-enhancing drugs should preclude others from using them,' said Jack McEnany, who co-wrote the book with Miller. 'He says, 'If a guy needs to get juiced to race, then I've already beat him.' That strikes me as a profoundly antidrug message.'
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Aamodt Makes a Precision Turn, Then Makes History
The last and most pivotal portion of today's men's Olympic super-G course was a snowy cliff called the Buffalo Jump. It is so named, the locals say, because the earliest hunters in this part of Utah would try to stampede buffalo over the precipice, knowing the terrain below the crag was so steep the buffalo would tumble several hundred yards, leaving the hunters a helpless bounty at the bottom.
The buffalo did not have to also make a sharp left turn as soon as they soared over the jump. A cross section of the world's best skiers did have to make that turn to stay on course today, and though they all survived the Buffalo Jump, several -- including four of the top medal candidates -- then had to abandon the course and miss a gate rather than risk tumbling down the abrupt pitch that closed the race.
The third skier out of the starting gate, Kjetil Andre Aamodt of Norway, negotiated the turn-filled final section and did so with more precision than any other, earning his second gold medal in four days. Aamodt's time of 1 minute 21.58 seconds was a tenth of a second better than Stephan Eberharter of Austria, whose silver medal-winning time was 15-hundredths of a second better than his countryman Andreas Schifferer, who earned the bronze medal.
Aamodt's performance will ensure his place as one of the greatest skiers in Olympic history, as Aamodt has now won seven medals -- a record for an Alpine skier -- and three golds. On Wednesday, he routed the field in the men's Alpine combined. Today's super-G victory comes 10 years after he won the event at the 1992 Albertville Games.
'This is such a bonus; I did not even dream of being on the podium in the super-G,' Aamodt said. 'Heading into the combined, I didn't even know if I would ever win another Olympic medal.'
After winning five medals in the 1992 and the 1994 Olympics, Aamodt was shut out in 1998 in Nagano, Japan. He has won more Olympic and world championship medals (17) than any other skier in history.
Meanwhile, for Eberharter, it was another day as the runner-up. Eberharter, who came into the Olympics as a favorite in the downhill and the super-G, instead has a third from the downhill along with a silver today.
Eberharter complained that his coaches did not radio to him in the start house to warn him about the difficult turn after the Buffalo Jump. 'I lost by a tenth of a second,' Eberharter said. 'That could have been the difference.'
Asked if he had been told of the troublesome fall-away gate that ruined so many skiers' runs, Aamodt answered: 'No. In the super-G, you inspect the course once and then you have a go at it. You make quick, early good decisions, or you don't.'
The man who defeated Eberharter in the 2001 worlds, the American Daron Rahlves, had another disappointing day today, skiing conservatively and with chattering skis through the exceedingly challenging midsection to finish eighth. Rahlves was the top American finisher, although Thomas Vonn was a surprising ninth.
It was also another day for the Norwegians and Austrians to assert their Alpine dominance. The Austrians had four skiers in the top 10, including the downhill winner Fritz Stoebl, who was fourth, and Christoph Gruber, who was seventh. That raises the Austrians' total number of top-10 finishes in the Alpine events to 14. Bjarne Solbakken of Norway was fifth, which means the Norwegians have now put together six top-10 finishes in Alpine this week.
Rahlves called the course, set on three-fourths of the Grizzly downhill course at the Snowbasin Ski Area, the most difficult super-G layout he has ever seen.
'After the Buffalo Jump, you have this blind turn,' said Rahlves, who conceded he skied cautiously at times during his run. 'Even if you know it's coming, you have to set up just right or you have no chance of making that next gate. When you see the caliber of skiers that have blown right by it and been done, it tells you something.'
Lasse Kjus of Norway, the silver medalist in the downhill, could not make the turn and neither did nearly a dozen others, including Didier Cuche of Switzerland, who had a quicker time through the majority of the course than Aamodt but got a little late and low only five gates from the finish line and missed a gate that disqualified him.
Rahlves's Olympics are now over as he will not compete in the slalom or giant slalom that remain, events that will feature the American Bode Miller. Rahlves, after winning the world championship super-G a year ago, has had a series of uneven performances during this season's World Cup tour. The Americans were hoping he would peak at the Olympics.
'To leave here without a medal is obviously disappointing,' Rahlves said. 'I really thought I would do better. But it's one of those things.'
OLYMPICS: ALPINE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Jews and the Vatican Protect Relationship
LEAD: The Roman Catholic and Jewish officials who confronted one another here this week succeeded in meeting both immediate practical goals as well as healing a breach in a productive relationship of almost 20 years.
The Roman Catholic and Jewish officials who confronted one another here this week succeeded in meeting both immediate practical goals as well as healing a breach in a productive relationship of almost 20 years.
The Jewish officials were able to tell Pope John Paul II directly about their pain and anger over the audience he granted to President Kurt Waldheim of Austria, something some of them said they absolutely needed to do for themselves and for their credibility as representatives of Jewish organizations.
The Pope was able to express his sorrow over the Holocaust without directly discussing his audience with Mr. Waldheim. Neither did other Catholic officials apologize for the audience. At the same time the discussions dissipated fears that the Waldheim controversy would disrupt a meeting scheduled Sept. 11 between Jewish officials and the Pope in Miami. 'Frosting on the Cake'
'It has to be looked at as a package,' said Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum, director of international relations for the American Jewish Committee. 'I've been around Popes for a long time and I had no spectacular expectations. By the time we came to the Pope we had done our real work and as far as I was concerned the meeting with the Pope was frosting on the cake.'
Central to the talks was a desire by both sides to preserve a formal relationship that goes back to 1969. This relationship between Vatican officials and a coalition of Jewish organizations has involved productive discussions on everything from theology to the diplomatic status of Israel and has been credited with helping improve relations between ordinary Jews and Catholics. It stands in sharp contrast to the long history of distrust and animosity that preceded it.
Given their anger over the Waldheim audience, the Jewish officials who came here needed an honorable way to restore that relationship. 'Waldheim held the expectation of a serious breach in the dialogue,' said Henry Siegman, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, who has participated in Vatican talks since 1969. 'If you're practicing dialogue, you observe the rules of the game. If you do something as traumatic as Waldheim, then you have an obligation to talk to your partner before you do it.'
The Catholics officials also wanted to restore the relationship in a way that would not compel them to yield an essential principle and apologize for the audience.
In World War II, Mr. Waldheim served in a German Army unit that has been implicated in the deportations of Jews from Greece. But Catholic officials argue that his guilt has not been proved and they contend that refusing an audience to him would amount to a judgment on that guilt. Achievement and Disappointment
Both sides also had some practical goals in mind. The Catholics were worried that anger over the audience cast a pall over the Pope's 10-day trip to the United States. The Jewish officials also saw the Catholic concern over the Waldheim incident as an opportunity to achieve some upgrading in their dialogue with the Catholics. They have now succeeded in bringing in Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, who as Secretary of State functions essentially as the Pope's prime minister.
The meeting with the Pope today was perhaps more important for the way it took place than for what was said. There was some free back and forth and no bars on the topics that were discussed.
Mr. Siegman, as he emerged today from the hour-long meeting at the Pope's summer palace here, said, 'It was inconceivable to earlier generations of Jews to have even thought about such an encounter.
The Pope did not respond directly to them about Mr. Waldheim, but in several remarks about Polish villages of his youth, where there were no longer Jews, he let them understand his sorrow over the Holocaust. 'There is evil in the world and we hope and pray that the Lord will help us find good out of this,' was the way one participant paraphrased the Pope's broad response to a series of remarks about Mr. Waldheim and the Holocaust.
Dr. Eugene Fisher, executive secetary for Catholic-Jewish relations of the National Conference of Catholics Bishops, described the Pope's thinking this way: 'When one partner hurts, however much one would argue with the way they expressed that hurt, first one reacts to the deeper sense of hurt.' A Different Encounter
The Jewish officials had said before they came here that it would have been unrealistic to expect an apology for the Waldheim audience. There was, however, some disappointment that the Pope did not tell them that he understood their hurt, or offer a direct explanation for the audience.
The Jewish officials came away with some significant, if not major, victories that implicitly evolved out of the Waldheim episode. The Vatican agreed to a Jewish proposal that the Vatican's Commission on Religious Relations with Judaism prepare a document about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism. The Pope personally gave his endorsement of the project.
The Vatican also agreed to set up a 'mechanism' that would monitor issues within the Jewish community and consult with Jewish officials about them. While the mechanism is still vague, Jewish officials feel that it might have allowed them to alert the Vatican beforehand about potential fallout from an audience with Mr. Waldheim.
THE HEALING OF A BREACH",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Condition of Injured French Skier Worsens
The condition of Régine Cavagnoud, the French champion skier who was gravely injured in a training accident, deteriorated today, and physicians were increasingly pessimistic about her chances of recovery.
'She is still in a very bad state,' said Michael Blauth, the chief of Innsbruck University hospital's trauma department. 'Her brain injuries are that severe and her life is still in great danger.'
Cavagnoud, the reigning world champion in the super-G, collided with a German coach, Markus Anwander, during downhill training on an Austrian glacier on Monday. Anwander was crossing the run after repairing it and apparently had not received word by radio that Cavagnoud had started. He was walking in a dip, which kept Cavagnoud from seeing him until it was too late.
Cavagnoud, a 31-year-old from the Alpine resort of La Clusaz, and Anwander were then transported by helicopter to Innsbruck's primary hospital, where Cavagnaud underwent approximately five hours of surgery on Monday night in an attempt to treat the injuries to her head, brain, liver and rib cage. Tonight, she was being maintained in an artificially induced coma and breathing with the help of a respirator.
Blauth said that without the medication to keep her unconscious, Cavagnoud would probably remain in a natural coma. Asked whether she would be able to sustain life without assistance, he answered, 'Probably not from what we see morphologically in her brain.'
Dr. Wolfgang Koller, who works in the hospital's intensive care unit, said that the 40-year-old Anwander's condition was more stable and that he had yet to undergo surgery.
'He has multiple lesions in multiple parts of the body,' Koller said. 'It's still a life-threatening situation, but the risk is much lower.'
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"North Carolina Art Museum Says It Will Return Painting Tied to Nazi Theft
After confirming that one of its most prized paintings had been stolen by the Nazis during World War II from an Austrian Jewish art collector, the North Carolina Museum of Art announced plans this week to give the painting back to its rightful owners, two sisters in Austria.
The painting, 'Madonna and Child in a Landscape,' by Lucas Cranach the Elder, a German Renaissance artist, was deeded to the museum in 1964 by an art collector in Beverly Hills, Calif. The museum received the painting when that collector, Marianne Khuner, died in 1984. Since then, the work, which was painted around 1518, has hung at the entrance to the museum's Northern European collection.
But last March, the museum received a letter detailing evidence of the painting's jaded history from an agency based in New York concerned with recovering missing assets taken by the Nazis during World War II. The museum researched the trail of the Cranach piece, and verified the Nazi connection.
In 1938, the painting was part of a collection of about 85 works owned by an Austrian industrialist named Philipp von Gomperz. When Austria was taken over by Hitler that year, Mr. Gomperz fled Vienna and left the art collection behind with his niece. In 1940, Nazis confiscated the collection, including the Cranach painting, which was then acquired by a Nazi leader in Austria, Baldur von Schirach.
After the war, Mr. Schirach was tried with other Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg and sentenced to 20 years in prison. In the 1950's, the painting showed up on the New York art market and was eventually purchased by the Beverly Hills collector who, seemingly unaware of its history, donated it to the North Carolina Museum of Art. Museum officials say they think she was an acquaintance of the director at the time.
John Coffey, the museum's curator, said that as soon as he heard about the possibility of a Holocaust connection, the painting took on a new, unsettling aura. 'The fact that one of our paintings might not be ours,' he said, 'and that the Nazis might have been a part of its history, added a sort of eerie veneer to the painting.'
The Commission for Art Recovery of the World Jewish Congress wrote the letter to the museum last March, and the Holocaust Claims Processing Office of the state of New York's banking department represented Mr. Gomperz's two grandnieces, Marianne and Cornelia Hainisch, through the process. Mr. Gomperz died in Switzerland in 1948 at age 87. But his heirs have worked since the end of the war to reclaim pieces of his collection. The Cranach painting is the 13th work they have recovered. The market value of the painting has been estimated at $500,000 to more than $1 million.
This morning, Monica Dugot of the Holocaust Claims Processing Office in New York, spoke to the Hainisch sisters, who are in their 80's and living in Austria, and told them of the North Carolina museum's decision. 'They are ecstatic,' Ms. Dugot said. 'The acknowledgment that this painting belonged to their family meant a huge injustice could be corrected during their lifetime.'
Ms. Dugot said that similar claims had been made about artwork in other American museums, but that this was the first time she knew of that a resolution had been reached without legal action. 'I hope this sets an example for other U.S. and European museums,' she said.
Officials at the North Carolina museum said they were asking the Hainisch sisters to consider letting the museum keep the painting and develop an exhibit around it.
'People could learn a lot from this painting,' Mr. Coffey said. And its lessons are all the more poignant, he added, considering 'the contrast between the painting's exquisite beauty and spirituality, and its past as an object that was witness to one of the most tragic moments in human history.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"In England, 'Football' Is Life
Robert Green was not exactly in the middle of the maelstrom recently as England's national men's team drew with Austria and then went silent after beating Poland in World Cup qualifying matches. Not in the middle, but Green, a promising young goalkeeper for Norwich City, certainly had an orchestra seat.
'I was in Austria and Poland with the team and didn't realize that there was such a fury over what happened to David James,' Green said during a telephone interview from London on Saturday, a day before recording his first shutout in the Premier League as Norwich City earned a 0-0 draw against host Tottenham. 'People make mistakes in life and in football all the time.'
Part of the problem is that in England, 'football' is life, and making a mistake -- the way James did when he allowed a shot to squirt between his arms in a 2-2 tie in Vienna on Sept. 4 -- cannot be undone and cannot be forgotten.
Green, a hulking 6-foot-3, 24-year-old goalkeeper, was named to the national team last spring by Coach Sven-Goran Eriksson and then helped Norwich gain promotion to the Premier League. 'It was a bit of a surprise because I think I was the first keeper from outside the top league to be chosen for the national team,' Green said.
He has yet to make an international appearance for England, but that day could be creeping closer. After the debacle in Austria, Eriksson replaced James with Paul Robinson for England's 2-1 victory in Poland. After the game, the English players refused to speak to the news media. Eriksson was at the Premier League game on Sunday when Robinson, playing for Tottenham, and Green each sparkled on their small patches of turf.
Perhaps one of the strangest things about English soccer in recent years is the absence of a premier goalkeeper comparable to players like Gordon Banks and Peter Shilton. There are only five English keepers starting in the Premier League. And James's gaffe is not without precedent -- David Seaman misplayed a long shot (or was it a cross?) by Ronaldinho when Brazil eliminated England in the quarterfinals of the 2002 World Cup.
'There has been a huge influx of European players, including three American keepers, coming over in the last 10 years,' said Green, referring to Tim Howard, Brad Friedel and Kasey Keller. 'The influx has been good for the game, but not for England. With goalkeepers, when a team looks for a keeper it looks for someone with experience. We have youngsters in England, but teams don't want to risk it because it's all about results, and a mistake could cost a manager his job. The chances for young English keepers have been very limited in recent years.'
It would not be a huge surprise if Green makes his debut for England next month against Wales (Oct. 9 in Manchester) or Azerbaijan (Oct. 13 in Baku).
'I just hope to be in the squad again and be fit for selection,' Green said, ever the diplomat.
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER  Steady Force for MetroStars
MetroStars defender Chris Leitch is perhaps overlooked and underappreciated, but he is almost certainly overworked and underpaid.
Other than missing one game this season because of an injury, Leitch, who picked up his first point of the season when he assisted on Eddie Gaven's goal on Saturday night, has been the club's ironman. He has played all 90 minutes in 24 games and leads the team with 2,160 minutes played.
'I'm a defender; the less you hear about me, the better,' Leitch said after the victory over New England. 'If they call my name, there's usually something wrong.'
Leitch is one of only four MetroStars (Amado Guevara, Gaven and Jeff Parke are the others) who have started 20 or more games this season. Leitch is one of the best bargains in Major League Soccer because he earns the league minimum, $26,000.
'What keeps me going is that I want to be as consistent as I can be and bring the same level to every game,' Leitch said. 'My role won't be measured in goals and assists.'
Leitch, who is right-footed, has played on the left side all season because Coach Bob Bradley has not been able to obtain an acceptable left-footed player. The Costa Rican Pablo Brenes, normally a left-side midfielder, was believed to be the answer, but he is more effective at his normal position. 'If the team got a left-side defender, would I be playing?' Leitch said. 'I don't know.'
SAN JOSE -- A group of investors in California is interested in buying the Earthquakes from the Anschutz Entertainment Group, providing it can find support for building a new soccer stadium in either San Francisco or San Jose. Tony Amanpour, the Iranian-American chief executive of First Portfolio Mortgage Planners and Bankers, said he was ready to submit a letter of intent by Friday's deadline (which could be extended), according to The San Jose Mercury News.
Corner Kicks
REAL MADRID VS. MANCHESTER UNITED -- Real Madrid is the most popular soccer team in the world, according to a new survey from the research firm Sport + Markt in Cologne, Germany. Real Madrid was the No. 1 club in 8 (France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Japan, China and India) of 13 countries among 1,000 people ages 15-69 surveyed last May. Manchester United was the favorite club in England, the Netherlands, South Africa, Japan and the United States.
WOMEN'S CELEBRATION TOUR -- The United States women's national team will begin a 10-match tour on Sept. 25 with a match against Iceland in Rochester and again on Sept. 29 in Pittsburgh. The tour includes games against New Zealand (Oct. 3 in Portland, Ore., and Oct. 10 in Cincinnati), Mexico (Oct. 16 in Kansas City, Mo.), Ireland (Oct. 20 in Chicago and Oct. 23 in Houston), Denmark (Nov. 3 in East Rutherford, N.J., and Nov. 8 at a site to be determined). One game will be added to the schedule.
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE -- Still another wrinkle to Bayern Munich's match against Maccabi Tel Aviv tomorrow night, which will be played even though it is on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. Maccabi and the Israeli federation tried to reschedule the match, but were rebuffed by UEFA, the game's European governing body. Bayern's Iranian striker, Vahid Hashemian, was expected to make the trip even though Iran forbids its citizens from traveling to Israel. Late yesterday, the club said he would stay in Germany because of a back injury. The first Champions League match in Israel is expected to draw 40,000 spectators.
SOCCER REPORT",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"The Races Will Go On (With Imported Snow)
The International Ski Federation yesterday gave a green light to the coming World Cup ski races in Kitzbühel, Austria, where organizers used a fleet of helicopters this week to import more than 100,000 cubic feet of snow from higher elevations.
Among the three races confirmed for Jan. 26-28 is the Hahnenkamm downhill, the most famous ski race in the world. But the dangerous course will be heavily modified, redirecting the racers through the woods and onto a solitary strip of imported snow.
Pilots made hundreds of trips between low-lying Kitzbühel and a high mountain pass nearby, collecting snow and carrying it back to the downhill course in large nets suspended under the helicopters by cables.
The weeklong helicopter effort cost organizers an estimated $389,000.
'It is a lot of money for something that would normally come from heaven, not from helicopters,' the F.I.S. president, Gian Franco Kasper, said in a telephone interview.
Kasper said high-profile competitions could afford to take such extreme measures, but that grass-roots ski racing was suffering from the extraordinarily warm temperatures in Europe this winter.
'This is extremely catastrophic for tourism, and the worst, of course, for the junior athletes,' said Kasper, who said it seemed like springtime in his native Switzerland.
Dozens of major competitions have been disrupted this winter in the Alps. The freestyle skiing world championships, originally scheduled for next week in Italy, have been postponed until March.
The high Swiss village of Wengen managed to hold the Lauberhorn downhill last week, even though birds were chirping in town on the morning of the race. The thinness of the snow cover exaggerated the terrain, causing many racers to crash or collapse from exhaustion.
The Alpine skiing world championships, scheduled for Feb. 3-18 in Are, Sweden, are not threatened, officials said, because temperatures there have dropped low enough for snowmaking systems to be used on the host mountain.
There has been no such luck for Kitzbühel, an upscale resort town southeast of Innsbruck, at a relatively low altitude of 2,500 feet above sea level.
Safety officials from the F.I.S., who customarily inspect World Cup courses 10 days before the first training run, extended Kitzbühel's deadline earlier this week to accommodate the unprecedented helicopter effort.
The helicopters took 105,000 cubic feet of snow from the nearby Glockner Pass, near some of the highest peaks in the Alps, and deposited it on the muddy slopes of Kitzbühel, where troops from the Austrian army worked alongside volunteers to patch together a race surface.
The course will not include the treacherous final slope, where safety netting now stands in fields of grass and mud. Instead, racers will be funneled through the woods and onto the slalom course, allowing organizers to get double the use out of what snow they have available.
The historic Hahnenkamm races, now in their 67th year, are crucial to the region's economy and sense of pride. About 80,000 people visit the town of 9,000 people, and the downhill race receives daylong television coverage from Austria's national broadcaster.
Only the most experienced downhillers win at Kitzbühel, and many consider a victory there more prestigious than an Olympic gold medal. But whenever the course is shortened -- as it often is for blizzards or fog -- the race winner has a figurative asterisk by his name.
Many top skiers decline to speak publicly about climate change, for fear that their comments will damage the tourist industry that is often so important to the ski towns they come from, not to mention their equipment sponsors.
Kasper echoed many of the prominent skiers in the sport when he expressed skepticism about long-term global warming. He prefers to call this season's problems a cyclical phenomenon.
Benjamin Raich, last year's overall World Cup champion, said last week that he was not worried about his sport, even though he comes from Pitztal, Austria, where in recent summers townspeople have wrapped parts of a glacier in protective foil to slow its rapid demise.
One World Cup skier who has been particularly vocal about his fear for his sport is Steven Nyman, a young American who won his first World Cup race in December.
'I'm going to be out of a job in a few years if this persists,' he wrote in a recent posting on his blog.
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Austrian Women Leading In Luge
Austrians, who have been the dominant force in the early going of the Winter Olympics, positioned themselves to continue their run by placing team members one, two and three today on the first day of women's luge competition. They had to survive protests by both the United States and Italy, but on the track here as at other venues, the Austrians hung on.
By the end of today, Austria had 7 medals and was poised to increase that to as many as 11 by the end of Wednesday if the three women here maintain position in the final two runs and their countryman, Klaus Ofner, maintains his lead in the Nordic combined.
""It's a very optimistic moment,"" Jungwirth Heinz, secretary general of Austria's Olympic committee, said. ""Everybody is performing with very high motivation.""
Today, the challenge on the luge run came in the form of separate protests by the United States and Italy that the Austrians had tied their booties to their uniform pants to make the shoes more pointed and thus more aerodynamic. Rules forbid such a move. Myler in Sixth Place
The women's singles consist of two runs today and two Wednesday. Total time decides the standing.
Of the three Americans, Cammy Myler of Lake Placid, N.Y., up almost all night with a stomach virus, stood sixth in 1 minute 34.023 seconds. Erica Terwillegar of Lake Placid was seventh in 1:34.218 and Bonny Warner of Mount Baldy, Calif., 18th in 1:34.878.
""Cammy can win a medal tomorrow,"" said Wolfgang Schaedler, the American coach. ""She should be faster.""
The Austrians were faster today. Twenty-year-old Doris Neuner led with runs of 46.590 and 46.764 seconds down the 1,258-yard, 14-turn course at this mountain resort. Her total time of 1:33.354 gave her the lead over her 22-year-old sister, Angelika (1:33.529), and Andrea Tagwerker (1:33.781). A New Equipment Rule
For a while, it appeared that the Austrians' fine day might be wiped out. Until the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary, lugers were allowed to tie down their booties -- that's what they call them -- with surgical tubing. That added to the aerodynamic effect of their rubberized, form-fitting racing suits. It saved time in a sport in which races are sometimes settled by thousandths of a second.
Now, the Federation Internationale de Luge, the sport's world governing body, forbids such artificial aid. Section 5.3.4 of the federation's rule book reads:
""Racing shoes and racing suits are by no means allowed to stick together. Mechanical and elastic pointing of the foot is forbidden. . . . . Any violations are grounds for disqualification.""
The Olympic jury of appeals for luge checked the booties of the three Austrians and conferred with three technical delegates from the federation. Then, after one meeting of 25 minutes and another of 20, the jury ruled that the Austrians had violated no rule. As Bob Hughes, the American member of the three-person jury, explained it:
""The feet and shoes are strictly controlled because they are the first things that touch the air. The federation didn't want this to become a sport for scientific wizardry.
""Two teams felt that the Austrians' racing suits hooked over the heel and thus pointed the foot. The question was, 'Was it helping the racers?' The jury said no.""
With or without pointed toes, the Austrians did better than expected. ""Everyone was surprised by them,"" Schaedler said.
As for the Americans, Terwillegar and her teammates are Olympic veterans. In 1988, Warner finished sixth, Myler ninth and Terwillegar 11th. Here, Myler was a medal favorite off her second place in the seasonlong World Cup series.
But the virus struck Myler, among other lugers, Monday night and kept her up until 5 A.M. Team officials said she got no more than a half-hour of sleep. Still, she has a chance for a medal Wednesday, because she is only one-quarter of a second out of third place and she has beaten everyone ahead of her. Terwillegar said she was happy with her performance because she did not have an exceptional season.
""My goal is the top 10,"" she said.
Barring a disastrous run Wednesday, Terwillegar seems sure of meeting that goal. Not so Warner, who had trouble finding the right line in and out of curves.
Explaining her troubles, Warner sounded like what she is: a pilot for United Airlines. ""When you go fast,"" she said, ""you're supposed to put your gear up. My problem is that my gear is down.""
For Warner and the others, the track was in better condition than they had expected. The bobsleds and luges use the same track, and on Monday night two-man bobsleds took their first practice runs.
By 12:30 A.M., workmen were smoothing the ice. By 10 A.M., when the female lugers made their first run, the narrow chute was in better condition.
""It wasn't bad,"" Terwillegar said, ""but it was a little chattery.""
""It wasn't good,"" one observer said. ""With a track in this condition, the race becomes a lottery.""  ALBERTVILLE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Herminator Encourages Governator
The Austrian skier Hermann Maier, who knows a thing or two about bouncing back from injury, has offered encouragement to the Austrian-born governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who broke a leg last month on a skiing trip.
'I wrote him a letter,' Maier said in an interview Sunday. 'I told him I believe for sure he will have a great comeback.'
In the late 1990s, Maier's aggressive skiing and seemingly indestructible body earned him the nickname the Herminator, a play on the title of Schwarzenegger's most famous action-movie character, the Terminator.
Maier was already one of the greatest ski racers when he nearly lost a leg in a 2001 motorcycle accident. He then returned to the top of the sport two years later, winning skiing's most coveted trophies with a mellower, more reflective attitude.
Now losing speed at 34, Maier has not said when he plans to retire. He won two medals last year at the Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, but this season has finished on the podium only once in 15 races on the World Cup circuit.
He typically peaks for the annual Hahnenkamm race at Kitzbühel, Austria, the most dangerous and celebrated downhill on the tour. That Jan. 27 event could be canceled as early as tomorrow if race officials decide there is not enough snow.
With dirt showing through much of the course's lower section, organizers are importing snow from higher elevations with trucks and helicopters.
Schwarzenegger, who broke his right femur Dec. 23 in Sun Valley, Idaho, is an avid skier. Maier has never skied with him, though he said he hoped to.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Rah-Rah Roddick Happy to Be Part of New Generation in the Davis Cup
Other than bruising a spectator with another 150-mile-an-hour serve, Andy Roddick did nearly everything right Sunday when many would have excused him for not doing anything at all.
The United States had already clinched its first-round Davis Cup series against Austria, and Roddick had already pleased fans with a decisive victory on Friday. But he played anyway on Sunday and made quick work of his match-turned-exhibition against Jurgen Melzer, 6-4, 6-2, before a crowd of 5,936 at Mohegan Sun Arena. Robby Ginepri later beat Stefan Koubek, 7-5, 6-2, to complete a 5-0 shutout.
The scores did not matter. The circumstances did not matter. But to Roddick, the commitment did.
'I feel a pretty good obligation to the fans that make Davis Cup possible,' he said. 'To be honest, it's a pretty easy decision. Robby and I are on the same plane tonight to San Jose, so I wasn't leaving until he was leaving anyway.'
Patrick McEnroe, the United States captain, and his crew hoped that the sweep, albeit over a weak Austrian team with no singles player ranked higher than 76th, would underscore a renewed commitment to Davis Cup.
A previous generation that included Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi developed a reputation for being reluctant to play. Roddick said he did not think that reputation was accurate, but he said, 'We're a closer unit than that team was.'
'I'm very committed to playing Davis Cup,' Roddick said. 'I love the guys I'm with. That has a lot to do with it.'
Whether friendship matters will be further revealed when the United States plays host to Sweden in a quarterfinal April 9 to 11.
The site, which must be decided within 14 days, will probably be in Florida, California or Arizona, a spokesman for the United States Tennis Association said.
Sweden ousted the defending champion, Australia, 4-1, with Jonas Bjorkman and Thomas Enqvist winning the final two singles matches Sunday.
The last time the Swedes played the United States, they won the 1997 final, 5-0.
'These guys personally don't remember that, but I'll try to remind them of that in the coming months,' McEnroe said.
That defeat was among a string of disappointments for the United States, which has not won the Davis Cup since 1995. McEnroe said he would like to build an era of dominance.
Roddick said: 'Well, yeah, but we have got to get through this one first. You have to get to that first tier before you can become perennial favorites. Obviously, I think it excites Patrick like it does the rest of us that we have a pretty young core of guys who are very willing and very eager to play.'
The quartet that played here -- Roddick, ranked third; Ginepri, ranked 25th; and the doubles specialists Bob and Mike Bryan -- appeared inseparable. They spoke of their bonhomie, telling tales of friendly battles in Ping-Pong and arcade games.
'It's not anything that's canned or that we talk about,' McEnroe said. 'It is real. I think that the more they enjoy themselves, I think it has a big effect on the court.'
Ginepri said: 'It's extremely important to have a good relationship on and off the court. It makes it more fun, more energetic, more positive.'
McEnroe made no guarantees about who would play against Sweden. The only lock is Roddick, who said he thought that he had room for improvement.
Roddick has tinkered with his serve under his coach, Brad Gilbert. Although the controlled indoor environment here let him use brute force to blast two more serves of 150 m.p.h. on Sunday -- he set the record in his match Friday -- Roddick is thinking more location than speed.
'You can't have people sitting on your fastball,' said Roddick, who delayed a news conference to apologize to Joan Sweeney of Tampa, Fla., who had Roddick's first serve of the match ricochet off her shoulder and neck. He posed for a picture with her, and she later wore an ice pack.
Three Nations Advance
Spain, last year's Davis Cup runner-up, defeated the Czech Republic, 3-2, in a first-round match yesterday in Brno, Czech Republic. Rafael Nadal, at 17 the youngest man to play for Spain in the Davis Cup, topped Radek Stepanek, 7-6 (2), 7-6 (4), 6-3, in the deciding match.
Feliciano López started the comeback for Spain by beating Tomas Berdych, 6-4, 6-7 (2), 6-3, 6-4. Spain was without its injured stars Juan Carlos Ferrero and Carlos Moya.
Spain will meet the Netherlands in a quarterfinal in April.
Martin Verkerk beat Frank Dancevic of Canada, 6-7 (5) 6-2, 7-5, 6-3, yesterday in Maastricht, the Netherlands, to send the Dutch team into the quarterfinals. In the final match, Sjeng Schalken defeated Simon Larose of Canada, 6-2, 7-5, to make it 4-1.
Top-ranked Roger Federer overpowered Andrei Pavel of Romania, 6-3, 6-2, 7-5, in Bucharest to give Switzerland a first-round victory. Switzerland won, 3-2, after Victor Hanescu beat the Swiss reserve Stanislas Wawrinka, 6-3, 7-6 (3). Switzerland will play host to France in April. (AP)  TENNIS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"From Flexible Flyer To Olympic Favorite
When he was 12 years old and on a family vacation in Lake Placid, N.Y., Gordy Sheer copied a phone number from the side of a van and began his improbable career in the arcane sport of luge.
A neighbor had constructed a homemade luge track in a nearby backyard in Croton-on-Hudson. For sleds, Sheer and his friends used a Flexible Flyer or a sledding dish, whatever was available. But the van he had seen belonged to the United States luge association. And Lake Placid offered a track that had been used at the 1980 Winter Olympics and the chance to hurtle down a refrigerated track at 70 or 80 miles an hour on a sled that cost as much as a used car.
'I literally wrote down the number from the side of a van,' Sheer said. 'They invited me to a grass-roots program in March of 1984. I went up, tried it out and they invited me back for the summer.'
Thirteen years later, Sheer and his partner, Chris Thorpe of Marquette, Mich., are favored to win the world doubles luge championship this weekend in Igls, Austria, near Innsbruck. They finished second at the 1995 and 1996 world championships and have won three races on the World Cup circuit this season. A victory would place them among the early favorites to win the first Olympic luge medal for the United States at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan.
'We need to prove ourselves in a big race,' Sheer, who is 25, said Tuesday in a telephone interview from Igls. 'It would be nice to get that out of the way. In terms of setting ourselves up for next year, it would be a confidence builder.'
This weekend's race offers a rare attraction, Thorpe said. Parimutuel betting. To promote fan interest, luge racing has become horse racing in Europe.
'Our odds are 1-1,' said Thorpe, who is 26. 'That's kind of a strange feeling going into a race.'
Their success in recent seasons has followed a frightening episode in October 1993, when a group of American lugers went out to celebrate Thorpe's birthday in Oberhof, Germany, only to be attacked in a disco by a group of neo-Nazi skinheads. Sheer, who is Jewish, escaped and barricaded himself in his hotel room.
'I was living the nightmare that the Nazis were going to come and get me in the night,' Sheer said at the time. Several of the skinheads served jail time.
Last June, after numerous anti-Semitic incidents in Mamoroneck in Westchester County, Sheer and his teammate Duncan Kennedy, who was beaten up in the 1993 incident, spoke to high school students there about the lugers' experience in Germany. The lugers have been back to Oberhof several times since the attack without encountering any further trouble in the former East Germany.
'It was one of the worst experiences all of us have ever been through,' Sheer said. 'It had a long-term effect of making us all aware of what's around us.'
Although the Americans have never won an Olympic luge medal, they have recently joined the Germans, Austrians and Italians as powers in the sport. Wendel Suckow of Marquette, Mich., won the world singles title in 1993. A year later, the doubles team of Mark Grimmette and Jon Edwards finished fourth at the 1994 Winter Olympics, while Thorpe and Sheer finished fifth.
The reason for this success? In a word, money. Nynex, a corporate sponsor, has provided funding to hire topflight coaches, build topflight sleds and to attract newcomers through grass-roots clinics in the summer using wheeled sleds.
York, another sponsor, has provided a $1.1 million indoor refrigeration facility at Lake Placid that allows the lugers to practice their starts even in the heat of midsummer. The facility features three starting ramps pitched at various angles. In the past, athletes were left to practice their starts on the flat surface of the Lake Placid Olympic hockey rink. Essentially, the start is the most critical part of a luge race, which is often decided by thousandths of a second.
'If you're slow at the start, you're in trouble,' Sheer said.
Thorpe and Sheer have been partners since 1988. Thorpe, 6 feet 2 inches and 193 pounds, rides in front and steers with his legs. Thorpe, who is 5-10 and weighs 150, tucks in behind and steers by applying downward pressure with his shoulders. Sheer has no view except the back of Thorpe's helmet; he drives essentially by feel.
'I have the benefit of vision,' Thorpe said. 'Some people put their heads back and go down blind, but that's full of risk.'
This year, a modification in the sled design has allowed Thorpe the freedom to move his feet over or under an electronic timing eye that signals the beginning of a race. The trick delays the start of the clock by only a fraction of a second, but, as in sprinting, fractions of a second are like years in luge. The world doubles championships consist of two races that last about 40 seconds apiece.
'You're saving the length of the feet and the midcalf at the top of the course,' Sheer said. 'That can make the difference.'
LUGE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"In Race for Fractions, Swiss Skier Stands a Tad Too Tall
The Swiss pride themselves on being precise and detail oriented, so they may have felt a sting when they found out what happened to their countryman Didier Defago at a World Cup ski race Sunday.
Defago won a super combined event, finishing a downhill in the morning and a slalom in the afternoon in a cumulative time of 2 minutes 42.96 seconds. He immediately began celebrating what appeared to be the first World Cup victory by a Swiss man in almost two years.
'Days like this, you just take it, lean back, and enjoy the sunshine,' said Bernhard Russi of Switzerland, the 1972 Olympic downhill winner, rejoicing in what he thought was the end of the drought of Swiss victories.
But as he spoke, officials from the International Ski Federation, a Switzerland-based organization known as F.I.S., discovered through a routine examination that a piece of plastic between Defago's ski boots and his skis was too thick. Finely calibrated equipment was brought in for backup tests.
After the second test, the F.I.S. jury determined that Defago's ski was a tenth of a millimeter over the legal limit.
No more sunshine: Defago was disqualified, his name was struck from the results, and Michael Walchhofer of Austria was declared the winner with a time of 2:43.15. Rainer Schönfelder of Austria, 0.17 behind Walchhofer, advanced to second place.
Bode Miller moved into third, but by the time the decision had been made, he was on a helicopter, bound for the next World Cup race, a slalom Monday night in Italy.
'I feel sorry for what happened to Defago,' Walchhofer said. 'He has done a great race today, and I would be totally pleased to be behind him.'
Defago violated F.I.S. World Cup equipment rule 2.1.2, which states that the maximum distance between the bottom of the running surface of the ski and the sole of the ski boot is 55 millimeters.
The rule and the strict enforcement offer a window into the lengths that ski racers will go to shave time off their runs.
While the World Cup slopes are long and varied, with an almost infinite number of variables affecting skiers' performances, races are sometimes won by hundredths of a second.
For years, athletes have inserted plates of plastic or aluminum between their boots and skis in order to dampen vibration in downhill. But about 10 years ago, someone discovered that thicker plates also gave them more leverage on the ski in the middle of their slalom turns, and athletes started increasing their 'stand height' until the F.I.S. intervened with restrictions -- fearing that such modifications would contribute to knee injuries.
Defago's equipment supplier, Rossignol, said that cold temperature had skewed the way the test was performed.
'We have made a small mistake with a big effect in the end,' said Michel Vion, the company's competition director. 'To be precise, we are talking about a tenth of a millimeter.
'Of course we respect the rules, but we should give the benefit of the doubt to the athlete.'
Defago could not be reached for comment, but Gian Gilli, the chief of competition for the Swiss ski team, spoke for him. 'He's disappointed, it's clear,' Gilli said. 'But he's a sportsman, and he'll accept the rules.'
Stand height is not the only way skiers are looking for an edge. The aerodynamic speed suits that downhillers wear in races cannot be made too aerodynamic. The fabric must have a minimum permeability of 30 square liters a second. The F.I.S. has a machine to test each suit at every race, because skiers push right up to that standard.
Miller was nearly disqualified for violating the rule Dec. 2 after finishing second to his teammate Daron Rahlves in the downhill when the World Cup tour passed through Beaver Creek, Colo.
Miller failed the first test, as did the third-place finisher, Hans Grugger of Austria, but the F.I.S. recalibrated the machine, and both skiers passed on their second test. The F.I.S. issued a warning to all teams and suit manufacturers.
The United States Ski Team's senior ski technician, Brian Burnett, said that every athlete, technician and coach obsesses about honing equipment to gain an edge.
'You could be looking at things like, you know, I could have polished them a bit more here or there, or I should have gone to a finer grit sandpaper on the sidewall,' Burnett said, speaking of a part of the ski that occasionally drags in the snow.
'There's not ever one single thing. Is it the label on the bib flapping in the wind? Is it the goggle placement on the helmet? It can go on and on. It's the entire package.'
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Dorfmeister Acts Age To Win Super-G
If the talented young women of the United States ski team want to earn medals at the Winter Olympics in February, they are going to have to wrench them from the fingers of Austrian skiers like Michaela Dorfmeister, who won the super-G Sunday almost without breaking a sweat.
'She skis so well, so smooth, so clean, always has the right line, hardly ever makes mistakes,' said the American Lindsey Kildow, who finished in a tie for fourth. 'She has so much experience on every hill we go to, so it's really hard competing against her.'
Dorfmeister, 32, has competed in more than 300 World Cup races since her first one, on Dec. 21, 1991, in Serre Chevalier, France. At that time, Kildow was 7 years old, learning the basics of the sport on the short slope at Buck Hill in Minnesota.
Dorfmeister plans to retire in March -- with an Olympic medal from Turin, she hopes. She said she did not care what color it was. 'It's so hard making a medal at the Olympics, so you can be happy with a bronze as well as a gold,' she said. 'But gold is very special.'
Dorfmeister won the super-G in 1 minute 17.59 seconds. Her teammate Alexandra Meissnitzer was second (1:18.08) and Emily Brydon of Canada was third (1:18.15).
Dorfmeister and Meissnitzer are 32. Their teammate Renate Götschl, who struggled somewhat Sunday, is 30. Combined, the three of them have won 71 World Cup races.
Dorfmeister's mastery was evident in her winning margin of 0.49 of a second; the difference between the runner-up and the skier in 26th place was one second. 'She probably has something figured out from all these years,' said Julia Mancuso of California, who was seventh.
Skiers tend to listen when Dorfmeister speaks. She was one of the skiers who protested last winter that the course to be used for the Winter Games was too mellow. 'The girls want to have a technical slope, not a boring thing,' she said.
Organizers have retrofitted the course, and Dorfmeister, satisfied with the changes, is focusing on winning speed events.
'I think it's her last year and she's attacking more than she ever has,' Kildow said.
After winning Saturday's downhill, Kildow was awarded a 1,279-pound cow that munched hay near the finish area. The local cheese farmers who presented it to her -- from the Coopérative Laitière de Haute-Tarentaise -- expected they could buy it back for 1,000 euros, or about $1,200.
But much to their surprise, Kildow decided to keep the animal, working out arrangements to have the cow shipped to a farm near her training base in Austria.
'We were very touched that she liked it so much,' said Arpin Xavier, a representative of the co-op. 'Keeping the cash would have been much easier for her.'
STRONG SHOWING FOR ITALIANS -- Max Blardone and Davide Simoncelli of Italy finished 1-2 in a World Cup giant slalom yesterday in Alta Badia, Italy.
Bode Miller fell and did not finish his first run but kept his lead in the overall and giant slalom standings. His teammate Daron Rahlves finished fourth, losing time with a slight error at the beginning of his second run.
Italy is tied with the United States with four World Cup victories this season. Only Austria has more (eight).
Blardone pleaded with Italians to show more interest in the Turin Games; ticket sales in Italy have been slow. 'We're really putting our hearts into this and I hope this creates some attention,' he said.
(AP)
SILVER FOR HOST CANADIANS -- Beckie Scott and Sara Renner of Canada capped their sensational two-week World Cup run at home with a silver medal in the classical team cross-country ski sprint relay yesterday for their first top-three finish in the event. Viola Bauer of Germany edged Renner in the final 10 meters to spoil Scott and Renner's chance at a gold medal before an exuberant crowd in Canmore, Alberta.
Norway held off Sweden to win the men's team sprint by one-tenth of a second in 16 minutes 22.4 seconds.
The United States duo of Andrew Newell and Torin Koos placed ninth in the 10-team final field, advancing from the semifinal heats for the first time in the event.
(AP)
BIG DAY FOR NORWAY -- Petter Tande and Magnus Moan gave Norway two World Cup victories yesterday in Nordic combined events in Ramsau, Austria. Tande won with a 100-meter jump and Moan won the 7.5-kilometer sprint in 20 minutes 21.4 seconds.
(AP)
SKIING: ROUNDUP",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Rahlves and Maier to Duel in a Famed Downhill
On Saturday morning, Hermann Maier of Flachau, Austria, will go head to head in the Hahnenkamm downhill with Daron Rahlves of Truckee, Calif.
Forty-nine other skiers will take part in the race, the most dangerous in the world, but it is really a showdown between Maier and Rahlves, rivals who have taken verbal jabs at each other in public and in print over the last several years.
The Herminator is coming off a big victory Friday at Kitzbühel, and Rahlves will be racing on his favorite mountain for the last time. At 32, he plans to retire and start a family.
'This is the greatest place in the world to ski race -- Austria -- because of the fans, the excitement, the energy,' said Rahlves, who was sixth in Friday's race, a super-G. 'Of any other place in the world, this is where I want to be on top.'
He will have to topple Maier, who does not dominate the sport the way he did before his near-fatal motorcycle accident in 2001, but who seems to hold a wealth of experience and aggression in reserve for the big occasions.
Like Friday, when Maier won in 1 minute 22.97 seconds, edging the upstart Italian Peter Fill. Hannes Reichelt of Austria was third. Bode Miller, who refuses to speak to the news media these days, skied off the course early in the race.
The Kitzbühel slope is magical for Maier, who has started six super-G races here since 2000 and has won five. In 2003, it was the first race he won after returning from his accident. On Friday, he described the slope as 'zugeschnitten,' German for custom-tailored.
'My run here over the years has been incredible,' said Maier, who had not won a World Cup race since the season opener in Sölden, Austria, on Oct. 23. He insists he will race for at least one more season after this.
The only Kitzbühel super-G Maier entered but did not win was in 2004, when Rahlves spoiled his party. The trash talk began about 10 minutes later, with Maier insinuating that the American had never won 'the real Hahnenkamm race.'
He was referring to 2003, when Rahlves became the first American downhill winner on the Hahnenkamm since Bud Werner in 1959, but only after organizers lowered the start because of bad weather, cutting out some of the scariest terrain.
Anyone who wanted to see sparks leap out of Rahlves's ears since then has merely had to mention the 'Mickey Mouse downhill,' which is what the shortened version was labeled by another racer. That is because Rahlves knows he excels on the course's upper section, which includes a jump called the Mausfalle (mousetrap) and a turn called the der Steilhang (the steep slope).
So Saturday will be Rahlves's last chance to walk away with a victory he can feel good about. A long line of retired American downhillers will be in his corner, rising early to check the Internet for results.
'It's the standard,' said A. J. Kitt, who was second at the Hahnenkamm in 1992, and now lives in Hood River, Ore. 'It was the toughest. Kitz is a 10, and the next closest is a 7 1/2 or an 8.'
Kitt said racing Kitzbühel had prepared him to race any other downhill. 'It's the hardest by a long shot,' he said. 'You recalibrate yourself.'
Bill Hudson, a United States Ski Team downhiller in the 1980's and 1990's, said, 'Probably for most guys, it's more important than the Olympics.'
Hudson is famous for going off the first jump on the course at the wrong angle, clearing the safety fences and crashing into a small shack. He broke his back, sternum and arm, punctured a lung and severely bruised a kidney. For three months after the crash he had double vision.
'I skied well after that,' Hudson said, 'but never fast again.'
Kitzbühel has been the site of career-ending injuries, and it has caused psychological damage, too. 'There's a lot of people who went to the starting gate and turned around,' said Tommy Moe, who had several top-10 finishes in the 1990's. 'Kitz is the most intimidating course in the world.'
On Wednesday, Moe, the 1994 Olympic downhill gold medalist, answered questions on his cellphone while powder skiing in Jackson Hole, Wyo.
He predicted Rahlves would win the Hahnenkamm, and the Olympic downhill as well.
OLYMPICS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Bone-Shaking Slide to Gold By 3rd-Generation Olympian
He plunged face-first down the icy chute with a laminated photograph of his grandfather inside his white helmet, a bittersweet reminder of the legacy he was racing for.
The skeleton slider Jim Shea Jr. was the first third-generation Winter Olympian. His grandfather Jack Shea won two gold medals in speed skating at the 1932 Winter Games in Lake Placid, N.Y., and had planned to attend the 19th Winter Games. But on Jan. 22, Jack Shea died at 91 after his car was struck by a van on a snowy road near Lake Placid. The other driver was accused of driving while intoxicated.
Jim Shea Jr. raced today at just under 80 miles an hour on his rattling fiberglass sled, fighting for every hundredth of a second in memory of his grandfather.
After twisting around 15 narrow curves, after navigating for 51.07 seconds through a whirling snowstorm, Shea shot past the finish line, barreling through the throng of screaming fans with their American flags. He stood up and yelled in disbelief at his total time of 1 minute 41.96 seconds over two heats, enough to earn him the gold medal in a daredevil sport that had not appeared in the Winter Games since 1948.
Shea's underdog victory, by just five-hundredths of a second over Martin Rettl of Austria, the defending world champion, was the first of three medals for American skeleton racers today.
In the women's competition, Tristan Gale won the gold medal in 1:45.11 and Lea Ann Parsley won the silver. They scrambled off their sleds to chants of 'U.S.A.' even as their European opponents -- several of whom were considered more likely to win -- came over to hug them.
The world of skeleton racing is a close-knit one. Shea was warmly embraced by the men he had just beaten. Rettl's mother cooks for Shea when he races in Innsbruck.
After Shea's victory, he ripped off his helmet and took out the photograph of his grandfather, one of many funeral cards his family had made. There was the former champion speedskater, his grin as wide as his grandson's.
'I definitely felt him here today, and I definitely felt him at the opening ceremony,' Shea, 33, said. 'I think he had some unfinished business before he went up to heaven, and now I think he can go.'
Shea's victory came despite a debilitating circulation problem in his left leg that limited his walking and kept him from warming up properly, although he did do some short sprints before today's race.
Shea and Parsley have been two of the most visible symbols of American fervor during the Olympics.
Parsley, a firefighter from Ohio, was one of eight athletes who presented the tattered World Trade Center flag to President Bush during the opening ceremony on Feb. 8.
Shea took the Olympic oath on behalf of the athletes, as his grandfather had done 70 years earlier. Later that evening, Shea and his father, Jim Sr., a skier who competed in Nordic combined and cross-country in the 1964 Winter Games, were handed the Olympic torch in a ceremony that was to have included Jack Shea.
After winning the event today, Shea climbed up a fence to high-five his friends after his mother put a black fedora on his head. Then Jim Sr. grabbed his son in a bear hug, his eyes brimming with tears.
'You bet there will be celebrations tonight,' the father yelled to a friend through his cellphone. Then, turning to the crowd, he said, 'This is the greatest day of my life, of my family's life.'
The Sheas became the second family in Winter Olympic history to have two gold-medal winners. Bill Christian won gold with the American hockey team in 1960, and his son Dave was a member of the 'Miracle on Ice' team that won in 1980.
In the women's skeleton, Alex Coomber of Britain won the bronze. She was watching the scoreboard right after her run, knowing that she could be knocked down in the standings by Parsley and Gale, the two final sliders of the day.
'It's such a big deal, I'm not sure I'm ready to handle it yet,' Gale, a 21-year-old from New Mexico with red-and-blue highlights in her hair and glitter on her face, said of her gold medal.
Parsley, 33, was just as excited. 'I don't care what color it is,' she said of her silver medal. 'After watching Jimmy win his gold, it just felt good to see our program have such a great day.'
Many of the sliders said they were concerned when they woke up this morning and saw snow falling. The weather slowed everyone on the 4,380-foot track, and workers had to keep clearing the ice. But almost all the sliders reached speeds of nearly 80 miles an hour, grappling with forces so powerful that they prevented the racers from lifting their chins more than an inch off the ground.
Skeleton was invented in the 1880's in St. Moritz, Switzerland, by British Army officers vacationing there. They built a track called the Cresta Run that connected St. Moritz with a nearby village, where a bottle of champagne was given to the winner. That same track was used the two previous times that skeleton appeared in the Olympics, in 1928 and 1948. But Olympic officials discontinued it as too dangerous.
In the 1970's, skeleton became popular again with a small group of Europeans who traveled to artificial tracks in Germany and Austria to practice and race.
Skeleton's most dedicated followers lobbied to get it back into the Olympics. Mitt Romney, chairman of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, said skeleton was included this year partly to enhance television advertising revenue.
Skeleton sliders are wedded to the sensation of risk. Gale has likened the sport to 'tying yourself to an airplane wing.' She switched from ski racing to skeleton about four years ago and began competing at World Cup events only this season.
'Normal people can do this sport,' she said. 'I love this sport. It was fun when we started and it's still fun now.'
Parsley is a registered nurse as well as a firefighter, and has said she would like to be a smoke-jumper.
After Shea's family moved to Lake Placid in 1988, he became interested in bobsledding, though his mother warned him against it. He soon switched to skeleton. To compete in World Cup events, he hitchhiked around Europe with a broken sled, sleeping in bobsled sheds and surviving on his credit card.
He won the world championship in 1999, placed second in 1997 and third in 2000. He was ranked third over all in World Cup standings in the 2000-1 season.
'It's taken me a long time to get here,' he said. 'I've been around for a while. I've gone through some real tough times. My family has gone through some real tough times as of late. It's very emotional for me.'
OLYMPICS: SKELETON",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"With a Few Changes Austria Comes Up Big
In the 1984 Olympic Winter Games, an embarrassed Austria won a grand total of one medal, Anton Steiner's bronze in the men's downhill skiing. But in 1988, the Austrians earned 10 medals, 6 in Alpine skiing alone.
Here, the Austrians have been the first-week wonders of these Olympics in the French Alps. Halfway through the competition, they had 14 medals (4 gold, 5 silver and 5 bronze) and were neck and neck with the Germans for the medal lead.
Why this success? Why is a democracy of seven million people winning medals not only in its beloved Alpine skiing, but also in ski jumping, Nordic combined skiing, speed skating and luge? Front-Page News
""Nobody knows,"" said Johann Skolek, a veteran Austrian journalist. ""There is no one answer. Everyone is surprised. We expected nothing from the Alpine skiers, and they are doing so well. I write for Der Standar, a political and economic newspaper. Since Monday, we have given half of page 1 to the Olympics. Everybody in Austria is talking Olympics and nothing else.""
Heinz Jungwirth, the secretary general of the Austrian Olympic Committee, spoke of momentum. In the first medal event of these Olympics, the men's downhill, Patrick Ortlieb of Austria, a rank outsider who had never won on the international circuit, won this big one.
""When the train gets moving,"" Jungwirth said, ""you just have to jump on.""
Austria's success goes deeper than fast-moving trains. It is a combination of forward-looking leadership in individual sports and dedication by athletes embarrassed by past performances. Stepping Up in Luge
The Austrians had not won a medal in the men's luge singles since 1968, in women's since 1964. Here, Doris Neuner and her sister, Angelika, won the gold and silver among the women, and Markus Prock and Markus Schmidt earned the silver and bronze among the men.
The Austrians' success in a sport dominated by Germans and German-speaking Italians was no accident. The Austrians hired Klaus Bonsack in 1990, when coaches from what was East Germany found themselves out of work. Bonsack quickly set up indoor practice in the basement of a deserted brick factory and outdoor practice on an ice ramp similar to the Olympic course here. The sliders started to train year round.
Josef Feistmantel, a 1964 gold medalist in luge doubles for Austria, is now an optician, but he was hired to help coach the luge team.
""We used to spend maybe $100,000 a year on luge,"" Feistmantel said. ""Now it's $300,000. We hired coaches. We built new sleds. We thought it was time to do well, to stop losing. But this much success? We didn't expect so much so soon.""
The Austrian ski jumpers were good, but not the best. Then Anton Innauer, a gold medalist in 1980, taught them the new V style, in which the jumper soars with skis forming a V rather than flush to each other. Innauer helped his team keep up other with the other countries that were also teaching the innovation, and the Austrians won the 90-meter gold medal and the team silver medal.
Traditionally, the major sport in Austria is Alpine skiing. This is the sport of such national heroes as Toni Sailer, Franz Klammer and Annemarie Moser Proll.
But the Austrians were apprehensive about Olympic skiing here. They had won only three titles, all by women, on this winter's World Cup circuit, which many consider more important than the Olympics. Petra Kronberger, who was capable of medaling in all five Alpine events for women, was mired in a two-year slump.
But Kronberger won a gold in the combined here, and Veronika Wallinger won the bronze in Saturday's downhill. Injuries and crashes have cost medals for three other Austrian contenders -- Hubert Strolz, Ulrike Maier and Sabine Ginther. Good Life in the Army
Prock attributes much of Austria's overall success to its support program for athletes. He said that in luge, bobsledding, speed skating, biathlon, fencing and team handball, 90 percent of the male athletes are in the army.
""We make about $1,200 a month,"" Prock, who is a sergeant, said. ""They take care of our rooms and meals. We are not so often there. We are here, there and everywhere. We do military work maybe two weeks a year.""
The Austrian women are not in the military, although many attend schools that give them time to train. Also, many of the athletes here work in summer to support training in the winter. For example, Doris Neuner is a government secretary, and Angelika Neuner is a nurse.
""This Olympic success is a relief from all the serious things in our nation,"" said Skolek, the Austrian journalist. ""But it's like when you go to sleep drunk. When you wake up the next morning, it will be gone.""  ALBERTVILLE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"American Promise Unfulfilled In Downhill
With four medals in the first three events, the surprising American ski team was atop the mountain as morning broke clear and pale blue over this resort town on the day of the men's downhill.
In a place where materialism is a winter way of life, no nation had acquired more loot at these world Alpine championships: not Switzerland, not Norway, not even acquisitive Austria. And when Jake Fiala, a powerfully built Coloradan who was born in Prague, put together a fine-looking run from the 10th starting position to take the early lead this afternoon, the Swiss fans were rolling their eyes and wondering whether these normally cooperative Americans were not getting rather carried away.
'The way things have been going, all of us would like to be on the podium,' Fiala said.
But a semblance of order was about to be restored. The Americans, including Bode Miller and Daron Rahlves, would soon lose their momentum, and skiing's traditional European powers would start gathering speed. When the last puff of powder had settled on this gorgeous afternoon in the Alps, Austria's Michael Walchhofer had the gold medal, Norway's ever-opportunistic Kjetil-Andre Aamodt had the silver, Switzerland's Bruno Kernen had the bronze, and Fiala, the top American finisher, was 1.82 seconds back in 12th place.
'It's quite a feeling to be part of this Austrian club of medal winners at world championships or Olympics,' said Walchhofer, not the Austrian who was expected to be pumping his arms on the top step of the podium.
The Austrian favorite was Stephan Eberharter, the world's dominant skier over the last two seasons. Eberharter had won five of nine World Cup downhills this season, but he ended up fifth, more than a second off Walchhofer's winning time of 1 minute 43.54 seconds.
Miller was more than two seconds behind. He has built on his reputation as the sport's emerging star by taking a silver medal here in the super-G and a gold in the combined event.
But he could come up with no on-the-edge feats today, placing 16th and skiing conservatively (for him) on the bottom section of the course.
Miller, who will be a medal threat again in next week's slalom and giant slalom, had hesitated about competing in the downhill but said he had neither regrets about racing nor concerns about spreading himself too thin by competing in all five men's events here.
'It doesn't use up that much energy; it's a great race, a lot of fun to run,' he said. 'Especially because I had the chance to do really well today. Had I nailed it, I could easily have been on the podium.'
He got much closer to the podium than Rahlves, his American teammate, who had been the best speedskier in the world coming into these championships. Last month in Kitzbühel, Rahlves won the most prestigious and daunting downhill race on the World Cup circuit, but the less intimidating course in St. Moritz did not play to his strengths.
Though Rahlves was the defending world champion in the super-G, he could do no better than 22nd in that event here and today he did not earn a placing at all.
Having already lost time in the technical midsection of the course, Rahlves decided that he needed something special at the bottom, which features two consecutive jumps. He handled the first but misjudged the second, landing off balance and traveling a fair distance on a single ski. He avoided a crash but could not avoid missing the final gate. Though he crossed the finish line, his error meant disqualification and a disappointing visit to St. Moritz.
'I'm not taking anything away from this place at all, but the top part of the course is just not exciting to me,' a dejected Rahlves said. 'But from 50 seconds down it's a fun ride. Look, if I want to be the best in the world, I have to be fast in every condition.'
Hermann Maier, who has completed a made-for-Hollywood return from a horrific motorcycle accident, finished eighth. When Maier, who tied with Miller for second in Sunday's super-G, saw his time today on the huge electronic scoreboard, he smiled and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say: 'Let's not be too greedy.'
Merely competing was a triumph, although the Austrian skiers whom Maier bumped off the downhill squad could have been excused for thinking that they would have gone faster this afternoon.
Nonetheless, it was still Austria's day, and instead of one of its established stars wearing the gold, it was Maier's good and much more anonymous friend Walchhofer who quieted the Swiss crowd of 38,000 by gathering tremendous speed near the bottom and trumping Kernen's leading time. At nearly 6 feet 5 inches, there is a lot of Walchhofer to appreciate. His physical presence is reminiscent of Austria's strapping 1992 Olympic champion, Patrick Ortlieb, but until today he had never won so much as a World Cup race.
At age 27, Walchhofer is no youngster by skiing standards. He is also married and the father of an infant daughter. Originally a slalom skier, he turned to speed events after struggling to control the new, shorter slalom skis. He can have no regrets, and after finishing second in four different downhills this season, he has made the big leap to winning one of his sport's signature events.
'He's been on the podium a bunch of times,' Miller said. 'It's not really that surprising.'
It was even less surprising to see the 31-year-old Aamodt on the podium again. He has not been as consistent a World Cup force as greats like Ingemar Stenmark, Alberto Tomba and Maier, but he has clearly mastered the art of peaking for the big race. Finishing 49-hundreths of a second behind Walchhofer today earned him a record 12th world championship medal. He also has seven Olympic medals, including two gold medals from the last Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
'He's an inspiration for all of us out here,' Fiala said.
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"2 Athletes Worried They Broke Law
Austrian ski team officials said Tuesday that the two team members who fled after a police raid last weekend had confessed that they possibly 'used illegal methods' in preparing for their Olympic events.
On Saturday night, the Italian police raided five residences in the Alps where Austrian biathletes and cross-country skiers are staying. The police said they had confiscated syringes, glucose drips and other medical equipment. Italian law bans drugs that can be used to enhance an athlete's performance.
The biathletes Wolfgang Perner and Wolfgang Rottmann, hastily returned to Austria after the raid. They were subsequently kicked off the team and could not be reached for comment.
Markus Gandler, a top official with the Austrian ski federation, said at a news conference Tuesday in the mountain town of Sestriere that Perner and Rottmann had indicated to him that they might have done something wrong.
'They were scared of Italian law, and they preferred to leave because something was confiscated, only from them and not from the others,' Gandler said. 'They were worried it may have been illegal.'
The police conducted their raid amid reports that Walter Mayer, a coach implicated in a doping incident at the Salt Lake Games in 2002, was staying with skiers. After the raid, Mayer fled to Austria, where he was arrested on unrelated charges of crashing into a police checkpoint.
Peter Schröcksnadel, president of the Austrianski federation, said the police had taken Mayer to a psychiatric facility, where he was staying because it was feared he might commit suicide. Mayer appeared in an Austrian court Tuesday and pleaded guilty to several minor charges relating to his arrest.
Mayer was barred from the Turin Games and the 2010 Vancouver Games after blood transfusion materials were found at the Salt Lake Games.
At their news conference, the ski federation officials seemed to be attempting to limit damage to the reputation of Austrian athletes, who have been chastised here and at home after the raid. Salzburg, in central Austria, is pushing to play host to the 2014 Winter Games.
'I'm angry to answer such questions,' Felix Gottwald, an Austrian skier, told reporters who asked him about Mayer after Gottwald won the Nordic combined Tuesday. It was his second gold of the Games. He has also won a silver. 'I won a gold medal today, and I have to answer these questions.'
On Tuesday, Austrian athletes competed in biathlon and cross-country events, placing last out of 17 teams to cross the finish line in the 4 x 7.5-kilometer biathlon relay. 'We're drained,' the Austrian biathlete Christoph Sumann said. 'Physically and mentally, we're not here.'
The Austrian officials said their own doping tests had cleared eight athletes. But results from the tests on the 10 Austrian athletes and on the seized medical equipment had not been released. It was unclear when they might be made public.
Col. Angelo Agovino, regional head of the Carabinieri police force, said tests on the equipment generally take up to a week. On Monday night, the police returned to the room where Mayer had been staying. Agovino called it an inspection, and several police officials denied reports that more syringes had been found.
Blood and urine samples were taken from the Austrian athletes Saturday night and early Sunday. Since then, the International Olympic Committee laboratory at the Turin Games, comprising scientists from a Rome lab accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency, has been running tests.
The screenings include tests for performance-enhancing drugs like erythropoietin, known as EPO, and for evidence of homologous blood doping. Those methods are used to increase red blood cells, which transport oxygen to the muscles and boost endurance.
There is no test for autologous blood doping, which is when an athlete removes blood, stores it and concentrates the red blood cells, then reinfuses closer to the competition.
The scientists testing the syringes, glucose drips and other paraphernalia will test the blood and fluids found in those items to see if they came from any of the Austrian athletes. The used bags of glucose drips that the police said they had found could have been used for simple rehydration, but they also could have been used to administer a number of banned drugs. Another use could be to increase blood volume and lower hematocrit and hemoglobin levels, red flags for drug use.
Drug-testing experts say that the tests for synthetic hormones like erythropoietin take two to five days. Tests to determine whether an athlete has had a blood transfusion, which also increases red blood cell count, can take two to three days.
Even if the lab finds nothing amiss with the athletes' blood and urine samples, the Austrians could still face punishment. In a briefing here Tuesday, Giselle Davies, a spokeswoman for the I.O.C., raised the possibility that Austrian athletes could be sanctioned if the tests on seized medical equipment come back positive.
'Antidoping rules can be violated not just by a positive test, but also by attempted use or possession of prohibited substances,' Davies said. 'According to our rules, there are any number of ways the rules can be broken.'
2006 OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES: AUSTRIAN RAID",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Tribute to Baron von Trapp Joined by Country He Fled
On a hilltop ringed by the blue-tinged Green Mountains here, the von Trapp family and the Government of Austria today officially mended a relationship put asunder 60 years ago by the Nazi invasion of Austria.
The occasion was a visit by 89 cadets of the graduating class of the Theresianum Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt, about 25 miles south of Vienna. Three years ago, they chose as their class patron Baron Georg von Trapp, the family patriarch, who fled Austria because of his opposition to its Nazi occupiers. To honor him, the cadets accepted an invitation from the family and traveled en masse to spend the weekend at the Trapp Family Lodge here.
The ceremonies ended today in a morning Mass, at which the cadets stood watch during a performance of Franz Schubert's 'German Mass,' then laid a wreath at the grave of Baron and Baroness von Trapp, who were portrayed by Christopher Plummer and Julie Andrews in the 1965 film 'The Sound of Music.'
Nearly 50 people representing three generations of von Trapps from around the world gathered for the ceremony. The six surviving children are Eleonore Campbell, Rosmarie Trapp and Maria, Werner, Johannes and Agathe von Trapp, all of whom live in the United States.
'This is an important statement on the part of these Austrian officers that they chose as their patron someone who left Austria during the Nazi invasion,' said Johannes von Trapp, 58, of Stowe, the youngest of the famous singing children who toured Europe and, later, the United States as a family musical act.
'This is the fulfilling of a wish,' said Maria von Trapp, 83, of Stowe.
Walter Greinert, the Consul General of Austria based in New York, agreed. 'On the one side, I am here to express our appreciation of the fact that the von Trapp family always stood for patriotism and righteousness,' Mr. Greinert said. 'On the other side, I am here as a representative of a new Austria in a new Europe. We are a new generation now, putting behind us some of the troubles of the past.'
Because of the movie, many Americans are aware of some basic biographical facts: Maria Augusta Kutschera left a convent to become the von Trapp family's governess (in fact, she left the convent to care for Maria, the daughter, who was an invalid at the time), and she later married the Baron. The von Trapp family fled Austria in 1938 to escape the Nazis, and they eventually immigrated to the United States.
In 1942, the Baron and his wife bought a farm in Stowe and built the lodge, which burned in 1980 and was rebuilt. Some family members have continued to run the lodge as an inn and ski resort.
For the most part, the weekend events focused on Georg von Trapp's military career. A 1898 graduate of the Austrian Imperial Naval Academy, he commanded a submarine during World War I and was influential in the development of submarine warfare and torpedoes. 'He was seen as a hero for his work as a submarine commander,' said Saurugg Herbert, an Austrian cadet.
Johannes von Trapp said that his father, who died 50 years ago, was offered a position in the German Navy after the invasion of Austria. The Baron strenuously objected to the Nazis, so he refused, Mr. von Trapp said.
The touchiest issue of the weekend involved the attitude of the Austrian Government toward the family after its flight and whether this ceremony was to be understood as an official apology to the family.
'It was politically significant that they chose a man most well-known for his opposition to the Nazis,' said Mr. von Trapp.
'The view of the von Trapps was always one of appreciation,' said Mr. Greinert. 'Most Austrians agreed with his attitude, and there was never any official criticism of his decision.' But he added, ' 'The 'Sound of Music' was not shown in Austria for many years, and the fact that I am here now represents the change in the government and the people of Austria.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Dorfmeister Doubles Her Holdings in Gold
After waiting 32 years for her first Olympic gold medal, Michaela Dorfmeister of Austria had to wait only five days to win another.
The celebration, however, did not begin immediately. Though Dorfmeister was the last of the contenders to finish the super-G on Monday, she skidded to a halt with a serious expression on her face as she stared at the scoreboard and kept seeing nothing but Janica Kostelic's name.
'Janica stayed on top,' Dorfmeister said. 'I could not find my name on the screen.'
Eventually, Kostelic was the one who delivered the good news to Dorfmeister with a congratulatory hug.
'I said: 'What? I can't see me,' ' Dorfmeister said. 'But then I enjoyed it.'
Kostelic appeared to be enjoying herself, too, despite being bumped out of first place. Her silver medal was something of a bonus. She entered these Games feeling weak and feverish because of lingering effects of the flu, and she withdrew from the opening event, the downhill, citing an accelerated heartbeat.
She came back to win the combined event Saturday, but was expected to withdraw from the super-G, which was scheduled for Sunday. 'A lot of the skiers out here think that Janica is an actor,' said her father and coach, Ante Kostelic. 'But she's not acting. Her health is much more fragile since she had her thyroid problems. It means that she falls ill more frequently. She has to be careful.'
When a blizzard postponed the super-G to Monday, Kostelic threw herself back into the mix and proceeded to increase her record Olympic medal count to six: four golds and two silvers.
'Probably when I quit skiing, I will think about it more,' said Kostelic, a 24-year-old Croat. 'Right now, I'm just concentrated on my skiing. It's not about how many medals I won or will win. I'm just having fun.'
Alexandra Meissnitzer of Austria finished behind Kostelic to win the bronze, her third Olympic medal.
The Americans Julia Mancuso and Kirsten Clark finished 11th and 14th. Lindsey Kildow, who crashed spectacularly in downhill training last week and was briefly hospitalized, was seventh Monday.
For anyone who saw Kildow's training crash, her performance Monday was remarkable. But Kildow, one of the world's leading speed skiers, arrived here with higher expectations, and with two events remaining -- the giant slalom and the slalom -- the American women's Alpine team has yet to win a medal.
'I thought my destiny was going to be here, but apparently, Italy just isn't my place,' Kildow said. 'Maybe North America is my time to shine.'
That was a reference to the next Winter Olympics, in 2010 in Vancouver, British Columbia -- a sports festival that will probably take place without Dorfmeister, who said that she planned to retire after this season.
Dorfmeister is reaching her lifetime goals now, and it was a sign of her state of grace that the conditions in which she won her gold medals here were radically different. The downhill was contested on a cloudy day in flat light on artificial snow that had been packed and prepared for weeks. The super-G was run in brilliant sunlight on a course that had required yet another all-night work session from Italian soldiers and maintenance workers to clear off a thick layer of fresh snow.
'It's the best when you can stop your career on top,' Dorfmeister said. 'I want to give a big compliment to the organizers. They got so much snow, and today it was possible for us, the last racers, to make good times.'
It has been quite an Olympics for Dorfmeister, who had only one silver medal upon arrival, and quite a sweet-and-sour Olympics for Austria, which is embroiled in a doping investigation involving cross-country skiers and biathletes, but whose Alpine skiers have won nine medals in seven events.
'She seems to enjoy skiing; you can see it,' Kostelic said. 'When you want something too hard, it doesn't come out good. I like the way she is now. This season, I really like her.'
Dorfmeister, who was sitting next to Kostelic as she spoke, laughed off the compliment.
'It's not just me,' she said. 'It's the material I'm using, and the luck is all on my side.'
2006 OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES -- ALPINE SKIING: WOMEN'S SUPER-G",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Kostelic Smooths Rough Road With 3rd Gold
Because she is not ranked among the top competitors worldwide in the giant slalom, Janica Kostelic began her pursuit of Olympic history as the 19th skier from the starting gate today. That meant she skied about a half-hour after the first of the favorites, enough time for the snow on the race course to develop ruts like foxholes.
But it takes more than ruts to hinder  Kostelic. Three knee operations in the past year did not stop her, just as a training regimen of eight-hour days on skis as a teenager did not dispirit her. Fleeing war in her native Croatia and driving throughout Europe in search of a welcoming mountain did not discourage her. Sleeping in the family car with her father, mother and brother, or, for at least a week, sleeping in a cave because it was the safest haven from artillery did not distract her.
What then is so bad about a few dozen ruts?
On skis that she powered through the choppy snow conditions, Kostelic completed her first run in the giant slalom today 49-hundredths of a second ahead of the field, which is a significant margin.
For her next trick, as the halfway leader, she would ski 15th in the second run -- last among the leaders. Kostelic ripped through the course again, minimizing any disadvantage from the starting order as easily as she lapped the field again.
In these Olympics, there is no other skier -- male or female -- in Kostelic's class. In any single Olympics, there has been no other skier in Kostelic's category: four-time medal winner. She won the giant slalom, the slalom and the combined, and was second in the super-G.
With her victory today, Kostelic also tied Jean-Claude Killy of France and Toni Sailer of Austria as the only Alpine skiers to win three gold medals in one Winter Olympics. And Kostelic could have easily had four gold medals in the Salt Lake Games. Last week, she was second in the super-G by five-hundredths of a second.
Entering the 2002 Games, the record for Olympic Alpine skiing medals won in a career was five, a mark that has since been extended to seven by Norway's Kjetil Andre Aamodt, a 30-year-old veteran of four Winter Games. Kostelic is 20 and has already passed Aamodt in gold medals.
Earning the silver medal today was Sweden's Anja Paerson, who trailed Kostelic's winning combined time of 2 minutes 30.01 seconds by 1.32 seconds. Sonja Nef of Switzerland, ranked No. 1 in the world in slalom, won the bronze medal.
The top American finisher was Kristina Koznick, who was 17th. In the five women's Alpine events of the 2002 Olympics, no American skier placed higher than sixth.
Kostelic appreciated her milestone accomplishments for what they mean to others. 'The records by themselves do not matter,' she said. 'Making my family and all the people from my country happy, that matters.'
Gone are the days when she would win a World Cup race and organizers would not have a Croatian flag to display at the medal ceremony. 'It happened all the time,' said Kostelic, who started packing a Croatian flag in her ski boot bag. It happened, in fact, at a World Cup race in 1998 at Park City.
Today, they could have gone into the grandstand and requested any one of the 15 to 20 flags that Croatian fans had brought to fete Kostelic, the country's first sports star whose likeness was put on a postage stamp.
That was after she had won the World Cup overall title in 2001, a distinction earned primarily by a streak of eight consecutive slalom victories. But physical problems have always plagued Kostelic, and she endured two operations on her right knee last spring and summer. When the knee did not respond as well as Kostelic had hoped, she scheduled a third, arthroscopic surgery in October. At that time, doctors discovered and removed a random, floating piece of tissue.
Only then did Kostelic begin the road back that has led to four Olympic medals in a nine-day period.
Still, coming to Utah, there was no predicting the sweep of medals to come. Kostelic said before the Winter Games that she was focusing on saving herself for the combined and the slalom. She declined to enter the downhill, afraid to risk injury. 'I just wanted one medal and after I won the combined, nothing else mattered,' Kostelic said.
Ranked 30th in the world in the giant slalom, Kostelic knew her position in the starting order today would be unfavorable. 'I figured I'd just kind of go with it and see what happened,' Kostelic said.
When she finished her first run, her competitors knew the race was most likely over.
'She's proved that mentally she's the best,' Paerson said. 'Right now, she's incredible. After all she's been through, I'm really happy for her.'
With the women's Alpine events concluded, Kostelic plans a trip home soon. 'I need a rest,' she said.
Then reminded of the mob scene of friends, family and Croatian fans that enveloped her after her victory today, Kostelic added: 'Of course, I don't know how quiet that will be. It's going to be nice. It's going to be crazy.'
OLYMPICS: WOMEN'S GIANT SLALOM",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Pessimistic Kronberger Wins the Combined and Aims for 4 More Golds
In this morning's freezing rain, Petra Kronberger had skied the slalom a bit slowly, conservatively, knowing that if she made a horrible mistake she lost any chance to become the women's combined champion.
But then, in the afternoon snowstorm that howled through this valley, obscuring the peaks, she suddenly changed her strategy.
""I tried to put the Olympics out of my mind,"" said Kronberger, Austria's most popular, and perhaps most troubled, skier. ""But still I had to go fast so I wouldn't be sorry later.""
She has no regrets.
She went through 43 gates fast, faster than anyone else negotiated either of today's two runs. She skipped 350 meters down the mountain in 34.24 seconds. And so the two-race total, combined with her first-place finish in Wednesday's downhill, gave her the gold medal. She plans to go for an unprecedented four more, too: in the downhill, the slalom, the giant slalom and the super giant slalom. Less Pressure Away from Home
She has been a dour Austrian hero, having fallen and injured herself in the super G world championships last year before her countrymen at home. To her, it was one more example of not living up to expectations.
""This experience was good because I was not under as much pressure,"" she said today. ""I was not at home.""
The combined formula is weighted. Thus, a person can win the combined without winning a race.
Anita Wachter, also of Austria, and the winner in Calgary in 1988, took the combined silver even though she finished 12th in the downhill and second in her runs today. With today's gold and silver, the Austrians have now captured 12 medals, already equaling their best Winter Olympics yet, the 1964 Games at home in Innsbruck.
Florence Masnada of France earned the bronze.
Krista Schmidinger of Lee, Mass., who had been a stunning second in the downhill portion, was expected to finish far back today because Americans do not spend much time on the slalom runs. Instead, Schmidinger was a respectable 14th today, and wound up 11th over all.
""I just wanted to rip on my second run,"" said Schmidinger. ""I had nothing to lose.""
But of her earlier run she explained, ""I couldn't see the hill this morning.""
She estimated that she spends perhaps 10 percent of her training time gearing for the slalom. Now that she has done relatively well, she said, she will take it more seriously.
Her next race is the women's downhill. She will presumably heed her father's advice, given to her before the downhill. ""I told her,"" said Elmar Schmidinger, ""Ski like a butterfly.""
But the downhill presents another gold opportunity for Kronberger. And perhaps another disappointment. Better she does not think about it.
""I found if I really want something, I don't get it,"" she explained. She won the downhill in the world championships in Austria last year, set her sights on five medals and then fell during her next race. A Lesser Event?
She also knows that to many Austrian purists, the combined is a corrupted event not worthy of an Olympic medal. The combined's downhill and slalom courses are not as demanding as those individual Olympic races.
She wanted to revel in today's victory, though. She also wanted to displace remembrances of a sixth-place finish in Calgary in the downhill.
""Five medals,"" she said. ""This is not simply something you can just push a button to do. Everything from now on is just icing on the cake. But if it doesn't work, I won't be unhappy.""
She conceded she had a bit of luck in being in position to win the combined. Austria's best skier in the event, Sabine Ginther, hurt her back in a practice run on Tuesday and was sent home to be hospitalized.
Alongside today's course, fenced off, children slid down the snow not even using sleds. They enjoyed falling, tumbling over one another and laughing.
None of them was going for a gold. But they appeared to be having more fun than the medal winner.
ALBERTVILLE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Diplomat Picks Up the Pieces of Austria's Broken Image
DESPITE the diplomat's smile, the fatigue showed on the face of Ambassador Peter Moser, Austria's representative to the United States, the lack of sleep etched beneath his eyes.
He had been up since 4 a.m., just as he had every morning for most of the last two weeks, making urgent telephone calls to the Foreign Ministry in Vienna. He dispatched his wife to her sister's home in New York, knowing that it would be impossible to find time for her for days.
'This is a nightmare,' he said of what has gone on since Feb. 4, with the swearing-in of a new  government that includes the far-right Freedom Party led by Jorg Haider, who has praised  policies of Austria's Nazi rulers in World War II. 'You think of the job of a diplomat as a dream under usual circumstances,' Mr. Moser said. 'Well, what is going on now is the reverse.
'It does not feel real. It is surreal.'
Every day the embassy's mailbag bulges with scores of letters from Americans condemning Austria; some are filled with obscenities. 'There are serious letters, and then others are just offensive,' said Mr. Moser, a 58-year-old career diplomat. 'Maybe people get a personal relief if they call us names.'
The creation of a coalition government that includes Mr. Haider's party has turned Austria into a pariah within the 15-nation European Union, which has severed routine contacts with Vienna. The Clinton administration has protested by withdrawing the American ambassador, and Samuel R. Berger, the national security adviser, has been warning of the possible emergence of 'the extreme hateful right' in Europe.
The crisis has forced Ambassador Moser to dive into the whirlpool of Washington's 24-hour news cycle, as he tries to convince Americans, and the large foreign press corps based here, that Austria is being unfairly tarred.
In the last 10 days, he has appeared on CNN and on PBS's 'NewsHour,' as well as at a news conference on Friday at the National Press Club, the first solo news conference in Mr. Moser's 33-year career in the Austrian diplomatic service.
'Haider is not Austria, and Austria is not Haider,' he said at the press club in an  awkward effort to distance the people of Austria from the government that they put in place -- and that he must now represent.
He insisted that although the Freedom Party might be xenophobic, it was not fascist, and that while Mr. Haider might be an opportunist prone to outrageous remarks (praise for Nazi labor policies and for SS veterans), he was not a Nazi. 'We from the diplomatic establishment have to walk behind him, after him, and pick up the pieces,' Mr. Moser said.
Later, in his embassy office, Mr. Moser slowly sipped from a glass of water. Behind his desk was a stack of papers, topped by a book by Mr. Haider outlining his right-wing politics. On the cover is a photo of the well-tanned, carefully coiffed politician, who could easily pass for an American television anchorman.
'It was given to me,' Mr. Moser said. 'I don't think I will read it.' He resisted an  appraisal of Mr. Haider's character. 'My personal feelings, I am not being paid for,' he said.
Trying to salvage Austria's reputation was certainly not the assignment Mr. Moser expected when he arrived in Washington last year. His initial goal, he said, was to expand trade and to encourage Americans to think of his nation of eight million people as the economic hub of central Europe.
'I'm very sad and sorry because what we built up over the years is now being questioned,' he said of Austria's efforts to portray itself as a peace-loving member of the European community, and to distance itself from its Nazi past, when Austria embraced German rule under the Austrian-born Hitler.
He said it was unfair to single out Austria for condemnation when parties similar to Mr. Haider's exist across Europe and could, like the Freedom Party, enter government someday soon. 'One day they will wake up and find that they have similar problems,' he said. 'All of these remarks of Haider, which remember the Nazi history, are a wonderful instrument to distract attention from this fact.'
He does not deny that his job is made more difficult by the perception that Austria is unwilling to confront its history, a view that grew stronger outside Austria after voters elected Kurt Waldheim president in 1986 despite revelations about his service in Hitler's army. 'Yes, I think there are many people -- not only in the Freedom Party, but many, particularly older people -- who have not done this process of atonement,' Mr. Moser conceded.
THE ambassador could be considered another victim of the war. He never knew his father, an Austrian soldier in the German Army, who was sent off to the front two days after his only child was born in Vienna in June 1941. His father was killed in 1943.
Mr. Moser did well in school and entered Austria's diplomatic academy in 1965. His career as a diplomat has taken him to posts as diverse as New Delhi, Seoul and Sofia. His favorite posting was in Los Angeles, where he was consul general from 1979 to 1985. 'We lived in a house with a swimming pool in a wonderful neighborhood,' he said.
But the carefree sunshine of Southern California is far from his thoughts as Mr. Moser rushes through Washington's winter chill from one interview to another, trying to limit the  damage to Austria's reputation.
'When the dust settles,' he said, 'it will be a lot of work for us to get back what we have lost.'
PUBLIC LIVES",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Kildow Sheds a Label and Wins a Silver
Carving smooth turns on hard snow is a skill that ski racers spend a lifetime perfecting, but on some level, it is simply about who dares to go the straightest on race day.
Lindsey Kildow of Park City, Utah, has that mettle. Even after being battered by a series of painful crashes in recent seasons, Kildow knows how to 'let them run,' keeping her tips pointed more in the direction of gravity's pull than most of her rivals.
Kildow took the silver medal in the women's super-G on Tuesday, as the Alpine skiing world championships began after three days of weather-related postponements.
Anja Paerson of Sweden was the only woman to find a faster way down the course, which started high above the tree line, plunged down into a frost-encrusted forest and ended on the shore of a long frozen lake. She finished in 1 minute 18.85 seconds, followed by Kildow in 1:19.17 and Renate Götschl of Austria in 1:19.38.
The whole frigid tableau was glittering in the sunshine, and the clouds suddenly vanished from Paerson's face, too, as she ended a season-long slump, at home here in the remote and lonely mountains of northern Sweden.
Kildow, 22, described how she lost by 32-hundredths of a second to Paerson. 'I made a little mistake in the middle section,' she said. 'I got a little bit of air off this roll and it caused me to go wider than I wanted to.'
As she cut back and forth across the hillside, at an average speed of 52 miles an hour, Kildow resisted the urge to put just a little more swing into her turns and wore a new speed suit that was black and white -- in keeping with the businesslike approach to her career.
At first Kildow appeared disappointed with second place, but her reaction soon shifted to joy as she realized she had broken a string of poor results in big events. She had been without a medal after three fourth-place finishes in the previous world championships two years ago in Italy and a crash at last year's Olympic Winter Games.
Kildow said she was getting wary of always hearing that her teammate and longtime rival Julia Mancuso, the Olympic giant slalom champion, could rise to the occasion when the stakes were high.
'I felt like she was getting a name for being a big-event racer, and I was kind of out of the picture,' Kildow said. 'I felt like no one thought I could do it. I believed in myself, but I feel like I had some bad luck.'
That sentiment is common among the members of the United States team and their supporters. The team underperformed at last year's Turin Games and has regained its pride on the World Cup circuit this year.
Nevertheless, the team has played its cards closer to its vest at this event, choosing not to broadcast any specific goal for medals.
The women's super-G was run hours after the men's event, in which the defending world champion Bode Miller lost his title. On his course, he took an even straighter line than Kildow and made more mistakes.
The top American in the race was Steven Nyman, in 12th place behind Patrick Staudacher, an unheralded Italian who finished in 1:14.30.
Second and third place went to Fritz Strobl of Austria (1:14.62) and Bruno Kernen of Switzerland (1:14.92), a pair of 34-year-olds, each the last to qualify for his nation's four-man race quota.
Staudacher had cornea transplant surgery in June 2005 to treat a problem known as keratoconus, a thinning and bulging of the cornea that distorts vision. (He had tried compensating with contact lenses, but they would shift while he was skiing at high speeds.)
The next event at the two-week championships is the men's combined event Thursday, followed by the women's combined Friday and the downhills this weekend.
'Everyone knows that I'm fine, I can do it, it's not a big deal,' Kildow said, looking ahead. 'I feel like for the downhill I can just relax and have fun and go fast and go one step higher on the podium.'
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Justices Take Case on Nazi-Looted Art
A closely watched legal dispute over the ownership of works of art once looted by the Nazis reached the Supreme Court on Tuesday as the justices accepted an appeal by Austria and one of its state art museums on whether American courts have jurisdiction to resolve such cases.
An 87-year-old California woman, the niece and heir of a prominent art collector, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who fled Vienna in 1938 and died shortly after the end of World War II, has spent decades trying to get back the remains of the collection he left behind. At issue are six paintings by Gustav Klimt, including two portraits of Mr. Bloch-Bauer's wife, Adele. The six paintings, now in the Austrian Gallery in Vienna, are worth more than $100 million.
Austria maintains that the paintings were left to the state and its museums under the will of Adele Bloch-Bauer, who died in 1925, and that the Nazis had illegitimate possession of them during the war does not change the fact that they properly belong to Austria now.
The niece, Maria V. Altmann, disputes that interpretation, maintaining that her aunt's preferences about the eventual disposition of the paintings never achieved the status of a formal bequest to the government. Ms. Altmann filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Los Angeles three years ago.
There has not yet been a trial to sort out the competing interpretations, and the Supreme Court will not decide the merits of the case. Rather, the question for the justices is whether the case can proceed at all under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a 27-year-old federal law that defines the terms for suing foreign governments in the federal courts. Although the issue is a technical one, it could be decisive in resolving a variety of cases involving the behavior of foreign governments and their agencies in World War II.
Such cases have been proliferating. In June, for example, the federal appeals court in New York reinstated a suit by Holocaust survivors and their heirs against the French national railroad, which transported tens of thousands of Jews and others to the Nazi death camps. That decision was appealed to the Supreme Court last month. Also in June, the federal appeals court here dismissed a suit against Japan, brought on behalf of 15 women from other Asian countries who had been subjected to torture and sexual slavery in World War II.
The status of two paintings by another Austrian painter, Egon Schiele, remains in dispute in New York, where they were claimed by two American families after they were lent by an Austrian foundation to the Museum of Modern Art in 1997.
The Nazis are believed to have seized 600,000 important works of art, with 100,000 still missing.
The location of the Klimt paintings has not been in doubt. Only their ownership has been disputed since the late 1940's, when Ms. Altmann and the other heirs tried and failed to get export permits to take them out of Austria. Several years ago, the Austrian government returned $1 million worth of porcelain and Klimt drawings to the family, but refused to yield on the paintings.
Ms. Altmann, an Austrian native who settled in California after the war and became an American citizen, turned to the federal courts after learning that a suit in the Austrian courts, where filing fees are based on a percentage of the amount in controversy, would cost nearly $2 million.
The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act provides exceptions to the general rule that foreign governments are immune from suit. One exception authorizes suits 'in which rights in property taken in violation of international law are in issue' in connection with 'commercial activity.' The question for the Supreme Court is whether that exception, which became official United States policy in 1952 and was not codified until 1976, can be applied retroactively to conduct that took place before 1952. So the issue in this case, Republic of Austria v. Altmann, No. 03-13, obviously encompasses foreign governments' immunity from suit for the entire World War II era.
Both the Federal District Court in Los Angeles and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, refused Austria's request to dismiss the suit, both on retroactivity grounds and on other grounds that the justices chose not to review. The federal government entered the case late in the lower court proceedings, unsuccessfully urging the Ninth Circuit to reconsider letting the case proceed.
Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson has not yet filed a brief presenting the government's views to the Supreme Court, but undoubtedly will do so now that the justices have accepted the case. The federal government's general position is that diplomacy, not litigation, should be used to resolve disputes growing out of the Holocaust.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"I.O.C. Is Losing in a Game With Drug Cheaters
ITALIAN authorities are attempting to validate their raid of Austrian athletes last week by turning their investigation into a game of 'Clue.'
Was it Colonel Mustard in the billiard room with a lead pipe? Or was it Walter Mayer in the Austrian House with a glucose drip?
Or did the cook do it?
Prosecutors interviewed a cook for Austrian athletes during the Winter Games in an Olympic doping investigation that has thus far netted no one. Officials from the International Olympic Committee disclosed yesterday that none of the 10 athletes in the raid of Austria's biathlon and cross-country teams tested positive for a banned performance-enhancing substance.
'Samples did not show up any adverse findings,' said Giselle Davies, an I.O.C. spokeswoman. 'This is only one element in this undoubtedly wider affair.'
So the Pink Panthers persist. Detectives may yet find more than the circumstantial physical evidence they have now -- like the cache of syringes and a bag of blood found in the raid -- but the excessive sleuthing is largely for show.
'It's like an episode of 'Cops,' ' Charles Yesalis, a Penn State professor and steroids expert, said when reached yesterday. 'All you need are the perps.'
As it is, the only perp-like villain is Mayer, an Austrian Nordic coach barred from Olympic participation through 2010 after a maid found blood-transfusion supplies in the closet of his room at the 2002 Salt Lake Games.
Snoops from the World Anti-Doping Agency ratted out Mayer, who was playing roomie with Austrian athletes as the Turin Games began. Agency officials whispered their detective work to I.O.C. leaders, who alerted the Italian police.
Apparently unskilled at the art of skulking, the police arrived with sirens blaring. Mayer fled an athlete's residence bound for Austria, where the hills were alive with the sound of his car smashing into a police roadblock.
This escapade is not grist for a caper, though; it's the Hollywoodesque camouflage to the real issue: the I.O.C. is falling further behind the drug cheats.
For all the police maneuvers and vigilance of I.O.C. testing, as of yesterday there has been only one competitor, the Russian biathlete Olga Pyleva, to test positive at the Winter Games.
This doesn't mean athletes are cleaner, just craftier. The development of designer steroids resembles a lizard's tail. When one is detected and cut off from athletes, another one grows in its place.
And drug-weary officials know it. Arne Ljungqvist, chairman of the I.O.C.'s medical commission, was asked if it was possible that the Austrian athletes tested negative because they were on the newest undetectable miracle substance.
'My answer is, I don't know,' Ljungqvist said. 'I don't know.'
Here is the rub. Some experts believe police action is the only way to scare dopers straight, yet police action is only as effective as the evidence to support a crime.
If there is no positive test, is there proof of a violation? Remember, the track star Marion Jones was not banned from the 2004 Athens Games for her involvement with Victor Conte of Balco infamy. She passed every test. Why risk strip-searching the innocent in a raid if the guilty parties cannot be caught with a urine cup? What good is the I.O.C.'s tough-love deterrent if the doping cheats are undeterred?
Without a foolproof test, the I.O.C. is helpless in closing the loopholes of the Olympic drug culture. Right now, the I.O.C. is outdated and primitive in its approach to the high-tech world of boutique doping, choosing elephants to chase lab mice.
'I don't think the I.O.C. has a game plan,' Yesalis said. 'The drugs help sell the Games because there would be no records of bigger-than-life people doing bigger-than-life things.
'So I think the I.O.C. is in a bind. There is so much money at stake. They're flailing for the right answer.'
The untidiness of drugging is not I.O.C President Jacques Rogge's style. He doesn't like messes. Hasty to his detriment at times, Rogge likes to make quick work of scandals to preserve sponsor love and the Olympic image.
'He has a difficult job,' said David F. D'Alessandro, former chief executive of John Hancock Financial Services, a longtime major Olympic sponsor. 'But I think what Rogge does is he moves pretty quickly at containment.'
Doping is the one issue that appears out of his control. No matter how much money is dumped on research, or how wide the dragnet, most drug cheats continue to escape.
'You would need Tony Soprano with wiretaps and e-mail taps, but would people stand for such sting operations?' Yesalis said.
The undercover mob tricks are too unseemly for most. The best cure is the perfect test. Until then, the police raids will do more harm than good to the Olympic image.
In the six days between the raid and drug results, the idle time gave life to every conceivable Olympic rumor: the nation of Austria had survived a secret vote to cast it out of the I.O.C. (false), the Austrian athletes had tested clean (true).
So far, there are only negative testing results in an Italian caper fit for 'Clue,' a whodunnit mystery with plenty of glucose drips, but not a lead pipe in the room.
Sports of The Times E-mail: selenasports@nytimes.com",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Miller Closes A Wide Gap To Capture The Silver
It was not over for Bode Miller. No race this year has been over if Miller has had at least one more shot at the leaders.
Sure, he had already fallen once today. But he somehow ricocheted from sideways in the snow to upright on his skis, a stupefying, perhaps life-saving recovery. As Miller said: 'I had to get up. If I didn't, I might have killed myself and some other people out there.'
Hours later, Miller's near-death experience was nothing more than a memory, a little snow shaken out of the speed suit.
Now he had just one chance left in the Alpine combined, a daylong event made up of one downhill run -- where Miller fell -- and two slalom runs. With the second slalom run remaining, Miller was significantly behind the leader, Norway's Andre Kjetil Aamodt, who just happens to be the most decorated skier in Alpine history.
How far behind was Miller? If it had been a football game, he would have been down by four touchdowns in the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl. In baseball, he would have been down by nine runs in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7 of the World Series. Basketball? Trailing Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls by 20 points in the final 10 minutes.
To win the goal medal, Miller needed to ski the 60 gates of a steep, challenging slalom course 2.44 seconds faster than Aamodt, a margin that is unheard of, especially against the reigning world champion in the event. 'But then,' Aamodt said later, 'I have never seen anybody ski so fast as this guy.'
Miller charged through his final run, a surge that electrified the crowd of 25,000 that began to chant 'Bo-de' as Miller descended the course. Miller closed the gap, a stunning comeback, but could not catch Aamodt, who won the gold medal in today's Alpine combined at the Snowbasin Ski Area by 0.28 of a second. Aamodt's combined time of 3 minutes 17.56 seconds was good enough for his sixth career Olympic medal and his first gold-medal performance in 10 years.
Miller's silver-medal charge, however, could well be the skiing moment of these Olympics, a rally that will be fable in years to come with Miller saving himself from disaster in the downhill, then skiing a final slalom run that was 1.81 seconds faster than anyone in the field -- and more than two seconds faster than 24 of the 25 competitors.
Benjamin Raich of Austria won the bronze medal with a combined time seven-tenths of a second behind Aamodt.
'It was a long, amazing day,' said Miller, whose medal is the seventh for the United States Ski and Snowboard Team at the Salt Lake Games.
Aamodt said, 'Bode is revolutionizing skiing in the slalom and giant slalom.'
Those are the two events Miller has left in these Olympics, events he will likely be favored to win after today's performance.
The three runs of the combined were contested on the same day for the first time in Olympic history. Aamodt, who held the record for most Olympic and world championship skiing medals (15) before today's event, quickly took the lead with the best downhill time. Miller, meanwhile, headed into the final section of the combined downhill course -- a shortened version of the regular Olympic downhill course -- after a few slips and skids; he was putting together an otherwise respectable time for a skier with little elite-level experience in a speed event.
'Then, suddenly, at about 60 miles an hour I was on my side sliding right toward my coaches on the edge of the course,' Miller said, describing his spill. 'I got up as fast as I could, not to finish the course so I could be second in the combined. I got up so I didn't kill myself and some coaches.'
Getting up was only half the miraculous recovery. Miller then had to shift his weight immediately from his right ski to his left, execute a tight right turn and soar over the Buffalo Jump with enough balance to land it and start turning again.
'That was an adventure,' said Miller, who was in 15th place after the downhill. 'It took maybe two-tenths of a second. It took years off my life.'
Behind Aamodt by 2.44 seconds after the downhill, Miller figured to whittle away at the difference in the first slalom run. Instead, he skied poorly again. His first slalom time was exactly the same as Aamodt's, leaving Miller with the same deficit. Several other skiers fell in the first slalom, so Miller jumped to the fifth spot over all, but he seemed to be skiing for a bronze medal at best. That would mean making up 76-hundredths of a second in the final slalom run.
But Miller, who has the chance to become the first American skier to win three Olympic medals, skis slalom these days with an attacking line and aggressiveness no other skier can match. He flew down the course, faster than anyone in the flush gates -- those placed in a straight line -- and faster than anyone when the gates were spread wide across the hill and required a deft side-to-side motion.
'He is in a class of his own,' Aamodt said. 'He is like Alberto Tomba was. If he can keep his focus, he can catch up with him.'
Aamodt is a gracious man whose skiing career is unmatched, even by Tomba, and not just for the number of Olympic medals. Aamodt has won medals in four Olympic events, a versatility rare these days.
But Aamodt is right about Miller, who seems to engender awe and respect like no other skier right now. The American skier Casey Puckett, who fell in the first slalom run today, was asked before the second slalom run if he thought Miller could make up the deficit to win a bronze medal.
'Bronze?' he said. 'No problem. Really, he should have no problem. But Bode is probably not thinking about bronze. Bode thinks big.'
OLYMPICS: ALPINE SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"The Other Side of the Mountain: Skiers Provide Lessons in Grit
THE details of Hermann Maier's folk tale are written in the topography of his oxlike body.
There is a plum-size skin graft that bulges from his right calf and zipper scars in his left leg from the insertion of a titanium rod. There is also an imprint of joy in his blue eyes.
He has never been considered the warm legend of Austria, with the grand Franz Klammer as a model. Klammer was of pristine farming land; Maier worked as a bricklayer. Klammer was more ballroom dancer on the slopes with his impeccable balance; Maier bulled through peril. Human vs. Herminator.
So how did Maier become all at once more mortal and mythic yesterday?
He won an Olympic silver medal in the super-G, able to mix his resilient spirit with his longevity of talent.
'To win a medal, it's perfect,' said Maier, 33. 'For me, for sure, it was hard work. If you have success after injury, it's a wonderful feeling -- and it's more than before.'
There is the Herminator before the motorcycle accident on Aug. 24, 2001, before a 73-year-old German turned his car without a signal on Highway 99 near Radstadt, before Maier ended up in a grassy bank looking at his nearly severed leg.
There is simply Hermann after the accident, the man who needed painkillers that altered his mood and the physical-therapy patient who had to learn to walk again.
Before and after merged yesterday on the podium.
What does this miracle of alchemy mean? It is possible for a man to control his own myth.
Somewhere, Bode Miller was adding to his dubious legend. He bolted out of the start hut, then, in less than the time between hiccups, slammed into a red gate high on the mountain. His left ski skipped against the snow behind him, twisting and turning like a broken helicopter blade, as he glided to the side of the course on one ski.
A few minutes later, after Maier's silver medal run, Miller was spotted sneaking down the far side of the course and skiing to a side exit, slipping behind the grandstand and disappearing.
Will Miller ever seize control of his legacy? Will he ever feel empowered to shape the memory of his talent?
There were two how-to examples yesterday. To the right of Maier in the news conference room was the gold medalist, Kjetil Andre Aamodt, 34, of Norway.
Aamodt and Maier have a common bond in recovery powers. In the 1998 Nagano Games, Maier flew off the men's downhill course, rolling like a tumbleweed as he crashed through two safety nets. He was finished, everyone said. Two days later, Maier won a gold medal in the giant slalom.
Not to play can-you-top-this, but Aamodt was once drip-fed during a bout with mononucleosis only to win a 1992 Olympic medal two months later. Two years ago, he lost a season to torn ankle ligaments but managed quite deftly to grab gold here on the rebound.
'When you are injured, you treasure what you don't have,' Aamodt said. 'It's a good life to be an Alpine skier, in my eyes.'
Maybe pure love of a sport makes all the difference. Sometimes, Miller is more apt to embrace the rebel glory of spectacular failure than honor his sport with accountability to expectation.
'Fame is almost a poison,' Miller told La Gazzetta dello Sport of Italy last week, adding, 'I could give up tomorrow without having the slightest regret.
'I could keep away from this world for a year and then perhaps start to feel the desire to prove something to myself again.'
Maier and Aamodt have proved that happiness and victory can live as one in their fish bowls. Maybe it's age, though Miller is not a swaddled newcomer at 28. Or maybe it's just adult perspective gained through life experience. Perhaps in his R.V., far removed from the medals presentation, Miller was probably living the life, absorbing his day's work with a beer.
'When you achieve something, it's better to lie on the bed and feel the good feeling inside of yourself,' Aamodt said. 'I don't feel like going out to party too much. I'm a father now; I have to be responsible.'
Maier and Aamodt act responsibly toward their own legacies. They respect the history they are making despite its consuming nature.
'I don't think there were sacrifices,' Aamodt said. 'The sport has given me a lot of opportunities.'
Why not make the most of them? On the podium, standing on surgically repaired legs, Maier added to his lore once again. He didn't have to lose skiing to understand his love for it; and yet it was briefly taken away on a highway.
'It's perfect for me to have this great feeling, to have fun with skiing and then to have victories, its big moments,' Maier said.
How many more big moments?
'I haven't thought about it in detail,' Maier said of retirement. 'As long as skiing is fun and not too much pressure, I think I can go on.'
He could smile at the thought of his next race. Human laugh lines, just another topographical mark in the Herminator's journey toward folk-tale status.
Sports of The Times E-mail: selenasports@nytimes.com",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Austria Regains Dominance In Alpine Championships
Order was restored to the Alps yesterday in St. Anton, Austria.
After three days of delays on the mountain and snowballing doubts in the Austrian camp, the world's best ski team finally performed like the world's best ski team: sweeping the medals in the women's downhill at the world championships and getting a silver medal from the local hero Mario Matt in the men's combined event behind Norway's versatile Kjetil Andre Aamodt.
Michaela Dorfmeister, the new downhill champion, is a speed skier with a big reputation, but she had struggled in downhill thus far this season. But yesterday, after a forced three-day break in which heavy snow gave way to unseasonably warm temperatures, the snow was soft and the contours of the downhill relatively unfamiliar, but the women were not allowed another training run. All they got was the chance to inspect the reworked course.
But by the time the last racer finished, the Austrians were back on familiar territory: Dorfmeister was flanked by the silver medalist, Renate Goestchl, and the surprise bronze medalist, Selina Heregger, whose best previous downhill finish was eighth.
'We weren't really worried about the unrest,' Goestchl said, referring to public concern over Austria's performance here. 'We knew we were good, and I think this result wipes away all the criticism.'
It was an odd, occasionally unsettling race. The third racer, Emily Brydon of Canada, lost control of her skis in the lower third of her run as she entered a tricky, bumpy section known as the power turn. Brydon went flying into the security fence at full speed, her neck snapping back, her left knee twisting awkwardly, and after she slid to a stop, she stayed down long enough for the crowd to fall silent. Brydon would eventually rise and limp off the course with what Canadian officials suspected was a torn medial collateral ligament in her knee and with what anyone could tell was a badly damaged helmet.
Goetschl, who started 11th, had gone ahead with a typically bold effort in which she made up a quarter of a second in the bottom half of the course to finish in 1 minute 36.34 seconds. But Dorfmeister, who finished second to Goetschl in 1999, would find a way to reverse the pecking order. With the crowd audibly ambivalent, she sailed across the finish line and blew kisses to the sky as soon as she saw her time of 1:36.20.
Aamodt, 29, won the men's combined with experience and precision. He has now won more medals (14) than any other male skier in Olympic and world championships competition, and his very predictable victory yesterday broke his three-way tie in the Alpine record book with his teammate Lasse Kjus and Marc Girardelli, the Austrian who raced for Luxembourg.
CHRISTOPHER CLAREY
PLUS: WINTER SPORTS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"A German Legend Loses to an Italian, Then Loses His Composure
Georg Hackl, the 35-year-old German luge legend, spent most of his postrace news conference today smiling about his silver medal and breezily dismissing his place in luge history.
But on the final question, Hackl coughed on his own tears and the interview ended in a hush as the once-invincible icon took a tissue from his pocket, succumbing to a history that truly mattered.
An Italian, Armin Zoeggeler, 28, dethroned Hackl today in the men's luge and foiled his chance to become the first Winter Olympian to win four straight gold medals.
With the International Olympic Committee president, Jacques Rogge, at Utah Olympic Park to see if Hackl would make luge history, Hackl, by winning a silver medal, still became the first Olympian to win medals in five consecutive Winter Games.
'It doesn't really matter to me,' Hackl said cavalierly, and then added his irreverent view of his place in the Olympic annals. When the explicit equivalent of 'never mind the history' had been translated into English, he grinned as the entire interview room roared.
Twenty minutes later, though, his face crumbled; Hackl surrendered to his emotions.
Hackl's father, Georg, died Dec. 28 at the age of 62 from a heart attack after congratulating his son for winning a local luge competition at a track in Bavaria.
Today, the son had to compose himself long enough to answer a questioner, haltingly: 'I want to dedicate it to my father. Who died. A few weeks ago.'
The moment was a powerful glimpse of a man who had been so consumed with the intricate technology of his sport and the drive for success that he had not publicly grieved. His competitors did not know how to comfort him, letting him walk off the podium alone.
Markus Prock, the 37-year-old Austrian who is a longtime rival of Hackl, won the bronze medal. He has never beaten Hackl in the Olympics.
This is likely to be Hackl's final Olympics, capping a career that started with a silver medal in Calgary in 1988. He said he would re-evaluate his career after next year's World Cup.
'I feel great to have this awesome career, especially in the Olympic Games, and maybe I am very lucky because you also need to have good luck to win medals,' Hackl said with a smile before being overcome.
'Sure, when you talk about Olympic history, O.K., statistically speaking, it would have been nice,' he said. 'But you know I don't really care about that. Sure enough it would have been unique. The gold has certainly been won by the best man.'
Zoeggeler, who was runner-up to Hackl in the 1998 Nagano Games and won the bronze at the 1994 Lilllehammer Games, won with a combined time today of 2 minutes 57.941 seconds. He led from the first run Sunday and finished more than three-tenths of a second ahead of Hackl. Zoeggeler held a lead of just 41-thousandths of a second coming into today's third run and widened that to 232-thousandths by opening with a track record.
That got Hackl's attention. 'I knew I no longer had the chance for a gold medal, because Zoeggeler appeared to be very self-confident and secure, like clockwork, and even a very major mistake couldn't have cost him his chance for a gold medal,' Hackl said.
He finished 329-thousandths of a second behind, in 2:58.270. Prock was third in 2:58.283. And Adam Heidt, the Long Islander from Northport, N.Y., finished fourth, the highest finish ever for the United States in singles luge. His time of 2:58.606 was more than a half-second behind Zoeggeler's.
Zoeggeler did not take any perspective from defeating Hackl. 'I came to compete well and later I will have the time to reflect on history, but not during competition,' said Zoeggeler, who is from a small town, Voiana, in the Dolomites.
Zoeggeler is the defending world champion, even though Hackl won four of the seven World Cup races this season.
Hackl's father witnessed the victory in Königssee, Germany, but on the way to the medal ceremony, he was stricken and rushed to the hospital. He never recovered.
Hackl returned to training the next day. He crashed in his first World Cup race after his father's death, then won the final World Cup race.
Prock and Zoeggeler praised Hackl as the ultimate technician and perfectionist, constantly tinkering with his Porsche-designed sled.
'When you watch him in the luge lying flat, you don't need to comment on him any more,' Prock said.
All morning a crowd of 14,000 lined the track, five and six deep, some even shirtless in the sun-kissed day. The crowd chanted the leaders' first names, reserving their loudest cheers for Heidt.
Heidt had a faster time than Hackl in the third run, but then his glove spike got turned around on his start, bloodying his right pinky, causing the briefest of delays and costing him a chance at the bronze medal.
'I definitely thought I could medal, but it just didn't happen,' Heidt said. 'But I was in fourth place and I'm psyched with that.'
Wendell Suckow was the previous highest finisher for the United States, a fifth in 1994. Heidt improved his ninth from the 1998 Olympics.
Later, he watched as the three friendly rivals from Europe joked during the postrace ceremony, as Prock and Hackl lifted Zoeggeler to form a pyramid. But everyone knew it was Hackl who had lifted the sport.
'Georg has made us a little more famous in Europe -- and hopefully a little more famous now in America,' Heidt said.
OLYMPICS: LUGE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"An American Crashes the Slopes
Bode Miller liked being on the victory stand with the two Austrian superstars today. He did not mind saying out loud that he wished he had the gold medal.
'You finish second, it's like, 'I'm second in the world,' ' Miller told friends this afternoon with ambivalent shrugs.
Actually, he tied for the silver medal, a rare occurrence in these days of nanosecond computing, with the reconstructed Hermann Maier in the super-G race. Stephan Eberharter won the gold medal in the world championships of skiing, which will continue for the next two weeks.
Miller has fought through the stereotype of being somebody from a counterculture background who grew up with no running water or electricity and who, in school as well as in skiing, did things his way, perhaps to his detriment. At 25, he could be the best young skier in the world, with Maier having turned 30 and Eberharter approaching 34.
To put it in American baseball terms, Maier and Eberharter are the Mantle and Maris of Alpine skiing, a very big sport in the mountains and even in the cities of old Europe.
Maier is the lusty people's choice, making an amazing comeback from a motorcycle injury. Eberharter skis in the reflected glow of Maier and is leading the World Cup overall standing, ahead of Miller.
Just to challenge the Austrians, to exchange little medalist pleasantries (in English) with these two big-timers, is a signal accomplishment for an American skier.
In 2001, Daron Rahlves won the super-G at the world championships, and Miller became the first American man to win consecutive slalom races since Phil Mahre won three straight giant slaloms in March 1983. The twins Phil and Steve Mahre won the gold and silver medals at the Sarajevo Olympics in 1984, but that was nearly two decades ago.
Miller won two silver medals in the 2002 Salt Lake Games and could have had a third except that he extended himself trying for the gold medal and flew off course. This year, battling Eberharter and watching Maier come back, he has outgrown the old labels.
'We're friends,' Miller said. 'We talk about the equipment.'
In the past, the Austrians respectfully talked about Miller as a wild and crazy guy. After a recent race, Eberharter said: 'He's a very good skier. He takes a lot of risks, especially today. But if you want to win, you have to take risks.'
Massimo Lopes Pegna, the American correspondent for La Gazzetta dello Sport, the Italian daily sports journal, recently described Miller's past slalom style as that of the cowboy who kicks open the swinging doors of the saloon and offers whiskey all around.
That might be changing. Today, Miller went up on the hill, as all skiers do, to survey the gates that had been set up Saturday after the skiers took practice runs. He learned from the first two skiers, who flew out of bounds because they had not read the hill.
To hear Miller talk about it later, in the intricate shop talk that links anybody with a special skill, every second of his 1 minute-39.57-second run was full of choices. At one point, he said, he had followed the tracks of earlier skiers, only to regret his decision.
'The wheels almost fell off,' he said.
He started 23rd and took the lead. Then Maier, starting 26th, tied him, fading in the final stretch. Eberharter came out of the 30th spot and finished in 1:38.80, and half the spectators went out for the local hot wine drink. The last 25 starters were filler. Form had held. Two Austrians and one Yank.
Later, Miller sat in a hotel lounge here and discussed his evolution as a racer.
'Every athlete has certain tools,' he said. 'I had balance and feel, but I was lacking in endurance and experience.'
He added, 'My speed crippled my consistency.'
He gravitated to the slalom, the highly technical event of repeated sharp turns around gates. He tended to take them on more than other skiers. He feels he was slow to adjust to the super-G, a faster event in which the gates are fewer, and is only now coming to grips with the downhill.
'It hasn't been my choice to not win,' Miller said the other day. 'I've been 5-6-7-8 in the super-G and downhill. I'm surprised I haven't had more of a breakthrough.'
Why did Miller go through a period of crash-and-burn?
'From what I can tell, he's always been chasing after a certain feeling, a certain speed, with not as much concern with technique -- chaotic, hellbent, all those terms you've heard,' said Phil McNichol, the new coach of America's Alpine skiers.
'He went out to conquer terrain and not trying to win.'
Statements like this have brought out the iconoclast in Miller. This is a young man whose parents retreated to rural New Hampshire to live off the land. They schooled him at home for a while and encouraged him to think independently, which did not always endear him to the teachers and ski coaches who came along later.
'I don't necessarily agree with Phil,' Miller said. 'It just took me time to gain experience.'
Now he is a big deal in this part of the world, where people recognize him at airport baggage claim areas. Back home, Miller is a rumor to the general public. 'My family and friends go online at 4 in the morning to check my times,' Miller said.
He understands that other sports have priority. He even uses a basketball simile to say that dynasties come and go, like the Celtics and the Bulls and maybe now the Lakers, and that the Austrians are in a surge right now. Twelve of the top 20 skiers in the World Cup standing are from Austria.
Miller sees no reason why the sports channels in the United States could not show the personalities and the skills of skiing -- and yes, even the crashes -- the way they do auto racing.
'Same thing,' he said. 'Speed, danger, objectivity. No judges deciding who won.'
Was this a dig at figure skating, the cash cow of the Winter Games? Miller did not elaborate. He had to clean up to go to the victory ceremony -- along with the two Austrians, his colleagues.
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"World Champion Dies of Brain Injuries
Régine Cavagnoud, the world champion super-G skier, died here this morning as a result of brain injuries from a collision in training.
Doctors at University Hospital pronounced her dead when it became clear after tests that her brain was no longer functioning. 'We lost the battle because her brain was no longer receiving the oxygen it needed,' said Dr. Norbert Mutz, head of the hospital's intensive care unit.
Cavagnoud, 31, who would have been a leading contender for France this February in the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, had been in a coma since the collision, which occurred Monday on the Pitztaler Glacier in Tyrol.
She underwent five hours of emergency surgery that evening after being transported to Innsbruck by helicopter with Markus Anwander, a German coach who was also injured. Anwander, 40, who has a fracture at the base of his skull and other head injuries, remained on artificial ventilation in intensive care but was in stable condition after spinal surgery.
Cavagnoud's death sent a shudder through her high-speed, high-risk sport and could cast a pall over the Olympic season. With skiers already concerned about competing in the United States because of terrorism, they will now have to cope emotionally with the loss of one of the sport's more respected competitors.
Cavagnoud, the world champion in the super-G last season and an eight-time winner on the World Cup circuit during her career, is the most prominent skier to die on the slopes since 1994. In January that year, Ulrike Maier of Austria crashed and died after slamming her head against a timing post in a downhill in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
Maier's death launched an intense re-examination of safety procedures during World Cup speed events and prompted several changes. Cavagnoud's death could generate a similar re-evaluation of training safety. The Innsbruck prosecutor's office is conducting an investigation of the accident and is examining Anwander's role.
'Sadly, an investigation of this sort looks to assign responsibility,' Bernard Chevalier, president of the French ski federation, said. 'For me, it's not important to designate who is responsible. What interests me is finding out why this happened, and for now we don't know exactly.'
It is difficult to find training sites in Europe during this period of the season, which began last weekend with two races in nearby Sölden. (Cavagnoud was third in the women's giant slalom.) The few Alpine glaciers with ski facilities are in high demand by top teams, and the German and French women's teams were training together on the same slope Monday, hardly an unusual arrangement.
A report from the Tyrolean provincial police said the accident was a result of a misunderstanding. While some German coaches were aware that Cavagnoud had started her run, Anwander 'did not receive the information, either because he didn't understand or because there was a technical problem.'
Cavagnoud, who, because of injuries and self doubts, had to wait until she was 30 to become a world champion, ended up having precious little time to savor it.
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Austria's Kronberger Built for Speed, and It Shows
There are many racing skills and techniques that can be mastered in training. Speed, however, is not one of them. In skiing, as in most sports, it is an innate gift, wholly natural to those who have it and wholly incomprehensible to those who don't.
For the two-time World Cup champion Petra Kronberger of Austria, the gift is a heightened sensitivity in the feet and legs that allows her skis to slide just a little faster than those of her competitors.
""I think I have an advantage over most of the other girls because I am able to compete in all four disciplines,"" said the 22-year-old Kronberger, who won her first overall World Cup title in 1989-1990, repeated last season and is leading in the current standings after a downhill victory at Serre Chevallier, France, last weekend.
""Most skiers specialize in technical races like slalom and giant slalom, or in speed races like Super-G and downhill. I am able to do well in all of them. I don't have to win every slalom or every downhill. I know that if I ski badly one day, I'll have a chance to make up for it the next."" Starting Off Right
It is a Friday evening in December, two races into the 1991-92 World Cup season. Kronberger had placed second and third in last week's opening slaloms at Lech am Arlberg, Austria. Now she and her teammates are preparing for Saturday's Super-G and Sunday's giant slalom here at Santa Caterina, in northern Italy.
She is off to a good start, she says. Nothing like last year's start, of course, when she literally left the rest of the field in her dust with three victories and a second place in the first four races of the season. The astonishing sprint provided her with so comfortable a lead that she was able to sit out seven races to rest the left knee she injured at the February world championships in Saalbach, Austria, and still finish the World Cup season with 312 points, 127 points ahead of the 1988-89 champion, Vreni Schneider of Switzerland.
Born in Pfarrwerfen, Kronberger began skiing at the age of 3 and was racing before her seventh birthday. At 15, she earned a spot on the Austrian ski team.
""Like any other Austrian girl, my idol at the time was Annemarie Moser-Proll,"" she says, remembering the legendary Austrian who won five consecutive World Cup titles between 1971 and 1975 and added a sixth in 1979.
""When I started working out with the national team, I saw that there were lots of girls who could ski. I thought that I had a chance to compete. But I knew it would be hard. You need more than talent and hard work to succeed in this sport. You have to ski well. You have to avoid injuries. And most of all, you need good luck.""
Kronberger climbed onto her first podium in World Cup competition with a third-place finish in the downhill at Zinal, Switzerland, in 1987-88. At the 1988 Calgary Olympics, where Schneider emulated Alberto Tomba of Italy by winning gold medals in both slalom and giant slalom, Kronberger's sixth place in the downhill went virtually unnoticed. Surprise Winner
Kronberger was not yet 21 when she won her first World Cup race, a downhill at Panorama, Canada, at the beginning of the 1989-90 season.
""It was a surprise for me,"" she said. ""I thought that I'd skied well, that maybe I'd be among the first three. But I didn't think that I would win.""
By season's end she had won two downhills, two giant slaloms and one slalom. And with an aggregate of 340 points, she had edged out her teammate Anita Wachter to win her first World Cup title.
""It was a very hard season, the first one,"" she said, her deep blue eyes reflecting the firelight at the Baita Sciatori lodge where the Austrian team stays in Santa Caterina. ""Especially when I was leading at the end. It was so hard to believe. I kept thinking that my luck would run out.""
Kronberger, who at 5 feet 8 inches and 136 pounds is small for a racer, particularly a downhiller, admits that she feels some pressure in light of her consecutive World Cup triumphs, and even more with the thought of the upcoming Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France. But she says that she felt far more pressure last season.
""I had to demonstrate that I didn't win the World Cup because of luck,"" she said.
""I wanted people to see that I deserved to win it because I ski well. This year it's different. I don't have as much to prove. I just want to do my best, to have fun, and to have some good results. I don't want to have to think about having to win the World Cup again.""
Santa Caterina had been lucky for Kronberger in her first championship season. The engaging Austrian won the giant slalom there and finished third in both the downhill and SuperG.
In her Saturday race, Kronberger missed a gate in the Super-G after having registered the fastest intermediate time. At the bottom, she was patient while repeating to waves of reporters how she had picked up speed coming into the sharp curve and failed to shift onto her downhill ski in time. And she was gracious, even flattered, when mobbed by a pack of autograph-seeking children. Only when she was finally alone with her Austrian coach, Raimund Berger, did she betray her disappointment by stamping her boot against the snow.
""One gate,"" she lamented. ""Just one gate."" Looking Out for Schneider
On Sunday, Kronberger fell during the second run of the giant slalom, which was won by Schneider. The 27-year-old Swiss skier, who won six out of seven giant slaloms and all seven slalom competitions on her way to a record 376 points in 1988-89, appears to be over the knee problems that have hampered her the past two seasons. Kronberger knows that Schneider will probably be her toughest competition for the overall World Cup title and also for a gold medal in the slalom and giant slalom at Albertville.
""The Olympics will definitely be the most important event of the year,"" said Kronberger, who believes that her major weakness as an athlete is a lack of confidence. In fact, she has never excelled in major competitions.
At the 1989 world championships at Vail, she did not win a medal. She did win the downhill at Saalbach last February. Yet she had been expected -- unrealistically -- to win medals in all five events before the partisan Austrian crowds. Instead, Kronberger fell at the next-to-last gate of the Super-G, still finishing sixth but wrenching her left knee, an injury that would keep her out of the slalom, giant slalom and combined races.
""It's probably the most important event in skiing,"" she said of the Olympics. ""I try not to think too much about that, either. But I'd like to win a medal there. And maybe I'd like to win a gold.""  SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Two Austrian Sisters Claim Top Luge Prizes
On this final day of women's luge in the XVI Olympic Winter Games, there was a gold and a silver medal for Doris and Angelika Neuner, the Austrian sisters. There was a bronze medal earned the hard way for Susi Erdmann of Germany, the favorite.
There was a fifth place for Cammy Myler of Lake Placid, N.Y., the highest ever for an American in Olympic luge, and a ninth place for Erica Terwillegar of Lake Placid.
For the other American, 29-year-old Bonny Warner of Mount Baldy, Calif., there was an unexpectedly low finish, 18th in a field of 24, which she accepted with serenity.
For Warner, the first American to score highly in international luge, there were also tears Tuesday night, tears this morning and more tears as she talked about the emotions pulling her.
For after 12 years of racing little sleds on her back at up to 80 miles an hour, after many early days of eating crackers and cheese and 89-cent chili specials and many nights of sleeping on floors because there was no money for better living, this was her last race. The best ambassador the sport ever had in America was retiring. Differing Perspectives
To most of the Americans, Warner's final race was disappointing. To her, it was not.
""I came here saying I wanted four good runs,"" she said. ""I had four good runs, not fast but good. So I'm happy. I would be happier if I finished higher.""
In truth, Warner's two runs Tuesday and two today were sluggish, and she often entered curves too high or too low. Myler raced well, a remarkable feat because a stomach virus has weakened her the last two days. She has frequently been dizzy, nauseous and sick. She fainted briefly after her last run.
Erdmann is the world champion. She also won the World Cup season-long series by a point from Myler, so she was the Olympic favorite and Myler a medal favorite. Instead, she won a medal only because Andrea Tagwerker of Austria, who started the day in third place, slid into a wall and finished seventh over all.
The fastest racers on this 1,258-yard, 14-turn course were the Neuner (pronounced niner) sisters from the Austrian Tyrol. Doris is 20 and Angelika 22. Their father got them into luge nine years ago. After Tuesday's two runs, Doris ranked first and Angelika second. They were so excited that they stayed up talking until 4 A.M.
Doris took the lead on Tuesday's first run and never lost it. She completed the four runs in 3 minutes 6.696 seconds. Angelika finished in 3:06.769, less than a 10th of a second behind. Erdmann was timed in 3:07.115, Myler in 3:07.973, Terwillegar in 3:08.547 and Warner in 3:09.757. Hi Mom! Hi Pop!
When the race had ended, Poppa and Momma Neuner, arm in arm past the finish line, hugged and kissed and cried and laughed. At the finish house, the sisters hugged and stared at each other, almost unsure if this was a dream.
Myler's fifth place was the best by an American woman or man in Olympic luge. The previous best was Warner's sixth place in 1988 in Calgary. If Warner had mixed feelings about losing that distinction, she could have been excused. Instead, she was thrilled.
""I really wanted Cammy to beat my finish in Calgary,"" Warner said, ""because that would mean we are doing better.""
Moments before Warner said that, she was in tears. She has been looking forward to retirement, but she has also dreaded it.
""It sank in last night,"" she said. ""We have to polish our runners before every race. As I did last night, I remembered it was the last time I had to do it. I cried. Then this morning, before the last run of my life, I couldn't stop crying. I got a newspaper and read it and I stopped crying. I'm O.K. now.""
Not quite. She started crying again.
For a week, the effervescent Warner had been reminiscing about her career, how she was introduced to the Olympics by being one of the 50 people selected to carry the Olympic torch in 1980 to Lake Placid, N.Y., how she was talked into trying the luge run there. It looked like fun, she said, but scary. Then a 7-year-old went whizzing down the course.
""How could I back out then?"" she said. 52 Crashes in Row
She tried it. She was hooked, and her life changed.
""When I started."" she said, ""I crashed 52 times in a row. I said this was ridiculous. I wanted to go home because I had a nonrefundable ticket. But I stuck with it, and I'm glad.
""I've spent so much time at this that it took me seven and a half years to graduate from Stanford. I've made 5,000 luge runs. This is the time for me to retire. At a certain point, you don't like spending all that time away from home. What are you missing? Life?
""No, I can't say that. I have a degree and a job I love, flying for United Airlines. But who wants to date someone who's away all the time. I'd like to have a family, and how can you do it with the life I've been leading. So it's time to quit.""  ALBERTVILLE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Maier Finishes First and Goes to Top of Standing
When Hermann Maier streaked past the red line into first place in Saturday's World Cup downhill, all of Austria seemed to erupt with shouts, drums and cowbells.
Maier, the country's greatest skier, looked up at the race board, which showed him over a third of a second in the lead, and shook his head in disappointment. It was not fast enough.
But at a peak speed of somewhere above 85 miles an hour, it still proved to be faster than everyone else. When his teammate, rival and the last conceivable spoiler, Stephan Eberharter, finished 32-hundredths of a second behind, Maier celebrated his 46th World Cup victory and a temporary return to the top of the overall World Cup standing nearly 33 months after an elderly German driver took a wrong turn into his motorcycle and nearly severed one of Maier's legs.
'I made mistakes,' Maier said after the race. 'I thought it would not be enough, but the others made the same mistakes.'
Friday, after a slower training run, Maier said that he was merely happy to be back in the running and was looking forward to next season. While the skiing world has been saying 'the Herminator is back,' Maier says he is still on the way up.
'I have still power, it's not the same as before, but it's getting better and better,' he said in English.
It was a superlative day for Austria, the skiing world's juggernaut. On Saturday, Austrians took the top four spots and 7 of the top 10 on a cloudless day, which softened and slowed the course named after another Austrian skiing legend, Karl Schranz, who was in attendance.
Maier, who cannot forget a loss, said he was happy to correct a past wrong by winning at St. Anton, where he had lost before his accident in August 2001.
'I won the race I lost three years ago,' he told reporters in the finish area.
While the Austrians were triumphant, the race was a disappointment for an ascendant American team led by Bode Miller and Daron Rahlves. Miller, ranked 31st in the downhill standing before the race, said he was satisfied with an eighth-place finish, but disappointed for his friend and his teammate Rahlves, who needed to stay ahead of Eberharter to have a realistic shot at capturing the season's downhill title.
'I don't know what happened,' said Rahlves, who spent the week recovering from illness and finished 11th, falling behind Maier to third in the downhill standing. 'I felt good coming down.'
But Miller, who spends much of the season in nearby Innsbruck, has served notice on the Austrians, who have taken to affectionately calling him the crash pilot for his aggressive style. At Friday's practice run, autograph-seeking Austrian children, who are bred to worship their national ski heroes, alternated synchronized calls for 'Hermann' and 'Bode.'
Watching the race Saturday, Schranz was impressed with Miller.
'Bode is a real threat and can take on anyone,' he said.
But Schranz questioned whether the versatile American should be competing in all four disciplines, which could tire him.
On Sunday, while Maier rests, Miller will compete in the slalom against Benjamin Raich, who lost the lead in the World Cup's overall standing on Saturday but has dominated slalom this season. The Austrians still consider Miller, now in fourth place, in the running for the overall title and a long-term risk.
If the top of the world is not high enough for Maier, it is still a remarkable distance from a roadside ditch two and a half years ago, when he lay with compound fractures that nearly ripped off his calf.
He says now that his first thought when he saw the damage was 'amputation' and that early on he only thought about walking.
In a new book written by his coach, Heinrich Bergmüller, Maier says that he suspected he would never ski again. 'When they took the bandages off and I saw my leg for the first time, I was close to tears,' he said. 'My calf was bigger than my thigh. I thought: 'That's supposed to fit into a ski-boot. That will never, ever happen again!' ' he told Bergmüller.
But less than a week after doctors screwed his legs back together, while bruises left him temporarily unable to feel sensation in his lower torso, he was already using a hand-crank ergometer for stamina training in his hospital bed. Walking did not take long. He was back on skis 144 days later and won his first race in Kitzbühel last year, 521 days after the crash.
At the finish Saturday, it was clear Maier was back in world-class form. And it was hard to imagine that his calves could ever be larger than his thighs.
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Crystal Night: Vienna, '38
LEAD: The day began with a thudding. Jolts waked me. It was six in the morning. We were Jews in Vienna in 1938. Everything in our lives, including our beds, stood on a cliff.
The day began with a thudding. Jolts waked me. It was six in the morning. We were Jews in Vienna in 1938. Everything in our lives, including our beds, stood on a cliff.
We looked down into the courtyard. Pinked-cheeked storm troopers chatted and whistle. Chopped-up furniture flew through the window. One hummed something from 'The Merry Widow.'
'Franz! Run somewhere!' my mother said to my father. By that time we'd gone to the window facing the street. At the house entrance two storm troopers lit cigarettes for each other. Their comrades were smashing the synagogue on the floor below us, tossing out Torahs and pews.
'All right,' my father said. 'Meanwhile we get dressed.'
Meanwhile meant until they come up here. No other Jews lived in the building. It had no back door.
We met in the living room. We saw each other dressed with a normality made grotesque by the crashing of the perdition downstairs. It stopped. Silence. A different sound. Heavy, booted steps ascending.
My father had put on his hat. 'Everybody come close to me,' he said. 'My two sons, you put your hands on top of your heads.'
We put our hands on top of our heads, as hats. My father put his arms around all our shoulders, my mother's, my brother's, mine.
'Shema Yisroel,' my father said. 'Repeat after me: Shema Yisroel Adonoy Elohenu Adonoy Echod.' 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.'
The doorbell rang. Once. Ever since the Anschluss, we'd rung our doorbell twice in quick succession to signal that this was a harmless ringing, not the dreaded one. Now the dreaded ring had come. 'Hansi, you go,' my father said. 'No!' my mother said.
'Hansi is the only one they might not hurt on sight,' my father said.
My brother, a tiny blond 8-year old, an Aryan-looking doll, went.
A minute later he returned. Behind him towered some 10 storm troopers with heavy pickaxes.
'House search,' the leader said. 'Don't move.' We all stood against the wall, except my father. He placed himself, hat still on, a foot in front of us.
They yanked out every drawer in every one of our chests and cupboards, and tossed each in the air. They let the cutlery jangle across the floor, the clothes scatter.
'I am going to the office,' my father said. 'Breitel might help.'
Breitel, the Reich commissar in my father's costume jewelry factory, was a 'good' Nazi. Once he'd said we should come to him if there was trouble. My father left.
I began to pick up clothes, when the doorbell rang again. It was my father. 'I have two minutes.' 'What?' my mother said. But she knew. His eyes had become glass.
'There was another crew waiting for me. They gave me two minutes.'
I broke down. Now my father was the only one not crying. His eyes were blue glass, relentlessly dry. After one more embrace with my mother he marched to the door, turned on his heel, called out. 'Fritz!' I went to him, sobbing. 'Stop!' I couldn't stop.
Harshly his hands came down on my shoulders. 'If I don't come back - avenge me!'
He was gone. The fury of his fingers stung. I stopped.
Four months later he rang our doorbell twice, skull shaven, skeletal, released from Dachau.
Forty years later, today, he is practicing the tango with my mother in Miami Beach. Hansi is chairman of the political science department at Queens College. I am a writer in America with an American family. We are lucky. But to this day we all ring our American doorbells twice.
Nov. 10, 1978  PERSONAL",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"A U.S. Fed Cup Neophyte To Open With Austria Ace
At a draw ceremony that was as understated as this women's international team competition is underrated, it was determined that this weekend's Fed Cup quarterfinal between the United States and Austria will begin with a singles match between a Fed Cup neophyte from Michigan and the 29-year-old veteran who is Austria's leading lady of tennis.
Amy Frazier, hastily inserted after sixth-ranked Lindsay Davenport withdrew because of food poisoning, will face 22d-ranked Judith Wiesner in the first of the five matches at the Turnberry Isle Resort on Saturday. The pair have met just once before, with the experienced Wiesner prevailing.
""But what happened in the past doesn't have any bearing on the tennis I'll play tomorrow,"" said Frazier, who gave herself a solid dose of confidence last Sunday when she defeated eighth-ranked Kimiko Date in the Japan Open final. ""I should have my hands full because Judith is the kind of player who runs down a lot of balls, but I'm really excited about this.""
The newcomer is the only member of the United States squad who, according to the captain, Billie Jean King, has been thrilled about every aspect of the team, from King's pep talks to Martina Navratilova's tips on singles to ""the two little American flags embroidered on her skirt."" Said King: ""I selected Amy not just because she's our third-highest ranked player behind Lindsay and Mary Joe Fernandez. She's a great team player, and I felt she deserved a chance.""
That's why Frazier and not Navratilova, who will content herself with a doubles role alongside Gigi Fernandez, was King's instant choice for the vacant spot.
""To tell the truth, I felt a little funny not naming Martina as our No. 1 singles player,"" King said. ""I was a little worried when I told her I didn't think she earned or deserved to play singles as much as the other girls did. But she took it really well; she said she never expected to play singles and felt lucky to be on the team at all.""
In Saturday's second singles match, 12th-ranked Mary Joe Fernandez will tackle a surprise second-stringer in 118th-ranked Barbara Schett. Despite being ranked behind the two other members of Austria's team, the 19-year-old was chosen to play on the strength of reaching the third round on Lipton's hard courts last month.
Wiesner, who will also play doubles with Petra Schwarz-Ritter on Sunday, said she did not want Schett to feel pressured. The pressure, said Wiesner, is all hers.
""I wanted to play the first match,"" she said, ""because it's going to be the key match for us to have any chance at all.""  TENNIS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Jews and Catholics Confront Key Issues In Talks at Vatican
LEAD: Top Jewish and Catholic leaders, in an unusual candid discussion intended to pave the way for Pope John Paul II's visit to the United States next week, threshed over their differences today about the Pope's audience with Kurt Waldheim, the role of the church during the Holocaust and the diplomatic status of
Top Jewish and Catholic leaders, in an unusual candid discussion intended to pave the way for Pope John Paul II's visit to the United States next week, threshed over their differences today about the Pope's audience with Kurt Waldheim, the role of the church during the Holocaust and the diplomatic status of Israel.
The participants described the atmosphere here as one of 'amity,' but they said they faced sharply divergent views on some points.
Remarkable in itself, today's seven-hour discussion was a prelude to a more historic meeting Tuesday between the nine Jewish officials and the Pope himself, where these tense issues are to be dealt with in what the Jewish leaders hope will be a free give-and-take.
The participants expressed hope that after these meetings, they would be able to establish some sort of continuing, formal process for exchanging Catholic-Jewish concerns. This might avoid the sort of conflict that arose over the Pope's June audience with President Waldheim of Austria, who served in a German Army unit in World War II that has been implicated in the deportations of Jews in Greece.
Although the public declaration tonight emphasized the amiable atmosphere, Catholics and Jews who took part in today's meeting said there were some sharp exchanges.
When the Jewish leaders expressed their dismay at the Pope's decision to meet with Mr. Waldheim - who has said he had nothing to do with persecution of Jews during the war - they were told, according to participants:
'If the Pope said absolutely no, then the highest moral authority of the church would be saying to Waldheim you are indeed guilty of what you are accused of, and the Pope could not have done so. He didn't have the evidence.'
The Jewish spokesmen argued that by meeting with him, the Pope was declaring Mr. Waldheim innocent.
'We discussed how our perceptions can differ over the same events,' said Dr. Eugene Fisher, the executive secretary for Catholic-Jewish relations of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Jewish Body's Advertisement
At another point, several participants said, one of the American Catholics vigorously protested an advertisement run by the American Jewish Congress condemning the granting of the Waldheim audience. According to participants, Dr. Fisher suggested the advertisement appeared to revive the charge in Rolf Hochuth's play 'The Deputy,' that Pope Pius XII, for purely political and personal reasons, did not speak out about the Holocaust.
Participants said that Henry Siegman, the executive director of the American Jewish Congress, explained that the advertisement was merely stating that Pope Pius XII did not directly condemn the persecution and execution of Jews, without attributing any motives to him.
Catholic officials have said that Pius did not condemn the deportations and roundups of Jews because of fear that such statements would imperil Jews hiding in Catholic institutions. Prompted by Waldheim Outcry
This week's meetings at the Vatican were arranged after an outcry by Jewish spokesmen at the Waldheim audience and warnings by some Jewish organizations that they might not attend a largely ceremonial meeting Sept. 11 with the Pope in Miami, an early event in John Paul's visit to the United States. They sought a substantive discussion of issues that have been festering for many years, and by many accounts, today's meeting was that.
'It was a rewarding meeting,' said Rabbi Henry Waxman, the president of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations. 'All the issues were discussed quite fully. We spoke in an atmosphere of amity. There were no confrontations.' 'It was very positive,' said Bishop William Keeler of Harrisburg, Pa., the chairman of the American Bishops Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs. Ecumenical Lunch Break
The 18 officials met around a horseshoe table at the offices of Johannes Cardinal Willebrands, president of the Vatican's Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism. They began at 9:30 in the morning and finished at 6:30 P.M. At midday they broke for a kosher lunch of a beef, beans and eggplant goulash at the Hotel Columbus across the street.
The ecumenical stirrings behind the meeting were symbolized in the plates, which bore the cross of the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher but had been rendered kosher beforehand by a Roman Jewish caterer.
Four Jewish officials made presentations about each of the four agenda items: the Holocaust, diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Israel, the state of Jewish-Catholic relations, and anti-Semitism.
While participants were reluctant to provide details of the exchanges, drafts of statements made by three of the presenters were made available to The New York Times.
One, by Rabbi Alexander M. Schindler, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, said that Jews were 'pained and puzzled' by a number of homilies offered by John Paul II in which 'the charge of Jewish responsibility for the death of Christ is revived, Jews are rebuked for their continuing rejection of Christianity's fundamental premise, and the validity of Judaism as a living faith is brought into question.'
Dr. Fisher replied that the Pope, in the criticized homilies, was essentially paraphrasing the Gospel. Jews must remember, he said, that such gospel passages have been given new interpretations since Vatican II, cautioning believers not to represent Jews as rejected by God.
In the working paper on the Holocaust, Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, the director of international relations for the American Jewish Committee, said the Waldheim audience was the 'capstone' of 'revisionist tendencies' in the Roman Catholic Church that 'minimize or obscure Jewish martyrdom.' These included the erection of Catholic churches and convents at Nazi concentration camps.
But Rabbi Tanenbaum said after the meeting that he had admitted he was wrong in accusing the Pope of excluding Jews as victims during his visit to the Majdanek concentration camp last May. In fact, Rabbi Tanenbaum said, the Pope did not mention any nationalities; the rabbi blamed erroneous news reports for his mistake. The Vatican and Israel
On Israel, Seymour Reich, president of B'nai B'rith International, said that the Vatican's failure to extend full diplomatic recognition 'is perceived by Jews as a refusal by the Catholic Church to acknowledge the essence of their identity.'
According to one participant, Vatican leaders responded that they were reluctant to extend such recognition to Israel until greater efforts were made to solve the problems of uprooted Palestinians. They also asserted that they were afraid that recognition would bring reprisals against Christians living in Arab lands.
The other Jewish officials present today were Rabbi Leon Klenicki, director of interfaith affairs for the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith; Rabbi Gilbert Klaperman, president of the Synagogue Council of America; Dr. Jeffrey Wigoder of the Israel Interfaith Committee, and Dr. Gerhardt Reigner, co-chairman of the governing board of the World Jewish Congress.
In addition to Cardinal Willebrands, Bishop Keeler, and Dr. Fisher, the Catholic officials included the Rev. Pierre Duprey, vice president of the Vatican Commission for Religious Relations with Judaism; the Rev. Pier Francesco Fumagalli, secretary of the commission; Msgr. Luigi Gatti, of the Council for Public Affairs of the Church, the Vatican foreign ministry; Archbishop Jorge M. Mejia, vice president of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace; and Msgr. John A. Radano and Msgr. Eric Salzmann, both officials of the Secretariat for Christian Unity.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Justices Allow Suit Against Austria to Regain Art
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the 88-year-old niece and heir of an Austrian Jewish art collector can pursue her lawsuit against the Austrian government and its national art gallery for the return of six paintings by Gustav Klimt that belonged to her family before the Nazi takeover.
The court did not rule on the merits of the lawsuit, filed in federal court in California by the woman, Maria V. Altmann, and Justice John Paul Stevens indicated in his majority opinion that important defenses remain available to Austria as the case proceeds to the next phase.
While Austria has returned $1 million worth of art to the family of the collector, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, including drawings by Klimt, it maintains that the Bloch-Bauers intended to bequeath the six disputed paintings, now worth over $100 million, to the state museum. Therefore, Austria argues, the paintings are its legitimate property today despite having been illegitimately expropriated by the Nazis after the family fled Vienna in 1938.
The issue for the Supreme Court was jurisdictional: whether the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a law passed in 1976 to open the federal courts to specific categories of cases against foreign governments, applies to conduct that predated the law's enactment. By a vote of 6 to 3, the court's answer was yes. The decision affirmed a 2002 ruling by the federal appeals court in San Francisco, although in reaching that outcome, the Supreme Court applied a different legal analysis.
In affirming the retroactive applicability of the 1976 law, the decision may open the door to additional World War II-era lawsuits, but the category of cases the decision will actually assist is likely to be small. Claims against Germany and Japan, for example, were addressed by the treaties that ended the war and in the view of many legal experts cannot be pursued in private lawsuits.
The case the court decided Monday has attained high visibility as one of a handful concerning art looted by the Nazis that has made progress through the courts. Tens of thousands of important works stolen from Jews throughout Europe are still missing, and resolution of the claims has been slow for a variety of reasons.
The connection between the Bloch-Bauer family and the art at issue in this case is stunningly apparent: two of the paintings are portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer, Ferdinand's wife and Ms. Altmann's aunt. Mrs. Bloch-Bauer died in 1925, leaving a will in which she asked her husband at his own death to leave the paintings to the Austrian Gallery.
However, the works belonged not to her but to her husband. By the time he fled Vienna in 1938, he had made no legal arrangements to donate the paintings to the government or its museum. When he died in Switzerland in 1945, the paintings remained in his estate although they were no longer in his hands. Ms. Altmann, who also escaped Austria and has lived in California since 1942, is his only surviving heir.
After the war, the family made several efforts to retrieve the paintings. The current effort began in 1998, after a newspaper report based on the museum's records indicated that the Austrian government was aware that the Bloch-Bauers had not donated the paintings. Ms. Altmann turned to the federal courts when she learned that under Austrian court rules, she would have to pay $350,000 in court costs in order to bring her lawsuit there.
Retroactivity has been a vexing issue for the Supreme Court, which has developed a set of criteria for deciding when it is reasonable to apply a new law to past conduct. In opposing the lawsuit, Austria argued that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act could not provide jurisdiction and, further, that if the law did apply in a general sense, the specific section that Ms. Altmann invoked did not apply to her case.
The lower federal courts found in Ms. Altmann's favor, both on the retroactivity question and on the specific issue of the applicability of a section that permits suits for expropriation of property in violation of international law. In accepting the appeal, Republic of Austria v. Altmann, No.03-13, the Supreme Court agreed to decide only the retroactivity issue. It let stand the ruling on the specific section, meaning that the lawsuit can now go forward in Federal District Court in Los Angeles.
In his majority opinion, Justice Stevens cautioned that the ruling was narrow and that Austria could still defend itself on various diplomatic grounds. The United States government opposed the lawsuit, following a longstanding policy of preferring to keep such issues in the realm of diplomacy rather than federal court. Justice Stevens said that as the case proceeds, the government's views on the particular issues were entitled to deference.
The majority said that applying the law retroactively was 'most consistent with two of the act's principal purposes,' namely clarity, in handling claims of foreign immunity and 'eliminating political participation in the resolution of such claims.' Congress passed the law in part to relieve the executive branch of having to take a position in politically sensitive cases, Justice Stevens noted.
Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer joined the opinion. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy dissented in an opinion that Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas also signed. He said the decision would 'weaken the reasoning and diminish the force of the rule against the retroactivity of statutes, a rule of fairness based on respect for expectations.'
In a separate development on Monday, the court removed a legal obstacle for the Bush administration to put into effect a long-delayed policy of letting Mexican long-haul trucks serve United States markets.
For more than 20 years, Mexican trucks have been limited to a 20-mile-wide zone along the border under a policy that in Mexico's view violated the North American Free Trade Agreement. An international arbitration panel agreed with Mexico in 2001, but the new policy has been dogged by environmental concerns. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled last year that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the agency within the Department of Transportation charged with issuing rules for the new policy, had not adequately assessed the impact on air quality of permitting Mexican long-haul trucks both to idle at the border while being inspected and to drive the interstate highway system while serving their new markets.
The Supreme Court unanimously overturned that decision on Monday in an opinion by Justice Thomas. He said that because the agency had no policy-making role, but only the limited task of proposing regulations, it was not legally obliged to conduct a full environmental review.
The administration said it would immediately begin to process applications from Mexican truck companies. The outcome may not be popular in the border states that are still trying to meet targets under the Clean Air Act. California and eight other states filed a brief opposing the new policy, which Attorney General Bill Lockyer of California described Monday as an 'environmental blow.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Austrians Assert Downhill Dominance
At the world championships a year ago in St. Anton, Austria, the American Daron Rahlves silenced a mountainside of clanging cowbells and cheering hometown fans with a stunning victory over the famed Austrian skiers in the super-G competition. Neither Hermann Maier nor his noted Austrian teammates, Stephan Eberharter and Fritz Strobl, could outrace the risk-taking Rahlves, who for the next 12 months was promoted as the logical American candidate to halt years of Austrian dominance at the Winter Olympics.
Today's Olympic downhill was only the first of 10 Alpine events at the Salt Lake Games, but the Austrians used it to give Rahlves and his American teammates a little payback. With smooth, clean turns through the technically challenging Grizzly course at the Snowbasin Ski Area and an attacking line that was aggressive but not foolhardy, Strobl won the gold medal in a mild upset over Eberharter, who was third. Strobl, a 29-year-old police officer, became the sixth Austrian to win the Olympic downhill since it was introduced in 1948. The Austrians have now won 16 of the 46 downhill Olympic medals awarded.
Norway's Lasse Kjus was the silver medalist, repeating his finish from the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Rahlves charged brazenly from the start house, but his eagerness produced a heedless decision at the precipice of the Grizzly course's first major challenge and most treacherous spot. At the lip of the Flintlock jump, Rahlves took a chancy line and pressed his skis with too much speed, a tactic that vaulted him a spectacular 160 feet down the mountain. It was the day's most majestic jump, but by the time Rahlves landed, he was hopelessly out of position for the next turn and out of contention in the race.
Losing roughly a second in that section of the course to Strobl, Rahlves finished 16th.
'I came into Flintlock too strong,' Rahlves said. 'Right away, I was trying to get back down on the ground, but it was too late.'
Rahlves finished nearly two seconds behind Strobl, whose winning time was 1 minute 39.13 seconds. Kjus's time was 1:39.35 and Eberharter was 0.06 of a second behind Kjus.
Strobl's victory was unexpected because Eberharter had been the dominant skier during this season's World Cup, winning the overall downhill title with five victories. But Strobl came to today's event ranked second, and tellingly, he had two career victories at Kitzbühel, the world's most feared downhill course.
Since the Grizzly course had been lauded as a worthy rival of Kitzbühel, Strobl's experience with high speeds -- skiers averaged about 70 miles an hour today -- and tight turns figured to come in handy. Afterward, however, Strobl said the Grizzly course was not in Kitzbühel's class.
'You can hardly compare it,' he said.
Others, however, found today's course frightening. The top American finisher, Marco Sullivan, a 21-year-old first-time Olympian who finished ninth, said going any faster would have meant risking death.
Told of Sullivan's comments, Strobl said with a smirk, 'If you want to win, you have to risk something.'
Under sunny skies with no wind, Eberharter was the ninth skier to challenge the course, and though he twice reached 85 m.p.h., he skied with a calm upper body and strayed infrequently from his intended line. It was clear the Austrian team favored a less chancy approach to Grizzly's three major jumps as Eberharter, Strobl and their teammate Christian Greber, who finished sixth, took relatively little air on their jumps. It proved to be faster.
But Eberharter made two small mistakes in the Grizzly midsection and in the final steep descent, the last  in full view of a crowd of 25,000.
'It was not my best day, but I have other days yet,' Eberharter said.
Strobl, who later said he did not believe he had skied an aggressive race, judged the angle of his turns through the 38 gates of the 1.9-mile course just slightly better than anyone else. While the downhill often produces hair-raising, daredevil moments for the eventual victor, Strobl's run relied more on high-speed, controlled precision. No part of his effort stood out. He was consistent throughout.
Of the medal winners, Kjus had the most entertaining run, his skis skittering at times in bumpy turns. 'I am older,' said Kjus, 32. 'I have to take chances.'
Although the Grizzly course clearly put the majority of the field of 53 through a tortuous challenge, there were no crashes, which may have been because of good visibility and the clear recent weather that allowed organizers to make the course fast but generally even.
One skier, Paul Joyce-Schwarzacher of Ireland, fell but got up quickly to finish last. Another, Pierre-Emmanuel Dalcin of France, lost one ski yards from the finish but managed to charge through the gate for 11th place.
The Americans were disappointed by Rahlves's position but nonetheless encouraged by Sullivan's apparent breakthrough. Sullivan is a World Cup rookie and was skiing as a junior two years ago. Jakub Fiala was 27th and Scott Macartney was 29th.
'We have many other races yet,' Rahlves said. 'I'll have to lick my wounds for a few hours, but the Olympics are far from over at this point.'
The Austrians were pleased to have restored what they saw as a certain proper order to the skiing world.
'Skiing is the national sport, so there was a lot of pressure competing at home,' Strobl said when asked about last year's world championships. 'Maybe there was less here. But it will be nice to bring these two medals home. Very nice for all Austrians.'
Kjus joked that he had been made an Austrian sandwich.
'You know some of the world's best skiers are Austrians who can't get to the Olympics,' Kjus said. 'They are beaten in their national qualification races.'
Kjus smiled. 'It's tough to be an Austrian,' he said.
OLYMPICS: ALPINE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Minimizing Revenge, Austria Sweeps U.S.
Michael Walchhofer won a World Cup downhill here on Saturday, leading an Austrian sweep that he said had nothing to do with revenge against the United States ski team.
At the circuit's previous stop, in Colorado last weekend, the Americans Daron Rahlves and Bode Miller finished 1-2 in the downhill and swapped places in the next day's giant slalom.
But as the tour returned to Europe, the American duo looked mortal: Miller was tied for seventh and Rahlves was 14th here in the hometown of Jean-Claude Killy, who won three gold medals in the 1968 Winter Games.
'I skied pretty well today but made a few mistakes,' said Miller, who draws a distinction between his results and his confidence, and would like American fans to do the same.
He said that he did not care that he had won last week in Beaver Creek, Colo., 'but I cared that the race was so exciting.'
After the Americans' dominating performance in Beaver Creek, the Austrian team left town demoralized. Walchhofer, the top-ranked downhill skier in the world last season, left a day early to spend time with his family. In May he became the father of twins, Mathias and Patrick.
'I was missing the fun,' said Walchhofer, who owns a hotel in Altenmarkt, Austria.
Walchhofer completed the undulating track here in 2 minutes 0.15 seconds. His countrymen Fritz Strobl and Hans Grugger were 0.52 and 0.95 seconds behind. For their efforts, local organizers awarded them 99-pound wheels of Beaufort cheese.
Hermann Maier finished ninth, and was only the fifth-fastest Austrian. Unless he improves soon, he may lose out in the fight within his team for start positions at the Olympic downhill in February.
An Olympic downhill gold medal is one of the few trophies in the sport that Maier has yet to win, but he may not even qualify for the Games. He was fourth and 19th in the season's previous downhills.
But Maier will have five more World Cup downhills to prove his mettle. 'I think with Hermann it will just click and he is back,' Walchhofer said.
Miller and Rahlves will not visit home soil again until after the World Cup season ends in March. So it was with great relief that the two settled into the motor homes that were waiting for them this week in Val d'Isère, a small ski town 50 miles up a narrow valley from Albertville, the host city for the 1992 Winter Olympics.
The only skiers on the Alpine World Cup circuit who forgo central Europe's extravagant resort hotels, Rahlves and Miller opt to travel in customized vehicles.
Miller caused a stir in 2003 when he first started camping, as the European news media called it. He hired a childhood friend to drive his 26-foot vehicle up snowy switchbacks to the World Cup's staging areas.
Although such accommodations are normal in auto racing or the music business, European ski fans find endless novelty in the American convoy. At many places, groups of parents and children gather on the morning of the race to watch Miller and Rahlves emerge from their vehicles, which are usually parked alongside television production trucks.
A much discussed feature of Miller's motor home is a giant flat-screen television, on which he plays video games -- sometimes between legs of a race.
This year, Miller said, the top feature of his motor home is a set of custom foam pillows from his aunt.
'I hate waking up and having a sore ear from having it mussed up in the pillow the wrong way,' he said.
WINTER SPORTS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Twilight Tales, Upbeat and Otherwise
No scriptwriters are required when it comes to sports. The true stories are routinely dramatic and sensationalist enough. There is no need to jazz them up for wider consumption -- from figure skating's Russian mafia connections, to Lance Armstrong's comeback from cancer, to Andre Agassi's and Steffi Graf's beyond-the-baseline romance to a laundry list of other fiction-defeating plots and subplots.
There were two more examples just this week: one uplifting, one profoundly disturbing, both thoroughly unexpected.
Seventeen months ago, Hermann Maier, the world's greatest skier, was lying in the grass on the side of an Austrian road after a motorcycle accident, staring at his crushed, bleeding right leg in horror and pleading with those gathered around him to save it. But even on this unlucky summer evening, Maier would experience some good fortune: he had crashed about 200 yards from a medical clinic staffed by doctors who had known him for years. Within minutes they were at his side. Within two hours, he was on the operating table in Salzburg, fighting successfully for his life and limb during seven hours of surgery.
Saving his career took quite a bit longer, and though Maier looked like a beaten man as he limped around Flachau with dark circles under his eyes when I visited him in October 2001, he looked every bit the champion again on Monday when he won a super giant slalom race in Kitzbühel.
Elite skiing is replete with comeback tales, but Maier's return is exceptional. What filters through most is that Maier is a talented, driven, stubborn man.
Of course, stubbornness in sports can be a handicap as well as a strength. Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones, the world's fastest man and woman, could presumably have their pick of any track coach in the world with the 2004 Summer Olympics looming. So whom have they chosen to train with this off-season after unsentimentally severing ties with Trevor Graham? Their choice appears to be Charlie Francis, the Canadian who was the brains behind Ben Johnson's steroid-driven dash to tainted medals and records in the 1980's.
It sounds like a poor joke; a vicious rumor. Why, with the continuing concern about doping in track and field, would two of its biggest stars choose to risk guilt by association? An article on Tuesday in L'Equipe, the French sports daily, was headlined 'Les liaisons dangereuses' and detailed a reporter's visit to York University in Toronto, where he had a close encounter with Montgomery, Jones and Francis at a soft-drink vending machine between training sessions.
Montgomery and Jones have yet to comment publicly on the connection with Francis. What is clear is that Graham is no longer coaching them, despite the fact that Montgomery established a world record of 9.78 seconds last September and that Jones, the Olympic champion at 100 and 200 meters, had an undefeated season last year.
In December, Jones announced that she had hired Derek Hansen, a former Canadian long jumper, as her coach. That was surprising but not illogical, considering that she wants to win the Olympic long jump in Athens and her technique remains far from ideal. Jones made no mention of Francis in her announcement, but she and Montgomery have since been seen training with Hansen and Francis.
The International Association of Athletics Federations, track's governing body, is understandably concerned and wants a clarification from Jones and Montgomery about their work with Francis. Francis was banned for life from coaching Canadian athletes in 1990 after a two-year investigation into doping in the wake of Johnson's positive drug test at the 1988 Summer Olympics. American track officials have also expressed concerns to Jones and Montgomery, and the organizers of track's most prestigious one-day meets, the Golden League, are mulling over the possibility of keeping Jones and Montgomery out of their events.
With track and field struggling to maintain its appeal to youth and sponsors, the last thing it needs is a continuing story that calls into question its stars' ethics. There is nothing illegal about working with Francis. No national federation but Canada has banned him, and it has, after all, been 15 years since Johnson was caught after winning the Olympic 100 meters in Seoul.
And on Friday, I.A.A.F. officials seemed to take a conciliatory stance toward the controversial coach, saying they would back full reinstatement of Francis if he issues a statement against the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Later Friday, Francis released a statement defending the reputations of the American sprinters and stating he no longer is involved with performance-enhancing drugs.
'Tim and Marion have proven to me that athletic performances at the very highest level can be achieved without resort to performance-enhancing drugs,' Francis said.
When Jones and Montgomery do comment, they might argue that Francis deserves a second chance. They could also argue that they are not the only athletes working with compromised mentors. Dwain Chambers, Britain's top sprinter, is training on occasion with Dennis Mitchell, the former American star who served a two-year ban for steroids at the end of his career.
Jones and Montgomery would have two good points. But Francis, fairly or unfairly, is a symbolic figure in the sport's tarnished past, and he has hardly struck a repentant tone over the years, arguing as recently as 2000 that the quandary confronting today's athletes remained: break the rules or lose.
Francis could say that he, at least, is no hypocrite, but whether he is right or wrong, Jones and Montgomery have a responsibility to address and allay the concerns of the sport's remaining fans.
And they are hardly doing so by training under Francis's watch.
BackTalk",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Judge Denies Bail to Woman Extradited on Drug Charges
LEAD: A woman extradited from Austria will remain in jail without bond to face charges that she operated an international marijuana-smuggling ring, a Federal district judge has ruled.
A woman extradited from Austria will remain in jail without bond to face charges that she operated an international marijuana-smuggling ring, a Federal district judge has ruled.
The 58-year-old woman, Linda L. Leary, former president of the Indianapolis League of Women Voters and the local chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women, might try to flee before her Feb. 13 trial if bail was granted, Judge Larry J. McKinney said Tuesday in overturning a Federal magistrate's ruling allowing bond.
Judge McKinney said testimony from investigators showed that Mrs. Leary and her sons had moved to Austria to escape United States jurisdiction.
Mrs. Leary and her sons, Paul Heilbrunn, 35, and Richard Heilbrunn, 38, were among 34 people indicted in 1987 on charges of operating a marijuana-smuggling ring that was said to have shipped at least 250,000 pounds of the drug to this country.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Olympic Bronze Goes to Austrian
Benjamin Raich of Austria has received the Olympic bronze medal that was taken away from Alain Baxter of Britain for failing a drug test at the Salt Lake Games.
Baxter, who had been the first British skier to win an Olympic medal, tested positive for the banned stimulant methamphetamine after finishing third in the slalom. The International Olympic Committee disqualified Baxter and revoked his medal. (AP)
SWISS JUNIOR IS KILLED: Werner Elmer, 19, a member of Switzerland's junior team, died after crashing in a downhill event in Verbier, Switzerland, the national ski team said on its Web site. The rest of the day's runs were canceled, and no further details were released. (Bloomberg News)
PLUS: SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Fickle Austrians Adore Polster, for Now
LEAD: For a backdrop, Toni Polster could not have chosen a more regal setting. Behind him, atop a peak in the Tuscan hills about 15 miles northwest of Florence, stands the Villa d'Artimino, a four-story, 16th-century stone mansion once known as the Villa of the 100 Chimneys, for obvious reasons, and once a summer home of the
For a backdrop, Toni Polster could not have chosen a more regal setting. Behind him, atop a peak in the Tuscan hills about 15 miles northwest of Florence, stands the Villa d'Artimino, a four-story, 16th-century stone mansion once known as the Villa of the 100 Chimneys, for obvious reasons, and once a summer home of the Medici family.
These days, the building is part museum and part meeting hall, and for the time being, an activity center for Austria's national soccer team, which is training in the town next door, Comeana, for its opening match in the World Cup finals, Saturday against Italy.
The luxurious backdrop seemed entirely appropriate for Polster, a 26-year-old forward and team captain who has blossomed into one of the world's most explosive scorers. The only Austrian playing for a foreign team, Seville in Spain, he is easily the best scorer among the teams grouped with Austria for the first round: Italy, Czechoslovakia and the United States.
Beyond that, however, Polster is one of the few players who is generally viewed as having the potential to dominate World Cup matches the way other players have in the past, if not quite to the level of Pele in 1962, Paolo Rossi in 1982 or Diego Maradona in 1986, then close.
An imposing figure at 6 feet 2 inches and 176 pounds, Polster scored 33 goals this season with Seville, and he ranked third in Europe.
'He is a typical striker with the instincts for a dangerous situation,' Josef Hickersberger, the Austrian coach, said of Polster. 'But he stays quiet and calm in the goal area, always keeping his head to see where he had to finish.'
At home in Vienna, Polster has become something of a hero, a familiar face wherever he goes and now a favorite of the fans.
But it was not always so for Polster, and his recent rise to Elysian heights in Austrian society reflects how public passion can love, hate, then love again, within a short space of time.
As a younger player, he developed a reputation of being lazy. 'Immature,' as Hickersberger said.
By 1985, he was Austria's leading scorer, but a year later, the national team failed to advance from the World Cup qualifying rounds.
Over the next two seasons, Polster's renown as a scorer developed, as he finished the 1987 season with 39 goals and then signed to play for Torino's first division team in the Italian league. After he scored nine goals, a creditable performance for his first season away from home, Polster's contract was transferred to Seville for $2 million, and his efficiency improved significantly.
But at the same time, he found that his proclivities were becoming a curse.
'People began to get angry,' he said today, standing on the steps of the villa. 'They were angry I was earning money outside Austria and they started thinking that I should score three or four goals every game.'
The public's discontent reached its height during the final stages of Austria's World Cup qualifying matches, as Polster failed to score in a 0-0 draw with the Soviet Union and a 3-0 loss to Turkey. As he took the field in Vienna for the final qualifying match, when the Austrians needed a victory to advance, he was showered with boos and whistles. He was stunned.
The final score: Austria 3, East Germany 0. Polster scored all three goals.
Leaving the field, Polster was showered again, but with waves of wild adulation and appreciation.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"As New Alpine Season Begins, Miller Makes Himself Heard Again
The first race of the World Cup ski season began Saturday with a commemoration for nine Germans, six young racers and their coaches, who died here in a chairlift accident last month.
But a moment of silence before the first racer kicked out of the starting gate seemed more like the ski racing community steeling itself for the arrival of Bode Miller, a favorite to win Sunday's men's race.
On Thursday night, in a conversation with several reporters, Miller, 28, advocated the liberalization of anti-doping rules, calling the enforcement effort hypocritical, ineffective and invasive.
'I think people should be able to do what they want to do,' said Miller, the reigning World Cup champion.
'There's all kinds of things that just aren't equal,' he said, ridiculing the idea of a level playing field. 'That's the whole point of sports. One guy wins and one guy loses. If you want to make it equal, then make everything legal.'
He also said that under some conditions, steroids and EPO may be beneficial to an athlete's health.
Gian Franco Kasper, president of the international ski federation, called Miller's comments 'completely ridiculous,' and said Miller might have invited testing upon himself.
Miller has said controversial things before, but his coaches said he may have never looked back in regret, let alone publicly apologized. 'It is part of his charm,' said Fabio Fontina, a representative of Miller's primary sponsor, Barilla pasta.
This is the fifth consecutive season that the Alpine World Cup began here at 10,000 feet above sea level. Seventy-seven women carved their way down this steep track Saturday in the giant slalom, swinging back and forth in metronomic precision, and of these, Tina Maze of Slovenia was the fastest.
Maze had a two-run time of 2 minutes 24.59 seconds, 0.34 of a second faster than Janica Kostelic of Croatia, the 23-year-old who had her 11th knee operation last summer. Anja Paerson of Sweden, the reigning overall champion, was a tenth of a second behind, in third.
'I'm happy to beat Anja and Janica,' Maze said. 'They are really good skiers.'
Paerson denounced Miller's comments about doping. 'It's totally stupid to say that,' she said Friday.
Last summer, Miller and one of his primary rivals, Hermann Maier, trained in the Southern Hemisphere, in Chile and New Zealand.
They will begin their showdown Sunday. Miller has won this race the past two years. He won the overall World Cup title last season, becoming the first American to do so in 22 years. He is a contender for a gold medal in every skiing discipline at the Olympic Winter Games in February in Turin, Italy.
The premier circuit of Alpine ski racing, the World Cup consists of some 76 races, mostly in central Europe. The men have 39 races, and the women have 37.
The Rettenbach glacier comes spilling out of a high valley, fragmenting into chunks of pale blue ice, and slicing through these crevasses and rocky outcroppings is a smooth line of delicately prepared snow.
In early September, construction cargo fell from a helicopter that was transporting it to the mountaintop, landing on the gondola below, causing several of the cable cars to swing violently, eject their passengers and fall to the rocks.
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Waldheim Asserts Austrians Should Not Hide Nazi Years
LEAD: President Kurt Waldheim, found by an international historians' commission to have hidden his wartime past, said today that no veil of silence should be drawn over Austrian involvement in the Nazi crime against the Jews.
President Kurt Waldheim, found by an international historians' commission to have hidden his wartime past, said today that no veil of silence should be drawn over Austrian involvement in the Nazi crime against the Jews.
Mr. Waldheim said the 50th anniversary of the Kristallnacht Nazi progrom was a reminder to Austrians to resist racial hatred. Forty-two Viennese synagogues and prayer houses were set afire on Nov. 9-10, 1938.
'The commemoration of this pogrom and the suffering of the Jews in the era of National Socialism must be a reminder and a mission for us,' he said in a statement.
'A reminder that no cover of silence should be drawn over those crimes in which Austrians took part and a mission to insure that never again should such intolerance or racial hatred occur.'
Liberal Austrians and Jewish spokesmen have criticized Mr. Waldheim for failing to condemn his supporters' use of anti-Semitism in his election campaign of 1986 when the World Jewish Congress linked him to war crimes.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Austria Impressive at Worlds, Winning One-Third of Medals
Given some of the ungenerous things Bode Miller has said about journalists who cover his sport, he might not have approved of the way a team official allowed his two new gold medals to circulate the press room on Sunday, the last day of the Alpine world championships. A few journalists even posed with them and sent the pictures home.
Then again, Miller has never had much respect for his medals, either.
When these championships started Jan. 29, Miller amused ski fans young and old by admitting that he had used the gold medal he won at the 2003 world championships as a counterweight for a toilet seat that kept falling down.
'I just don't know where it went after that,' he said with a grin.
Janica Kostelic of Croatia, who won three world titles here, said she admired Miller's philosophy -- that the satisfaction of a perfect run is worth more than the tangible reward. But even she was shocked by Miller's casual attitude toward his medals. 'I don't lose my medals or use them as a toilet-something,' she said.
Of the 33 medals available at these championships, 11 went to Austria. It won its final medal, a silver, on Sunday, in the inaugural team event, an experimental cross-discipline race involving men and women. Germany won the gold and France finished third, a point ahead of the United States.
Germany and France would have gone home empty-handed if not for Sunday's competition.
'Sometimes it actually is a help to have such a poor championships,' said Sarah Lewis, the secretary general of the International Ski Federation, when asked how France would deal with its performance here. 'Being saved by a bronze medal based on one-hundredth makes you go back and say, 'How can we achieve our potential?''
Success in Alpine skiing is often cyclical. Ten years ago, ski racing meant nothing in Croatia; since Kostelic won four medals in 2002, it has become a national sport.
The United States is on an upswing, too, winning six medals at these championships: two gold by Miller, two bronze by Julia Mancuso, and a silver and bronze by Daron Rahlves. Barring injury, they should hit their career climax next year at the Olympics in Turin, Italy. Lindsey Kildow, considered the next Picabo Street, did not make the podium here.
'The administration tries to peak for the big events, and they shot for 2002 in Salt Lake,' says Street, who retired after those Olympics, just as the renaissance was beginning. 'Now the overflow of that effort is starting to show. You're starting to see so many young American girls stack the deck. It's fun to see them starting to whomp up on the Europeans.'
Notably, Switzerland did not win a medal here, even though Alpine skiing is a national sport and the International Ski Federation, or F.I.S., is based there.
It was Miller and Benjamin Raich of Austria who emerged at the top of the sport in these championships. Raich won four individual medals, with two gold, a silver and a bronze, and was part of the Austrian team that won silver Sunday.
Raich seemed oblivious to any rivalry with Miller. 'The Olympics are not in my mind now,' he said. 'I know now that it can be possible, but that it's not easy. How many medals did Bode get?'
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Morceli's Only Holes Are on Back Of His Leg
He made a halting victory lap with blood trickling down his right Achilles' tendon, but Noureddine Morceli certainly was feeling little pain.
He had waited four years to fill the gaping hole in his resume and his reputation. And tonight, in the same sort of slow, tactical race that cost him a gold medal in Barcelona, the Algerian won with relative ease.
Morceli has dominated the metric mile throughout the 1990's, and tonight he dominated the Olympic field, winning the gold medal in a time of 3 minutes 35.78 seconds. Fermin Cacho of Spain won the silver in 3:36.40 and Stephen Kipkorir of Kenya won the bronze in 3:36.72.
'Of course, I have been thinking about the Olympics for the last four years,' Morceli said.
In the women's 1,500, Svetlana Masterkova of Russia won her second middle-distance gold medal, taking the lead from Kelly Holmes of Britain with 200 meters remaining and sprinting home.
Masterkova upset the favorites Maria Mutola and Ana Quirot to win the 800, but there was no clear favorite in this race in the absences of the defending world and Olympic champion Hassiba Boulmerka of Algeria and Ireland's Sonia O'Sullivan, who both failed to reach the final.
Romania's Gabriela Szabo won the silver behind Masterkova; Austria's Theresia Kiesl won the bronze. Masterkova became the second woman to double in the 800 and 1,500 at the Olympics. Another Russian, Tatyana Kazankina, then running for the Soviet Union, was the first, in 1976.
Morceli focused entirely on the 1,500, and he might have had a more difficult time if not for a collision with Hicham El Guerroudj of Morocco, one of the few runners given a chance to pull off an upset. It happened with one lap to go. Morceli had taken the lead 300 meters earlier, blowing past the trio of Kenyans who had unsuccessfully attempted to box him in during the first two laps.
El Guerroudj, who had broken the 3:30 barrier earlier this season, moved into position just behind Morceli. He turned out be too close, because his spikes soon had a close encounter with Morceli's right ankle. El Guerroudj went down in a heap, and Cacho was forced to hurdle his prone body, losing momentum in the process. Morceli glanced back just for a moment, and whether he knew it or not, the gold medal was firmly in his grasp. Cacho, the defending Olympic champion, could never close the gap on one of the most relentless finishers in track history.
The time was unspectacular: well off Morceli's world record of 3:27.37 and well off his semifinal time of 3:32.88. But unlike most of Morceli's races, this race was not about records, and as Morceli dabbed at the blood dripping down into his shoe while holding the Algerian flag, he had accomplished his goal: he had wiped out some bad memories. El Guerroudj, who left the track in tears after finishing 12th, will have some of his own to erase in the year 2000.
'In major championships, there is always pushing, but that is quite normal,' Morceli said.
Morceli was the world's dominant 1,500-meter runner heading into the last Olympics, too. But a hip injury slowed his training in the months leading up to Barcelona. He flirted with not competing and then got boxed in during a tactical race and finished a not-so-distant seventh as the local hero Cacho galloped off with the gold and the acclaim.
Morceli vowed it would not happen again, and he kept his word. Over the next four years, he would lose only one race, an 800-meter event in Cologne, Germany, in 1993. At every other distance, he was untouchable. His long-stated goal is to hold every world record between 800 meters and 5,000 meters.
As of today, he holds the world marks in the mile, the 1,500 and in two events that are not on the Olympic program: the 2,000 and the 3,000. He has done it by reworking his entourage since 1992, dismissing his former manager and confidante Ahmar Brahmia and relying on his family.
The Morcelis take great pains to keep Noureddine in his comfort zone, and like many of the top European track stars, he rarely faces his top rivals outside of the world championships.
At a meet in France earlier this year, it reached the point of absurdity when two separate 1,500-meter races were organized: one for Morceli; the other for Burundi's Venuste Niyongabo, who nearly beat Morceli at the distance in 1994.
'I appreciate Morceli as an athlete,' Niyongabo said tonight after winning the 5,000-meter race. 'But sometimes I feel embarrassed for him because he's afraid of meeting his opponents. I think we need sportsmanship, and he does not have it.'
ATLANTA: DAY 16 -- TRACK AND FIELD",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Austrians Cap Their Blowout With a Sweep in the Slalom
Nearly a century and a half after the end of the Austrian Empire, the country that has remained in its place seems to have built a new kind of power on the slopes of the Italian Alps.
The Austrians Benjamin Raich, Reinfried Herbst and Rainer Schönfelder swept the medals in the slalom Saturday, putting an exclamation mark on their country's dominance of the Alpine events at these Winter Olympics, at which the Austrian men and women combined for a team-record 14 Alpine medals.
Raich, with his second gold medal of these Games, may have established himself as the world's top Alpine skier.
'This is one of the greatest days in the Austrian ski history,' said Hans Püm, the director of the country's Alpine team.
If Saturday night's sweep was the defining moment for the Austrian team, then the failures of Bode Miller and Ted Ligety epitomized what the United States skiers did here. Ligety posted a good time in his first run but was disqualified because he did not get his skis around one gate. Barely out of the start house on his first run, Miller also straddled a gate and did not finish.
The other two Americans, James Cochran and Chip Knight, finished 12th and 18th. The United States men and women combined for two Alpine medals at these Games -- Ligety took a gold in the combined, and Julia Mancuso won the giant slalom.
'We came in here with a much higher goal than that,' said Jesse Hunt, the director of the United States Alpine team. 'We came into this capable of getting a medal in every discipline. We didn't hit our goal, and that's upsetting.'
Raich, Herbst and Schönfelder mastered a hill that gave many skiers problems Saturday. In the two runs combined, skiers failed to finish 41 times. Five skiers were disqualified, and several crashed.
Perhaps the most breathtaking spill of the day was by the first skier, Giorgio Rocca of Italy, who was a favorite. Less than halfway down, Rocca's skis crossed and he tumbled to the snow, sending the flag-waving Italian fans into a chilled silence.
Several skiers said the course was faster than usual and the surface inconsistent. The temperature rose before the race, softening parts of the ice and creating bumps, Hunt said.
Saturday night was the third time in Olympic history that the Austrians swept the medals in an Alpine event. These Games have helped solidify Raich's reputation for all-around greatness. Should Raich, who turns 28 on Tuesday, continue to shine, he could rival the legendary Hermann Maier.
What separated Raich from other skiers, Schönfelder said, was his patience and dedication. Earlier in the Games, Raich was closing in on a gold medal in the combined when he skied off the course. That did not stop him from blowing away the competition in the final two Alpine events.
'For me, the important thing is, when you make bad races, or when you go out, like in the combined, don't think too much to this race,' said Raich, who also won the giant slalom. 'Think to the future. That was always my goal, and I think that is my secret.'
2006 OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES -- ALPINE SKIING: MEN'S SLALOM",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"More Curious Material Found in Skiing's Closet
WE always get these wonderful explanations from Olympic athletes about the various drugs found coursing around in their bodies. I can hardly wait for the explanation of the blood supplies left behind by the Austrian Nordic skiing team in a house in Utah.
Athletes and the officials who enable them are always so glib with their denials. For example, when Larisa Lazutina of Russia came up with a heightened level of red blood cells at the Winter Games, team officials said it was because she was menstruating. That excuse was not available for Johann Muehlegg, a German who brought dishonor to his new country, Spain. Anyway, they were both sent packing, along with another Russian, Olga Danilova.
The three disgraced athletes had better look in their trophy chests to see what happened to the three gold medals and three silvers they lugged out of Salt Lake City.
'They may think they have won gold medals,' Richard Pound, the Olympic drug watchdog, pronounced the other day. 'But they are lead.'
The six medals constituted quite a haul by skiers who were subsequently documented as cheaters, taking a drug designed for anemia to increase their red blood cell count for endurance. And the merry dance goes on.
On Wednesday workers discovered a cache of blood-transfusion equipment in a house that had been rented by the Austrian Nordic team. Not only were the Austrians slobs for not cleaning up, but they were also very likely cheats. An Austrian official said that it was all a big mistake, that the equipment, including blood packets, was merely a part of normal health-care material.
'Whatever happened to the Hippocratic oath?' Pound said yesterday from his office in Montreal. 'Whatever happened to 'Do no harm'?'
Pound called for the Austrians to make a full disclosure and said, 'To deny it is nonsense.'
Pound is the chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, which is becoming a force against cheating. A week ago, he was hopefully talking up an almost totally drug-free Olympics, but the bust of three medal winners and the finding of blood-packing material in the Austrians' house seem to be taking us back to familiar territory.
The multiple bust in the closing hours of the Games was played down because we all -- myself included -- preferred to enjoy the Sarah Hughes skate and the Canada-United States hockey game. Catching three prominent athletes who had already won gold medals, however, was like catching three Ben Johnsons in Seoul in 1988.
Unfortunately, the way the rules work, anything they won before they were busted remains theirs. Pound said earlier that blood and urine samples should be re-examined to see if tests had disclosed the presence of the blood-enhancing drug.
'This is systemic use,' Pound said. 'It did not begin on the day of the last race.'
Muehlegg had won two gold medals before a positive test cost him a third; Lazutina won two silver medals before turning back the gold she won Sunday; and Danilova did not have to return the gold and silver medals she won before testing positive on the final day.
Pound and his colleague Johann Olav Koss, the Norwegian speed skating champion from 1994, say the busts are proof the system is working.
'I get called a Pollyanna because I say that having only three, or three and a half, positives is a good sign,' Pound said. (His half-bust was the Russian skier Natalya Baranova-Masolkina, who was turned away from Utah after a positive test.)
Koss, who won gold medals with marvelous endurance and always tested clean, is a member of the International Olympic Committee and an activist who spreads sporting equipment and expertise to underprivileged nations.
'I don't think athletes should keep their medals, absolutely not,' Koss, who now lives in Toronto, said.
At the Salt Lake Games, Pound and Koss set up an office in the athletes' village and recruited athletes to sign up for a passport that contained their drug-testing history. They said 512 athletes signed up, putting their records in a computer and on an actual passport, which they can present at future events.
'This is a proactive first step,' said Pound, a former Olympic swimmer for Canada who was recently defeated for the presidency of the I.O.C. but accepted the leadership of the anti-doping agency, which is supported by government and I.O.C. money. He thinks the passport will ultimately drive a wedge between the vast majority of athletes who he says do not cheat and the handful who do.
Call me a cynical sportswriter who has covered far too many Olympics, but I tend not to believe any athlete who says he or she does not cheat. However, I do believe lab reports, which have been upgraded in the past decade to catch illegal stimulants, body-building steroids and also blood-packing.
Now, to the shock of the two Russians and Muehlegg, the labs caught the presence of darbepoetin, which is similar to the hormone erythropoietin (EPO), which produces red blood cells. One product on the market, Aranesp, is not on the I.O.C.'s list of banned substances by name, but the general type of drug is covered by a phrase 'and related substances.'
The word was out that testing for darbepoetin would not be sophisticated for another 12 to 18 months, 'but it was kind of a trap,' Koss said.
'The Russians said, 'You weren't supposed to be testing for this,' ' Koss added with some glee.
Koss is calling for national federations to investigate medals that were won dishonestly. He said: 'Spain and Russia could. The ski federations could ask for an investigation. This just shows low moral standards from their federation. Now they are going home with their tails between their legs.'
Koss, who does not easily criticize nations or ideologies, was annoyed by the way some Russian officials blustered about judging and testing and even threatened to go home. They were told by President Vladimir V. Putin to remain, and have been called on the carpet since returning home, despite public sentiment in their favor.
'The Russians were complaining,' Koss said. 'Now it seems they had something to hide.'
He resents what the Russians did because it rubs off on all athletes who are clean. 'The problem is, if you have a great performance, you are suspect,' he said. 'That must change.'
Austria won one silver and two bronze medals in Nordic skiing events. It is too soon to tell who was involved with the bloody evidence back in Utah, but those three medals may have also lost all their luster.
Sports of The Times",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Scientists Enthralled By Bronze Age Body
THE discovery of a 4,000-year-old mummified man in a glacier in Austria late last month is the most complete Bronze Age find in Europe and may also provide new insight into ancient weather conditions, scientists say.
The body was first sighted on Sept. 19 by German mountain climbers at 10,500 feet on the Similaun glacier in the southwestern Austrian province of Tirol near the Italian border. Its estimated age, a rough estimate at this point, is based on the ax found at its side. The ax is of a well-known type that appears exclusively from the Early Bronze age, which in Europe started about 2000 B.C.
""It's a very important find,"" said Chris Stringer, who heads the Human Origins Project at the Museum of Natural History in London and has seen pictures of the withered corpse. ""This kind of preservation is very rare. There are some from peat bogs but those are not anywhere near this age. The British example, Lindow Man, is 2,000 years old. This is double that.""
Scientists who study glaciers say the ice that encased the man, who died hunched over on his knees on solid rock, is the oldest ever found in the Alps.
""The man surely hadn't melted out in 4,000 years or otherwise he would have disintegrated within weeks,"" said Gernot Patzelt, a professor at the Institute for Alpine Research at the University of Innsbruck, who has explored the site. ""That means that for the first time in 4,000 years, this area is ice-free. You can deduce from that that the climactic conditions now are similar to the time 4,000 years ago.""
Scientists believe that the last time the Alpine glaciers were as small as they are now was 700 years ago, when the climate was also similar to that now. What they still do not know is whether the glaciers' retreat is simply part of the earth's natural cycle of warming and cooling or whether it has been speeded by the feared greenhouse effect, the climate warming induced by a buildup of polluting gases in the earth's atmosphere.
""But the fact that this area was ice-free 4,000 years ago is proof that even without the man-made greenhouse effect, the climate was as warm as now,"" Mr. Patzelt said.
It is not yet understood why the body did not melt out during the last warm period. But the reason may lie in its location away from the sun at the bottom of a five-foot-wide, nine-foot-deep trench that runs through rock for about 150 feet and is still mostly filled with ice.
Mr. Patzelt said the man's body remained exactly where he died because the ice in the trench was trapped and was not pulled along with the glacier on the rock above. Normally the bodies of people who die on glaciers are carried along in the ice as it grows down mountains. Under pressure of the ice, the corpses are transformed into a waxy-like material.
Five more bodies of mountain climbers who died in the last 50 years have emerged from the glaciers in Austria this summer, which means that much ice has melted, said Rainer Henn, a professor of forensic medicine at the University of Innsbruck.  Authenticity of Find
Archeologists who have examined the mummified body say they are convinced it is genuine.
""There's no question of its authenticity,"" said Markus Egg of the Romisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz, Germany, after examining the body.
Mr. Patzelt said he had examined maps going back to 1817 and all showed that the area was covered with glacier until this summer. He believes this eliminates the possibility that someone could recently have planted the body, which was found encased in ice.
Mr. Henn said that for the body to have been mummified, it must first have dried out nearly completely before being covered with snow not more than a month after death.
Archeologists say study of the man and his equipment is expected to reveal a great deal about the life of Bronze Age humans in South Central Europe. The exact age of the find will not be known until radiocarbon dating tests are made, the results of which will not be available for at least three months.  Gaps in Knowledge
""We know very little about these people,"" said Konrad Spindler, the prehistorian at the University of Innsbruck who has led the early investigation. ""All we have are some bones, tools and a few remains of houses.""
The mummified body was dug out of the ice by forensic doctors who at first believed it was 500 years old. Discovered beside it were a bronze ax with a wooden shaft, a flintstone knife, flint lighter and kindling in a small pouch. Scientists examining the site a few days later discovered a leather quiver, reinforced with wood, which was filled with 14 arrows. According to X-rays of the quiver, some of the arrows have arrowheads of bone and some have wooden points, which were probably used to hunt fowl. X-rays of a small leather bag also revealed a sort of repair kit for the arrows, including replacement arrowheads made of flintstone and what is believed to be a putty that may be made of pitch.  Prepared for Cold
The clothes of the man, who is estimated to have been 25 to 35 years old, have disintegrated almost completely, but it appears that they were mostly of leather and fur and that he wore leather boots with a lining of hay for warmth, a stone necklace and a birchbark case around his waist.
""He knew exactly what he would encounter, be it cold, ice or snow,"" Mr. Spindler said.
The man is also tattooed on the inside of his knee with a small cross and on his back above the kidneys with six two-inch-long straight lines lying one on top of the other.
Mr. Egg, who examined the body, believes that the man was either hunting or looking for minerals like copper, which were plentiful in the Alps.
""In the Bronze Age people came from what is now Italy and Bavaria to look for copper in the Alps and the area became more thickly settled,"" Mr. Egg said. But he said the settlements were in valleys and the man was most likely several days' hike from home.
The man has no wounds, and it is not clear why he died, though it appears from his position in the trench that he may have been seeking shelter. If he was hunting, Mr. Egg said, he would not have been alone, but weather conditions change within minutes in the Alps and he could have become lost. The area is a five-hour hike from the nearest valley but is not terribly demanding terrain.  Autopsy May Be Performed
An autopsy will probably be done, Mr. Spindler said, and may reveal what the man had last eaten and his cause of death as well as information on his diet and general health.
""Also if the DNA is well-preserved, we could say how he relates to a number of genetic lines in Europe,"" Mr. Stringer said. ""If the individual has well-preserved tissue, red blood cells, we should be able to get out extensive information from that as well.""
Jean-Pierre Mohen, the director of France's National Museum of Antiquities in St. Germain-en-Laye, said the discovery might encourage more exploration in areas where glaciers are retreating.
""There is now the possibility of finding in these glaciers, which are getting smaller and smaller, things we've never even looked for before,"" Mr. Mohen said. ""It's all new research.""",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Out of The Fire
You can survive a disaster for only so long. Do it for 90 years, like Rose Rosenfeld Freedman, and you can become famous mostly for how long it has been since you didn't die.
Two days before her 18th birthday, on March 25, 1911, Rose Rosenfeld woke up believing that the day was ordinary. The weather was lovely. She went to work on the ninth floor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company on the corner of Washington Place and Greene. Most of March 25 passed like any Saturday. Then at 4:40 p.m. a fire broke out.
Descriptions of fire necessarily slow time. A spark, a thread of smoke, the smolder, the first diffident flames that gain confidence, then swell, grow barrel-chested and broad-shouldered and decide to wreck the place. One person smells something and points. Others look and panic.
The fire started on the eighth floor, where the cutters, mostly men, worked and quickly spread to the ninth, which housed the machine operators, mostly women. The executives occupied the 10th floor. Flammable fabric was everywhere, in bolts by the walls, in scraps on the floor, hanging from the ceiling. Fed by the fabric and oiled machinery, the fire spread. There had never been a fire drill at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company. There were no sprinklers. The building, after all, was fireproof.
The girls on the ninth floor wanted to get down, directly, immediately. There were two staircases. One was locked. Soon enough, the crush of people as good as locked the other.
Women on the ninth floor pushed the elevator call button, but so did workers on the eighth. The cars rose to the eighth, filled and descended, over and over. On the ninth floor, panicked women pried open the outer elevator doors and threw themselves down the shafts. Passengers inside the cars could hear the percussive thud of bodies on top of the car, then the rattling of coins falling out of pockets and through the metal grating.
That left the windows. Surely some of the early jumpers believed they were saving themselves: they flung their bodies into blankets and jackets held taut by strangers, into fire safety nets once the fire department arrived, which ripped in half and flung their contents to the ground. Some women died trying to leap into the arms of firemen, who stood at the tops of ladders that, fully extended, reached only to the sixth floor.
People on the ground begged women not to jump. They begged as one woman waved a white handkerchief and then leapt; her flaming dress caught on a wire and she hung there till she burned free. They begged as a man helped a series of women off the ledge with courtesy, as if the air itself was an elevator car, before he kissed the last, let her fall and followed.
I do not want to die in a fire. I do not want to die so far from the earth. I am dying, and I believe I can fly.
Perhaps these women realized they could not save their lives. They knew that those who stayed inside the building would be incinerated beyond recognition. They may have thought that it would be a comfort to their families to have something to identify and then bury. In fact, the families would later beg to be allowed to walk among the bodies that had been laid out on the 26th Street pier. They went to the site. Then the morgue. Then back to the site. It was impossible to believe that a person you would know anywhere, walking blocks ahead of you, was not just gone but also unidentifiable. You must keep looking: even if her shoes are gone, if her fillings have melted to nothing, you will find her.
To survive such a disaster -- 146 people died, mostly young immigrant women -- you must be clear-headed, and you must be lucky. Rose Rosenfeld, an Austrian immigrant, was both.
Somehow she managed to make her way into the stairwell. Blind with smoke, she decided to climb up the stairs -- she was thinking, What are the executives doing on the 10th floor? -- and then to the roof, where a fireman hoisted her to the next roof and to safety. The executives had already escaped.
She walked down 10 flights of stairs and outside, in time to see people jump. She knew the world had changed.
The factory relocated within days of the fire, but Rose Rosenfeld never returned. Instead, she went to college. She took a job with the Cunard Line and then married Harry Freedman, an American she met in Vienna, and had three children. For the rest of her life, she spoke at labor rallies, to classes, to reporters about the fire. She retired at age 79, perhaps not realizing she had another 28 years to paint, study languages and root for the Lakers. At 107, she picked up Spanish, her seventh language.
She survived everyone else who survived. Only the fireproof Asch Building remains.
'I don't pretend,' she said last year of remembering the fire. 'I feel it. Still.'
THE LIVES THEY LIVED: ROSE FREEDMAN, B. 1893",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Lendl Eliminates Muster, Will Face Mecir in Final
LEAD: Ivan Lendl, closing in on a Grand Slam title he has never won, outplayed 11th-seeded Thomas Muster of Austria, 6-2, 6-4, 5-7, 7-5, in a grueling baseline duel today to reach his second Australian Open final.
Ivan Lendl, closing in on a Grand Slam title he has never won, outplayed 11th-seeded Thomas Muster of Austria, 6-2, 6-4, 5-7, 7-5, in a grueling baseline duel today to reach his second Australian Open final.
Lendl, who can regain the No. 1 ranking by winning Sunday's final, will play ninth-seeded Miloslav Mecir of Czechoslovakia, who defeated Jan Gunnarsson of Sweden, 7-5, 6-2, 6-2.
Muster, a hard-hitting left-hander playing in his first Grand Slam semifinal, tried to outstroke Lendl from the baseline on a sweltering day when temperatures soared into the high 90's and the court surface reached 130 degrees.
But Lendl, who prides himself on his stamina and fitness, refused to wilt after Muster mounted a serious challenge midway through the 3-hour-12-minute match.
After losing the first two sets, Muster fought back to win the third and had a chance to go up, 6-5, in the fourth. But he netted an easy overhead on game point and followed with a long backhand and a double-fault to lose the game.
Lendl, who lost the 1983 Australian Open final to Mats Wilander, then clinched the victory with a love service game.
'Those are the hottest conditions I've ever played under,' said Muster, who suffered nosebleeds early in the match. 'Sometimes you really couldn't move any more. I've got blisters all over my feet. I feel like jumping into ice water.'
On Thursday, the defending women's champion, Steffi Graf trounced Gabriela Sabatini of Argentina, 6-3, 6-0, to move one victory from her fifth straight Grand Slam title.
Graf will play fifth-seeded Helena Sukova of Czechoslovakia for the championship on Saturday. Sukova overcame the jitters and an errant backhand to defeat unseeded Belinda Cordwell of New Zealand, 7-6, 4-6, 6-2, in the other semifinal.
'I don't think Helena has many chances,' Sabatini said. 'Steffi is playing very well and Helena had to struggle today. I don't think it will be a problem.'
Graf has an 8-1 record against Sukova, whose only victory came in 1983 when the West German was only 14 years old. But Sukova, who lost her two previous Grand Slams finals at the 1984 Australian Open and 1986 United States Open, said she won't be intimidated.
'I have nothing to lose,' she said. 'I'll try my best and see what happens.'
What happened to Sabatini was surprising, even though the 18-year-old Argentine had lost 14 of her 16 previous matches against Graf. Most of their matches have been close. This one wasn't.
After breaking for 2-all in the first set, Graf unleashed her lethal forehand and dropped only 14 points the rest of the way.
'I wanted to win badly today and she didn't seem to be physically there,' Graf said. 'I played well and she was not at her very best. She wasn't moving as well as she can.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Kronberger, Going for 5
Petra Kronberger, a 22-year-old Austrian, has already managed to do what no other woman ski racer has ever done. During a 38-day span between December 1990 and January 1991, she won an event in each of Alpine skiing's five disciplines: slalom, giant slalom, Super G, downhill and combined. She is considered a strong gold medal possibility in the Olympic downhill, combined and Super G, with an outside chance at a medal in all five.
The pressure of being a national hope for Austria, as the country attempts to rebound after 10 years of Swiss domination, might be a negative factor. But Kronberger has had to overcome adversity and long odds most of her life. Her parents were of modest means, her father a truck driver and her mother a restaurant dishwasher.
By reputation quiet and shy, Kronberger now lives in the village of Pfarrwerfen, near Salzburg, where she travels by bicycle despite her newly attained wealth. Her earnings have reached a reported $300,000 annually from skiing and endorsements.
ALBERTVILLE '92",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Schumacher Remains Hot in Austria
No sooner had his mechanics put out the raging flames shooting from his red Ferrari than Michael Schumacher shook his head, drove down the pit lane and ran his hand across his visor as if wiping sweat off his brow.
Within a few laps, Schumacher passed the season's Formula One leader, then the race leader, and held on to win the Austrian Grand Prix today. It was his 3rd straight victory and the 67th in his Formula One career.
The fire began when Schumacher made a pit stop on the 23rd of 69 laps. Fuel splashed out and ignited, but the fire was quickly extinguished without injury or damage to his car.
'I guess the mechanics felt I was a little bit too cold and cool and wanted to warm me up,' he said. 'I had a little doubt for a moment whether we had a problem with the car because of that fire and how serious it was.'
Schumacher took the lead on Lap 32 from Juan Pablo Montoya, whose engine blew out. Schumacher led comfortably the rest of the race and averaged 138.38 miles an hour for the 185.6 miles.
Asked how it compared with his victory in Austria last year when his teammate, Rubens Barrichello, was instructed by their team to move aside on the last lap to allow him to win, Schumacher said, 'I feel like a winner now.'
Barrichello finished third today, half a second behind Kimi Raikkonen. Raikkonen finished 3.3 seconds behind Schumacher, keeping his lead in the drivers series with 40 points, 2 more than Schumacher.
The race began on the hilly, short track in the Styrian Alps under cloudy skies with Schumacher on the pole.
Moments before the start, Cristiano da Matta, 13th on the grid, had his Toyota stall and the race was halted by a red flag. Moments before the restart 10 minutes later, da Matta's car stalled again and the race was red-flagged once more.
'I pressed the launch button as I normally do and the car just stalled,' da Matta said.
Although the cars got off the grid the next time, Jos Verstappen's Minardi broke down before the first corner. It stopped in a dangerous position, so the safety car came out and slowed the race after the second lap. As the safety car left the track and racing resumed on Lap 5, rain began to fall lightly.
By Lap 13, Schumacher had built his lead to eight seconds over Montoya. But then the rain began to fall harder, and by Lap 16 cars were sliding off the track. Schumacher and Montoya were the first to go wide on Turn 1, but they recovered.
In the wet conditions, Montoya gained ground on Schumacher, and by Lap 20, when he made his first pit stop, Montoya was only 3.4 seconds behind.
Three laps later, Schumacher pitted while leading Raikkonen by 9.4 seconds. His mechanics struggled with the fuel hose nozzle and fuel splashed and caught fire around the fuel opening on the side of the car behind the driver's head.
Mechanics sprayed it with extinguishers, and Schumacher left the pits after a stop of 20.4 seconds, regaining the track in third place.
'Seeing the fire was not nice,' he said, 'but I thought the guys reacted very well with their extinguishers and blew it out immediately, so I kept going.'
On Lap 32, just as Schumacher passed Raikkonen to take second, Montoya's BMW-Williams engine blew out clouds of smoke.
AUTO RACING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Austrians Dominate Downhill
It seemed like an Austrian national downhill race, with no one else competing. One by one, members of the Austrian women's team dusted one another in the standing today until they had swept the podium clean at the world Alpine skiing championships.
So confident was each Austrian that the race results seemed sealed with each succeeding run. There was the tall, lanky Michaela Dorfmeister, standing there blowing kisses into the camera as if the gold medal  belonged to her.
And then, four bibs later, came the petite Renate Goetschl, rose-cheeked and confident, outdoing Dorfmeister. Waiting politely for a few more skiers -- none of them Austrian -- to take their turn down the icy International race slope, Goetschl finally gave in to the flock of European cameras panning her happy face.
The 23-year-old Goetschl had won the gold medal with a time of 1 minute 48.20 seconds; Dorfmeister, 25, would claim the silver medal 0.15 seconds behind, and Stefanie Schuster, a 29-year-old late bloomer on the Austrian team, had the bronze medal  0.17 seconds behind Goetschl.
'My goal was to just to win any medal,' said Goetschl, who won silver medals in the super-G and the women's combined earlier in the competition. 'This week is unbelievable for me. It's a great week, unforgettable.'
Of the 15 races completed in the two-week championships so far, 10 of the medal winners have been Austrian. Earlier in the competition, the powerful Hermann Maier shared the super-G gold with the Norwegian Lasse Kjus, and won the downhill, edging out Kjus and another Norwegian, Kjetil Andre Aamodt, who are the event's only men to successfully take on the Austrian might so far.
Perhaps it is Goetschl, a farm girl from Obdach, Austria, who makes the most sense of this Alpine domination. Having started skiing at 3 years old, she dreamed of ski racing, the  Austrian national sport, and tagged  along with her brothers to local races.
'In Austria, it is like football or baseball in America,' she said. 'Where I grew up, it was always a goal for me to be on TV the way the others were.'
Goetschl made her mark in the big leagues at 17 when she won a slalom event in Lillehammer, Norway. By the 1994 Olympics, she was ready to show her worth as one of the youngest skiers competing, but then failed to finish the course. Now she is fourth over all in World Cup points, an aggressive skier with talent in all four of skiing's race disciplines. But her Austrian teammates also know that on any day, any one of the four who made the training cut to compete here could also take a medal.
Take, for example, Alexandra Meissnitzer, the gold-medal winner in the super-G last Monday. She was fourth today, just 0.27 seconds behind Goetschl. If not for an indecipherable skid here or an edge there, she might have stood atop the podium.
'The course was perfect,' Meissnitzer said. 'It was one of the best races I've ever had. The difference in not winning was very small. Renate maybe made a little better speed at the bottom.'
The Austrian roadblock made it frustrating for everyone else, including the best hopes of the United States Ski Team. At first, it seemed that the Austrians might have made a mistake in choosing to run in the middle of the pack today rather than with the early skiers. Snow flurries were predicted for the 11 A.M. start, something the Austrians wanted to avoid. But no snow fell, and the day was alternately sunny and cloud-covered.
'I really thought it would come back and bite them,' Tom Kelly, a spokesman for the United States Ski Team, said. 'But it didn't. They just skied right through it.'
For Megan Gerety, the 27-year-old competitor from Anchorage, a skillful early run of 1:49.30 brought a realistic view of a podium finish. Vail is one of her favorite World Cup destinations. She had fifth-place finishes in the downhills here in 1991 and 1996. But with an eighth-place finish today, she was one more victim of the Austrian machine. She was disappointed but not surprised.
'It's not like it's something new,' Gerety said. 'They've been doing well all season. The momentum carries over to everyone on the team. It pumps everybody up.'
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Excerpts From Pope's Letter On Catholic-Jewish Relations
LEAD: Following are excerpts from the text of a letter written by Pope John Paul II to Archbishop John L. May of St. Louis, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops:
Following are excerpts from the text of a letter written by Pope John Paul II to Archbishop John L. May of St. Louis, president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops:
In my pastoral concerns, journeys and meetings and in my teachings during the years of my Pontificate, I have constantly sought to develop and deepen our relationships with the Jews, 'our elder brothers in the faith of Abraham,' and I therefore encourage and bless not only this initiative but the initiatives of all those who, in fidelity to the directives of the Second Vatican Council and animated by good will and religious hope, foster relationships of mutual esteem and friendship and promote the Jewish-Christian dialogue in the appropriate places and with due theological competence and historical objectivity.
The more we try to be faithful in loving obedience to the God of the Covenant, the Creator and Savior, contemplating in prayer His wonderful plan of redemption and loving our neighbor as ourselves, the deeper will be the roots of our dialogue and the more abundant its results.
With our hearts filled with this unyielding hope, we Christians approach with fearsome respect the terrifying experience of the extermination, the Shoah, suffered by the Jews during the Second World War, and we seek to grasp its most authentic, specific and universal meaning.
As I said recently in Warsaw, it is precisely by reason of this terrible experience that the nation of Israel, her sufferings and her Holocaust are today before the eyes of the Church, of all peoples and of all nations, as a warning, a witness and a silent cry. Before the vivid memory of the extermination, as recounted to us by the survivors and by all Jews now living, and as it is continually offered for our meditation within the narration of the Pesah Haggadah - as Jewish families are accustomed to do today - it is not permissible for anyone to pass by with indifference.
Reflection upon the Shoah shows us to what terrible consequences the lack of faith in God and a contempt for man created in His image can lead. It also impels us to promote the necessary historical and religious studies on this event which concerns the whole of humanity today. Hope for Positive Results
In this regard, I look forward to positive results from the work of the forthcoming 13th Plenary Session of the International Catholic-Jewish Liaison Committee, to be held in Washington precisely on the subject 'The Shoah, Its Significance and Implications Seen from a Historical and Religious Perspective.'
There is no doubt that the sufferings endured by the Jews are also for the Catholic Church a motive of sincere sorrow, especially when one thinks of the indifference and sometimes resentment which, in particular historical circumstances, have divided Jews and Christians. Indeed, this evokes in us still firmer resolutions to cooperate for justice and true peace.
As I said at Assisi, I wish we could create ever newer opportunities for showing 'what God would like the developing history of humanity to be: a fraternal journey in which we accompany one another toward the transcendant goal which He sets for us.'
In this spirit of peace and universal fraternal solidarity I am preparing to renew to you and to the beloved Jewish community in the United States the joyful proclamation of peace, the Shalom announced by the prophets and awaited by the whole world. I express the hope that this peace will well up like a stream of living water from the bosom of Jerusalem and that there may be accomplished that which was foretold by Zechariah: 'The Lord shall become King over the whole earth; on that day the Lord shall be the only one, and His name the only one' (Zech 14:19).",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"After Day 1 of Women's Combined, Austrian Rises and Avoids the Tumble
Petra Kronberger, still saddened by her Austrian teammate's training accident over this same slope, began her downhill run at a possible five gold medals in skiing today.
She captured the first day of the women's combined on a course that also continued to send Americans crashing into the life-saving nets and did little to answer questions about the spate of accidents on the slopes in these Games.
Kronberger was barely half a second faster than Krista Schmidinger of Lee, Mass., whose favorite part of the difficult downhill course is the two jumps, one of which sent her teammate, Kristin Krone, tumbling today.
In Tuesday's practice run, the American combined champion, Wendy Fisher, broke her thumb and sprained both knees, coming off a jump. Also at Tuesday's practice, Austria's top women's combined ski racer, Sabine Ginther, fell, broke a bone in her back and was sent home. Sadness Prevails
""All of us on the team were very sad Tuesday night,"" Kronberger said. ""Our coach tried to keep our spirits up. It was hard for me to concentrate today. It's not easy. You think about the injury. But in my years of skiing, I have seen many bad things, and I am accustomed to it.""
It goes with the territory of skiing, downhill in particular. This course is designed by Bernhard Russi, the 1972 Olympic downhill gold medalist who also designed the men's downhill at Val d'Isere. The men's course has been criticized for being overly technical, with pronounced twists that invite a skier to wipe out if unable to turn on a dime. Several men did in the downhill on Sunday and the Alpine combined, although typical of a twisting and thus slower course, none was badly hurt.
But the criticism directed at this course before the Games was the opposite: that it was perhaps too straight, fast and full-throttle.
In fact, Russi had to get the International Ski Federation to bend its rules on the amount of vertical drop allowed for a women's course so he could make full use of the Roc de Fer (Iron Face) mountain that plunges 2,080 feet in the space of a mile and three-quarters.
The question being asked here today was: Is this a dangerous course?
""The conditions are confusing,"" Krone said. ""You'd think that if you have soft snow on the top, the course is slower. But it gets packed near the jumps.""
Regine Cavagnoud of France, who finished far back, used the word ""dangerous"" in describing the second jump. ""You are going too fast,"" she said.
One skier, Vreni Schneider of Switzerland, was a casualty of the course before the racing even began. She decided Tuesday that she wasn't comfortable with the course and announced she would not compete in the combined, sticking to the slalom and giant slalom.
The day was beautiful. Those who remained upright (three fell) at the finish will return on Thursday to ski two different slalom courses. The combined winner of all three events gets the medal.
The 22-year-old Kronberger is Austria's most popular female skier. She has been voted the country's top female athlete the last two years in a poll of journalists. And her income of $300,000 a year from endorsements reflects her wide-ranging appeal.
Here, she is a gold-medal possibility in the combined, the downhill and the super giant slalom, with perhaps a shot at the other two skiing events: the slalom and giant slalom. But her trainer is considering withdrawing her from the giant slalom to avoid the risk of tiring and injury.  Combined a Challenge
Schmidinger, whose father is from Austria, admits that the downhill is the stronger of her combined events. So despite today's brilliant run, in which she finished ahead of several of the world's best downhill racers, she is unlikely to win a medal in the combined.
It indicates, though, that she is a candidate for a medal in the downhill against many of these same skiers on Saturday.
""I was ready to explode coming out,"" she said of today's effort. ""But I wasn't concerned about the jumps, even though that's where the other girls crashed. Jumps are my favorite part, so I just went about my business.""
Still, she nearly tumbled -- twice. Sailing Through Air
Coming off the hardest jump, she soared 140 feet, instead of the preferred distance of about 60. Sailing through the air actually takes longer than skiing on the snow. And then, late in the race, she hit the fence, she said, ""a little bit."" Those two incidents might have spelled the split-second difference between first and second.
The energy-absorbing orange netting is particularly valuable at what course designers euphemistically call ""spill zones"" -- the bottom of a jump, or at the end of a steep curve.
That, indeed, was where Krone had her spill today, at the jump in the first half of the course.
""I was in the air, thinking I was going the wrong way, and I couldn't do anything about it,"" she said. Angry After the Crash
Krone's crash was, simply, spectacular. She was out of control as she landed, one ski tilted toward the sky. She went head-first into the netting, as if propelled there in one of those circus acts featuring a woman shot out of a cannon.
""I knew the netting was there,"" she said later. ""I wasn't worried.""
But at the time she was angry. She got up quickly and took a clump of snow out of her helmet and flung it to the ground.
Later, she said, her left hand hurt. ""It feels loose inside."" It was, in fact, diagnosed as being broken. Her two-day event lasted one day. She may be able to compete Saturday, though.
""I'll do anything to get a day off,"" she quipped.
ALBERTVILLE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"First Croatian Medalist Wins the Gold for Her Family
HUNTSVILLE, Utah, Feb. 14 -- For others, a training session might be four hours. For Janica Kostelic, it would be twice as long. While others would practice by skiing through 400 gates a day, Kostelic would ski through 1,200. While war in the former Yugoslavia stopped many of her Croatian teammates from training or from skiing at all, Kostelic and her family fled their native Zagreb and found a place to train in the distant snow of the mountains.
It took resourcefulness and pluck. The Kostelics -- Janica; her brother and fellow Olympian, Ivica; her father, Ante; and her mother, Marika -- once slept a week in a cave after traveling to an unfamiliar mountain where they feared nighttime air strikes. By day they trained. Then it was on to the next mountain, where the accommodations were more plush: the family car.
'For 10 to 12 years we never stopped,' Ante Kostelic said minutes after his daughter had routed the field in winning the Olympic gold medal in today's women's combined event. 'Maybe we did not know better. We did what we thought was right.'
He looked over his shoulder as his daughter climbed a podium for the flower ceremony following her competition. 'You never know; are you father or are you coach?' he said. 'Are you both? I don't know.'
Later, it was Kostelic, the first Croatian medalist at a Winter Olympics, who had no trouble summing up the day's accomplishment.
'This is a family medal,' she said. 'Everything was always me, my brother and my father. My mother was always there on the side, too, and she's the boss. This is great, the family's dream come true.'
Kostelic's gold-medal journey has been more than selfless dedication. She endured a variety of missteps, crashes and injuries. She had three operations on her left knee in the last year alone. Today's combined requires competitors to ski two slalom runs, a Kostelic specialty, and a downhill run. The times of the three races are combined. Although she is the defending overall World Cup champion, Kostelic had avoided the downhill this season and rarely trained at high speed because of her delicate knees.
Today's downhill was the last stage of the competition, so while she held a comfortable 1.1-second lead after the two slalom runs, she was in range of more skilled downhillers like Austria's Renate Götschl, the defending world champion in the combined. But skiing last among the leaders, Kostelic sped along the downhill course in a low, seamless tuck, her hands and arms rarely rising as she negotiated the turns. If the 70-mile-an-hour speeds bothered her state of mind or her knees, she did not show it. Götschl defeated Kostelic in the downhill portion of today's event, but not by nearly enough.
Kostelic's combined time of 2 minutes 43.28 seconds was 1.49 seconds better than that of Götschl, who won the silver medal. Martina Ertl of Germany was third, giving her medals in three successive Winter Olympics.
The American Caroline Lalive, who had been considered a medal contender in three events at these Games, fell about 50 yards from the finish of her first slalom run. Lalive, who also crashed in Tuesday's women's downhill, has now either fallen or failed to complete her last seven races in the Olympics or world championships. Lalive will have one more chance at a medal in these Games, in Sunday's women's super-G. Officials of the United States Ski Team said Lalive would not be among the women competing in the giant slalom or slalom next week.
The top American finisher today was 17-year-old Lindsey Kildow, who was a surprising sixth in her Olympic debut. Kildow, who showed nerve and promise, will take Lalive's spot in the slalom.
Kostelic's exhausting training regimen was established by her father, a former world-class player and coach in team handball, a sport that Marika Kostelic also played. When it came to creating training schedules for Janica and Ivica, Ante Kostelic had no models to follow -- he watched what drills other coaches devised for their skiers and applied them to his children. Because he had often trained his team handball squads for six to eight hours, he figured that his skiing children could do the same.
But the toll on the knees, not to mention the risk of calamitous crashes, is far greater in skiing than in most other sports. And coaches of other countries, noting the relative youth of the skiing Kostelics -- Janica is 20 and Ivica is 22 -- have privately suggested that overwork has led to the many knee problems experienced by Janica and her brother, who has also had frequent operations .
'I am not healthy,' Janica said. 'I think only my right arm is O.K. right now. But it is like this for many of us in skiing. Not just me. My story is a long story, but that's not important. The story is that I started skiing for serious at age 9. I was skiing and skiing and then I came here and I won.'
Indeed, whatever the process, there was no doubting Kostelic's skill, versatility and mettle today. As Götschl, another of the world's best skiers, said, 'Janica was unbeatable today.'
Ante Kostelic, dressed entirely in red, stood near the finish line and waved to a handful of Croatian fans who were waving their nation's flags at him. Asked to reflect on the 14 years he has trained his son and daughter, he shrugged.
'It does not seem that long,' he said. 'There were so many days, but it does not seem like it. I am happy for Janica. She is the hero.'
Moments later, the gold-medal winner in the Kostelic family came by, skis in hand. Father and daughter embraced, with Janica asking for a cellphone.
'We have to call Ivica; he is flying to Utah right now,' she said. 'I hope he is proud of me.'
OLYMPICS: ALPINE SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Miller Loses His Ski, and Then Loses the Combined Title
Benjamin Raich took the combined title away from his rival Bode Miller at the Alpine skiing world championships on Thursday, but Miller still stole the show.
Only 15 seconds into the downhill course, Miller's left ski came off, but he kept going and going -- to gasps, giggles and, finally, loud cheers from the spectators -- until pulling off the course just above the finish line.
'I was going 70 or 75 already, so it was a matter of time before I was going to stop anyway,' Miller said. 'I just made the next turn, and then I decided that maybe I'd try to make it down.'
Miller coasted down the steep corkscrew of a course, carved long smooth turns on his right ski, which is 7 feet long, and had no problem landing several jumps. Holding his arms out to his side as he skied along, he looked like a kid pretending to be an airplane.
'Che equilibrio,' exclaimed the announcer in the finish stadium.
Aksel Lund Svindal, a young Norwegian who finished second to Raich, said he doubted that even the one-ski drills that he and other ski racers do to develop balance could have prepared him to perform like Miller, who didn't falter even as he flattened several gates marking the course.
'Most racers could ski on one ski, but not as easy as him, I guess,' Svindal said.
As Miller passed by clusters of coaches and photographers, he folded himself into an aerodynamic tuck position with mock earnestness.
One coach who was not impressed was the one responsible for Miller.
'I don't care how big his cape is,' said Phil McNichol, the head coach of the United States Ski Team, who said Miller had risked a career-ending injury. 'It's unnecessary.'
Raich, who is from Pitztal, Austria, and is ranked second in the world behind Miller, is in many ways his opposite. Raich paces himself throughout a season, skipping the most difficult races so he can train and rest. He is rarely candid with the news media, and sits through news conferences with a disciplined, ramrod posture.
'That's not good for him,' said Raich, who was amazed that Miller would put so much strain on his thighs just two days before the world championship downhill. 'He will need a very good massage.'
At some point in the last two seasons, Miller has become the charismatic face of Alpine skiing, stepping into the role of the rebellious super-talent, even though he talks wistfully of returning to anonymity in Franconia, N.H., where he grew up.
Like his larger-than-life predecessors, Hermann Maier and Alberto Tomba, Miller has had his run-ins with the officials who enforce the rules of the sport. He is also famous for big crashes, a byproduct of his unrestrained style. He has crashed in six of seven World Cup slaloms this season.
Whenever he is about to push onto a course, the song 'Born to be Wild' is cued up on the public address system.
'I remember going over the rules in my head,' said Miller, when asked what he was thinking while descending the course, one ski boot out to the side. He said he knew where the race referee would be standing, and looked to see if he would be waved off the track.
'He was definitely out there looking,' Miller said. 'I don't know if he let me go because he didn't care, or if it was still legal.'
Miller said he had hoped to finish and use the afternoon training runs to practice on the hill where the world championship slalom will be held next week. But he was too exhausted to go on.
'I was relaxed, but it was so hard I had to stay focused,' Miller said. 'When your ski is not on the snow there's a whole other appendage that's getting wind resistance with no extra balance for you. It's just a little bit weird.'
WINTER SPORTS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Flip-Flop Leaves Peirsol With the Gold
The self-appointed technique critic in swimming came in for some criticism of his own on Thursday night in the shark tank that is the Olympic pool. Despite being disqualified shortly after his final, the world's best backstroker, Aaron Peirsol of the United States, was eventually reinstated as the winner of the 200-meter race that he has dominated the last four years.
'A weird one, but it happens, even at this level,' Peirsol said.
It was the most memorable flip turn on an evening in which the Americans extended their lead over the Australian swimmers in the Olympic pecking order with three more gold medals, with Michael Phelps winning the 200 individual medley with relative ease and Amanda Beard winning the 200 breaststroke on the final stroke over Leisel Jones of Australia.
Jones's teammate Jodie Henry, who set a world record in the 100 freestyle semifinals, did not go quite so quickly in Thursday's final but still won the gold in a time of 53.84 seconds, pushing Inge de Bruijn of the Netherlands, the defending Olympic champion, into second place. Natalie Coughlin of the United States finished third.
Phelps's latest victory gave him four gold medals in these Games and six medals over all in six events. It is one of the most remarkable sprees in Olympic history, and with two events remaining -- the 100 butterfly and the medley relay -- two more victories for Phelps are a strong possibility.
If Phelps wins eight medals, he will have more in a single Olympics than any other swimmer. 'First seven, now it's eight; can't get away from the numbers,' Phelps said in reference to his failed attempt to match Mark Spitz's record of seven gold medals in a single Games. 'I'm just going to take it one race at a time.'
After watching how Peirsol won, then lost, then won again on Thursday night, perhaps it is wise not to start counting in advance. After a narrow victory in the 100 backstroke here, Peirsol was a bigger favorite in the 200, and he controlled the race from the time he surfaced.
He was leading after all three turns and finished first in 1 minute 54.95 seconds, nearly 2.5 seconds ahead of Markus Rogan of Austria. In an Olympics that has featured tight finishes, this was a rare rout, but there was a delay in the posting of the results. When they were finally flashed on the electronic scoreboard, the results had Rogan in first and Peirsol at the bottom with the letters DSQ, for disqualified, by his name.
The crowd began to boo, and Peirsol, who had left the pool deck, started shaking his head and expressing his confusion, answering shouted questions from journalists about the disqualification with, 'I don't know yet; I'll find out.'
In the stands, Peirsol's mother was in tears.
The issue turned out to be her son's final turn, which one of the judges apparently believed contained an illegal kick after he flipped to his stomach heading into the wall.
It was a wry twist considering that Peirsol had been one of those who questioned the legality of a kick by the breaststroker Kosuke Kitajima of Japan, who won the 100-meter event at the expense of the American Brendan Hansen, Peirsol's friend.
There was no official protest in that case, but the American team was intent on filing a protest over Thursday night's ruling against Peirsol until the technical committee of the world governing body for swimming, FINA, reinstated Peirsol and posted a revised standing on the scoreboard. Rogan was bumped to second, Razvan Florea of Romania to third and James Goddard of Britain into fourth.
In a statement, FINA said that Peirsol's disqualification had been reversed because the unidentified official's explanation had been 'inadequate' and 'not in the working language of FINA,' which meant not in English or French.
'It turned out the way it probably should have, and I know the guys understand that,' said Peirsol, who complimented his rivals for showing 'a lot of grace and respect.'
But the Austrian and British swimming federations filed protests that FINA's jury of appeal rejected. It was unclear whether the Austrians or the Britons would take the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the ultimate arbiter in Olympic affairs.
Despite the Austrian protest, Rogan did not appear dissatisfied with his silver medal, but then he has finished behind Peirsol plenty of times.
'I feel like the second-best backstroke swimmer in the world; the best is Peirsol,' Rogan said. 'I never felt like an Olympic champion; I never accepted it in my heart.'
He also suggested that the initial disqualification might have been a punishment from FINA for Peirsol's outspoken criticism of Kitajima's technique.
Peirsol refused to accept that theory. 'It's not my place to say anything; I honestly thought it was just a mistake,' he said of the initial ruling.
As for the accusations regarding Kitajima's kick, Peirsol said: 'I'm not here to bash anybody. I'm staying with what I said, because I know what I saw and know what the rest of the field saw.'
There was less confusion the rest of the day, and it was a miserable day for the Russian swimming icon Aleksandr Popov.
Popov, 32, arrived here with four individual Olympic gold medals and as the reigning world champion in the 50 and 100 freestyle, but he failed to qualify for the 100 final and on Thursday failed to qualify for the semifinals of the 50, in which he still holds the world record.
It is a younger man's sport now, and no younger man is having more success than Phelps, who continued to excel at time management on Thursday, requiring less than an hour to complete his 200 individual medley race, a 10-minute warm down, yet another medal ceremony and a 100 butterfly semifinal. Weary or not, he won that event in 51.61 seconds. That was an Olympic record, a tenth of a second faster than the Ukrainian Andriy Serdinov's record of 51.74 seconds, which was set in the first semifinal.
That was not the first time Phelps had stolen Serdinov's thunder in a hurry. Last year in the world championships in Barcelona, Spain, Serdinov broke the 100 butterfly world record in the first semifinal only to watch Phelps break it again less than five minutes later.
It remains to be seen what the final numbers will be on Friday when they and the American Ian Crocker, the current world-record holder and world champion, swim the 100 butterfly final.
'Ian and I have sort of battled it out the last year,' Phelps said. 'And tomorrow is the biggest one, the one that counts, and I'm looking forward to it very much.'
SUMMER 2004 GAMES -- SWIMMING: 200 BACKSTROKE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Few Surprises as Austrians Go 1-2 in Ski Jumping
He sailed through the air for 5 or 6 seconds twice today, and then an Olympic event was over for Jim Holland.
""It's one of those stupid things you train for all your life, and then you come down to this,"" he said good-naturedly afterward.
But Holland, a 24-year-old from Norwich, Vt., wasn't sulking about his 13th-place finish in the normal-hill ski-jumping event, which used to be called the 70 meters.
After all, he's from the United States, a country not known for its ski jumpers.
Finland is known for its ski jumpers, and 16-year-old Toni Nieminen, who dominated the recent World Cup season, had been given a good chance to become the youngest male champion in the history of the Winter Olympics.
Today, after winning only the bronze medal, Nieminen looked as if his world had crashed around him. Austrians Prevail
Winning in the ski-jump events is also a tradition for Austria, and today, Ernst Vettori and Martin Hollwarth, both from that country, finished one-two in the normal, the shorter of the two jumping events at the Olympics.
Vettori, a 27-year-old veteran who had 14 career victories on the World Cup circuit but no medal in two previous Olympics, gave Austria its first ski-jumping gold medal since its current coach, Toni Innauer, won the short-hill event in Lake Placid, N.Y., in 1980.
Austrians and Finns split the first six places today.
The 17-year-old Hollwarth produced the day's best jump. While cowbells clanged in the traditional European way to urge on the athletes under sunny skies, his first jump of 90.5 meters (about 297 feet) put him far ahead of the field.
Ski jumping is also judged on style, and his combination of length and looks put him 5 points ahead of Vettori. Slight Slip
Hollwarth's second jump was, for him, mediocre, about 25 feet shorter.
""I slipped slightly on the takeoff of my second jump,"" he said later through an interpreter.
The consistent Vettori jumped 88 and then 87.5 meters. He won with a total of 222.8 points to Hollwarth's 218.1.
""I started jumping when I was 8 years old,"" Vettori said. ""I still take great pleasure in it, and obviously more so today."" Bronze Is No Solace
All the top finishers today employed the newly popular V-style, in which the rear of the skis almost touch. Because the front of the skis point away to form a V, there is less drag under the skier's body and he soars farther.
Nieminen, especially, helped bring this style to public attention because he has had such dramatic success with it at such a young age.
Today, though, Nieminen was an unhappy teen-ager, even though his first leap of 88 meters had tied him for second. He slumped on his second jump to 84.5.
""I wasn't satisfied with any of my two jumps,"" he said. He left the news conference with his coach's arm around his shoulders, a bronze Olympic medal apparently not solace enough.
Holland, by contrast, seemed almost delighted.
""Thirteenth place in the Olympics is pretty damn good,"" he said. ""I don't think we get one-fifth the financial support they get in the European countries.""
He is America's best and is expected to do fine when he competes in the large-hill event, which used to be called the 90 meters.  Too Much Twist
His leaps today were 85 and 81 meters in the V-style, which he learned only last summer and which still gives him problems. He has a tendency to twist his body, a holdover from the days when skiers attempted to get as much chest as possible over the skis to create a more aerodynamic surface.
The United States actually has won one Olympic ski-jumping medal in the past. In 1924, Anders Haugen was an also-ran in the Olympic competition. But, remarkably, someone was checking the record 50 years later and discovered a scoring error. Haugen had actually finished third. So in 1974 in Oslo, Norway, Haugen, who was 83 years old, received his medal.
ALBERTVILLE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Victory In Doubles Is Clincher For U.S.
Even as the top-ranked doubles team in the world, Mike and Bob Bryan rarely play in the spotlight. They joked earlier this week that the only television time they have is on the Tennis Channel.
But on Saturday, ESPN2 cameras and a crowd of 5,327 at the Mohegan Sun Arena focused on their every move as the United States played Austria in the first round of the Davis Cup.
They seized their moment. It just did not last very long.
The Bryans, identical twins from Camarillo, Calif., dispatched Jurgen Melzer and Julian Knowle in straight sets, 6-2, 6-1, 6-4, clinching the three-of-five-match series for the United States, which leads, 3-0, with two singles matches left on Sunday.
Expedience trumped patriotism. The match lasted just 86 minutes.
'It's great to have a day dedicated to you,' Bob Bryan said.
The United States has won 28 straight Davis Cup first-round matches on home soil, but has not won a Davis Cup championship since winning its 31st in 1995. [The United States will play Sweden, which clinched a victory over the defending champion, Australia, when Jonas Bjorkman defeated Mark Philippoussis, 7-5, 6-2, 6-2, on Sunday in Adelaide, Australia.]
After Bob Bryan fired a match-ending service winner at Melzer, the brothers leaped in the air and bumped chests, their signature gesture of joy. They paraded around the court and passed an American flag back and forth to teammates Andy Roddick and Robby Ginepri, who gave the United States a 2-0 lead on Friday with their singles victories.
In the reverse singles pairings Sunday, Roddick is scheduled to play Melzer and Ginepri will meet Stefan Koubek. But because the matches are now an afterthought, Roddick might defer to one of the Bryans.
United States Coach Patrick McEnroe said he thought it best to enlist men who play doubles for a living instead of those from the singles ranks. Last year, James Blake and Mardy Fish lost a two-set lead against Goran Ivanisevic and Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia. That gave Croatia a 2-1 lead and it won the series, 4-1, to oust the Americans in the first round for just the sixth time. The United States is 13-17 in doubles since 1992.
The Bryans won the confidence of their coach when they won in their Davis Cup debut last fall in a qualifying series victory over Slovakia.
'It's really relaxing to the other guys,' McEnroe said. 'The other guys know they can focus on what they need to do. These guys give us the best chance of winning the doubles. That outweighs having singles guys step in.'
The Bryans, the oldest players on the American team at 25, had little trouble with the Austrians, who have never won a Davis Cup title.
Melzer smashed his racket after a poor return in the second set, but the anger seemed futile. It was a mismatch on paper, too. The Bryans won the 2003 French Open and made the final of the Australian Open last month. Melzer is a singles specialist ranked 76th and Knowle has a doubles ranking of 38th.
The teams were on serve until Melzer double-faulted on game point to give the United States a 4-2 lead in the first set. The rout accelerated from there. The Bryans zipped through their service games. They lost their serve once, but they were already leading by 4-2 in the third set. Bob Bryan, a left-hander with the bigger server of the two, was particularly impressive, nudging the radar gun to 139 miles an hour just one day after Roddick hit a record 150 m.p.h. serve.
'I was blowing my own mind,' said Bryan, who has never served faster.
The Bryans also kept the Austrians off balance with aggressive service returns.
'They were just too good,' Melzer said. 'There was no chance for us.'
Austrian Coach Gunter Bresnik used Melzer in place of Alexander Peya. Peya had a sore wrist and Melzer was impressive in building a two-set lead before losing his match Friday against Ginepri. That was among Bresnik's last moves as coach. He retired Saturday and said Thomas Muster would probably take over as Davis Cup coach.
Meanwhile, the Bryans said they hoped to qualify for the United States Olympic team. They could become the first American brothers to play Olympic tennis since Joseph and Arthur Wear, the great-great-uncles of President Bush. They played in the 1904 Games.
TENNIS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Austrian Wins, but Winter Rules on Famous Downhill
Michael Walchhofer of Austria won the prestigious 66th Hahnenkamm downhill on Saturday, beating Marco Büchel of Liechtenstein by five-hundredths of a second. Daron Rahlves was third despite a costly mistake.
'It's tough to think this is the last time I'll be on this hill,' said Rahlves, who was hoping to win here in the most perilous ski race in the world before he retires this spring. 'This place is like nowhere else in the world.'
Bad weather forced organizers to move the start shack lower on the mountain, beneath the enormous Mausfalle jump. The same thing happened in 2003, when Rahlves became the first American since Bud Werner in 1959 to win the Hahnenkamm race.
The lower start may put an asterisk on Walchhofer's victory. He disagreed.
'For me, it has the exact same value as if I had started from the top,' said Walchhofer, who took the lead in the season-long World Cup downhill standings from Fritz Strobl after Strobl crashed, breaking his left hand.
Walchhofer won the race in 1 minute 46.75 seconds. By comparison, Jakob Lackner took 9:55 to win the first running of the race, in 1930.
An estimated 50,000 fans made the pilgrimage to Kitzbühel to see the downhill, which is a national institution. The finish area is a strange mix of fur coats and squalor, as the country's elite move through luxurious sections and others partake in huge quantities of gluwein, a hot spiced wine.
With 7 of 10 downhills complete, Walchhofer has 472 points, Strobl 415 and Rahlves 390. No American man has won the downhill title, and Rahlves has made it his No. 1 goal this season, even before the Olympic downhill gold.
Strobl's broken hand means he will miss next weekend's downhill and super-G races in Garmisch, Germany, but he is expected to return in time to defend his 2002 Olympic downhill title next month in Italy.
Bode Miller, who was fourth on Saturday, said he would race in Sunday's slalom here but is considering skipping the Garmisch races to rest an aching knee in the lead-up to the Olympic Alpine races.
Miller has competed in each of the past 134 World Cup races, far more than any other active skier.
'The priority right now is to make sure I have my equipment sorted out well in every event, so that I can race hard in every event,' he said Saturday This was the last race that will enter into the United States ski team's selection criteria for the Olympic downhill. Rahlves and Miller have clinched spots, but the final two start positions are still not determined. Scott Macartney, Marco Sullivan and Steve Nyman have had similar results this season.
All four of the Canadians in the race were running the course for the first time. (Last year the race was canceled because of poor weather, and the year before their coaches had felt this generation of skiers was too young and inexperienced to start.)
One of them, Erik Guay, finished fifth despite not being able to see the gates as he bounced over ice at speeds close to 90 miles an hour.
'You just try to pick a point farther on and arc across the hill toward it,' Guay, 24, said. 'The best part is actually when you're in the air. When you're not touching the snow, you can finally see something.'
Guay skied aggressively despite feeling nervous in the start after watching the run of his teammate Manny Osborne-Paradis, who slid low on the treacherous Steilhang and actually skied up onto the safety netting.
It was a mistake similar to the one that Brian Stemmle of Canada made in 1989, except Stemmle caught the tip of his ski in the netting and came to a stop, sustaining severe internal injuries and a broken pelvis.
After spending three months in hospitals, Stemmle sued the Hahnenkamm's organizers for a negligent shortage of plastic fencing, won his case before the Austrian supreme court, and returned to race again at Kitzbühel eight times in the 1990's.
'I always say that's the toughest thing I'll ever have to do, is stand in that start gate at Kitzbühel in 1993 knowing that I almost died there,' Stemmle said this week. 'I never wanted to be defeated by anybody or any mountain.'
OLYMPICS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"For Austrians, Test Results Will Determine Legacy of These Games
As Austrian Olympic officials and athletes anxiously awaited the results of doping tests on 10 skiers, they have used nightly gatherings here to distract themselves from the issue that could put a damper on the sporting success they have enjoyed at these Winter Games.
The Italian police raided the quarters of the Austrian cross-country and biathlon teams late Saturday in search of evidence of doping. Five days later, the results of doping tests performed on 10 Austrian athletes were still not known.
The International Olympic Committee said that the delay was not unusual and that more time was needed to check for the blood-boosting drug EPO.
'The laboratory analysis is still ongoing,' the I.O.C. spokeswoman Giselle Davies said Thursday at her daily news briefing. 'It just takes this long sometimes, and that's the bottom line.'
The mood of the Austrians might be tempered, but the scene at the Austria House shows how an open bar and free food can ease the tension.
The snowboarder Siegfried Grabner, fresh off a bronze-medal performance in the parallel giant slalom, was greeted at the Austria House on Wednesday night by a television crew, a platter with fruit and a chocolate cake, and dozens of fans giving him hugs, handshakes and kisses.
'It's not so often that you win a medal,' Grabner said. 'I enjoy it a lot that there are others to celebrate this accomplishment with.'
As for the doping issue, Grabner said, 'I am not going to let that overshadow my accomplishment.'
Initially, the raid Saturday night outraged Austrian officials. But the police said they had confiscated syringes, glucose drips and other medical equipment, and then two biathletes fled to Austria, compelling the Austrian officials to address the situation.
The Austrian Olympic Committee, not satisfied with how the Austrian ski federation had handled the incident, formed a commission to investigate.
The raid came after the authorities learned that Walter Mayer, a former Austrian coach who was implicated in a doping incident at the Salt Lake Games in 2002, was in contact with the team here. Mayer had been suspended by the I.O.C. through the 2010 Games, and federation officials insisted that he was at the Turin Games independent of the Austrian ski team. But they admitted that he had spent a night in the team's private quarters.
Peter Schröcksnadel, president of the ski federation, said he had no knowledge that Mayer had stayed in the team's housing until afterward. Another top official, Markus Gandler, said he was not aware that Mayer was not allowed to be in close contact with athletes during the Games.
But Matthias Bogner, the sports director for the Austrian Olympic Committee and the director of Austria House, said the committee had made it clear that Mayer should not have been in contact with the team without an accreditation.
'The crisis management was very, very bad by the Austrian ski federation,' Bogner said. 'Some people must be held responsible. Everyone is waiting on the resulting consequences in the ski federation.'
Salzburg, Austria, is in the running to be host of the 2014 Winter Games. The Austrian Olympic Committee hopes to salvage Salzburg's campaign by showing that when problems arise, it knows how to take the appropriate action, Bogner said. Therefore, he added, there is a possibility that top officials could be in trouble.
Even some of Austria's fans have become skeptical of the cross-country and biathlon teams.
'They made a mistake in that they are not sticking to what they say,' Rainer Schennach, who is from a small village in the Austrian state of Tyrol, said Wednesday night at the Austria House.
When it comes to finding ways to be competitive, Schennach said: 'Every federation pushes the limit. Apparently, the Austrian federation has gone over that limit.'
The guests at Austria House have included politicians, sponsors and gold-medal winners, and the parties last as late as 4 a.m. With plain wood walls and no paint or siding, the house seems makeshift. In a way, it is. After the Turin Games, the house will be taken down and re-erected in the Austrian town of Bischofshofen.
The legacy left behind could depend largely on what becomes of the suspicions of doping, even though Austria is approaching its Winter Games record of 21 medals.
2006 OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES -- DOPING RAID",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Montillet's Tough Year Ends Triumphantly in Downhill
After the finish line of the Olympic women's downhill, after her gold medal-winning time had been posted, after bowing her head and rising to wave to the French fans beating drums in the grandstands, Carole Montillet knew she could again think of her friend Régine Cavagnoud.
For the past two weeks, Montillet played a joyless game of self-control as she tried to separate herself from her thoughts of Cavagnoud, who had been France's best female skier until her death in October after a training accident. For months after the accident, Montillet was consumed by Cavagnoud's death. Naturally, she grieved for her teammate, but as her heir apparent, she also found that the conclusion of every race this season brought about another period of commiseration for what the French team had lost.
'It was very difficult because it did not matter whether the race results were good or bad,' said Montillet, whose upset victory today at the Snowbasin Ski Area was her first victory in an international downhill race. 'Everything referred to Régine. I felt I was losing my own identity.'
A week before the Salt Lake Games began, Montillet left the World Cup circuit and traveled to San Diego. She trained in sunlight and sand, away from the European news media, the trappings of the World Cup and her own French team, fleeing every reminder of what she and the skiing community had lost when Cavagnoud crashed into a German coach who had strayed onto the French team's training course.
'My time in San Diego was liberating,' Montillet said. 'I focused on freeing myself, knowing it was something I had to do before the Olympics. Today I raced for myself, but I know that Régine was with me. Always, every day, she is with me in my heart. I can think of that now. The gold medal is for me, for her, for our coaches, for all of us on our team.'
While the women's downhill, which was postponed Monday and delayed by two hours today, began as the setting for Picabo Street's final chance to become the first American skier to win a medal in three Olympics, it ended with a victory that seemed to delight almost everyone.
After a fast start, Street finished 16th. She said of Montillet: 'This has been a very tough year for the French team. I don't know that I could have lost a teammate and gone on, so I am so happy for her and them.'
Isolde Kostner, perhaps the pre race favorite, won the silver medal, becoming the first Italian to win an Olympic downhill medal in 50 years. Renate Götschl of Austria won the bronze. The top American finisher was Jonna Mendes, who was 11th.
Montillet, 28, posted her winning time, 1 minute 39.56 seconds, early in the draw, taking advantage of favorable snow conditions. Most of the top contenders, who have their choice of when to start in the race, had selected spots later in the starting order, apparently believing the snow might be faster as the bright sun of a cloudless day melted and turned icy on the surface. But perhaps because of the two-hour delay, the opposite proved true. No one genuinely challenged Montillet, who won by 45-hundredths of a second over Kostner.
Montillet's chief advantage, however, was how calm her skis were through the midsection of the Snowbasin course, which was where every other skier seemed to slow. Montillet drove her skis forward in this turn-filled sequence, and, unlike the others, she picked up speed.
Street, who started 26th, gave Montillet a solid challenge. With a mostly American crowd at the bottom of the mountain cheering as she began her run, Street beat Montillet's split times in the first third of the course -- and was the only skier to do so. But as Street entered the first major right-hand turn, a plume of snow sprouted from the tails of her skis.
It was a sign of a slightly skidded turn, but it might as well have been the smoke from a blown engine at the Indianapolis 500. By the next timed interval, Street went from being ahead to trailing by nearly a second.
'I wished I could have gone off with a medal,' Street said. 'But I leave very happy and proud.'
Given the snow conditions, in retrospect, the American with the best chance at getting on the medal podium might have been Caroline Lalive, the second racer on the course. But Lalive, after skiing the top portion well, caught an edge and fell. The other American medal hopeful, Kirsten Clark, was 12th.
Austria's Michaela Dorfmeister, another of the favorites, who chose to be the 25th skier on the course, also lost ground in the midsection after a reasonably quick start. She finished ninth.
In the end, though, it was a smiling Montillet who captured the day. Having placed 14th in her two races at the 1998 Olympics and having lived in the shadow of Cavagnoud for many years, Montillet had happily found a way to face the pressure of losing and succeeding her friend: a gold medal.
'It has been a very tough, hard year,' said Montillet, standing near the finish line with a French flag draped around her shoulders. 'I know it has changed all of us. But we have this gold medal now. It does matter. It is not everything, but for Régine, for all of us, it is something.'
OLYMPICS: ALPINE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Czechoslovakia Reaches Round 2
LEAD: Czechoslovakia today assured itself of advancing beyond the first round of the World Cup finals for the first time since 1962 by defeating Austria, 1-0.
Czechoslovakia today assured itself of advancing beyond the first round of the World Cup finals for the first time since 1962 by defeating Austria, 1-0.
Besides making Czechoslovakia the third country to move to the next round - Cameroon and Italy were the first two - today's victory also gave Czechoslovakia a 2-0 record in its group, for 4 points, and set up a showdown with Italy, also 2-0, Tuesday in Rome to decide first place.
Czechoslovakia could win the group with a victory or on goal differential with a draw. The Czechoslovaks, who beat the United States, 5-1, are plus 5. Italy, a winner by 1-0 over both Austria and the United States, is plus 2.
Runner-Up Goes South
The winner of the group also gains the right to play its round-of-16 match in Rome's Olympic Stadium, Italy's home field for the first round, against a presumably weaker opponent. The runner-up plays its match in the southern city of Bari.
Czechoslovakia's victory was a rough, sometimes mean-spirited affair in which the referee, George Smith of Scotland, handed out seven yellow cards of caution, including one after the game. Play was especially nasty in the first half.
Czechoslovakia's goal came on a penalty kick by Michal Bilek in the 31st minute. As Jozef Chovanec, a key midfielder for Czechoslovakia, set himself to receive a pass just inside the penalty area, Klaus Lindenberger, the Austrian goalkeeper, raced toward him and dived at the ball, which he missed. Instead, he caught Chovanec at the feet and brought him down. Smith signaled a foul, and Czechoslovakia got a penalty kick.
Bilek sent the ball screaming past Lindenberger's right to the corner of the goal. Chovanec was diagnosed as having reinjured a hip muscle. It is doubtful he will be available to face Italy.
Czechoslovakia will also be without its other leading midfielder, Lubos Kubik. The yellow card he received in the 70th minute was his second in two games, which makes him ineligible to play the team's next game.
West Germany 5, United Arab Emirates 1
MILAN, Italy (AP) - West Germany easily qualified for the second round of the World Cup, beating the United Arab Emirates behind two goals by Rudi Voller.
Voller and a fellow striker, Jurgen Klinsmann, scored late in the first half. The West Germans used a persistent attack similar to what they used in a 4-1 victory over Yugoslavia.
K. I. Mubarak scored for the United Arab Emirates early in the second half. But a minute later, the West German captain, Lothar Matthaeus, got his third goal in Cup play. He and Voller share the World Cup scoring lead.
WORLD CUP '90",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Race Car Hits Deer
LEAD: A deer that wandered from nearby woods onto the race track at the Oesterreichring race course in Zeltweg, Austria, during practice runs yesterday for the Austrian Grand Prix tomorrow was struck head-on and killed by a Formula One car driven by Stefan Johansson of Sweden. Although the car burst into flames and repeatedly hit the barrier while skidding down the track after the accident, the driver of the McLaren-T
A deer that wandered from nearby woods onto the race track at the Oesterreichring race course in Zeltweg, Austria, during practice runs yesterday for the Austrian Grand Prix tomorrow was struck head-on and killed by a Formula One car driven by Stefan Johansson of Sweden. Although the car burst into flames and repeatedly hit the barrier while skidding down the track after the accident, the driver of the McLaren-TAG racer was not injured.
'The deer was walking around there for 10 minutes and no yellow flag went up,' Johansson said afterward. 'They should have stopped practice.' Johansson, using a backup car for his official qualifying attempt, placed 14th with a speed of 145.342 miles an hour. Nelson Piquet of Brazil was first with an average speed of 159.457 m.p.h.
SPORTS PEOPLE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Hitched to Miller, U.S. Skiing Slips Off Course
Bode Miller released an autobiography last year, 'Bode: Go Fast, Be Good, Have Fun.'
It is catchier than 'Fifth Place, Disqualified, Did Not Finish.'
Those are the results for Miller after three Olympic ski races at the Turin Games. Miller, the defending world champion, a pre-Olympic news media star and a medal contender in five events, made it 0 for 3 Saturday when he slammed into a gate in the men's super-G, then teetered off the course like a weekend novice looking for somewhere soft to fall.
In a surprise, Kjetil Andre Aamodt, 34, of Norway, won the race, 14 years after he won the super-G at the Albertville Games in France. Aamodt has won eight Olympic medals, the most of any Alpine skier. Hermann Maier of Austria, whose dominance at previous Games Miller had hoped to duplicate, took the silver medal, and Ambrosi Hoffmann of Switzerland earned the bronze medal.
United States ski team officials did not discuss Miller's latest failure. Over the years, they have tolerated his wild-child act, especially after his many successes last season. But with the team having disappointing results, Miller's collapse has cast a malaise on athletes who had hoped to challenge the vaunted Austrians for dominance in Olympic Alpine skiing.
A week into the Alpine competition that was supposed to set Miller up as the most decorated American Olympic skier ever, he has finished fifth in the downhill, blown a large early lead in the combined when he straddled a gate and skidded off the racecourse in one of his best events.
'We're all having our problems, not just Bode,' Daron Rahlves, another multiple-medal contender for the United States who has been shut out here, said Saturday. Rahlves finished 9th Saturday and was 10th in the downhill. 'I didn't feel I had it today. I don't know what's going on exactly. It's kind of strange.'
Miller's failures have been amplified by his apathetic, almost bored, postrace reactions and numerous sightings of him in the few nightclubs of this small village in the western Italian Alps. Publicly, United States ski team officials have generally not commented on Miller's performances on or off the slopes. But Miller, who won two silver medals at the 2002 Winter Games, was the face of the team and was expected to lead the American skiers to their stated goal of eight Olympic medals.
They have instead won one medal, a gold earned by a little-known 21-year-old, Ted Ligety.
In Miller, the United States ski team finds itself hitched to a mercurial contrarian who has always said he does not value medals or victories, but the team did not know that Miller would pick this fortnight to prove that he meant what he said.
'I look for objective results by my own standards,' Miller said after the downhill last weekend. 'And with that perspective, I skied the way I wanted to today. It was a good run.'
After missing a gate in the combined, a major gaffe in a race he seemed likely to win if he avoided a significant mishap, Miller smiled and joked. His blunder meant he did not have to make the 60-mile trip to Turin for the medal ceremony the next day, or as Miller said near the finish line, 'At least now I don't have to go all the way to Torino.'
Saturday's super-G was halted after 30 minutes because heavy snowfall made for poor visibility. Restarted in the midafternoon, all of the morning runs were discarded and the race resumed under sunny skies.
Miller came down the super-G course with the pedigree to sweep the field. After the first section, he was on a pace to have the fastest time. Then, about one minute into his run, making a right-to-left turn, he inexplicably skied too close to a tricky gate in a flat section of the course. Miller is always aggressive -- that is why he is fast -- but this was reckless. His left ski crashed into the gate, and Miller spun around, skiing inelegantly as he balanced on one leg.
Knowing his chances at a medal were gone, Miller got both skis on the snow and left the course near a side gate, skiing through the woods, and never returned to the finish area to talk to teammates, team officials or reporters.
Miller, who stays in an R.V. near the finish area, will race in two more events next week: the giant slalom Monday and the slalom next Saturday. He will be a long shot in the slalom, an event in which he has not contended during the World Cup season. But Miller, if not for his bad streak in these Games, would be viewed as a certain gold-medal contender in the giant slalom. He won a World Cup giant slalom in December in Beaver Creek, Colo.
If Miller, 28, can win any medal, he will become the first American Alpine skier to win three Olympic medals in a career.
As baffling as Miller's results have been at the Turin Games, his life and his performances on the mountain have been a mystifying jumble from the moment he won last season's World Cup overall title in March. In the news conference immediately after the race that clinched the award, which had not been won by an American skier since Phil Mahre in 1983, Miller was expected to celebrate. Instead, a dour Miller announced that he might not ski in these Winter Games.
The reason?
He didn't want to become too famous.
At lunch in Manhattan a month later, Miller insisted he was serious about his potential Olympic boycott.
'Everyone wants to be rich and famous, but most don't like it when they get it,' Miller said. 'And I'm one of those people. The rich part is O.K., but the famous I can do without.'
Asked if he would not be calling more attention to himself by staying away from the Olympics, Miller paused to sign an autograph for a waiter, then answered: 'I could fade away. No problem.'
Three days later, he signed a two-year endorsement deal with Nike. Among other things, the company agreed to set up a Web site, joinbode.com, that contained Miller's pontifications on things like the excesses of youth sports and his distrust of authority.
Miller then spent the summer, by his own admission, playing golf and drinking beer. He worked out -- he has a self-designed regimen that includes pushing an old one-ton paving vehicle up the hills near his home in Franconia, N.H. -- but it is not clear how often. Miller kept reporters at arm's length for months, then showed up for the opening of the World Cup circuit overweight by about 10 pounds at 222.
For hardly the first time, his coaches on the United States ski team fretted that Miller was squandering a golden Olympic opportunity. But when he came in second in the World Cup season's first race in Austria, everyone in the ski community gave the usual response: It's just Bode being Bode.
In an interview earlier this year, Miller said, 'The whole world would be better off if people thought for themselves and trusted themselves instead of doing what television commercials tell them to do or thinking in whatever way the media tells them to think.'
This kind of thinking influenced his skiing style as well, and it frustrated coaches who tried to make him use a more traditional technique. As a teenager, Miller made the United States team despite the protests of several national coaches. But as a 20-year-old in 2001, he won a national championship in slalom, and a year later he won four World Cup races.
The United States ski team has been on a wild ride, tethered to the willful Miller, ever since.
The team's coaches and executives happily went along with the unmanageable Miller, rolling their eyes behind him as he spoke, in early 2005 when Miller was dominating the European skiing elite as no American racerbefore him. But the officials cringed when all the interviews from Miller's late-2005 book tour became public.
The best known of those interviews was broadcast on '60 Minutes' on CBS in January, when Miller seemed to indicate he skied the final race of last season while drunk. Miller apologized after the '60 Minutes' interview, but his agent and the United States ski team president had to fly to Switzerland to make him do so.
Heading into the Olympics, Rahlves defended Miller. But many of his other teammates seemed to be growing weary of the distractions Miller caused.
Miller has not traveled with the team for two seasons, preferring his R.V. He often skips team meetings and functions. What Miller calls individualism, his coaches and teammates sometimes privately call selfishness. While it grates on them, they have largely chosen to ignore the tension it creates for fear of making it worse by saying something.
For example, Miller slept late before the Olympic men's downhill, skipped the customary course inspection and arrived about one hour before the start. Phil McNichol, the United States men's head coach, was asked if Miller's prerace decision-making had bothered him.
'It's happened before,' he said, shrugging. 'Same old thing. We have said this many times: Bode does things his own way. I believe he is trying. But this is the Olympics, and is it enough?'
2006 OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES -- ALPINE SKIING: MEN'S SUPER-G
Correction:  February 27, 2006, Monday  A front-page article on Feb. 19 about Bode Miller, who had been expected to lead the United States ski team during the Turin Olympics, misstated the year he won the national championship as a 20-year-old. It was 1998, not 2001.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Twilight of Career Bright for Austrian
After playing 10 years in the German Bundesliga, Andreas Herzog was a free agent, at home in Austria, when the phone rang late last year. Jürgen Klinsmann, a former teammate at Bayern Munich and now a technical adviser for the Los Angeles Galaxy of Major League Soccer, was calling.
'I was looking for a new life experience,' Herzog, now an All-Star midfielder in M.L.S., said in a telephone interview. 'The only bad thing is that they should have called two years ago. I'm 35 now and not the youngest player. I don't know how much longer I can last.'
Herzog is doing fine so far. A savvy, left-footed player, he has been one of the best players in the league on the best team in M.L.S. The Galaxy has the most points in M.L.S. (32) and the most goals (33), but it has played at least two more games than every other team. The Galaxy has four players (Carlos Ruiz, Alejandro Moreno, Jovan Kirovski and Herzog) among the top 15 scorers in the league.
Although M.L.S. has generally been averse to importing high-priced players from overseas after disappointments like Lothar Matthäus and Khodad Azizi, Herzog has not bungled his move to the United States.
'Andi has become the focal point for our attack on the field and has endeared himself to his teammates with his humor, stories and willingness to work with the young players,' Galaxy Coach Sigi Schmid said in an e-mail message.
The Galaxy will be in Minneapolis tonight for a U.S. Open Cup match against the Minnesota Thunder of the A-League, a match that was moved from James Griffin Stadium in St. Paul to the Metrodome, where a crowd of about 10,000 is expected, said Jim Froslid, a Thunder executive. But Herzog, who missed the second half on Saturday with a strained lower back, will not play on the artificial turf indoors.
As the end of his career nears, Herzog would like to field one more important phone call regarding soccer -- from the coach of Austria's national team, Hans Krankl.
'Of course I would like to play for Austria against England, it would be nice to play against Beckham,' said Herzog, who has played 103 times for Austria, including twice in the World Cup.
Austria is scheduled to play England in a 2006 World Cup qualifier on Sept. 4 in Vienna.
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER  Cleveland Still May Get a Team
In expanding to 12 teams for next season, M.L.S. followed the money from Cleveland to Utah, awarding a team to a group led by Dave Checketts, formerly the top executive at Madison Square Garden, for the 2005 season.
Last year, the league signed a letter of intent to award a franchise to Bert Wolstein, a real estate developer and philanthropist. Wolstein had proposed a $110 million stadium project for either downtown Cleveland or Summit County, north of the city. But Wolstein died in May. The agreement remains in place with deadlines for stadium development, season-ticket targets and sponsorship commitments.
'We are continuing to move forward and hope to have something new on stadium financing in the next three weeks, but the clock continues to tick,' Paul Garofolo said in interviews last week. Garofolo had long worked with Wolstein at the Cleveland Force of the Major Indoor Soccer League. 'We continue to move forward with our desire to bring M.L.S. to Cleveland in 2006.'
Garofolo met with M.L.S. Commissioner Don Garber in New York last week and will meet with league officials again at the All-Star Game in Washington at the end of the month.
METROSTARS -- After allowing 11 goals in a three-game losing streak, the first-place team in the Eastern Conference has given up one goal in two games. Coach Bob Bradley used five defenders to thwart struggling Chicago on Saturday.
CHICAGO -- Fire midfielder DaMarcus Beasley, 22, was sold to PSV Eindhoven of the Netherlands yesterday for a $2.5 million transfer fee, according to PSV's Web site.
UNITED STATES  Futsal Qualifying in Costa Rica
There is another soccer team from the United States trying to qualify for a FIFA world championship -- in futsal. The 12-man national team, coached by the indoor guru Keith Tozer, is in Costa Rica for the eight-nation Concacaf tournament that will send two teams to the championship in Taiwan this year. The United States begins play against Panama on Friday and will also play Cuba and Guyana.
Futsal is a five-a-side game played on a field roughly the size of a basketball court with no walls and a smaller, low-bouncing ball. The emphasis is on close skills and quick moves. All the players on the American team play in the M.I.S.L. and several, including strikers Todd Dusosky and Greg Howes also play outdoors in the A-League.
'I hate to say this because things usually go wrong, but we are the most organized and best prepared than any futsal team I have coached,' Tozer said in a telephone interview before the team departed. 'Although a lot of people don't know futsal, there are more than 200 teams around the world. All the Brazilian clubs also have futsal teams, and the sport will be in the Olympics, maybe in Beijing, definitely in 2012. And whether we are representing our country in darts or in soccer, it's an honor.'
The United States finished second to Brazil in 1992 in Hong Kong; Brazil has won three of the four tournaments. Spain won the title in 2000 in Guatemala.
Corner Kicks
U.S. OPEN CUP -- There are six games tonight in the Round of 16, including the MetroStars at the A-League Charleston Battery. Quarterfinal matches are scheduled to be played on Aug. 4. If they advance, the MetroStars will play the winner of the match between the Rochester Raging Rhinos (A-League) and New England (M.L.S.).
FINAL WHISTLE -- Sonia Denoncourt of Canada, the first woman to referee a men's match in Brazil and El Salvador and the first woman to earn recognition as a FIFA referee, retired last week after 27 years calling games. Denoncourt will continue as the referee development coordinator for the Canadian federation.
SOCCER REPORT
Correction:  July 22, 2004, Thursday  An account in the Soccer Report column on Tuesday about the expansion to 12 major league teams next season misstated the location for one possible stadium site, Summit County, Ohio. It is south of Cleveland, not north.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Klammer Still on Slopes After '76 Downhill Feat
Franz Klammer can recall every tiny detail, every sharp turn and every steep angle of his dramatic downhill race at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria. Halfway down the Patscherkofel course, he trailed Bernhard Russi, and needed something special to make up time.
Coming out of a jump, Klammer made a wide, even reckless turn near a fence that accelerated him to victory by .33 of a second. 'It was my best decision ever,' he said yesterday. He relives the memory frequently for corporate audiences and a videotape of his assault on the downhill never seems far away.
'I watch it often and I win all the time,' he said, laughing.
Now, 15 years since he last competed in the Olympics, Klammer, 45, is in a race to persuade the International Olympic Committee to select Klagenfurt, a joint Austrian-Italian-Slovenian bid for the 2006 Winter Games. He is one of the organizing committee's athletic ambassadors sent out to extol the unique three-nation 'bid without borders' against the other bid cities: Sion, Switzerland, which is considered an early front-runner after losing bids for the 1976 and 2002 Games; Turin, Italy; Helsinki, Finland; Zakopane, Poland, and Poprad-Tatry, Slovakia.
'This is the first three-country bid ever,' said Klammer, who lives in the Austrian region of Carinthia, of which Klagenfurt is the capital. 'Once, we were at war against each other. Now we're trying to bring countries and regions together. It fits perfectly into the Olympic ideal.'
The I.O.C.'s choice of the winning city on June 19 in Seoul, South Korea, will come amid new rules promulgated two months ago in the aftermath of the Salt Lake City bribery scandal. Visits to bid cities by I.O.C. members were halted to limit lavish hospitality and illicit gift-giving. The new regulation has forced bid city officials to go on the road to plead their cases to I.O.C. members.
'It's unfair because Sion is well known,' said Michael Ausserwinkler, the president of Klagenfurt 2006, during an interview with Klammer in New York yesterday. 'Sion is 20 to 30 miles from Lausanne,' the site of the I.O.C.'s headquarters. 'We wanted to show I.O.C. members what's going on with us.'
He said that as many as 100 total I.O.C. member visits to the proposed three-nation Olympic region, planned last November, were canceled when the Salt Lake scandal tainted the Olympic movement.
'This hurts us,' Klammer said. 'But we'll make the best of it.' Even if it means preparing Klagenfurt for another bid for the 2010 Olympics.
Klagenfurt officials have pitched their bid to I.O.C. members in Lausanne, Bangkok and Mexico City, offering ceremonial Olympic pins but no other inducements, Ausserwinkler said. Klammer will soon travel to Japan. Without the visits to the region, Ausserwinkler has had to provide I.O.C. members geography lessons and assuage some of their concerns that the locale is too close to the war in Kosovo.
Now, the committee is producing CD-ROMs that will provide I.O.C. members with a visual tour of the area and its venues, including the women's downhill course, which starts at a mountain top where Austria, Slovenia and Italy meet.
'We're quite hopeful it's the right time for a new step in Olympic history,' Ausserwinkler said.
Klammer and Ausserwinkler said they cannot gauge the impact of the scandal on the I.O.C. or how reforms will alter the organization.
'They're changing,' Klammer said. 'If it's enough, I don't know. We're so focused on what we're doing. But we believe in the Olympic movement. It's still good for the kids. It's good for the world. It's a pity what's happened.'
OLYMPICS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Moe Struggling 4 Years After His Gold
If you have not paid heed to ski racing since the last Olympics, you can step off the cog railway car in this venerable Alpine village and think that nothing had changed.
On the posters in the station advertising the annual Lauberhorn men's downhill is a large and flashy photograph of Tommy Moe in mid-tuck. But in a town from another era with pedestrian-only streets and century-old chalets, that poster looks like another museum piece.
It has been nearly four years since Moe won the Olympic downhill in Kvitfjell, Norway, and he has yet to win another international race. He has experienced both a major knee injury -- suffered on the same course where he won the gold medal -- and a major dose of reality.
Today on the Lauberhorn, as skiing's newest poster child, Hermann Maier of Austria, gambled and won his fifth consecutive World Cup race, Moe hit a tricky series of small bumps in mid-course, crossed his ski tips and went sprawling into a safety barrier at approximately 60 miles an hour.
He emerged unscathed, but for the moment, the yawning gap between the defending Olympic champion and the sturdy, supremely confident Austrian who wants to replace him looks unlikely to close in the four weeks that remain until the downhill in Japan.
'It's just a psychological barrier,' Moe said. 'I just need to let it hang out. I was letting it hang out the best I could today, and it's good to know it's in there. I've just got to dig a little deeper, but I'll be ready when the Olympics come.'
While his fellow American Picabo Street built on her 1994 Olympic silver medal in the women's downhill by achieving greater success on the World Cup circuit, Moe proved incapable of using his Olympic title as a launching pad, although he said that it had sent his earnings soaring.
'I don't feel badly because I gave it my best shot every time I was in the gate,' Moe said. 'Picabo was in a different situation because in women's ski racing, if you're more confident than everybody else, you can win. In her situation, I don't think the competition was as deep, but she was definitely skiing out of her mind to win nine downhills.'
Moe knows that no man or woman has won two Olympic downhills. He also knows that Maier, a former bricklayer and ski instructor, is on a history-making, peer-rattling roll and has all but clinched the prestigious World Cup overall title with two months remaining in the season. Although Maier is at his crushing best in the more technical disciplines of Super G and giant slalom, he also has won two of the four downhills contested thus far and finished second in another.
Today, his time of 1 minute 44.59 seconds was .68 seconds faster than anyone else.
As Moe watched a replay of Maier's winning run on the giant video screen in Wengen's finish area, he saluted the Austrian, saying: 'He just ripped those turns at the bottom. He's just going straight, just carving it. Unreal. He's just stronger and taking a more direct line on his skis than the rest of us. I take my hat off to him.'
For the moment, Maier cannot return the favor. The Americans have three experienced downhillers in Moe, AJ Kitt and Kyle Rasmussen, who at age 29 is coming back after major knee surgery. But after today's race, not one American is ranked in the top 35.
The United States has four slots in the Olympic downhill, but men's coach Bill Egan said he might select only two skiers if results do not improve.
'We're not going to take people there to be tourists,' he said. 'We're going to take skiers to Japan that we feel can be competitive or that we feel really deserve an opportunity to get exposure to the Olympics because they might do really well in Salt Lake City in 2002.'
In Thursday's final training run, Kitt finished a whopping eight seconds behind the leader and kicked his skis in disgust. Today, he finished 2.39 seconds behind Maier, in 30th place, and did not look a great deal happier.
Rasmussen, the rangy Californian who won on this classic, narrow course in 1995 but tore knee ligaments on it last season, flirted with danger again today as he lost his balance in the closing stretch. He missed the last gate, came off the finishing jump and struck the protective barrier. Somehow, he avoided falling and finished.
As Rasmussen trudged out of the finish area, he passed unnoticed through a large group of European journalists. They were all waiting for Maier.
NAGANO 1998",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"U.S. Finish Is Memorable, But Not for Right Reason
The door smacked the United States on its way out of the Alpine skiing world championships Sunday, when it finished dead last in the team event. It put together the worst performance by any nation in the short history of team racing.
The skiers on the United States team made a mess of the icy slope, wrecking and inexplicably flying past gates as if they were lost. They collected, by far, the most points in a race in which the object is to gather as few as possible.
'It's a tough way to end the championships,' said Jesse Hunt, director of the United States team's Alpine program. His skiers won three medals, all silver, in these 11-race championships.
Austria easily won the team race with 18 points. Sweden was second with 33 and Switzerland was third (39) among the 11 teams.
The United States, whose top racers were sidelined because of injury and fatigue, finished with 77 points, which put them well behind Alpine skiing lightweights like the Czech Republic (57) and Slovenia (58).
The team event, in which skiers compete in the super-G and slalom, was introduced two years ago. Since then, no national team had done as poorly in the race as the United States did Sunday.
'We didn't have our all-star team competing today, and that hurt,' said Ted Ligety, the 2006 Olympic champion in the combined. 'We had to go hard and we had to hope it paid off, but it didn't.'
The biggest applause the United States team received was when Resi Stiegler of Jackson Hole, Wyo., imitated the 'belly slide,' which is the traditional victory celebration of Anja Paerson of Sweden. But unlike Paerson, who does the slide in the finish area, Stiegler did it on the race hill, after crashing.
Tim Jitloff, an eager 22-year-old from Reno, Nev., turned in a respectable run. He races with the words 'Thanks Dr. Orr' on his helmet in recognition of Terry Orr, the ski team surgeon, who repaired his left knee 14 months ago.
The team event was the last competition in the 15-day championships, which take place every two years. Austria finished with nine medals, two ahead of host Sweden.
Bode Miller sat out Sunday's race with what coaches were characterizing as a relatively minor knee injury. The two women who won the United States team's three medals at this event were also sidelined.
Julia Mancuso, who took silver behind Paerson in the women's super-combined, was at home in California taking a long-planned break before rejoining the World Cup circuit next week in Spain.
Lindsey Kildow, who was runner-up to Paerson in the downhill and the super-G, withdrew from the competition Friday after injuring her right knee in a training crash.
Kildow and Mancuso are in striking distance of titles on the World Cup circuit, which resumes this week and ends next month. Mancuso has a chance for the overall title, which no United States woman has won since Tamara McKinney became the first in 1983.
These championships will probably be remembered for the numerous weather-related postponements and the ascension of the Scandinavians, who won 5 of the 10 individual world titles. Paerson won three gold medals and Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway won the men's downhill and giant slalom.
Paerson became the only skier to win world titles in all five of skiing's disciplines.
For Hermann Maier of Austria, this was the first time he failed to win a medal at a world championships or Olympics he entered. Maier, 34, said it was important for a champion to know the feeling of defeat -- another example of the humility he has exhibited since his near-fatal motorcycle crash in 2001.
Miller, 29, was also shut out of the medals, as he was at the Olympics last year in Turin, Italy. The difference this year was that Miller had been splendid on the World Cup circuit.
At the world championships two years ago in Bormio, Italy, Miller won the downhill and the super-G. But he saved perhaps his greatest performance for the combined event, in which he lost his ski while landing a jump at high speed and continued on the downhill course on one ski -- a moment so memorable that few remember who actually won.
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Summer Skiing: Mornging Adventures in the Alps
LEAD: SNOW may have melted off the mountains in the Northern Hemisphere, but glaciers never die. In fact, they hold enough snow for skiing 12 months of the year, right through the summer. In the Alps, a number of ski resorts have installed lifts and developed skiing terrain on glaciers for winter use and these are often kept open through the summer.
SNOW may have melted off the mountains in the Northern Hemisphere, but glaciers never die. In fact, they hold enough snow for skiing 12 months of the year, right through the summer. In the Alps, a number of ski resorts have installed lifts and developed skiing terrain on glaciers for winter use and these are often kept open through the summer. A few resorts on this continent have done so as well.
While only avid skiers would plan a summer skiing vacation abroad, especially given the vagaries of the dollar, if you are in Europe anyway glacier skiing is a unique and relatively accessible experience. Skiing on a glacier may seem like a dangerous sport, but glaciers aren't much different from ordinary ski terrain. Except for a few steep pitches, the treeless fields of snow are fairly tame for experienced skiers and the lift-served sections are generally far from crevasses or other hazards.
The greatest danger is the sun in the high altitudes, with reflections from the snow coming from every direction. To avoid a serious sunburn, skiers are cautioned to use strong suntan lotion.
What is different about glacier skiing is the snow surface. Temperatures get down to freezing at night on the glaciers, firming the surface. By the time skiers reach the glacier at 8 or 9 A.M., however, the sun has been shining for an hour or more, and the snow is beginning to thaw.
The freeze-thaw cycle is what makes glacier skiing distinct. The surface is usually very hard in the early morning. Gradually the surface becomes granular, and the skiing can be like moving on ball bearings, but the snow is very forgiving so you can always get your ski edge to hold. As the sun beats down and the heat penetrates the granular snow, the surface becomes thicker and eventually is so mushy it is unskiable.
In July and August, the time to ski a glacier is limited to 8 A.M. to noon. The air temperature is usually in the 50's during this period, but in June and September, the temperature may be cooler - just above freezing -which means the snow remains skiable for a longer period.
Quitting at noon, however, isn't without its benefits at most European mountain resorts. At St. Moritz in Switzerland, for instance, skiing starts high on the Corvatsch Peak at 10,200 feet. A cable car from the base of the mountain starts operating at 8 A.M., and two T-bars on the glacier serve skiers. Returning to the valley for the afternoon, skiers can select tennis, golf, swimming, sailboarding, horseback riding, fishing or hiking to round out an active day.
Laax, another Swiss resort, has skiing on the Vorab 3,000 glacier. The ride up to the glacier can take 45 minutes or more on two trams and a gondola. There are two T-bars and one chairlift on the glacier, which has a large section for cross-country skiing. Then there's rafting on the Rhine and balloon rides in the valley.
Other Swiss resorts with glacier skiing are Crans/Montana, Les Dieblerets/Gstaad, Pontresina, Flims, Sass-Fee, Verbier and Zermatt.
Several Austrian glaciers are popular training sites for national ski teams. While ski team members practice slalom training on the steep pitches at Hintertux, Dachstein and Solden, recreational skiers enjoy the vast treeless and mostly intermediate terrain on these glaciers.
Many Austrian glaciers have a half-dozen or more lifts, including gondolas, to take skiers up the 1,000 to 2,000 vertical feet of skiing. Like the Swiss peaks, the glaciers in Austria are usually accessible by cable car, but a few can be reached by automobile as well. Aerial lifts - chairs, gondolas and trams - are anchored to solid rock adjacent to the glaciers, but T-bars, which don't require as critical alignments, are operated on the glacier itself.
Some of the other Austrian glacier skiing sites are Kaunertal, Pitztal, Stubaital, Styria and Carinthia. There is usually a colorful ski village nearby, such as Neustift, Mayrhofen or Schladming, with numerous sports activities for afternoon outings. In addition, the city of Innsbruck is less than an hour's drive or bus ride from several of the glacier skiing sites.
In France, Val d'Isere and Tignes have lift-served skiing at high altitudes, plus summer sports for afternoon activities. At Val d'Isere, skiing is off the Ponte du Montet at over 11,400 feet in height, and at Tignes it is on La Grande Motte at nearly 12,000 feet. Val Thorens offers two glaciers for summer skiing plus a variety of summer activities. Summer skiing is also available at La Plagne, Les 2 Alpes and Chamonix on the famous Mer de Glace Glacier.
In Italy, Courmayeur and Cervinia, which has a view of Zermatt, both offer summer skiing. The Passo Dello Stelvio, not far from Bormio, also has lift-served glacier skiing.
On this continent, Mount Hood, Ore., has snowfields above the 8,500-foot level that stay white through the summer. Besides the youngsters and adults attracted by more than 50 racing camps, which are organized and run independently from the resort, numerous recreational skiers stay at Timberline Lodge, located near the snowfields, and enjoy a day or several days of warm-weather skiing.
Last season, Blackcomb Mountain in British Columbia installed a T-bar on the Horstman Glacier that reached 7,500 feet. This year a second T-bar is being installed to a higher elevation and summer skiing will be expanded. The Canadian National Ski Team, junior skiers and adults interested in racing participate in training programs on this glacier.
Most of the resorts have ski equipment rental operations in villages at the base of the mountains and a few rent equipment from shops on the glacier itself. A few, however, do not have rentals in summer, so it is best to check with a local tourist office to determine if ski equipment is available. Also, for the best fit and greater comfort, it's wise to pack your own ski boots.  Billy Kidd on Glacier Skiing
Bring plenty of suntan lotion, with a sun protection factor of 15 or stronger.
Wear very dark sunglasses with side protectors or ski goggles that have ultraviolet filtration. The sun reflecting off the snow can cause snow blindness.
Although it's warm on a glacier in summer, keep arms and legs covered while skiing. A fall on granular snow is like sliding on rough sandpaper and can cause nasty abrasions.
Dress in layers, with a light windbreaker on top. Carry a backpack with extra clothing for warmth in case of a sudden storm.
Bring juice, water or soda to drink during the day. Activity at high altitude can lead to dehydration.
Ski only on the marked runs or pistes. Going out of bounds can lead to serious misadventures.
ON YOUR OWN",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Piccard Steals Super-G Show From Zurbriggen and Tomba
LEAD: This was supposed to be the Mount Rushmore of Alpine skiing, where Pirmin Zurbriggen of Switzerland and Alberto Tomba of Italy would etch their profiles in the Olympic snow. But since Zurbriggen won the downhill last Monday with a spectacular run down Mount Allan, he and others among the world's more renowned male and female skiers have found the slick, icy slopes to be unforgiving.
This was supposed to be the Mount Rushmore of Alpine skiing, where Pirmin Zurbriggen of Switzerland and Alberto Tomba of Italy would etch their profiles in the Olympic snow. But since Zurbriggen won the downhill last Monday with a spectacular run down Mount Allan, he and others among the world's more renowned male and female skiers have found the slick, icy slopes to be unforgiving.
There were 100 skiers entered in the super giant slalom today, the first time the event has been held in the Olympics. Six did not start and 37 more failed to finish, either falling or missing a gate.
Tomba, the self-proclaimed messiah of skiing, almost fell rounding the third gate, looking like a freestyle skier as he made a 360-degree turn before coming to a stop. He decided to call it a day. Zurbriggen, the overall leader in World Cup points this season, finished fifth, skiing at a turtle's pace for him. More Surprises
Thus, once again the gold medal was won by someone who did not think he had a chance. Franck Piccard of France, a 23-year-old who is carrying the burden of being compared with his countryman Jean-Claude Killy, won the super giant slalom, racing under a self-imposed yellow caution flag over the treacherous course. Piccard finished in 1 minute 39.66 seconds.
Helmut Mayer of Austria was an equally surprising silver medalist, finishing in 1:40.96. He was entered in this event only after outskiing his teammate Gerhard Pfaffenbichler in qualifying runs the past two days.
In fact, no one expected Lars-Boerje Eriksson of Sweden, ranked 34th in the World Cup points standing, to win the bronze medal as he did in 1:41.08. All three medalists described their performances using words like 'surprised' and 'unexpected.' All also had plenty of healthy respect for Mount Allan. Austrian Woman Wins
In the women's combined, Anita Wachter of Austria won the gold medal after today's two runs of the combined slalom. Brigitte Oertli of Switzerland won her second silver, again upstaging her more illustrious teammates, Maria Walliser and Michela Figini. Walliser won the bronze medal in the combined.
Thus, there have now been four unexpected winners in the total of five events completed in the men's and women's Alpine competition.
The men's super giant slalom is basically a glorified downhill with more gates, run on the women's downhill course. The course is steeper and longer than the giant slalom and slalom, favoring downhillers more than technical skiers who can cut sharp edges around the gates.
'The first part was really steep,' Piccard said. 'I was a little afraid. I just skied the line, staying wide on the turns. I didn't think I could get a good time. I didn't look at the scoreboard when I finished. I was angry with myself.'
Piccard was the fifth starter. By the time he pushed off, Michael Eder of West Germany and Marc Girardelli of Luxembourg had already abandoned their runs. Markus Wasmeier of West Germany, one of the pre-race favorites, fell after Piccard's run. 'Brutal' Wind
Zurbriggen admitted he became tentative after observing that 5 of the top 14 skiers did not make it all the way down. 'I was disappointed but I knew that many had gone out of the race,' he said. 'So I did not take many risks. The course was not absolutely regular. The wind was brutal and it was very slippery.
'When the wind came, it took the silver medal. But Piccard was the best today.'
The Swiss skiers - male and female - were expected to dominate these Games. Now, they are doing more whining than winning, mostly about the wind.
As for Tomba, he was hoping for a top 10 finish in this race, his first of the Olympics. He is No. 2 in overall World Cup points, a specialist in the slalom and giant slalom. He offered no excuses, though.
'It was stupid mistakes,' he told Italian journalists. 'I can't say anything. The next time, I hope to arrive at the bottom with a result. Only speaking is not useful. I must perform, too.'
Piccard won a World Cup super G in Val-d'Isere, France, last year, but he is a giant slalom specialist, who also surprised ski experts when he won the bronze medal in the downhill last Monday.
He is from Albertville, the site of the next Winter Olympics. But it is too early to think about that, he said. Piccard also discouraged comparisons with Killy, a national hero who won three gold medals in the 1968 Olympics in Grenoble, France. 'I was only 4 years old,' he said.
He now has two medals in the three men's events, one more than Zurbriggen. 'He is the best skier in the world this winter,' Piccard said. 'I thought he would get three or four gold medals. I am surprised to be in front of him.'
Zurbriggen appeared to be in good spirits after today's race. Moni Julen, his friend, said she thought he was suffering a letdown after the downhill, the most glamorous Alpine event of the Olympics. 'He looked so much to the downhill,' she said. 'It was his first wish to win that. It's people who count medals; he never counts.'
'88 WINTER OLYMPICS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"TIME INC. CHIEF TO BE NAMED AS ENVOY TO AUSTRIA
LEAD: Henry Anatole Grunwald, the editor in chief of Time Inc., will be nominated by President Reagan to be ambassador to Austria, according to Administration officials.
Henry Anatole Grunwald, the editor in chief of Time Inc., will be nominated by President Reagan to be ambassador to Austria, according to Administration officials.
The publishing company announced yesterday that Mr. Grunwald, who is 64 years old and still speaks with the accent of his native Vienna, had retired as editor in chief of Time.
In April, Mr. Grunwald said he would retire in December after 40 years at Time, nine of them as editor in chief. Louis J. Slovinsky, a Time spokesman, said Mr. Grunwald's early retirement came 'because he is being considered for a Government position,' but he would not identify the position. A phone call to Mr. Grunwald's office was not returned yesterday afternoon.
Ronald S. Lauder, who has been ambassador to Austria since April 1986, has said he wished to resign the post, according to a State Department official who asked not to be named. The official said Mr. Lauder indicated he will vacate the post in order to run for the United States Senate seat now occupied by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York Democrat who is up for re-election in 1988. Jason McManus Is Successor
Administration officials said the United States had asked the Austrian Government to accept Mr. Grunwald as ambassador. The officials said they expect the change to take place in October, after the required Senate approval of the nomination.
Jason McManus, who had been previously designated to take Mr. Grunwald's place, has assumed the position of editor in chief, giving him responsibility for such publications as Time, Life, Sports Illustrated, Money, People, and Fortune.
Mr. Grunwald, who is Jewish, fled Austria at the age of 17 to escape Nazi persecution. He is viewed as politically conservative, though he has not been identified with either policial party.
Administration officials said that Mr. Grunwald could be expected to bring a measure of stability to a diplomatic post that has traditionally been considered an undemanding political plum, but during the Reagan years has become first an embarrassment and later politically sensitive.
In 1983, Mr. Reagan appointed Helene A. von Damm, his personal secretary, to the ambassadorship, and she resigned in 1985 after a romance and marriage to a local hotelier.
Mr. Lauder, a businessman and the son of Estee Lauder, the founder of the large cosmetics firm, quickly became embroiled in the controversy over charges that Kurt Waldheim, Austria's President, committed war crimes during World War II. Mr. Lauder did not attend Mr. Waldheim's swearing-in ceremony.
A State Department official said that Mr. Lauder is leaving the post at his own request, and not at the urging of the Administration.
Mr. Grunwald will remain a member of Time's board of directors until the end of the year when Mr. McManus will take his place, according to yesterday's announcement.
Mr. Grunwald began at Time as a copy boy after graduating from New York University in 1944, a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. After writing 30 cover articles, he became the youngest senior editor in the company's history.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"The Gates Glide By For Kostelic In the Slalom
The downhill might be the most dangerous race in skiing, but the slalom has to be the most nerve-racking with its thicket of tightly packed gates and chronic shortage of room to recover from mistakes.
There were reminders of its unforgiving nature almost from the start of today's world championship event when two experienced American skiers, Sarah Schleper and Kristina Koznick, lost their rhythm and their way at the top of the first run. Schleper ended up distraught on the side of the course after missing a gate, putting her helmeted head on Coach John Ethen's shoulder as he rubbed her back. Koznick, never at her best in the biggest events, ended up sliding down the course's first steep pitch on her side instead of her skis after falling within seconds of the start.
Plenty of other women tried and failed, too, including the 18-year-old American Julia Mancuso, who straddled a gate in the first run and went skidding into a camera bag, abandoned by a photographer in a hurry to avoid a collision.
But when it was Janica Kostelic's turn to run the gantlet in St. Moritz for the second and final time, there was suddenly a calm about the place. Most slalom skiers, even at this level, look to be at the limit of their speed and talent, their knees bobbing and feet shifting at a furious pace. But if you could not see the split times, you would have sworn that Kostelic was taking her time. Other slalom skiers slash; she flows.
How could someone this much in control be nervous? And how could she have any doubt about the outcome, particularly with Kostelic's main rival, Anja Paerson, handicapped by a surprisingly poor time in the opening run?
At least for now, the 21-year-old Kostelic remains a sidecut above in this event, and when she finished in a combined time of 1 minute 39.55 seconds, the American Bode Miller was no longer the only skier with two gold medals in St. Moritz.
After winning the combined event last Monday with a sore right knee, Kostelic won the slalom today with a sore right shoulder, too. For a woman who professes to be no fan of world championships, she certainly skied through plenty of pain to take part.
'There are some things in life you prefer; I prefer the World Cup,' she said. 'But it's not that I didn't want this world championship medal.'
When she arrived here two weeks ago as the world's dominant female skier, Kostelic had never won a medal in the championships. Now she has two to go with the record four she won at last year's Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, where she won gold medals in the combined, the giant slalom and the slalom.
Many were betting against Janica today. When last seen in the finish area, she was hunched over and clutching her right shoulder on Thursday after smacking into a gate during the giant slalom race in which she finished 13th. Meanwhile, Paerson, the effervescent and physically imposing Swede, was winning the gold medal by a whopping, Kostelic-like margin of 1.55 seconds.
But doctors here determined Kostelic had only bruised her shoulder and, though they have yet to determine precisely why her right knee is sore, she decided to start anyway.
That came as no surprise to some of Kostelic's competitors, who think she has been exaggerating her aches, pains and limp.
Kostelic is not amused, and she certainly did not fake the major right knee injury she sustained during downhill training in St. Moritz in 1999, an injury that threatened her career and required reconstructive surgery. Nor did she fake the left knee pain that required three minor operations in 2001.
'It's not a big deal,' she said. 'But I don't think it's very nice when some girls think that I'm not injured.'
In the seven World Cup slaloms this season, Kostelic has won four, Paerson three, and Paerson showed why in the second run. She stormed back to record the fastest time, in part because her father, Anders Paerson, who also coaches the Swedish technical skiers, had been picked in a random draw to set the course.
But she could not storm all the way back to a medal, finishing fourth, as 21-year-old Marlies Schild of Austria took the silver medal with a combined time of 1:40.18 and Schild's 19-year-old teammate, Nicole Hosp, took the bronze medal in 1:40.46. Hosp also won a silver medal in the combined event.
But Kostelic's two medals here were of a more spectacular color, and today's gold came in front of a crowd of about 13,000 that included the for-now-retired Swiss tennis star Martina Hingis, who could later be seen skiing down to the town of St. Moritz at a much slower pace than a Kostelic.
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"An Encouraging Sign for Killy and France
Jean-Claude Killy of France has mislaid none of the grace and sportsmanship that made him the greatest ski racer of his time. When he refers to participants in the Alpine skiing world championships, which take place in odd-numbered years, he sometimes refers to them as 'the champions.'
For Killy, who is organizing the next world championships in his hometown, Val d'Isère, the term sometimes seems to apply to every competitor, not only the race winners like Mario Matt of Austria, who took the men's slalom title Saturday.
Cynics would say that it is a necessary adjustment of standards for supporters of the French ski team, which has fallen on hard times 40 years after Killy swept the Olympic gold medals at the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble, France.
A little relief came Saturday as Jean-Baptiste Grange finished third, collecting the French team's first medal of the championships, which end with a team event Sunday.
Matt finished the two-run slalom race in 1 minute 57.33 seconds, an astonishing 1.81 seconds ahead of Manfred Moelgg of Italy. Grange was another 0.40 behind Moelgg.
'It hasn't been so much success for us at the world championships, although we did win a race at the Olympics,' said Grange, referring to his teammate Antoine Deneriaz's victory in the men's downhill last year in Turin, Italy.
The only American to complete Saturday's race was Tim Jitloff, a wide-eyed 22-year-old rookie from Reno, Nev., who finished last after hiking to reach a gate he had missed. Three of his teammates -- Bode Miller, Jimmy Cochran and Ted Ligety, the Olympic combined champion -- were among the 50 racers who failed to finish after 74 had started.
It was the first time since 1999 that the United States men failed to collect a world championship medal.
'It was a tricky hill,' Jitloff said of Saturday's course. 'A lot of terrain changes, and the light was bad.'
Miller, who reportedly hurt his knee Saturday, was shut out of the medals. In the five events he entered, he was 24th, 6th, 7th, 15th and D.N.F. -- did not finish. He will not race the team event. Nor will Lindsey Kildow and Julia Mancuso, the women who collected the United States' three medals here. Mancuso is taking a long-planned break, but Kildow injured her knee in training Thursday, and her season is imperiled.
Miller's performance echoes his strikeout at the 2006 Olympics in Turin. Then as now, Miller had moments of athletic genius -- Killy's description -- which amplified his failure to successfully defend his world titles against less-talented racers.
It is difficult to know what Miller is thinking because he is the only racer who refuses to participate in routine interviews at the finish line.
Matt's margin of victory was the third biggest in the history of men's slalom at the world championships. The record came on the same mountain in 1954, when Stein Eriksen of Norway won by 5.77 seconds. That was another time, when skiers in short leather boots often drew their skis into a conservative snowplow position to slow down.
The man who ushered ski racing into the modern era was Killy. His goal is to interest the French in ski racing again, and he announced this week that the 2009 championship races would be free for all spectators.
'Improving our racers is the key to our success; we know that,' said Killy, who steered what he called modest financial support from his organizing committee to the French team. 'It has to be a very festive 15 days.'
The race will feature the resurrection of the one of the most dramatic downhills in the world, the 1992 Olympic course, which sends racers shooting through a narrow gap in a rocky outcropping. Killy said that he hoped to find a way to include racers from nontraditional ski nations like Ghana and Senegal, who boycotted races this week after arriving to find new qualification rules in place.
'We have got to find a way to keep everybody in play,' Killy said. 'You cannot have five nations playing with their skis.'
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Composer Plans to Strike Up the Cell Phones
ASK not for whom the cell tolls. Golan Levin already knows. In fact, he will be making the calls.
Mr. Levin is the creator of 'Dialtones: A Telesymphony,' a musical composition for 200 cell phones. To play the 'instruments,' which are  held by audience members, Mr. Levin will dial their numbers from an onstage computer to produce carefully orchestrated patterns of sound.
'Dialtones' will receive its premiere on Sept. 2 during an electronic arts festival in Linz, Austria. In -- you guessed it -- a telephone interview from the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, where he is an artist in residence, Mr. Levin said the 30-minute work was inspired by society's love-hate relationship with the increasingly ubiquitous cell phone.
'Everyone has one, yet we don't like it when they ring,' said Mr. Levin, a 29-year-old composer and software engineer who recently completed a master's degree at the Media Lab of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 'Part of the motivation is to make a sacred space for the enjoyment of these phones.'
At a time when hand-held cell phones have been banned from cars in some areas and cultural events are often preceded by a caution against them, Mr. Levin, a Staten Island native, says he hopes to alter the phones' image by showing that they can make art as well as noise.
In Linz, concertgoers who want to double as performers will have to register their cell-phone numbers before the event, and some will be asked to install special ringer tones on their phones. Inside the hall, they will be assigned positions in a 20-by-10 array of seats that corresponds with a grid on Mr. Levin's computer screen. By clicking on the grid, Mr. Levin will issue dialing commands to phones at those locations in the audience, making them ring in a range of tones, from a few seconds to four minutes -- provided audience members heed instructions and don't answer their phones.
Some phones will warble melodies, while others may burble rhythmically. Certain passages will sound like birds, Mr. Levin said, 'as much as you can get a bunch of cell phones to sound like a twittering jungle.'
Commands sent to a sequence of adjacent rows will generate waves of sound. To augment the phones' limited three-octave range with bass tones, Mr. Levin will amplify the vibrations of several units. His ring cycle will conclude with a crescendo of 60 phones singing simultaneously.
Mr. Levin will have to contend with the delay between the time he triggers a signal and when its sound is heard. Even though he will have direct access to the switching network of Mobilkom Austria, a cell-phone service provider, he expects delays to vary from three to six  seconds. ''It means we cannot do anything that is extremely rhythmic in a rock music kind of way,' he said.
Audio samples from 'Dialtones' rehearsals can be found at www .flong.com/telesymphony. Mr. Levin said he would add video clips from the premiere.
In staging the work, Mr. Levin is using a theatrical touch that will hearten anyone who has had a concert interrupted by the shrill chirp of a cell phone. As each phone rings, an overhead spotlight will shine on the head of the call's recipient. An onstage mirror will let audience members watch the light show, which is in  effect the work's musical score rendered large as life.
The idea of turning cell phones into musical instruments is very much in the air these days. In June, an Israeli orchestra played a classical medley in which a cell phone introduced themes by Bach, Mozart and Rossini. On Aug. 25, a minutelong piece for seven phones is to be performed at a Berlin trade show.
For Mr. Levin, such developments ring true. 'I'm just responding to the sounds in my own environment,' he said. 'That's what any composer does.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Two Golds, One Stunning Crash: Now Maier Is Fast and Familiar
Without the crash, Americans would have cared very little about Hermann Maier.
Without the crash, he would have been just another fast and faceless Alpine villager who won multiple Olympic gold medals before returning home to a lifetime of testimonial dinners in his native Austria and a lifetime of fame on the World Cup circuit, which is about as popular in the United States as college football is in Europe.
Anyone remember what Germany's Markus Wasmeier looks like? He won two golds in Lillehammer, Norway, just four years ago.
But somewhere between the moment Maier soared into midair in a most compromising position and landed on his helmet at a very high speed, people who don't know a parabolic ski from ginseng tea began to take a special interest in this former bricklayer. When he came back like some sort of Lazarus on snow to win the super-G and the giant slalom in convincing fashion, suddenly he was fast but no longer faceless.
Strangers noticed the jutting chin, the blond stubble on his face, the broad nose that looks as if it belongs to a boxer instead of a ski racer.
Not that Maier had wanted it this way. 'If you ask me, it would have been better to get famous for winning the gold medal in the downhill,' he said.
Maier has not watched his crash again on video, and he has no plans to screen it until after the World Cup finals in Crans Montana, Switzerland, in mid-March.
'I think it's better maybe for the mental to not look at it before the next downhill in Kvitfjell,' he said today after he skied and won his last Olympic race in Japan.
For those who have watched the crash again and again, it is clear that Maier, who had not fallen all season, was simply too bold. The downhill champion Jean-Luc Cretier, who started just before him, essentially stood up in his skis 14 seconds into his winning run in order to negotiate the right-hand turn in the narrow chute leading to the lip that made the Austrian flip. Fourteen seconds; 15 seconds into his run, Maier was still in full tuck, and as he schussed into the chute, he hit a small bump that threw him slightly into the air.
By the time he landed, he was off balance and moving too rapidly, and though he tried a late desperation turn, his skis went into a slight depression just before the lip, which sent him exploding skyward off it.
'Other skiers were letting their skis slide through that turn, but his skis were fully loaded,' said the former American downhiller Steve Porino. 'The pressure had to release somehow. If he had been going 10 miles per hour slower, he could have turned in the air. But at that speed, he just went shooting off into space.'
And cartwheeling through two safety nets and out of the start list for the combined downhill later that day because of a sprained right knee and bruises on his left shoulder and sternum. It could have been worse, much worse, but his great escape was not only a question of luck. It was also a question of preparation: Austria's top skiers pay close attention to flexibility and, said their team coach, Werner Margreiter, all can do a full split.
But Margreiter said: 'You must respect physics. I think Hermann, for the first time, found out that he cannot just risk anything without accepting some natural laws. You have to deal with gravity and other forces, and if you push too far, it can be dangerous.'
It is a testimony to the significant gap between Maier and his peers that he was able to win the super-G on Monday and giant slalom today despite the psychological and physical aftershocks of that fall.
'After having survived such a crash, it is like being born again,' Maier said. 'These two gold medals probably mean more because of it.'
He is assured of becoming the first Austrian man since Karl Schranz in 1970 to win the overall World Cup title. In Japan, he became the first Austrian man since Toni Sailer in 1956 to win multiple gold medals in a Winter Olympics. (Sailer won three.)
'I was half the Herminator after the super-G; three-fourths after the first run of the giant slalom and all the way back after the second run,' he said. 'You can call me the Herminator again.'
He looked like himself on today's second run, with his eyes bulging, teeth bared and edges flashing. Maier skied the giant slalom the way the last true Austrian ski hero, Franz Klammer, the 1976 Olympic champion, once skied the downhill: recklessly, almost disdainfully.
'Maier eats the course,' said Schranz, the last true Austrian ski hero before Klammer. 'And his technique is really good, and he is lower down than all the others. You can afford to be lower down only if you are very strong.'
The strength is a fairly recent acquisition. When Maier was 15 and forced to stop skiing because of sore knees caused by a growth spurt, he said his schoolmate and current teammate, Christian Mayer, weighed 176 pounds while he weighed 110.
'It was a problem when it was windy,' cracked the man who now weighs 198 pounds, 'and it was also not so easy to get through the gates.'
With his rugged features and crooked, slightly menacing teeth, Maier looks like someone you would not want to meet on a dark slalom run. But that appearance is deceptive. He is full of wit, whether he is speaking his native German or the very respectable English he learned teaching Scandinavians how to ski in his home village of Flachau. But the most intriguing thing about Maier is his curiosity and acute sense of observation.
Interview him, and he asks you a string of questions about your newspaper and your objectives (not a common occurrence with star athletes). Put him on a super-G course for inspection and he pushes the legal limit. (He nearly drew a protest in Schladming, Austria, last month because he was the last one on the hill.) Put him in the midst of a crowd of Japanese volunteers and he poses pleasantly for photographs and then somehow notices a pair of sunglasses lying half-buried in the snow underneath a chair.
'He seems a very hang-loose guy on the outside, but inside he is concentrated,' said his coach, Anton Geiger. 'He's a little bit like Alberto Tomba that way. He's making jokes, but he's focused.'
Maier has been focused on being an Olympic champion since he was 8. 'I was the favorite in four disciplines here,' he said, referring to the downhill, super-G, giant slalom and combined. 'I won in all of them on the World Cup, and so it was a lot of pressure. But after the crash, I fell on my head and it was a little bit better. It somehow released the pressure.'
Maier was smiling that crooked smile again, and before long he was working his way toward the door.
THE XVIII WINTER GAMES: ALPINE SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Magic Eludes Miller as Reichelt Wins the World Cup Super-G
Bode Miller's attempt to recreate the racing magic he exhibited at last year's World Cup event in Beaver Creek lasted 38 seconds on the first day of competition Thursday as he missed a gate and skied off the super-G course. Miller, as usual, was skiing the most aggressive line on the steep top portion of the challenging course and paid for it, skidding so wide on a left-to-right turn that he had little chance of recovering to make the next gate.
Miller was one of many who had trouble with the turn at the same gate, but perhaps no one attacked it with the same fervor. About 17 seconds earlier, Miller went through the first timed interval on the course faster than every racer but one, Didier Cuche of Switzerland, who also did not finish the race.
In four World Cup races this season, Miller has finished 2nd, 18th, 22nd and been disqualified. A year ago, Miller won the first three races and was second in the fourth. He then won the fifth race of the year, the downhill at Beaver Creek.
In snowy conditions with high winds Thursday, it seemed an advantage to have an early starting position. The winner, Hannes Reichelt of Austria, was the seventh skier on the course, which he completed in 1 minute 17.33 seconds. Miller started 30th, last among the top racers. The start order is determined by using the world rankings in reverse order, beginning with the top 30 racers.
Miller's teammate Daron Rahlves started 28th and battled the winds at the top of the course to post a gutsy, respectable time and finish in fifth place. Hermann Maier of Austria was eighth.
Erik Guay of Canada placed second, four-hundredths of a second behind Reichelt. The Austrian Matthias Lanzinger was third in 1:17.49.
Miller, the reigning super-G and overall World Cup champion, did not come to the finish area after his run and was not available to reporters. But one of his coaches with the United States men's team, John McBride, said that Miller had trouble seeing through his goggles in the start house. Rahlves said he had similar problems with moisture, which can freeze on the goggle lens.
'On the course, Bode made a tactical error,' McBride said. 'I guess he was looking through the bottom of his goggles, where he could see, and he approached that important turn a little indecisive on when to start the turn. You don't have time like that -- not on this course.'
Rahlves, and several other racers, said the conditions at the top were treacherous.
'It was nasty up there, to say the least,' Rahlves said. 'Visibility was almost zero and the wind was going sideways.'
Benjamin Raich of Austria said he was shocked the race was run.
'We have to accept these results,' Raich, who finished 18th, said. 'But this was not very fair. You couldn't see and the wind gusts were changing.'
Rahlves said he had lost speed at the same gate that sent Miller off course.
'It's a tough turn, and we were told that before we got in the gate,' Rahlves said. 'But there was also soft snow above and below that turn that could throw you off, too, so you had to be careful regardless. It was a blind gate, a good, tough turn.'
Of Miller, Rahlves said, 'He was going too straight in there, too direct.'
Rahlves, who watched Miller's run on a giant video screen at the finish line, said, 'Once he got low and away from that left-foot turn, Bode had no chance.'
It was Reichelt's first World Cup victory of his career. Reichelt is returning to ski racing from a serious knee injury last season, when he tore knee ligaments and sustained bone damage.
'I skied the top today just fast enough,' Reichelt said. 'And that was important because it allowed me to carry my speed through the flat section. It was great to get to the bottom and see my name at the top of the leader board. It was great to see it there at the end of the race.'
With more snow in the forecast for Beaver Creek on Thursday night and through the weekend, there were concerns that Friday's downhill might not be run as scheduled.
'I don't even want to think of that,' Rahlves said. 'That's too fun of a race to lose. It's a highlight of the year.'",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Grunwald's Delicate Deliberations on Austria
LEAD: Relations between the United States and Austria, until several years ago a matter of such calm orderliness as to be virtually ignored in the press, are about to take a fresh turn in the spotlight with the selection of Henry A. Grunwald as the new United States Ambassador.
Relations between the United States and Austria, until several years ago a matter of such calm orderliness as to be virtually ignored in the press, are about to take a fresh turn in the spotlight with the selection of Henry A. Grunwald as the new United States Ambassador.
Mr. Grunwald, who resigned Monday as editor in chief of Time Inc., is a Jewish native of Vienna who fled the Nazis in 1940, a fact that as recently as 1985 would have drawn only a polite mention in a profile of a future ambassador to Austria.
In the meantime, however, Kurt Waldheim, the Austrian who had served as Secretary General of the United Nations, ran for the presidency of his country. Early in 1986, the Austrian magazine Profil and then The New York Times published accounts based on records showing that in World War II Mr. Waldheim served as an officer in Nazi Army units that had executed Yugoslav partisans, sent Yugoslav civilians to forced labor camps and rounded up Jews in Salonika for deportation to death camps. Barred From the U.S.  In his autobiography and campaign literature Mr. Waldheim skipped over or covered up this activity. When the truth became known, an outcry arose among Jews here and elsewhere.
The Justice Department began an inquiry that concluded last April with the placement of Mr. Waldheim, by then the President of Austria, on a list of people barred from entering the United States because of links to participation in 'activities amounting to persecution' of Jews and others. Mr. Waldheim has not been accused of physically taking part in deportations or executions.
Other countries have also said that Mr. Waldheim would not be welcome.
The Waldheim affair has seriously complicated Austria's otherwise friendly relations with the United States, and thus the choice of a new ambassador to Vienna acquired a sensitivity rare in the postwar era.
In Austria today, the current Ambassador, Ronald S. Lauder, announced his intention to resign, as he indicated he would months ago.
As it always does when such posts open up, the State Department chose one of its own, a career Foreign Service officer, as its candidate for posting to the former imperial capital on the Danube.
But the department's hopes were not high because the last seven ambassadors to Austria have been 'political' appointees chosen for their loyalty to a President and not as career professionals. They included a lawyer, an investor, a builder, a business executive, a real-estate developer, a former personal secretary to President Reagan and a cosmetics magnate. The last three, appointed by President Reagan, were Theodore E. Cummings, the real-estate executive; Helene A. von Damm, the secretary, and Ronald S. Lauder, son of Estee Lauder.
So it was that no one in Foggy Bottom was astonished when it became known that the White House personnel office had approached Mr. Grunwald. President Reagan's spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, acknowledged today that although no announcement was being made, Mr. Grunwald was indeed 'undergoing background clearance' by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a high-level Government position.
The prospect of a Jew's presenting his diplomatic credentials to President Waldheim for official accreditation as the United States Ambassador to the Government of Austria unsettled Mr. Grunwald enough to cause him to consult not only old friends but also several American Jewish spokesmen. 'He wrestled with it,' said one friend Mr. Grunwald asked for advice, former Ambassador Sol Linowitz.
A senior Administration official said today that Mr. Grunwald, 64 years old, 'had conversations with a variety of Jewish leaders before he decided to go forward' because he was concerned that Jews might oppose his selection. No Outrage
'They turned out not to be outraged,' the official said of the Jewish leaders.
'There is another side to this coin,' he added. 'After all, it means another Jew is being appointed in Vienna.' He was alluding to Ambassador Lauder, whose Jewish grandparents emigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the turn of the century.
A high-ranking State Department official said with regard to Mr. Waldheim: 'We distinguish between Waldheim as an individual and Waldheim as the President of Austria. At a social event it might be different, but we have to continue to deal with Austria and deal with the President of a friendly country.'
The Jewish spokesmen consulted by Mr. Grunwald apparently see this the same way.
Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defmation League of B'nai B'rith, said: 'I'm proud of this appointment, proud that the United States decided, with Waldheim as President, to send a Jewish ambassador, a Jewish refugee, as Ambassador. I hope they'll receive him as an American, not a Jew or a refugee.'
As for Mr. Grunwald's presenting credentials to President Waldheim, Mr. Foxman said: 'It may be difficult for any Jew to do it, but he is representing his country, and the opportunities transcend the difficulty. It is worth the moment of discomfort.'
Mark Tannenbaum, director of international relations of the American Jewish Committee, said of the Grunwald choice: 'This is a very important and positive development. We've been very concerned about the strain that developed between the United States and Austria, and Austria and Israel, over Waldheim.'
'Grunwald is clearly a person of first-rank intellect and abilities,' Mr. Tannenbaum continued. 'Because he is a Jew born in Vienna, he has no illusions about realities in Austria. And I think he can help Austria overcome delusions of victimization and encourage them to understand themselves as they are.
'We welcome the decision to appoint him. The United States hasn't helped Austria face up to its past. Previous ambassadors were chosen primarily for political reasons, for their large contributions to campaigns. This hasn't helped Austria feel good about itself. It has reinforced a feeling there that they don't matter, that Austria is an ambassadorial dumping ground. This appointment - a man of quality and enormous talent - will help reverse this image.'
Reached in Los Angeles, Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, struck a more skeptical note, saying: 'Grunwald will have to walk a very tight rope between representing his heritage versus his role as a representative of the U.S. Government. At present it would be inappropriate for Grunwald to meet officially with Waldheim.'
Mr. Grunwald's selection was hailed by former United States Government officials involved with Austrian affairs over many years.
Philip M. Kaiser, who was Ambassador to Vienna from 1980 to 1981, said of Mr. Grunwald, 'It's a first-class choice. His knowledge of Austria must be rather unique. It's a real compliment.'
Walter R. Roberts, a Vienna native who served as an information specialist for the United States Government for four decades, also praised the Grunwald selection. Mr. Roberts said of his fellow Jews from Austria: 'The attitude of former Austrians is a highly emotional, personal one. Some say, 'I'm never going to visit it again as long as I live.' Others say the Nazi era was an aberration that happened only because the Germans took over in 1938,' and so they do go back. I am sort of in the middle.' A Graduation Ceremony
Mr. Roberts happened to be in Vienna in June 1986 a few days after Mr. Waldheim won election to the presidency, and was watching a television program about a graduation ceremony at a central Vienna high school. To his surprise about eight former pupils were on hand to receive honorary diplomas. All were former Austrian Jews who had been unable to receive their diplomas because they had fled Nazi rule. One of them was Henry A. Grunwald, Mr. Roberts reported. He added that the school had invited more than 20 such former Jewish pupils to receive honarary diplomas. 'But only seven or eight like Grunwald showed up,' he said.
As for Mr. Grunwald's Austrian connections - he is a member of the American Austrian Foundation -Mr. Roberts remarked that his father, Alfred Grunwald, was librettist for the great Austro-Hungarian composer of operettas, Emerich Kalman, and wrote the words to some of the songs of 'The Countess Maritza' and 'The Circus Princess.'
One can't get much closer to the Blue Danube than that.
WASHINGTON TALK: SELECTION OF AN AMBASSADOR",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Après-Ski, It's Bottoms Up: Down the Hill, to the Bar
If Bode Miller wanted to forget about the idea of drunken skiing this week, he should have gone anywhere but Kitzbühel, the medieval Tyrolean town that over the next three days will play host to one of the biggest parties in the sporting world.
But of course Miller never leaves the Alpine skiing World Cup, which has come to Kitzbühel for three races, including the Hahnenkamm downhill on Saturday -- the most prestigious and dangerous ski race in the world. Miller's teammate Daron Rahlves is the favorite.
In recent years, as many as 100,000 fans have packed into this town of 8,000 for the three days of racing, which begins Friday, and most of them have disregarded the recent ban on schnapps during the races. Many will not bother to find hotel rooms, but instead will go from the downhill course to the pubs, stay up all night, and return to the mountainside for the slalom Sunday.
This is the backdrop for Miller and the American men's ski team as they try to distance themselves from Miller's quote heard around the world: 'If you ever tried to ski when you're wasted, it's not easy.'
Miller delivered that line on '60 Minutes' on Jan. 8, and the CBS advance news release promoting the segment turned his words into a miniscandal a few weeks before the opening of the Winter Games in Turin, Italy.
'Why make that such a big story and not make a bigger story of the success we've all had?' said Rahlves, who has won three World Cup downhills this year and is the runaway favorite for the Olympic race.
But as the general public in the United States is discovering an excellent ski team (ranked second behind the seemingly invincible Austrians), it is also discovering that ski racing's deep drinking culture is alive and well, in part a product of a schedule that keeps the racers on the road 250 days a year, mostly in Europe.
And nowhere is the sport's relationship with alcohol on more prominent display than in Kitzbühel on one Saturday night each season when the world's top racers finish the terrifying Streif course -- an unrelenting icy staircase -- and head to the jam-packed Londoner pub, where they get behind the bar and spend the entire night pouring beers and celebrating because their limbs are still attached.
'Franz Klammer always said that if you come down alive from the Streif, then you're entitled to have a party,' said Nina Gunnell, whose father, Rik, founded the Londoner in 1976.
'It's always been like that,' Rahlves said. 'That's how it is. It's part of the sport. Why downplay it?'
The Canadian ski team started the custom, which over 30 years has evolved into an initiation rite for World Cup downhillers. Not until they finish the course are they allowed to take a turn at the taps. Most of the beer they pour (and Gunnell has ordered 140 kegs for this weekend) ends up flying through the steamy air, landing on the racers' fan clubs.
'That's what sometimes people misunderstand is that were not drinking it, were just throwing it on each other,' Gunnell said. She maintains that the Londoner experience is a healthy way to unwind after the monthlong buildup to the Streif, which comes at the end of a string of important downhills.
Rahlves and his pals, particularly the North Americans, seem to cherish the Londoner tradition. 'We're over here for six months,' said Manny Osborne-Paradis of Canada, a Kitzbühel rookie hoping to tend bar Saturday. 'You gotta let loose a little bit. It's not like we can go home between each race and see our families.'
Said Christin Cooper, the 1984 Olympic silver medalist in the giant slalom: 'People love the image of these colorful characters that are kind of wild, so does the F.I.S. and so do sponsors and so does the U.S. Ski Team. What goes along with that is that your whole life has to be dedicated to a hard-charging way of life.' Cooper was referring to the international body that governs skiing, the Fédération Internationale de Ski.
But the party at the Londoner has been costly for American skiing. In 1997, the Olympic gold medalist Tommy Moe was sidelined for most of the season after cutting his thumb on broken glass while trying to jump over the bar. In 2004, Rahlves got so sick afterward that he lost his advantage in the downhill standings. Rahlves had the flu, but he admitted that the Londoner experience had made him vulnerable, and made him commit afterward to reducing his in-season drinking.
That was a tactical decision, not a public-relations move to satisfy the scolds. The coaches and the administrators who oversee the American men's team are the first to admit they keep the skiers on a looser leash than some of the other top teams, like the Austrians. They say that many of their athletes, including Miller, are fiercely independent and would not accept a rigid structure.
'We're trying our hardest to have a good time and manage the workload and focus on the long, long, long blocks of time on the road,' Phil McNichol, the coach of the United States men's team, suggested in an interview in November. 'It's a balancing act because it doesn't take much to step over the line.'
Rahlves resented the way Miller was attacked for talking about drinking. It's important to note that Miller never suggested he drank before a downhill, the race where the skiers reach speeds of more than 90 miles an hour.
'We all downplay it to be a little more professional, but everybody goes out and has fun,' said Rahlves, who tastes a shot of hypocrisy in the '60 Minutes' affair. 'Everybody knows what Hermann does, and that's way worse than Bode's ever gone.' Rahlves was referring to the Austrian star Hermann Maier.
Rahlves might be right about Maier, who, at the peak of his powers, in 1998, was arrested in Aspen, Colo., after capping a long evening by stealing a car, a bicycle and a forklift in quick succession.
But the Austrian team is generally more discreet about its nocturnal habits, in part because it is so competitive and there is not much room for rebellion. 'We have to keep our spot on the team,' said Fritz Strobl of Austria, the reigning Olympic downhill champion.
It is not unheard of for journalists to walk into a bar past midnight in a town holding a World Cup event and find the Austrian or Swiss ski team hunkering over tall mugs of beer as they sing their country's somber farming songs.
But because the Alpine World Cup takes place in much more intimate settings than American professional sports, a nondisclosure pact seems to have developed between athletes and the skiing news media.
'I suppose you could call it an unspoken code that ski reporters tend not to write about the drinking,' Steve Porino, a former World Cup downhiller who now is a commentator for the Outdoor Life Network, said in an e-mail message.
There are exceptions to the nondisclosure agreement. That is where Miller comes in. Long before the '60 Minutes' story, Miller was trying to tip that glass over, frankly and colorfully discussing his nightlife with reporters.
Few used their pens in 2004, when Miller won a World Cup slalom in St. Anton, Austria. He arrived at the postrace news conference to find, sitting beside the microphone, a tall glass of beer from the race sponsor, Gösser.
Miller drank it, but a young woman from the organizing committee quickly brought out a second glass. As soon as he had exhausted his questioners and the second drink, he was directed to the V.I.P. tent, where the Austrian skiing icon Karl Schranz had requested his presence.
Schranz is something like royalty in St. Anton, so Miller had little choice but to oblige, even though he was still wearing the Lycra speed suit that had been drenched with Champagne during his podium celebration. It was hard for anyone watching the proceedings to fault Miller for tipsiness when the sport was throwing so much booze at him, literally.
And it was hard for Miller not to accept the invitation. After all, Schranz had even offered to buy him a beer.
OLYMPICS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"After a Sleepless Night, Dorfmeister Takes Gold and Kildow Ties for 8th
Neither Lindsey Kildow nor her fellow competitor Michaela Dorfmeister slept much on the eve of the women's Olympic downhill Wednesday. Each was kept awake by a nightmare.
Kildow saw herself flying through the air, out of control, uncertain of her landing and the consequences. Dorfmeister saw herself eight years ago, an Olympic champion in waiting. And then, still waiting, and waiting.
By the end of the downhill competition, Kildow and Dorfmeister had done much to calm their subconscious, to erase bad Olympic memories and to reconcile the path of their ski-racing careers.
A good night's sleep may be next.
Kildow, of Vail, Colo., skied roughly 48 hours after a frightening crash in training, and though her form was clearly stilted and stiff, she completed the course in a tie for eighth place.
'It was important for me to come out and try,' said Kildow, who was released from a hospital Tuesday and took anti-inflammatory drugs to combat back pain. 'There was something to prove. When you've worked so hard to get here, you can't just quit. I wanted to win a medal today, but I still have other chances. Don't give up on me yet.'
Dorfmeister, an Austrian who is one of the most decorated female skiers of her generation, finally won an Olympic gold medal, a prize she lost at the 1998 Nagano Olympics by one-hundredth of a second.
The 32-year-old Dorfmeister, who will retire at the end of this season, cradled her gold medal on the medal podium, covering her face to obscure her tears.
'It is like a dream,' Dorfmeister said through an interpreter. 'I was under so much pressure. When you get so close to winning, you can wonder if it will ever happen again. But that elusive Olympic medal was probably the thing that kept me skiing.'
Dorfmeister turned in the most proficient, seamless run on the treacherous, bumpy Fraiteve Olympique racecourse. She posted a time of 1 minute 56.49 seconds, a significant 37-hundredths of a second ahead of the second-place finisher, Martina Schild of Switzerland.
Anja Paerson of Sweden, the defending World Cup overall champion, nearly won with a stirring late run, but she crossed her skis in the last technical section, scrambled to recover and had to settle for the bronze medal, her third Olympic medal.
The defending Olympic champion, Carole Montillet-Carles of France, also returned from a horrific crash in Monday's training. Battling rib, back and facial injuries, Montillet-Carles finished 28th. Missing from the field was the multiple Olympic medalist Janica Kostelic of Croatia, who withdrew with an illness.
In 1998, Dorfmeister lost the Olympic downhill to Picabo Street of the United States by the smallest possible margin. Although she won two world championship titles shortly thereafter and an overall World Cup championship, she entered four events at the Salt Lake Olympics four years ago without claiming a medal.
'I was awfully disappointed by the 2002 Olympics,' Dorfmeister said. 'I felt that should have been a good Winter Games for me, and it was instead a poor memory.'
Dorfmeister's problems at the 2002 Games were no small setback in skiing-mad Austria. No Austrian woman had won the Olympic downhill since 1980, and as Dorfmeister pressed on in the four years leading up to the Turin Games, expectations grew again. There was talk, in fact, of the Austrians sweeping the downhill.
But only Dorfmeister skied her best among the Austrians on Wednesday.
'To be honest, I have been more relaxed since I announced that I would not ski after this year,' Dorfmeister said. 'I knew it was my goal to win at the Olympics and I felt the pressure, but I felt ready for the consequences. I didn't sleep for the last two days, but riding the lift up today, I said, 'This is the day I'll win.' '
Kildow, meanwhile, said she raced Wednesday at about 70 percent of her normal ability. She finished 1.29 seconds behind Dorfmeister, tied with Alexandra Meissnitzer of Austria.
'My back was very painful, and I didn't have very good range of motion,' said Kildow, who came into the race as the world's second-ranked downhiller. Dorfmeister is first. 'But not racing was never an option. I was frustrated I couldn't go faster, but it's weird going from a hospital bed to the start gate.'
Kildow, 21, said she had not seen the video of her crash and did not plan to watch it any time soon.
'I saw or felt it in my mind over and over,' she said. 'It kept me up, as did the pain in my back. In the course today, I was worried about my body handling the forces, but I could do that. In that bumpy section with the rollers where I crashed, I was a little more conservative.'
Her boyfriend, Thomas Vonn, a former United States ski team racer, said that among the goals for the day was finishing. 'It was important to be out here again,' Vonn said.
Kildow is entered in Friday's combined, an event that is one downhill run combined with the times of two slalom runs. The slalom requires dozens of rapid turns, putting a lot of torque on a skier's midsection, and Kildow conceded that her back might not be fit enough to participate. But she said she was hopeful for continued improvement and still planned to enter the combined.
On Sunday, she has the super-G competition, which is closer to the downhill in style and technique. She is also scheduled to compete in the slalom and the giant slalom next week.
'I got a top-10 finish today, and that's still pretty good,' Kildow said. 'My back doesn't feel too good right now, but there's time. I need the rest. Over all, if I think about it, I have to be glad to be here right now.'
2006 OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES -- ALPINE SKIING: WOMEN'S DOWNHILL",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Agassi a Winnner But Chang Beaten
LEAD: On a day of few surprises on the red clay court of Prater Stadium, the United States and Austria stood even at one match each after the first-day singles in the Davis Cup semifinals.
On a day of few surprises on the red clay court of Prater Stadium, the United States and Austria stood even at one match each after the first-day singles in the Davis Cup semifinals.
Thomas Muster, playing in the No. 1 spot for the Austrians, gave his team the first point by defeating Michael Chang, 4-6, 6-2, 6-2, 6-4 in just under two hours on a cloudy day with intermittent sprinkles of rain.
The No. 1 American, Andre Agassi, using the one-two punch of a strategically placed kick serve and punishing ground strokes, overwhelmed Horst Skoff in the second match, 7-6, 6-0, 6-1.
The Americans will be relying on their doubles team of Rick Leach and Jim Pugh in Saturday's only action. They will face Muster and Alex Antonitsch in what will be a tough match for the Americans.
The Big Switch
In the reverse singles on Sunday, which will decide which country advances to the championship against either Australia or Argentina on Nov. 30-Dec. 2, Agassi will open against Muster and Chang will face Skoff.
Leach and Pugh are 2-0 in Davis Cup play, but after winning Wimbledon, they had a lackluster summer, losing in the first round of the United States Open. Muster and Antonitsch have an 8-3 record as a team.
Muster and Chang had never played each other, and while their match had a certain appeal on paper considering Chang's speed and Muster's thunderous ground strokes, it was a sloppy affair, with unforced errors outnumbering winners by 2 to 1.
Chang, who made some marvelous retrieves during the match, looked in control early. After trading service breaks in the first set, the players played on serve until the 10th game, when Chang broke Muster for the set at 6-4.
In the second set, Muster broke early and went up 4-2 with an uncharacteristic foray to the net. Chang fought off four break points in the seventh game, until a forehand error gave Muster a 5-2 lead. He wrapped up the set when Chang dumped a backhand into the net off a forehand drive.
Talk of the Day
Muster won the next two sets, losing only two games in each set, and slammed the door on the American, 6-4, in the fourth with a forehand drop volley that dribbled off the net cord for the match.
But it was the play of Agassi that was the talk of the day. He kicked his serve wide to the backhand of the right-handed Skoff, and then barreled a forehand or backhand into the open court before Skoff was able to return to his ready position.
'Personally, I have never played someone who could put me under pressure that much,' said Skoff, who was visibly tired. 'If you don't put pressure on Agassi, he makes you run like a dog. I think Thomas will have a better chance than I because he's a left-hander and Agassi won't be able to hit that kick serve.'
Skoff called it 'out of his mind tennis,' which is exactly what Agassi told him when they shook hands at the net.
Skoff Is Run Ragged
The first set was Skoff's only opportunity to make it a match. Like Agassi, he is known for his forehand, but his is an unorthodox one on which he propels himself into the shot. A player with Agassi's quickness leaves Skoff vulnerable on his recovery shot.
They each broke serve twice in the first seven games of the opening set, until things settled down. They played on serve into a tie breaker, in which Agassi took control of the match. He pumped up his serve, and literally toyed with Skoff, running him ragged from side to side.
Agassi finished off the tie breaker, 7-3, with an ace, and then ripped off a string of nine games in a row: he won the second set at love in 21 minutes, and then added an effective drop shot to the final set attack to win 6-1. ----Australia Goes 2-0 SYDNEY, Australia, Sept. 21 (AP) - Wally Masur rallied to defeat Martin Jaite in a five-set struggle today and lift Australia to a 2-0 lead over Argentina in their Davis Cup semifinal. Masur defeated Jaite, 3-6, 6-7, 6-4, 6-0, 6-2 in just under three hours.
TENNIS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"For Miller, Skiing Is Far Easier Than Post-Race News Conference
After the rarest of vacations, Bode Miller returned to World Cup competition Friday, finishing third in a super combined event and addressing a number of controversies that he escaped, for a week, while golfing in Dubai.
It was a promising result on the slopes for the outspoken Miller. Despite a relatively lackluster season, he remains a medal contender for the United States in each Alpine event at the Olympic Games, which begin next week in Turin, Italy.
Benjamin Raich of Austria was the winner, finishing his downhill run in the morning and his slalom in the afternoon with a combined time of 2 minutes 36.48 seconds. Rainer Schönfelder of Austria was second in 2:37.31.
Miller was right behind in 2:37.47, despite a huge mistake in the downhill portion; he misjudged part of the terrain and flew off the course.
Miller's third-place finish also meant mandatory attendance at a post-race news conference, something Miller's sponsors might have hoped would never happen again.
For the first time, the determinedly unscripted Miller was asked about an interview published in Rolling Stone magazine in which he seemed to suggest that Lance Armstrong and Barry Bonds had used performance-enhancing drugs.
'The interview was pretty warped and pretty compressed to make it sound that way,' Miller said. 'Obviously, if I were to speak with Lance, I would apologize to him personally. But to make anything public of it, I think would actually probably make it sound like the article is more truth than it was.'
Miller has praised Armstrong in the past. 'In no way was I trying to incriminate him or accuse him in any way of cheating,' he said.
Miller went to Dubai last week to golf with his brother, and in so doing he snapped a 136-race, 46-month streak of not missing a World Cup event. The vacation was meant to recharge him physically and to provide escape from the public stage.
But as Miller returned, ESPN magazine published an article questioning the legitimacy of an orthopedic specialist Miller and some teammates have visited in Mexico. On Friday, Miller was invited to address that.
'I don't really have a lot of interest in going through the flagrant exaggerations of the press these days,' Miller said. 'It doesn't do much for me.'
It also does not seem to do much for his primary sponsor, the Barilla food company. Invitations to a press gathering with Miller on Thursday, arranged by the company's Switzerland-based marketer, specified that journalists should avoid asking questions regarding antidoping programs or alcohol.
The 28-year-old Miller has been forced to explain his recent candor on those subjects. Numerous critics have interpreted the remarks as a publicity stunt, timed to raise his profile during the Olympic season, but people within the United States ski racing community say that Miller's frankness is nothing new.
'He's so honest,' said Olle Larsson, a longtime coach and a founder of the Rowmark Ski Academy in Salt Lake City, a feeder program for the United States ski team. 'He always speaks with conviction and not politics in mind.'
On Friday, Miller spoke, as he usually does at news conferences, in a rapid monotone. He said it depressed him that the news media 'manipulates things to try to get readership and increase their ratings.'
The ESPN article included comments from several members of the United States ski team staff expressing concerns about Milne Ongley, the specialist with a practice in alternative joint therapy in Mexico.
'The guy's practicing out of the country for a reason, and we're uncomfortable at best,' Phil McNichol, coach of the United States men's team, is quoted as saying in the ESPN article.
Miller said Friday that he and other athletes had done their own research on Ongley and had 'come to their own conclusions.' Miller and some of his teammates have publicly praised Ongley's techniques for years.
In the late fall and early winter, Miller gave several interviews, then traveled to Europe for the World Cup circuit. As the Games draw closer, articles based on those interviews have begun appearing in rapid succession.
Friday's race was just the fifth podium finish in the season's 29 races for Miller. On Saturday, the men will race a downhill at Chamonix before the World Cup calendar pauses for the Winter Games.
Saturday's race will be crucial for Daron Rahlves of the United States. Despite winning three of the season's eight downhill races, he faces the possibility of elimination from any chance at the downhill title.
WINTER SPORTS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Swede Has Gold-Medal Celebration Down Cold
There were no more awards celebrations more joyless than Anja Paerson's accepting her two bronze medals in the women's combined and the downhill earlier in the Turin Olympics. She forced a wave to her fans in the grandstand, but Paerson, the reigning overall World Cup champion from Sweden, did nothing to hide her disappointment.
The 24-year-old Paerson came to Turin with a silver and a bronze medal from the 2002 Salt Lake City Games. Two more bronze medals did not fill the prominent hole in her ski racing résumé.
So Wednesday, when Paerson finally won her first Olympic gold medal, in the women's slalom, she threw her arms in the air, and performed her trademark belly slide, which she calls the walrus. Paerson gets a running start and flings herself down the finish-area slope on her stomach with her arms and legs splayed outward. And she cried on the top step of the medal podium.
'It is a day when I felt in total harmony,' said Paerson, who slightly injured a knee practicing during the race's warm-up period.
'Even when things seemed to be slipping away, when the other girls skied well and I hurt my knee, I was calm. I was sure this was the day, an amazing day.'
The night race was contested with light snow and dense fog obscuring the lighted racecourse nearly from gate to gate. Paerson led after the first of two runs, but several top racers put pressure on her with swift second runs. Paerson, the last elite skier waiting in the start gate, could hardly coast to a victory.
Her aggressive and efficient second run gave her a total time of 1 minute 29.04 seconds, which was 0.29 seconds ahead of the silver-medal winner, Nicole Hosp of Austria.
Hosp's teammate Marlies Schild won the bronze medal with a sparkling run that allowed her to jump from sixth place after the first run. The Austrian Alpine team has won 11 medals in the 2006 Olympics, and 101 in Olympic history. The next closest country is Switzerland, which has won 53.
Paerson's dramatic second run also knocked her chief rival, Janica Kostelic of Croatia, off the medal podium.
Kostelic, who was the runner-up to Paerson in the overall World Cup standings last year and whose relationship with her had been sometimes frosty, finished fourth. Kostelic, who has six medals in the past two Olympics, failed to win a medal for the first time in seven Olympic events.
Afterward, she said she might not race in the giant slalom Friday because of a lingering illness.
Paerson said her knee injury hurt enough that her father and coach, Anders, asked if she wanted to skip Wednesday's race to rest for the giant slalom.
'But I said, 'No, I'm doing this today,' ' Paerson said. 'There had already been days at these Olympics when I felt a little bit unlucky. The snow conditions were against me, and things weren't working out. I wasn't going to dwell on any negatives anymore.'
Paerson's victory was aided by the disqualification of Kathrin Zettel of Austria in the first slalom run. Zettel, ranked third in the world in the slalom, was on a pace to knock Paerson off the top of the leader board halfway through her first run when she suddenly skied off the course.
'I don't know what went wrong,' Zettel said. 'I felt so good, and now I feel so bad.'
Kristina Koznick, the United States' best slalom skier for the past several years, skied Wednesday despite a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee, an injury sustained in training just days before the Olympics. On Wednesday, she struggled through her first run and finished 34th, more than 3 seconds behind Paerson. Koznick withdrew before her second run. She will have knee surgery Monday in Vail, Colo.
'It took a lot of courage to go from being on crutches to being here,' Koznick said afterward. 'I wanted a fairy tale, and I guess it didn't happen. But I'm happy I tried.'
The 30-year-old Koznick said she might retire.
'This has been very hard, and I spent a lot of time crying at the timing of it all,' she said. 'I don't know if this is the last race of my career or not. It's hard to think about going out this way.'
Sarah Schleper, in 10th, was the top American finisher. Lindsey Kildow, still recovering from a back injury sustained during a downhill training crash last week, was 14th.
2006 OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES -- ALPINE SKIING: WOMEN'S SLALOM",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Norwegian Topples Tomba in Slalom
A man who likes challenges, among other things, Alberto Tomba now has more motivation for the 1994 Winter Olympics than he needs and probably wants.
It would seem that the fabled La Bomba has a genuine nemesis on his calloused hands in 25-year-old Finn Christian Jagge of Oslo, who proved today for the second time this winter that he can win the big one, the slalom, against Tomba on the road.
Most of the fans lining the course for the last Alpine event of the Olympics were Tomba's, an estimated 10,000 who came from nearby Italy and hopelessly jammed the switchback mountain road into this distant Savoy station. By late in the race, Tomba had the momentum from a stirring second run. At the moment Jagge reached out from the start house to dig his poles into the snow for his second trip down the course, Tomba still had the lead.
But 52.96 one-hundreths of a second later, Tomba had a silver medal.
Jagge thus won the gold, giving Norway two golds and a pair of bronzes in Alpine skiing at these Olympics and the reputation as a formidable Alpine player.
This has less to do with the failures of Switzerland, among others, and more to do with Norway putting serious money and labor into its own Winter Games at Lillehammer in 1994. That is where Tomba will have to go reclaim his gold, and certainly it won't be a place where the course is a mountain of Italian green, red and white.
It wasn't as if Jagge ruined the Olympics for Tomba, who won the giant slalom gold last week. Judging from Tomba's postrace mood, it didn't appear that Jagge even darkened his afternoon. Jagge did roadblock Tomba's joy ride into the Olympic history book, preventing him from a repeat double gold from Calgary -- where he won the slalom and giant slalom -- and from becoming a holder of an unprecedented four Olympic gold medals in Alpine skiing.
Silver, he said, wasn't such a blow to his ego after a first run that was loose at the top put him more than a second and a half behind Jagge's superb 51.53. He reported a problem with sharp, slippery edges on his skis. ""I didn't feel comfortable and confident to go for it,"" he said.
Two of the other strong medal candidates, Luxembourg's Marc Girardelli and France's Patrice Bianchi, departed this race on their first run, Girardelli having wasted one of the best times by missing a gate not far from the finish and Bianchi eliciting a chrous of hometown groans by missing a gate a third of the way down.
There were still four men between Tomba in sixth place and Jagge in first, eventual bronze winner Michael Tritscher of Austria and World Cup leader Paul Accola of Switzerland among them.
By some quirk of vision, Jagge could only see Tomba in his rearview mirror.
""I was nervous,"" he admitted. ""But I felt that I could have a normal second run and still win."" Roar Tells the Story
As Tomba, skiing 10th in the afternoon, poised for his second run, the Norwegian said he was better off not knowing what kind of time the Italian would produce. But the crowd gave away the secret with a gigantic roar. Tomba ferociously attacked every one of the 63 gates, his linebacker-like legs surging into every turn. When Tomba was past the finish line in 51.66 seconds for a cumulative time of 1:44.67, he collapsed on his back, at once joyous and exhausted.
Given the first run, he knew he had made the best possible play on a lousy hand. He'd handed Jagge pressure.
Jagge heard the fans grow louder as each of the four racers between Tomba and him failed to unseat Tomba from the lead. Jagge told himself that no matter how good a run Tomba had had, he could win if he just focused on himself.
""I had to tell myself that about a hundred times,"" he said.
If he believed that, it was because he was able to draw on his experience last December, when he took the first-run lead in a World Cup slalom at Madonna Di Campiglio, Italy, only to have Tomba roar down the slope and take the lead in the afternoon.
Once upon a time in his career, when he had the reputation as a great first-run racer and a second-run flop, this would have been his cue to make the crucial mistake. But a coach had suggested that he see a sports psychologist, just like Tomba has. His results began to improve. And on that December day, with banner-waving Tomba zealots lining the course, Jagge won in the legend's lair.
This being for a gold medal, Tomba hoped Jagge would lose the moment. While Tomba waited, Jagge, who needed a 53.24 to win, crossed in 52.96 and a 1:44.39 total. He won with 28 one-hundredths of a second to spare, and Tomba was part of the reception committee to lift him in the air.
Later, Tomba was saying he was happy and looking forward to the rest of the World Cup season, when someone asked if he would revert to the life style he led after the 1988 Olympics.
""Eating, drinking and womanizing,"" the reporter said.
ALBERTVILLE",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Washington Talk: Capital Reading; Dispassion and Austria
LEAD: Henry Anatole Grunwald testified last Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on his nomination to become the United States Ambassador to Austria and on the State Department's decision to bar the Austrian President, Kurt Waldheim, from entry into this country because of his record in World War II.
Henry Anatole Grunwald testified last Wednesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on his nomination to become the United States Ambassador to Austria and on the State Department's decision to bar the Austrian President, Kurt Waldheim, from entry into this country because of his record in World War II. Here are excerpts:
I need not repeat to this committee the circumstances which unfortunately compelled the American Government to place President Waldheim on the so-called Watchlist. This was inevitable under American law, and that decision, as Deputy Secretary John Whitehead recently reiterated, is firm and not subject to change.
The only wise course under the circumstances, I believe, is not to perpetuate the discussion over this action but to get on with the business of American-Austrian relations in the many areas in which we have common interests. Let me stress that this is not at all the same as ignoring the Waldheim situation or sweeping it under the rug.
May I insert a personal note? In weighing my nomination, you will probably consider my background and the fact that I left Austria as a teen-ager with my parents, fleeing Nazi persecution. Some of you may wonder whether this might cause me to be unduly emotional in my dealings with Austria, should I go there as ambassador. I would like to point out that throughout my professional career, I have been trained, as far as possible, to analyze people and situations dispassionately.
I have been extremely fortunate, unlike so many others, to be able, with my family, to escape the horrors of Nazism and to make my way here in this great and free land. But for the grace of God, I could easily have been one of those millions who were doomed by the Holocaust. The civilized world can never forget those victims, and should I go to Austria, they will be very much on my mind.
But it is also necessary to live and work in the present. I would like to dedicate myself to a principled and sensitive foreign policy, one that enhances American strength, enhances American influence among its friends and potential friends and does not inadvertently play into the hands of our adversaries. It was, after all, America which above all other countries helped to end the Nazi horror. Today it is America which, above all other countries, is fighting to build a world where the nightmare of the Holocaust can never recur. That is why I believe a foreign policy to further American interests, strength and influence is not merely a pragmatic policy but a moral one, a policy which serves not only the living but also serves the cause and the demands of the victims.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"For Kostelic, Gold Medals As Plentiful As Obstacles
Once again, there were plenty of vacancies in the stands at an Olympic Alpine ski event, but as the medalists in the women's combined event headed for the podium Saturday, the front row was getting crowded with Croats.
One of them, an elderly woman, held up a signed poster that showed Croatia's national star Janica Kostelic wearing her three gold medals and one silver medal from the last Olympics.
But what Kostelic was about to receive on the podium would soon make that photograph out of date. Kostelic has now won four Olympic gold medals, more than any women's Alpine skier in history, and her victory in the combined was merely the latest example of her ability to overcome bad health, bad knees and bad weather.
Kostelic withdrew from the women's downhill event Wednesday morning, citing an accelerated pulse brought on by the flu. But though she said she considered withdrawing from the combined event, too, she finished second in the slalom despite a fever Friday night in Sestriere. On Saturday, she traveled down the winding road to San Sicario to record the fastest downhill time on a shortened course.
'Every victory is different in some way,' the 24-year-old Kostelic said. 'You approach it in a different way. Now I've been sick, so it was kind of a challenge for me to beat my sickness and try to do my best when you're not feeling good.'
Kostelic has made a surprising habit of thriving through the pain: recovering from 11 knee operations, including minor surgery last June. After suffering for more than a year from Basedow's disease, she had her thyroid gland removed in January 2004, but she has quickly worked her fluid way back to the top of the sport to which she has sacrificed so much of her youth and her health.
Her final combined time of 2 minutes 51.08 seconds was a half-second better than the combined time of the silver medalist, Marlies Schild of Austria, who had finished ahead of Kostelic in the slalom. Anja Paerson of Sweden, Kostelic's biggest rival on the World Cup circuit, won her second bronze medal of these Games in 2:51.63 and then complained about the snow conditions and the length of the course.
Alpine skiing's speed events are particularly vulnerable to shifts in the weather, and the combined downhill was stopped Friday because of high winds after the first racer, Nika Fleiss of Croatia, crashed on the first jump when a gust blew her off balance.
The skiers did complete the slalom that evening in sometimes heavy snow, and the storm continued through the night into the next morning, forcing the organizers to delay the combined downhill again, this time by 90 minutes. The start was also moved to the super-G start, shortening the course to 2,549 yards from 2,920 and increasing the advantage that slalom skiers have in the combined event. Winning margins tend to be greater in slalom races than downhills, and with two slalom runs, there is room for those margins to grow.
'They really ought to make it one slalom run and a true downhill, like they're doing in some World Cup combined events,' said Florence Masnada, a former French racer and now a television commentator who was third in the combined in the 1992 Olympics.
Yet it bears remembering that Kostelic now excels at every event. Once reluctant to risk her knees in speed events -- she sustained a major injury to her right knee in a downhill at 17 in December 1999 -- she no longer holds back. Last month, she won her first World Cup downhill and has won in all four disciplines -- slalom, giant slalom, super-giant slalom and downhill -- this season.
Paerson did the same last season, but for now the Olympic record book makes it abundantly clear that Kostelic is the greater all-around threat. Paerson has won the past two World Cup overall titles but is still searching for her first Olympic gold medal.
'I think I lost it when the downhill wasn't yesterday,' Paerson said. 'It was really difficult for me to compete in slalom, and I would have liked a longer downhill from a combined start yesterday on harder snow. Then I could have taken more risks.'
Kostelic won the slalom, the combined and the super-giant slalom in Salt Lake City in 2002, and she is now the first skier to win the combined twice at the Olympics.
She grew up something of a skiing nomad. Because of the war in Yugoslavia, she spent her early childhood training with her father, Ante, and older brother, Ivica, in foreign resorts, sometimes sleeping in the car to save money during junior races. But the Kostelic family has become one of the symbols of the recently independent Croatia, and despite the postponements and uncertainty, there were still a small yet vocal block of Croatian fans to support her in San Sicario.
Ivica Kostelic was soon there to join them: taking a car from Sestriere after finishing his run in the men's super-G, which overlapped with this event. Ivica, 26, won his first Olympic medal in the men's combined Tuesday, taking the silver behind Ted Ligety of the United States. Despite her illness, Janica made it to the finish line to embrace him, and Ivica was the Kostelic leaping the fence Saturday to congratulate his sister.
It remains to be seen how many more medals Janica can win here. She said she was '99 percent' certain she would not ski in Sunday's super-G. 'I'm tired, and I need some time off,' she said.
2006 OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES -- SKIING: WOMEN'S COMBINED",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Now, Austria's Muster Has a Real Reason to Groan
Three disparate men dominated men's tennis in 1995: Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi and that moaning, groaning Austrian baseliner with the fragile left knee  and iron will, Thomas Muster.
As of Sunday night, only Agassi was still in the Australian Open.
Less than 24 hours after the top-seeded Sampras was stunned by the Australian teenager Mark Philippoussis, the third-seeded Muster was upset in the fourth round by Sweden's Mikael Tillstrom, another player with very little Grand Slam experience and lots of talent.
Tillstrom's 7-5, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 victory not only dealt a blow to Muster's healthy ego, it struck a serious blow to his chances of becoming No. 1 in the world at this tournament. Agassi can now reclaim the top ranking he lost to Sampras in November by winning his quarterfinal match against the American Jim Courier, a 7-5, 2-6, 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 winner over Marcus Ondruska of South Africa on Sunday.
As for Philippoussis, the strapping 19-year-old from Melbourne, he won't be in the quarterfinals at all. After dominating front pages in Australia for the last two mornings, he returned to center court today and proceeded to fall flat  on his ruggedly handsome face, losing by 6-2, 6-2, 6-2 in the fourth round to a  cagey, left-handed Australian 11 years his senior: Mark Woodforde.
The contrast between Saturday night's straight-set victory over Sampras, in which he served 29 aces and played near-perfect attacking tennis, and today's straight-set defeat could not have been more striking.
""It was very hard for me after a win against Sampras to come back,"" Philippoussis said. ""I'm going to play plenty more tournaments. The main thing for me to do is get more experience. Mark showed today that experience is a key  thing.""
Philippoussis opened the match with consecutive aces (he would finish with 12), but after that Woodforde, better known as the left-handed half of the world's best doubles team, began delicately weaving his web. A 30-year-old from  Adelaide, Woodforde learned his tennis when touch was still valued, and he put all his touch to good use today, slicing backhands, drop-shotting, lobbing and knocking volleys away for winners at very tight angles.
Meanwhile, Philippoussis blasted away from the ground. But it was as if he were trying to use a bazooka to kill a mosquito. Boom. Philippoussis would smack a forehand. Poof. Woodforde would slice a backhand back. Boom. Philippoussis would overhit and put the ball in the net or long. In one case, he nearly hit the wall 25 feet behind the baseline on the fly.
""He's got to learn that there are many ways to win a tennis match,"" said Woodforde's doubles partner, Todd Woodbridge. ""He's got to hit the ball differently against different players.""
Nonetheless, it was a classic case of post-upset letdown,
""We should all just forget this match and look forward to him playing much, much better tennis,"" the 63d-ranked Woodforde said gallantly.
Sixth-seeded Yevgeny Kafelnikov and No. 7 Thomas Enqvist, both 21 and with powerful baseline games, have been playing very well throughout the tournament,  and they continued to roll today. Enqvist, a Swede who will face Woodforde in the next round, beat Renzo Furlan of Italy by 7-5, 6-0, 6-3 to reach his first Grand Slam quarterfinal. Kafelnikov, the top Russian, defeated American MaliVai  Washington, 6-3, 6-2, 6-4.
Kafelnikov's match ended before Philippoussis's, and he accurately predicted  the young Australian's downfall, partly because he, too, had played a fine match against Sampras at this tournament when he was 19, losing in five sets in the second round in 1994.
""I was in the same situation as Philippoussis; I had nothing to lose,"" Kafelnikov said. ""He has enough confidence, but he's young and doesn't have enough experience to win it.""
But Kafelnikov, a semifinalist at the 1995 French Open and a quarterfinalist  here a year ago, feels differently about his own chances.
""I feel like I can really win this,"" he said. ""The one player I never won against is out of the tournament: Pete Sampras. Everybody else, I beat them. So  why can't I win the Australian Open?""
In women's action today, second-seeded Conchita Martinez advanced to the quarterfinals with a surprisingly easy 6-3, 6-1 victory over 10th-seeded Lindsay Davenport, who had pushed her to three sets in their three previous matches and  pushed Monica Seles to three sets in the Sydney final eight days ago.
""Maybe I peaked too soon in Sydney,"" Davenport said.
Martinez will face No. 8-seeded Anke Huber of Germany in the quarterfinals. Huber has not lost a set here yet and beat the Austrian Barbara Schett, 6-3, 6-2. The South African Amanda Coetzer also advanced with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Yelena Likhovtseva of Russia, who upset the defending champion Mary Pierce  in the second round.
But Pierce has not been the only star to fall early in this tournament. Muster was strangely muted on center court against Tillstrom, missing forehand after forehand and falling prey to the Swede's frequent dropshots and abrupt changes of rhythm. Asked whether the twisted ankle he suffered in the third round had affected his play, he responded cryptically: ""It's like being in court: anything I say can and will be used against me, and therefore I'm not going to say anything at all.""
Muster, whose bristling on-court persona contrasts with his measured off-court manner, clearly is weary of attacks from his peers. Boris Becker and the Frenchman Guy Forget both accused him of melodramatic on-court behavior after he cramped in matches against them in 1995. Several top players have openly mused whether someone who plays most of his tennis on one surface (clay)  deserves to become No. 1.
""I think there is nobody No. 1 who doesn't deserve it,"" Muster said. ""It's not that you buy your points in the supermarket.""
Nonetheless, he could often not buy a point against Tillstrom, a 24-year-old  who was considered a great prospect in Sweden when he reached the final of the 1990 United States Open junior tournament but has been held back by ankle injuries and chronic, career-threatening knee problems.
TENNIS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Navratilova Finishes Off Fed Cup Sweep
The sun dealt everybody a knockdown, but it was the United States that applied four consecutive singles blows, then added the knockout punch of a Martina Navratilova-Gigi Fernandez doubles dream team, to sweep Austria by 5-0 in their Fed Cup quarterfinal this weekend.
The doubles victory today left the 38-year-old Navratilova with a perfect 37-0 record in Fed Cup play; no other player in the 32-year history of the event has an unblemished record in singles and doubles.
Billie Jean King, the United States Fed Cup captain and Navratilova's perennial mentor, said Navratilova's doubles-only role did not signify a diminished role.
""She's never lost in Fed Cup, and no one has more pride than Martina Navratilova, and that does set a tone for the others, that this is what champions do,"" said King.
Mary Joe Fernandez, a player blessed with a competitive conscience but plagued by a fragile constitution, clinched the round for her American teammates today with a debilitating three-set victory over Austria's top player, Judith Wiesner.
She was tired yesterday after giving the United States a 1-0 lead by winning her first singles match following a seven-week layoff due to pneumonia. But Fernandez nonetheless provided the clincher by battling the heat and her dogged opponent to earn a 6-3, 2-6, 6-3 victory and a 3-0 lead for the United States.
By handily defeating Austria in the quarterfinals for the second straight year, the United States, 14 times a Fed Cup champion, advanced to meet France on grass in the semifinals. The United States, now 6-0 against Austria, is 8-0 against France. In the other semifinal, Germany will meet Spain.
Today's leadoff singles players pronounced themselves much worse for wear after their 1-hour-56-minute workout beneath a scorching sun that transformed the Turnberry Isle hardcourt into a bed of coals.
""I haven't had enough of playing Americans, but I have had enough of playing in this heat,"" said Wiesner, the deeply tanned anchor of Austria's squad. ""It was about 110 degrees on the court, and I felt it coming right up into my feet.""
Mary Joe Fernandez repeatedly sought out the tiny patch of palm-provided shade in one corner of the court and repaired to a bed of ice immediately after the match.
""It was just really hot, and I was getting headaches; physically, it was a very difficult match for me,"" she said.
Fernandez was talked through the final set by King, and the player later said she appreciated her captain's ebullience.
""She has so much energy, and she's so positive on the court; at no time was she quiet,"" said Fernandez, who also was the beneficiary of a cheering squad composed of her teammates Amy Frazier, Navratilova and Gigi Fernandez. ""The team spirit really kept me going.""
In today's second match, Frazier, the 16th-ranked Fed Cup neophyte who replaced an ailing Lindsay Davenport, improved her singles record to 2-0 by defeating Austria's Barbara Schett, 6-3, 5-7, 6-3.
King said the most interesting aspect of this coaching stint involved getting the rookie from Michigan through her opening match yesterday against Wiesner.
""She was hyperventilating for three sets, and I felt like a breathing coach, like it was a Lamaze class,"" said King.
In doubles, Navratilova and Gigi Fernandez roared past Schett and Petra Schwarz-Ritter, 6-2, 6-1, before an appreciative crowd that was, like Schett, delighted by the opportunity to watch Navratilova perform.
""I'd never seen her play before; she was great,"" said the 19-year-old Austrian. MATCH POINTS
Due to the unavailability of the grass courts at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, R.I., LES SNYDER, president of the United States Tennis Association, said the July 22-23 Fed Cup semifinal will probably be played at Forest Hills or at the Longwood Cricket Club in Brookline, Mass., a Boston suburb. Snyder said he anticipated that plans for a Las Vegas, Nev., Davis Cup semifinal between the United States and Sweden would be firmed up by Monday. Even though ANDRE AGASSI is the resident pro for the MGM Grand, Caesar's Palace is expected to be the host site.  TENNIS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Kostelic Captivates Croatia With a Slalom Run for the Ages
Janica Kostelic lost a ski pole while pushing out of the starting gate but still managed to finish third in a World Cup slalom race in her homeland on Thursday.
Kostelic was the main draw for the 25,000 fans who braved the cold at Sljeme, a small ski area just north of Zagreb, the capital. Thousands more watched on a wall of televisions in the city's main square.
'Janica Kostelic is very important to us here,' said Milan Bandic, the mayor of Zagreb, a city of about 800,000. 'We are a small people, but we have a winner's mentality.'
Marlies Schild of Austria won the two-run race in 1 minute 53.63 seconds, with her countrywoman Kathrin Zettel 0.44 seconds behind. Kostelic finished 1.45 seconds off the pace and clutched her hand in pain after losing her pole at the top of the second run.
'I wanted to quit because it was hurting so much,' said Kostelic, who dragged her bare right hand in the snow on half the turns, and knocked the gates out of the way with it on the others. 'But at the end of the flat part I realized I only had 20 more gates, and I thought it would be best to finish for my fans.'
Ski poles are essential to skiers for balance, but racers often ski without them as a training drill.
The race was held on Kostelic's 24th birthday, at the slope where she learned to ski. The second run was held at night, under floodlights, to maximize the ratings of the live television broadcast.
Kostelic became a national hero by winning four medals at the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City: gold in combined, downhill and slalom, and silver in super-G. Croatia has passionately embraced the sport of Alpine ski racing ever since.
Growing up, Kostelic and her brother, Ivica, were the ultimate outsiders, sleeping in their car at races to save money and being coached by their father, Ante. In Croatia, which has a population of 4.5 million, the Kostelic family story is sometimes called the miracle.
On Thursday, athletes, coaches, journalists and ski technicians were transported to the mountain in a lengthy police convoy, which left a downtown hotel at 12:15 p.m. and arrived at the top of the mountain 40 minutes later. The athletes found thousands of fans lining the length of the race hill, clutching road flares that they did not light until Kostelic came down. With a budget of $3.59 million and the biggest purse of the season, the Zagreb race may be the most enthusiastically organized event of the women's World Cup.
Last year the same mountain was the site of Croatia's first World Cup race. Kostelic's fans were disappointed when she failed to finish that event, but they showed more patience than they had in 2003, when they threw snowballs at Anja Paerson of Sweden while she descended the course.
On Thursday, Kostelic lost her right pole at the starting gate, and the pole's retention strap pulled her mitten off with it. Fans groaned, then went wild when Kostelic registered faster times at each of the timing splits.
'She is No. 1 in our eyes because of her will,' said Goran Kratofil, who for 20 years has been the proprietor of the Golden Bear restaurant at the top of the Sljeme slope. 'When she gets hurt, she wants to recover so badly, and she always does.'
The top Americans in the race were Kristina Koznick in seventh place and Resi Stiegler in 10th. They have probably clinched positions in the slalom for the Olympics in February in Turin, Italy, although the United States team will not be named until Jan. 25.
WINTERS SPORTS",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Kerry's Grandfather Left Judaism Behind in Europe
On May 18, 1905, Frederick A. Kerry, a 32-year-old Viennese, arrived in New York City by steamship, the Königin Luise, with his wife and 4-year-old son, hopeful that his new country would bring him the success and social acceptance that had eluded him in Europe.
Mr. Kerry probably could not have imagined that within a century a grandson, John Forbes Kerry, would find himself the Democratic candidate for president.
Frederick Kerry brought with him a secret: he was born a Jew, Fritz Kohn, in what is now the Czech Republic, but he and his wife, Ida, had converted to Roman Catholicism. Senator Kerry, a Catholic whose maternal side includes such blueblooded names as Winthrop and Forbes, said he did not know his paternal grandfather was Jewish until a reporter for The Boston Globe told him last year that it had been discovered by a genealogist in Vienna who scoured church records from the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Tomas Jelinek, chairman of the Jewish community in Prague, and Rabbi Norman R. Patz, president of the New Jersey-based Society for the History of Czechoslovak Jews, said that Czech Jews, in contrast to those in Poland, wore their identity somewhat more lightly. Given periodic spasms of anti-Semitism and the difficulty of advancing in the government and military as a Jew, many, like the parents of Madeline K. Albright, the former secretary of state, found conversion made their lives immeasurably easier.
The brother and sister of John Kerry's paternal grandmother, Otto and Jenni Lowe, died in concentration camps.
Frederick Kerry's story begins in Horni Benesov, a town near the Polish border that in 1880 had 4,200 inhabitants, most of them ethnic Germans (only two dozen of them Jewish) and was then known as Bennisch. Felix Gundacker, the genealogist who researched the senator's roots, said church birth ledgers include the notation that on May 10, 1873, 'was born Fritz Kohn, a legal son of Benedikt Kohn, master brewer in Bennisch, House 224, and his wife, Mathilde.' The handwritten entry was included in the 'Pages for Israelites' kept by the church in towns with small Jewish communities.
Fritz's father died when he was 3. Fritz's mother then moved with her three children to Vienna, where she had relatives, Mr. Gundacker said in a telephone interview. Fritz attended high school, served in the army, then worked as an accountant for a shoe factory owned by his maternal uncle in nearby Modling.
In 1896, his younger brother, Otto, seeking advancement in the military, was baptized as a Catholic; he later changed his name to Kerry. In 1901, Fritz, who had married Ida Lowe in a Jewish ceremony the previous year, was baptized in Modling.
Later that year, he changed his name to Kerry, too, a fact recorded in the original church birth ledgers for Bennisch confirming that Frederick Kerry was born Fritz Kohn. Mr. Gundacker said the records state that Frederick Kerry gave these reasons: '1) that this very common name is specifically connected to Judaism 2) that therefore this name could be detrimental to his military career.'
After coming to the United States, he settled in Chicago, where he counseled stores like Sears, Roebuck on organization. By 1915, he moved to Brookline, Mass., where Ida gave birth to their third child, Richard, who grew to work as a diplomat, marry Rosemary Forbes and father John Kerry.
In 1921, a virtually bankrupt Frederick Kerry shot himself in a bathroom at Boston's Copley Plaza Hotel.
The family's Jewish connections did not end with his death. In 1983, the senator's brother, Cameron, married Kathy Weinman, a Jew whose mother keeps a kosher home. Before the wedding, Cameron converted to Judaism.",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"Maier Leads Austrian Sweep In World Cup Downhill
The Herminator is back. Vanquishing his nearest opponent by almost a full second, Hermann Maier on Saturday won his first World Cup downhill ski race since nearly losing his leg in a motorcycle accident in 2001.
Maier reached speeds of 75 miles an hour on Beaver Creek's difficult Birds of Prey course, beating his Austrian teammates Hans Knauss and Andreas Schifferer, who finished second and third.
The top American racer was the fourth-place finisher, Daron Rahlves, who finished 1.25 seconds behind Maier's winning time of 1 minute 39.76 seconds. On Friday, in another World Cup downhill race held to replace one canceled in Val d'Isere because of a lack of snow, Rahlves logged the course record, winning his second World Cup downhill this year.
Maier, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, finished fifth in Friday's race. With his downhill victory on Saturday and a super-G victory last week in Lake Louise, Alberta, Maier moved into first place in the overall World Cup standing. The American Bode Miller, who did not finish either of the Beaver Creek races, was in fifth.
With Saturday's victory, Maier, who turns 31 Sunday, has logged 43 World Cup victories, bringing him within striking distance Italy's Alberto Tomba, who won 50 races before retiring two years ago.
'It's amazing,' Bill Marolt, the chief executive of the United States Skiing Association, said of Maier's performance. 'To come back from that serious of an injury and compete at the top is just incredible.'
The 15th racer out of the starting gate, Maier steered clear of race gates that those before him had tried to cut more closely, holding the dynamic, gravity-defying tuck he is famous for as he hurdled himself at an average speed of 60 m.p.h.
'I know the fastest line to the bottom here,' said Maier, who has won 8 of 11 races on the Beaver Creek course. He said that it is one of his favorites because 'you don't have time to think between the gates.'
His coaches had not expected him to reach his peak until later in the season, but 'he's getting stronger,' said Walter Hubman, a coach with the Austrian team. 'And today he was quite aggressive, almost like in his old days.'
Yet no one was as surprised by Maier's success as he was. Last year at this time, he said he was drinking beer in a bar in Obertauern, Austria, watching the race on television and thinking it was not possible for him to ski again on this level. 'One year later, I won this race,' he said. 'It's a big dream for me.'
He said his long recuperation, which required multiple operations that healed only last spring, made him appreciate the grueling training necessary to compete in a World Cup race. 'Before it was easier,' he said of his remarkable record of 40 victories before his accident. 'I missed almost two seasons of training. And now I know how much work it takes to win.'
For his part, Rahlves, who last year was ranked second in World Cup downhills, grimaced as he caught his breath Saturday at the end of his run. 'To finish off the podium after being the fastest in the world yesterday made me mad,' he said, adding that Maier skiied a good race.
Jeremy Bloom, who plays football at Colorado, was second yesterday in the season-opening moguls race to Janne Lahtela of Finland.
Lahtela beat Bloom in Ruka, Finland, with a more difficult first jump despite a slower run, 23.80 seconds against 23.10. Lahtela had 24.90 points to Bloom's 24.57. Finland's Mikko Ronkainen, the world champion, was third.
Kari Traa of Norway won the women's race. Jennifer Heil of Canada was second, and the American Hannah Kearney was third.
Traa totaled 25.43 points, Heil had 24.72 and Kearney finished with 23.73.
SKIING",2
Top/News/World/Countries and Territories/Austria,"U.S. Shows Its Depth and Ties Record as the Olympics Approach
The United States ski team tied its own longstanding record yesterday, and demonstrated its depth going into the Turin Olympics, when Scott Macartney reached the podium at a World Cup super-G race in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
Macartney, who was runner-up to Austria's Christoph Gruber, became the seventh American to finish in the top three of an Alpine World Cup race this season.
It tied the record set in 1969, when Billy Kidd, Kiki Cutter, Judy Nagel, Marilyn Cochran, Spider Sabich, Cathy Nagel and Karen Budge each reached the podium at least once.
That record was tied in 1970 and 2001, but the important distinction this time is that the current season is far from complete, and several Americans are waiting in the wings.
Macartney, 28, from Redmond, Wash., had not reached the podium in his eight years on the American team. But during that time, in narrow windows created by warm weather or knee injuries, he slowly earned an engineering degree from Dartmouth College.
'The U.S. ski team has two stars, Bode Miller and Daron Rahlves,' Macartney said. 'But there are some good guys coming up.'
Macartney will race in the super-G at the Olympics, but he will be part of a run-off competition with two of his teammates for the final start position in the Olympic downhill.
'We're going to have three boys gunning for the final two start rights,' said John McBride, coach of the American downhill and super-G squads. Miller and Rahlves have clinched their start positions, but McBride said Macartney, Steve Nyman and Marco Sullivan would compete for the final two start positions.
The showdown will take place in one of the standard training runs in the three days leading up to the Feb. 12 race.
Macartney's finish came two days after Julia Mancuso finished second in the super-G in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, making her the sixth American in this particular group of podium finishers. The other five are Miller, Rahlves, Ted Ligety, Caroline Lalive and Lindsey Kildow.
With the exception of Lalive (who is having knee surgery this week), each of those athletes has had multiple trips to the podium -- and the doping control and news conferences that go with it.
While Macartney was racing in Garmisch-Partenkirchen yesterday, Mancuso finished fifth in the giant slalom in Cortina d'Ampezzo. She had been reunited with her ski boots, which she left in a Canadian hotel in December and which did not catch up with her for more than a month as she traveled from country to country on the tour.
'It's what's inside, the liners and footbeds, that are hard to replace,' said Mancuso in a conference call last week. 'The most difficult thing for me was just trying to get something to work. I never had any rest. It was just race to race to race.'
The Alpine World Cup, organized by the International Ski Federation, began in the 1966-67 season, when a group of journalists and coaches devised a scoring system to determine which skiers were the best that season. (The answer, it turned out, was Jean-Claude Killy of France and Nancy Greene of Canada.)
That year there were 17 men's races and 17 women's races. Since then, the number has grown to almost 40. Many in the sport believe that it has gotten too big, diluting the importance of individual races and exhausting the athletes. But because the national governing bodies in each country derive revenue and exposure from the races they are host to, the federation has had trouble shrinking the circuit.
The season is more than half over, with women having completed 25 of 37 races and men having raced 29 of 39. Janica Kostelic of Croatia and Benjamin Raich of Austria lead their respective standings.
There is one more weekend of racing before the tour breaks for the Olympics. The women will race Feb. 3-5 in Ofterschwang, Germany; the men will race the same dates in Chamonix, France.
Miller's recent long-planned golf vacation ended a streak of 136 consecutive World Cup races in which he started. No active skier has come close to that mark; two of the sport's best all-rounders, Raich and Anja Paerson of Sweden, have skipped races in the past three weeks to train and rest.
If an American skier is to break the longstanding record and become the eighth skier on the podium this season, it will most likely be Erik Schlopy or Nyman. Schlopy, 33, was a hundredth of a second behind the third-place finisher at a giant slalom on Dec. 3. Nyman, 23, was fourth on Saturday's downhill in Garmisch-Partenkirchen.
'When I watch him ski, he gives me a heart attack,' Mancuso said of Nyman, who has been her boyfriend for almost three years. She likens Nyman's technique to that of Miller in that they both swing their arms wildly to maintain balance.
If Nyman wins the training-run showdown in Turin, Italy, the world will get to see his unfettered style in the Olympic men's downhill, which is scheduled for Feb. 12 and happens to be his 24th birthday.
OLYMPICS",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"National Airport Enters Modernity
A $409 million terminal is scheduled to open today at National Airport in Washington, holding the promise of no more than a five-minute walk from its Metro subway station to the departure gates.
The new terminal will transform National Airport from one of the nation's most inadequate -- it was built in 1941 and has been expanded in fits and starts as traffic has increased -- into one of the most modern. It was already just about a 15-minute subway ride from downtown Washington. It will also have eight lanes on a new road that is designed to relieve chronic traffic tieups.
The architect for the new terminal is Cesar Pelli, who once worked for Eero Saarinen, the designer of the Dulles International Airport terminal in suburban Virginia. Mr. Pelli has incorporated an airiness like that of Dulles into the million-square-foot National Airport design. The new terminal has 54 domes, for example, each of which lets in the sun through skylights 65 feet above the floor.
Airlines to move in today are US Airways, US Airways Express, Air Canada, American, American Eagle, Midway Express, United, America West, Delta and the Delta Connection-Business Express.
The Delta and US Airways shuttles and Continental will not move from the old terminal to the new one until early next year when the last 10 of the 35 gates are opened. TWA, TW Express, Midway and Northwest will stay in the old building, which has been connected to the new one and will be renovated. Alas, those gates require a walk of all of eight minutes.
National is Washington's gateway airport. It had 15 million passengers last year, a figure that will not grow much, because its capacity will not be increased. For comparison, the two airports in Washington's suburbs, Dulles and Baltimore-Washington International, each had about 13 million passengers last year.
IRVIN MOLOTSKY
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Travel Advisory: Correspondent's Report; Parks and Monuments: Some Open, Some Not
MOST of the national parks, monuments and historical sites that were closed for a time after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington have reopened, and as visitors return to many parks, they will not notice much change in security arrangements.
But behind the scenes, the park police and other agencies are being more vigilant than before the attacks, just as security is being heightened throughout the country, especially after the retaliatory military strikes in Afghanistan, park officials said.
Several tourist landmarks in the park system remained closed as of Oct. 8, notably the Statue of Liberty, which is closed indefinitely as ferry service is not available; the statue is in New York Harbor not far from the destroyed World Trade Center. All of Ellis Island is closed, as emergency-response operations continue to use the park service's facilities there.
Federal Hall National Memorial on Wall Street and Castle Clinton in Battery Park were also closed while new security arrangements were being made. Federal Hall, where George Washington took his first oath as president, served as a refuge for people fleeing the destruction, despite having suffered damage in the attack.
On Staten Island, Fort Wadsworth is closed at the Coast Guard's request because of military activity, and Miller Field is closed while New York City uses it for staging equipment for recovery operations. No date for reopening these sites has been set.
In Washington, national monuments reopened the day after the attack on the  Pentagon, even as the city remained on high alert. 'We must remain vigilant as we provide the American people access to our nation's monuments, memorials and parks for the solace and inspiration they provide,' Interior Secretary Gale Norton said as she reopened such sites as the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.
At the Pentagon, public tours have been canceled. And at a few other sites in the national park system, there are isolated closings that appear to be safeguards against terrorist attacks. At several parks, for example, tourists are not being allowed to visit dams.
At Glen Canyon National Recreation Area in Arizona and Utah, the road to the dam and the visitor center are open, but the Chains overlook is closed and tours of the dam have been suspended. At Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area in Montana and Wyoming, the visitor center and the road to the dam are both closed, and tours have been suspended. Tours of the dam at Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Arizona and Nevada have been suspended, but the park visitor center is open and the dam access road is open to cars, vehicles towing small boats and jet-skis, and pickup trucks with campers on the bed. The dam at Lake Roosevelt National Recreation Area in the State of Washington is closed and there are no tours, but the visitor center is open. The situation at Shasta Dam in California is the same: no tours, but the visitor center is open.
There have been closings at a few other places around the country. Areas at the north and south ends of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco are closed. Fort Funston, with cliffs near the bridge, is closed to hang gliding and paragliding.
In Boston, the Naval Yard remains closed. Elsewhere in the city's national historical park, Bunker Hill, Dorchester Heights and the State Street visitor center are open.
At Cape Canaveral, Playalinda Beach, where the public goes to watch space launches, is closed at the request of the space agency, but all other park areas are open.
And Huffman Prairie Flying Field near Dayton, Ohio, which is at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, is closed. The visitor center is open.
At most national parks, travelers will not have to do anything differently, a parks spokesman said. The most they may notice at some locations is an increased presence by park police and rangers. More accommodations are available than usual because many people have chosen not to fly since the hijackings. The park service has announced that it will cancel entrance fees at all parks during the Veterans Day weekend, on Nov. 10, 11 and 12.
But things have been very different for many people of the park service since the shock of the attacks. A number of those on Liberty and Ellis Islands saw the first plane hit the World Trade Center, and even more saw the second plane hit after it passed low over the islands. Many others were directly involved in rescue efforts, or in the intensive systemwide efforts to beef up security in the aftermath of the attacks. A number of park system employees have decided to apply for jobs as armed marshals riding on airplanes, park service officials have reported.
What many who were involved seem to be seeking is an elusive return to normalcy in the parks. One of them, Raymond Collins, an immigrant from Belfast, Northern Ireland, who works as a guide on Ellis Island, spoke movingly to 300 park employees who gathered the other day in the immigration museum there.
'I have first-hand experience of the consequences of the traumas and long-term consequences of bombings and assassinations,' he said. 'We all now face the same enemy -- terrorism. We also need to deal with a very potent and destructive enemy -- ourselves. Our inner fears, our doubts, our anxieties.'
Correspondent's Report",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
A picture caption on Dec. 19 with an article about the St. Johns River in Florida referred incorrectly to a series of buildings on Cholokka Boulevard, the main street in Micanopy. While they do include antiques shops, the Herlong Mansion, a B&B, is just beyond the edge of the picture.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Buckingham Palace Expands Garden Vistas
Visitors to Buckingham Palace during August and September this year will get a little something extra on their route: a 1,475-foot walk along the front of the palace and the south side of the palace garden, from which there are views over the west part of the garden and the three-and-a-half-acre lake.
The design of the 40-acre garden dates back to 1825 when Buckingham House was transformed into a palace. King George IV appointed William Townsend Aiton, in charge of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, to oversee the remodeling of the grounds. It was a time when less formal gardens were becoming popular, inspired by the work of Humphrey Repton and Capability Brown. Over the years the garden has undergone many changes, including the clearing of dense Victorian shrubs by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and the introduction of decorative flowering trees and shrubs. There are over 200 mature trees -- wild cherry and fern-leaved beech, among them -- in the garden and more than 350 kinds of wildflowers along the lake.
Buckingham Palace will be open daily  Aug. 4 to Sept. 30, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Timed tickets, required for entry to 19 state rooms, are $15. Advance tickets are available from www.the-royal-collection.org.uk, or (44-207) 321 2233, or the ticket office in Green Park from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. July 28 to Sept. 30.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
An article on Feb. 15 about Austin, Tex., and both a caption and letter on April 5 included an erroneous description of the 309-foot-high Texas State Capitol from the city's convention and visitors bureau. A reader's letter received April 7 points out that the state capitols in Louisiana and Nebraska are both more than 400 feet. The one in Austin is not the tallest in the country.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Travel Advisory; Ecology Gallery Opens in London
The Natural History Museum in London offers what it says is the first permanent exhibition on global ecology in the world. The exhibit, which opened this month, is designed to appeal to nonspecialist visitors who wish to know more about the scientific background of environmental matters. The exhibition looks at the earth in space -- the atmosphere, the solid earth, water and the sun's energy.
The exhibition is housed in a towering greenhouse structure. Visitors enter it through a simulated moonlit rain forest buzzing with sounds of life that leads to a glass chasm around which the display is built. The walls are lighted to represent fire and water, and spinelike bridges over the chasm symbolize the plant and animal forms that comprise the chains of life. A video wall, a quadroscope that uses mirrors to create a globe about 65 feet in diameter, traces the water cycle from ocean to mountaintop and back. Visitors can also enter a leaf structure in which they are moved around while the process of photosynthesis is explained and illustrated by a sound and light effect. The complex web of life unfolds through interactive videos, models and displays.
The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD; 938-9123, is open 10 A.M. to 6 P.M. Monday to Saturday and 11 to 6 on Sunday. Admission is about $5.50; $1.75 for those aged 5 to 17, free for under 5.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"N.Y. Court Finds Agency Liable
The New York State Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court finding that a travel agent has an obligation to report to a client any information that might adversely affect the client's travel plans.
The ruling grows out of a case in which Zenith Travel, of New York City, is being sued for purportedly failing to inform two clients, Samuel and Renee Marcus, of reports that a tour operator was having financial difficulties. Mr. and Mrs. Marcus, who bought a tour to China through Zenith, say they were stranded in Japan after the tour operator, Hemphill Harris, ceased operations in October 1989. The Marcuses' attorney, Thomas A. Dickerson, said the agency's personnel had read in the travel trade press that Hemphill Harris was having financial problems but did not pass on the information. The case, in which Mr. Marcus is suing for $50,000, is likely to go to trial soon. Zenith denies negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.
Mr. Dickerson said the court's decision was important because the appeals court is the highest court in the country to consider the liability of retail travel agents. The decision, he said, ""reinforces the general duty of travel agents to make themselves aware and to convey to clients any information that would have an adverse impact on the travel contract.""
Mr. Dickerson is representing 800 people in a suit against Hemphill Harris and its suppliers.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"WHY WE TRAVEL: BULGARIA
Nate Fackler, 35, an American who has been teaching English literature at a high school in Istanbul for four years: 'This place is only 250 kilometers from Istanbul, but it's a whole other world and a nice break from the pollution, traffic and rush of the big city. I think I was drinking Zagorka beers, standing in the sand at a beach bar with some hard-drinking locals, when I noticed the sun rising over the Black Sea. After the sun got high enough, I just decided to lay back and relax.'
As told to J. R. Romanko",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"'Last Supper' Site To Close for 3 Months
The refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie housing Leonardo da Vinci's 'Last Supper' in Milan will close from March 1 to May 27 for completion of a restoration that began  two decades ago. The painting can be seen by visitors during Holy Week from March 30 to April 4.
The delicate operation on the fresco was necessary because the masterpiece began disintegrating soon after it was completed in 1498, mostly as a result of the artist's unfortunate choice of medium: not conventional fresco, in which the paint is applied to wet plaster, but tempera applied to dry plaster.
Reports from as early as 1517 spoke of its deterioration. The fresco underwent a number of restoration attempts and touch-ups throughout the centuries, and the refectory that houses it was badly damaged in 1943 when a bomb demolished the roof of the building.
This most recent restoration began in the late 1970's and has involved dozens of specialists and technicians. This is the first scientific restoration of the masterpiece,  following a careful scientific analysis, where the restorers are removing rather than adding to the fresco.
'Our hope is that it will be longer lasting than earlier attempts,' said Pietro Cesare Marani, a fine-arts expert who has been closely involved in the project, 'but we aren't presumptuous enough to believe that it will last forever. Nothing lasts forever.'
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Comparison Shopping Available on Web Site
A new Web site, www.farechase.com, allows users to compare prices and availability for airlines, hotels and car rentals without going to multiple sites. It works with any browser and requires no downloads.
(A similar site, www.sidestep.com, works only with Microsoft Internet Explorer and requires downloading a program into your computer, which then searches airline, hotel and car-rental sites.)
After the user enters the desired dates and cities, farechase.com searches travel sites -- currently 22 for air fares, 11 for hotels and 6 for car rentals, including lowestfare.com, expedia.com, placestostay .com, Continental Airlines and United. Results are sorted by cost and availability. Each listing includes links for information about the particular hotel, airline or car rental agency.
Farechase.com is not an online travel agency and does not make bookings or sell airline tickets. Users connect to the originating Web site to make the booking directly.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Driving Into Mexico? $800 Deposit, Por Favor
FOR American and Canadian tourists who are dismayed over a new plan to charge deposits of up to $800 for foreign-registered cars driven into Mexico, the government has some advice.
Get used to it.
Mexican Customs officials were to begin collecting the increased deposits on Nov. 1, but after criticism by American lawmakers, residents of border states and some Mexican officials, the government postponed the start-up until Dec. 1 -- when, it insists, the daunting measures, meant to discourage illegal importation of cars, will take effect.
Under current rules, a traveler who wishes to drive a car with American plates into Mexico at any of the 23 legal crossing points along the 2,000-mile border can receive a six-month permit by paying an $11 deposit by credit card. Two other, cash-based options are far more expensive.
Under the new rules, the deposits rise to $400 for a foreign-registered car manufactured before 1994, to $600 for cars made between 1994 and 1998, and to $800 for models newer than that. The deposits are to be paid in cash or by credit card; in the latter case, the Mexican government will not simply retain the voucher but will immediately debit the card, officials said.
The deposits apply only to cars that pass into the Mexican interior, beyond a legally defined border zone that extends 25 kilometers, or about 16 miles, south of the frontier. The deposits do not apply at all to the peninsula of Baja California, which includes two states that have traditionally enjoyed a variety of free-trade provisions, officials said.
Highway checkpoints are set up at the perimeters of the 16-mile zone, and a driver caught without a permit can lose his car.
The new deposits will probably greatly reduce cross-border tourism. Experts on car travel to Mexico, including owners of agencies that sell Mexican car insurance to foreign motorists, say that if the new deposits take effect, a large percentage of American and Canadian tourists are likely to cancel their Mexican plans.
'It's going to be terrible,' said Olivia Bravo, co-owner of the Bravo Insurance Agency in Laredo, Tex. Her agency sells 5,000 policies a year to motorists heading into Mexico. She predicted that sales of Mexican policies would fall by at least half under the new rules.
'They're going to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs,' Mrs. Bravo said.
Last year, 2.7 million Americans and 34,000 Canadians crossed into Mexico beyond the border zone, and the American motorists spent $679 million in their Mexican travels, said Camilo Perez Venegas, a director at the Council for Tourist Promotion, a government agency. Another statistic measuring the same cross-border tourism is that Mexican Customs issued 750,000 six-month permits for foreign cars to circulate in Mexico in 1998.
Five congressmen, from Texas, Arizona and California, outlined the broad discontent in border states in a meeting Nov. 3 with Mexican Ambassador Jesus Reyes Heroles.
One of the lawmakers, Representative Solomon Ortiz, Democrat of Texas, said his constituents in Corpus Christi have been organizing to protest the measure, and other demonstrations and boycotts appeared to be brewing all along the border.
'People are very unhappy with this, because they just don't have the money,' Representative Ortiz said. 'A lot of people can't afford to even get a credit card, much less have $600 to $800 for this.'
The new deposits are designed to force people who drive cars into Mexico to drive them out again, since at least 1.5 million cars have been left behind -- in effect, imported illegally -- said officials at the Treasury Ministry, which together with the Interior Ministry wrote the new rules.
The 1.5 million owners of the illegal cars are so powerful politically that authorities simply discard the possibility that police might seize the illegal cars or arrest the owners. Last year federal police confiscated only 8,000 of the illegal cars.
Marco Provencio, a Treasury Ministry spokesman, said that the owners of the illegal cars pay no taxes, making them a drag on government revenues and a threat to Mexican car dealers. Pretax prices on new cars in Mexico are on average about 5 percent higher than in the United States, he said. When taxes are included, Mexican prices increase by 21 percent, United States prices by about 8 percent.
But the new deposit's impact on tourism appears to have gone largely unconsidered in the government's internal debate. Several Tourism Ministry officials expressed surprise over the new rules, saying they had not heard of them. One asked a reporter to explain the measures.
An American official said he believed that the Oct. 28 postponement of the new plan was a first step toward canceling it completely. But Mr. Provencio said that people should plan to comply.
'We're not planning to repeal this,' he said. 'We wouldn't postpone it for a month and then cancel it. That wouldn't be a serious way to operate.'
TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"TRAVEL ADVISORY
LEAD:  Gatwick Gets New Terminal Nearly 30 years after opening the South Terminal at Gatwick Airport, Queen Elizabeth dedicated the new North Terminal there on March 18, and passengers were due to begin using the building last week.
Gatwick Gets New Terminal Nearly 30 years after opening the South Terminal at Gatwick Airport, Queen Elizabeth dedicated the new North Terminal there on March 18, and passengers were due to begin using the building last week.
Completion of the $450 million terminal at the airport, 20 miles south of London, is expected to increase the airport's capacity from its current 20 million to 25 million passengers a year. British Airways will be the major user of the new three-level terminal, which will be capable of handling up to 2,500 arriving and departing passengers an hour.
The lower level is for arriving passengers, and the top level for those checking in. On the second level is The Avenue, Britain's first airport shopping mall, with a wide selection of shops, a restaurant and bar. The terminal features terrazzo paving in the check-in concourse, two 50,000-gallon water sculptures in the departure lounge and wide views of the surrounding countryside.
An automatically run train system links the North and South Terminals. The British Rail station at Gatwick is adjacent to the South Terminal, and passengers are advised to allow an extra five minutes on their journey time from London if they are to leave from the new terminal. Tickets will indicate North Terminal departures.  Adirondack Outings
Though the calendar says it is spring, there is still plenty of snow in the Adirondacks. The Adirondack Mountain Club is leading a cross country tour for advanced skiers April 9 and 10 (cost $60) from the Adirondak Loj. The lodge, near Lake Placid, has about 8 miles of cross country trails on its property and access to hundreds of miles of trails in the wilderness area.
The Club runs various kinds of outings year round, and each Saturday at 8:30 P.M. presents a free lecture in the lodge. Some subjects coming up are maple sugaring (April 16) and the work of the artist Frederic Remington done in the area (April 30).
Among outings in the warm months is one to see mountain wildflowers (June 10 to 12), ferns (June 24 to 26) and birds (July 5 to 7). The cost of the excursions is $25 for members, $30 for nonmembers. Lodging is $7.50 for a two-person campsite, $18.50 for breakfast and one bed in a bunkroom in the lodge and $32 for breakfast and a private room.
Club membership is $30. The charge is $35 for families, $15 for students and $20 for persons 65 or older.
More information: Adirondack Mountain Club, Box 867, Lake Placid, N.Y. 12946; 518-523-3441.  New Programs For Cruises
ALOHA PACIFIC CRUISES has added two segments to the 46-night maiden voyage of the Monterey, setting out July 31 from Copenhagen and ending in San Francisco. In addition to the full voyage, the line is offering a 26-night segment from New York to San Francisco and a 17-night segment from Fort Lauderdale to San Francisco. Passengers will also have a choice of sailing for 18 nights from Copenhagen to New York or 29 nights from Copenhagen to Fort Lauderdale. Fares, which include air transportation between home city and city of embarkation and disembarkation, range from $13,995 to $21,995 a person in double occupancy for 46 nights, $5,495 to $8,995 for 17 or 18 nights and from $8,995 to $13,995 for 26 or 29 nights.
On Sept. 16 the Monterey will begin a 15-night homecoming voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu with calls at Kauai, Maui and Hawaii. Year-round weekly cruises of the Hawaiian islands will begin Oct. 1. Homecoming cruise fares range from $3,995 to $6,995; weekly interisland cruises range from $1,195 to $2,295.
More information: Aloha Pacific Cruises, 510 King Street, Suite 501, Alexandria, Va. 22314; 800-544-6442.
CUNARD LINE is adding more calls in the Soviet Union. Between June 18 and Aug. 20, six weeklong Sea Goddess I cruises from Copenhagen will include a one-day call at Leningrad. Between June 11 and Aug. 19, three of the Vistafjord's two-week cruises out of Hamburg will stop for two days at Leningrad. In addition, the Vistafjord will call at Yalta and Odessa on two 14-night Black Sea cruises departing from Venice on May 20 and Sept. 17. The fare for seven nights on Sea Goddess I cruises is $4,800 a person in double occupancy. On the Vistafjord, two-week cruises range from $2,580 to $6,150 a person.
More information: Cunard Line, 555 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017; 212-661-7777 or 800-221-4770.  Athens Limits Motor Vehicles
In an effort to cut down air pollution, Athens has restricted traffic in its downtown commercial district and has limited taxi traffic in the city. Earlier this month all vehicles were prohibited from the area bounded by Stadiou, Ermou and Athinas Streets, except for trucks resupplying shops at certain hours and the cars of 100 permanent residents. The ban is in effect through May, when the Government will evaluate its effect.
The taxi measure, instituted earlier this year, limits traffic into the city on weekdays from 7 A.M. to 8 P.M. Those arriving at airports or ship terminals at those times and looking for rides to downtown hotels should look closely at the license plate on any taxi they take. A taxi whose last license plate digit is an even number is allowed into the city only on even-numbered dates, and one with odd last digits can enter only on odd-numbered dates.  New Stickers On Air Tickets
Domestic airlines have agreed to new, more specific wording on the orange stickers on the cover of reduced-fare tickets. The current sticker merely says that a special fare ticket may involve penalties for changes or cancellations.
The new version says: 'This is a special fare ticket and one or more of the following restrictions may apply:
' Advance notice is required to change reservations.
'Travel is restricted to flight, days and/or hours.
'Minimum and/or maximum stay is required.
'Fee is required for changing or canceling reservations. 'Ticket is non-refundable/non-exchangeable.
'Changing your reservation may result in penalties and increased fare. Always advise your airline or your travel agent that you are traveling on a special fare.'
Bill Jackman, a spokesman for the Air Traffic Conference, an industry group that sets airline standards, said the wording was adopted because ticket buyers 'may not have understood what they heard on the phone or have gotten all the information.'  Festivals: Music and Drama
SPOLETO FESTIVAL U.S.A., the cultural festival held in Charleston, S.C., opens May 20 with a new production of Dvorak's opera 'Rusalka' and runs until June 5, with 213 events in all. A new work by avant-garde director Martha Clarke also premieres. More information: Spoleto Festival U.S.A., Post Office Box 157, Charleston, S.C. 29402; 803-722-2764. Tickets can be ordered beginning April 4 at 803-577-7863.
THE MONTREUX INTERNATIONAL JAZZ FESTIVAL in Switzerland, begins July 1 with a week of Brazilian, blues and rock music. Then, jazz follows until July 17. Some of the performers at this year's festival will be George Benson, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis and James Taylor. More information: Swiss National Tourist Office, 608 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10020; 212-757-5944.
THE NATIONAL BLACK ARTS FESTIVAL, in its first year, will explore contributions of blacks to the arts with 70 events between July 30 and Aug. 7, at locations throughout Atlanta. Among the events are the premiere of 'Sally,' a play by Charles Fuller about relationships between blacks and whites during the Civil War, and 'An Evening at the Savoy Ballroom,' featuring the Count Basie Band. Also in the festival are 17 art exhibitions, 7 dance recitals and 10 concerts. Tickets go on sale on May 1. More information: National Black Arts Festival, 60 Walton St. N.W., Suite 300, Atlanta, Ga., 30303; 404-681-7315.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Choose Your Weapons
The Gorham, a 115-room hotel at 136 West 55th Street, gives new meaning to the old expression about knocking someone over with a feather. Its Pillow Fight Menu offers children (and adults, for that matter) a free choice of themed pillowcases, including Pokémon, 102 Dalmatians, Winnie the Pooh and Blues Clues. Information: (800) 735-0710 or www.gorhamhotel.com.
TRAVEL ADVISORY: HOTEL",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"A Eurailpass Gift For the Big Four-O
Users of Eurailpasses who turn 40 in 1999, the 40th anniversary of the first Eurailpass, will receive a 40 percent discount on train fares. The passes are offered by the national rail systems in 17 European countries, and are good for travel in all 17.
The basic Eurailpass is good for unlimited first-class travel for periods ranging from 15 consecutive days to 3 months. Other versions of the Eurailpass, including Eurail Flexipass, Eurail Saverpass and Eurail Saver Flexipass, also qualify for the 40th-anniversary discount. They have varying time periods and conditions. The Europass, a more restricted type of Eurailpass, allows unlimited travel in five countries -- France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland -- to which up to four other countries may be added. The 40-percent anniversary discount does not apply to the Europass, however.
Users of both Eurailpasses and Europasses will once again have a grace period of up to six months -- not three months, as was the case earlier this year -- before having to start their first trip. Americans intending to use Eurailpasses or Europasses are expected to buy them in the United States before going abroad.
Eurailpass fares range from $554 for 15 days to $1,558 for 3 months. Europass fares range from $348 for 5 days in 2 months to $828 for 15 days in 2 months, with two extra countries in both cases. Contact Rail Europe, (888) 382-7245 or www.raileurope.com.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Europeans Debate Inner-City Airports
THE fatal crash of a supersonic Concorde northeast of Paris on July 25 has renewed debate over the construction of a third major airport to serve the French capital. The fact that the Concorde could easily have come down on top of a small town, with even more than the four deaths that resulted among people on the ground, is also raising questions about the safety of existing airports in or near cities, about their further development and about the location of future airports elsewhere in Europe.
Fierce disputes over inner city airports have erupted on the Continent in recent years, notably in Italy, where a group of European airlines has taken Alitalia to court over its plans for Linate Airport, a 15-minute drive from downtown Milan. The argument erupted after Alitalia, backed by the Italian authorities, sought to capitalize on local resistance to Linate by forcing its European competitors to use a new airport, Malpensa, a $65 cab ride from central Milan, while Alitalia reserved Linate for itself.
In Berlin, controversy is simmering about the future of downtown Tempelhof Airport, site of the 1949 airlift into Berlin by the Western Allies. Berlin now relies mainly on tiny Tegel Airport, in former West Berlin, and proposals to enlarge Schonefeld, the old East Berlin airport, into a major international hub are hamstrung by debates among politicians, air traffic planners and environmentalists opposed to any airport enlargement. Meanwhile, the former East German city of Leipzig, whose airport was upgraded after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is booming, attracting travelers from as far away as Berlin.
In Paris, the numbers speak for themselves. Last year, Charles de Gaulle Airport, departure point for the fatal Concorde flight, registered 490,000 takeoffs and landings, a leap of 100,000 in three years. The airport, in Roissy on the northeastern outskirts of the city, handled 44 million passengers, almost 13 percent more than in 1998. At that rate of growth, a ceiling of 55 million passengers set by the French government will be reached by 2002.
In March, Yves Cousquer, president of Aeroports de Paris, the government-owned company that operates Charles De Gaulle and Orly, the smaller Paris airport, said that construction of a third airport for the Paris region had become unavoidable. After the Concorde crash near the town of Gonesse, which killed 113 people, the French minister of transportation, Jean-Claude Gayssot, said a formal decision to build the third airport would probably come this month and a site would be chosen by year's end.
Such a decision will not be easy. Originally, Aeroports de Paris favored expanding Charles de Gaulle and Orly, but after the  crash, Mr. Cousquer acknowledged that construction of a third airport had become 'ineluctable.' In towns like Gonesse that profit from jobs the airports create, mayors and other politicians are torn between the benefits and the risks. If the Concorde had crashed in the center of Gonesse, instead of its thinly populated outskirts, the number of victims would certainly have been far higher.
Discussion of a possible third airport for Paris began in the mid-1990's, as the saturation of Charles de Gaulle and Orly clashed increasingly with French ambitions to build Paris into a major European hub to compete with Frankfurt and London. Initially, the government of Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, which took office in 1997 with the backing of Green parties and environmentally sensitive leftists, shelved the idea, preferring instead to expand the two existing airports. Generally, the Greens and their leftist allies oppose hub development, favoring smaller regional airports and preferring high-speed trains, rather than planes, for trips shorter than 500 miles.
In 1996, the government of Prime Minister Alain Juppe had proposed a site at Beauvilliers, near Chartres about 50 miles southwest of Paris. Mayors in the region objected, suggesting Vatry, a town east of Paris near a proposed high-speed train line between Paris and Strasbourg. Whatever the choice, Mr. Cousquer of Aeroports de Paris says the third airport will not be in operation before 2025. The Juppe government had envisaged an opening in 2015.
These projections have encouraged a bid by Lyon, in the southeast of France, to turn its airport, Lyon-St.-Exupery, into a second major port of entry to France at less cost and time than it would take to build a third Paris airport. Bernard Chaffange, director of Lyon-St.-Exupery, says that the airport, which has a high-speed train link to Paris and will connect next year with Marseille on the Mediterranean coast, could absorb the 40 percent of international travelers now flying into Paris but ultimately destined for business or vacations in the south of France.
In July, Mr. Gayssot approved further investment at Lyon-St.-Exupery, including two additional runways. Local environmentalists and others opposed to the expansion are already organizing resistance.
TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Waikiki Buses Shuttle Guests to Hotels
Visitors to Waikiki can now make the half-hour journey from airport to hotel via Airport Waikiki Express shuttle buses. Trans Hawaiian Services, a Honolulu-based charter service and package tour company, operates the fleet of minibuses that run between Honolulu International Airport and most Waikiki hotels.
The buses pick up passengers at seven stops throughout the airport. The pickup points are on the median strip outside terminals, opposite baggage claim areas. Daily service is provided every 20 to 30 minutes to major Waikiki hotels. The fare (cash only) is $7 one way and $12 round trip; children 2 to 11 are charged $4 one way and $8 round trip.
Reservations are not necessary from the airport, but are required 24 hours in advance for return trips. Passengers are allowed two pieces of luggage and one carry-on bag. Additional baggage costs $2 per item, as does oversized pieces such as golf bags or boogie boards. Surfboards, windsurfers and bicycles are not permitted. More information: (808) 523-0771 or (800) 533-8765.  TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
The What's Doing column on May 25, about Montreal, misstated the city's distance from Toronto. It is 340 miles, not 200. The column also misstated the Web address for the Montreal Museum of Archaeology and History at Pointe-à-Callière. It is www.pacmuseum.qc.ca.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Visiting Dutchess County Farms
The Dutchess Hunt Country Stable, Farm and Garden Tour, a daylong look at three thoroughbred horse farms, a sheep farm, a country estate and a winery in the Millbrook, N.Y., area, will be held Oct. 11. Equestrian and sheep herding demonstrations and a polo match are also part of the program, organized by the Dutchess Land Conservancy, a conservation group. The event will raise funds for the conservancy, which has worked to secure nearly 5,000 acres of protected land.
A 10-acre formal garden will be open at Wethersfield, the country estate of the late philanthropist Chauncey Stillmann, where visitors will also see a collection of hackney horses and historic carriages. The winery is at the Millbrook Vineyard. At the farms, visitors on this self-guided driving tour (10 A.M. to 4 P.M.) will go into stables, barns and carriage houses. Two picnic sites are being provided.
Gate prices for the tour are $20 and $10 for children under age 12. Advance tickets are available through the Dutchess Land Conservancy, (914) 868-7066, for $17 and $7. A box lunch costing $7 is also available to advance buyers. The Patron's Tour, including a ticket and a luncheon at Allyn's, a Millbrook restaurant, costs $75 and may be bought from the conservancy.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Indiana Jones Comes To Disneyland
Disneyland's newest attraction, ""Indiana Jones Adventure,"" opened last month, with waits for the ride up to two or three hours, according to a park spokesman. The attraction is based on themes from the Indiana Jones movie series.
Cars styled to look like military troop transports take riders on a four-minute expedition through the Temple of the Forbidden Eye into an encounter with the deity Mara. Indiana Jones himself makes an appearance in an attempt to keep the expedition on track and out of danger, but the temple god takes his revenge on the intruders, forcing them to flee through a series of perilous chambers.
The cars provide many of the thrills of the ride as they reach speeds of up to 60 miles an hour, slow down, spin their wheels for traction, and back up to escape danger.
Indiana Jones Adventure is housed in a four-story temple-like structure in the Adventureland section. Disneyland is at 1313 Harbor Boulevard in Anaheim, Calif. Adults $33 for one-day pass, children, $25.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Tours of Japanese Internment Camp
The National Park Service has recently taken control of Manzanar National Historic Site, the internment camp in eastern California halfway between Los Angeles and Reno, where up to 10,000 people of Japanese ancestry were held during World War II. The transfer of management brought with it a number of planned improvements, none of which are yet financed, for the 800-acre site.
All that is left of the internment camp -- the best preserved of the 10 war relocation centers in the United States -- is a rickety auditorium, stone sentry posts, dusty streets, a rock garden and the foundations of barracks where Japanese-Americans and Japanese citizens lived from 1942 to 1945. The Park Service wants to turn the auditorium into an interpretive center for visitors, and restore some of the living quarters, guard towers and barbed-wire fence to their World War II conditions.
New to the site is a tour offered by the Eastern California Museum in nearby Independence. The tours, which last one to two hours and discuss the history of the camp and its earlier incarnations as agricultural land and an Indian settlement, begin at the entrance to Manzanar Saturdays and Sundays through October at 9 A.M. Information: (760) 878-0258.
Manzanar is 220 miles north of Los Angeles, just off Highway 395, between Lone Pine and Independence. Admission is free. There are no facilities or permanent staff members on site. Information: (760) 878-2932.
VERNE G. KOPYTOFF
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
LEAD: Because of a production error, the Practical Traveler column in some copies of the Travel section last week omitted three lines beneath the drawing. Readers wishing copies of the correct page may write to Production Quality Control, The New York Times, 229 West 43d Street, New York, N.Y. 10036.
Because of a production error, the Practical Traveler column in some copies of the Travel section last week omitted three lines beneath the drawing. Readers wishing copies of the correct page may write to Production Quality Control, The New York Times, 229 West 43d Street, New York, N.Y. 10036.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Former Onassis Yacht Now Takes Bookings
The yacht Christina O, which once belonged to Aristotle Onassis, will take up to 36 passengers through the Greek Isles between Aug. 30 and Oct. 19. For $8,750 a person in double occupancy, Tauck World Discovery of Westport, Conn., offers 10-night packages that include seven-night voyages on the vessel. A similar program is planned next spring and fall, and the 325-foot yacht is available for charter at other times of the year.
A former Canadian frigate, the Stormont, the yacht served as a convoy escort in World War II. It was bought by Mr. Onassis in 1954 for $34,000. He spent $4 million converting it to the Christina, named for his daughter. Jacqueline Kennedy and Mr. Onassis spent their honeymoon aboard the yacht in 1968. After Christina died in 1988, the yacht went to the Greek government as a bequest from her. In 1998 Tauck World Discovery bought it, then sold most of the yacht to John Paul Papanicolaou, a shipping magnate, and some investors, who refurbished it for $50 million and renamed it the Christina O.
The upgrading included an engine refitting and restoration of the interior, including the bar where John F. Kennedy met Winston Churchill in 1957. A fitness center and sports lounge have been added along with CD and DVD players in each cabin.
Packages include hotel stays in Rome and Athens, a flight between Rome and Brindisi and calls at Corfu, Kefalonia, Itea, Hydra, Milos, Santorini, Mykonos and Delos. Voyages either begin or end in Piraeus, and a side trip to Delphi is included. Flights from the United States are extra.
Information: (800) 468-2825 or at www .tauck.com.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Jewish Museum to Show Early Chagall Works
Marc Chagall 1907-17,"" a survey of the artist's formative years, will open at the Jewish Museum in New York next Sunday. The exhibition examines the period during which Chagall developed his unique imagery and traces his life from Vitebsk, where he was born in 1887, to St. Petersburg, Paris and back to Vitebsk at the outbreak of World War I, ending with the Bolshevik Revolution.
The 100 paintings, gouaches and drawings on view will include a selection of self-portraits, as well as portraits of Chagall's family; depictions of life in Vitebsk, Lyozno and Paris; works centering on religious themes and Jewish life, and works produced after Chagall's return to Russia. Highlights include ""The Wedding"" (1911), painted during his first year in Paris; ""The Lovers in Gray"" (1916-17), a portrait of himself and his wife, Bella, and ""The Cemetery Gate"" (1917), one of a series of paintings of Vitebsk and its surroundings. Many of the works, from European museums and private collections, have never been exhibited in the United States.
Marc Chagall 1907-17"" was organized by the Jewish Museum in conjunction with the Kunstmuseum Bern, and runs through Aug. 4.
The museum, open Sunday through Thursday, is at 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92d Street. Admission is $7; $5 for students and the elderly, free for children under 12 and on Tuesday after 5 P.M. For information: (212) 423-3230.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Houston Space Center Marks Moon Landing
Space Center Houston is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing with laser light shows, documentary videos and 18 space-related exhibits created from 200,000 Lego pieces. The laser light show uses four large screens, sound and laser effects to provide a sensory re-creation of the lunar mission, including the the first Earth rise seen from the surface of the moon.
The shows run through Labor Day at Space Center Houston, an educational and entertainment complex at the Johnson Space Center, 20 miles south of Houston. The center is open daily. Admission is $11.95 and $8.50 for children under 12; children under 3 admitted free; seniors over 65, $10.75. For more information: (713) 244-2105 or (800) 972-0369.  TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"TRAVEL ADVISORY
CRUISE  Floating Feng Shui
The principles of feng shui, the Asian practice of placing buildings and arranging interior spaces to create balance and harmony, are becoming as commonplace as dim sum. Crystal Cruises has renovated the spa aboard its Crystal Symphony to conform with feng shui tenets, and the Crystal Harmony's spa will get the same treatment later this year. Among the touches on the Symphony that are designed to allow qi (life force) to flow like the tides are Chinese tiles outside beauty rooms and Zen rock gardens in waiting rooms. Call (800) 820-6663.
TOUR  Women and Wilderness
Explorations in Travel offers wilderness trips for women over 40 in U.S. national parks and abroad. Among the scheduled journeys is a rafting trip on the Salmon River in Idaho from Sept. 9 to 16 for $2,295 a person, including air fare to the river from  Boise. The company also offers multigenerational trips for mothers and daughters (and granddaughters). Contact Explorations in Travel, 1922 River Road, Guilford, Vt. 05301; (802) 257-0152, fax (802) 257-2784.
HOTEL  A Room and a Chef
Putting a new twist on room service, the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle allows guests to order up a chef from its restaurant. Its Buy the Chef program lets guests hire a personal chef to customize a three-course dinner, on Friday or Saturday, subject to availability. Prices for the meal start at $45 a person, not including tax, tip and beverages. It can be served in the room or in the hotel's restaurant. Doubles start at $225. The 268-room Edgewater is at 2411 Alaskan Way, on the water at Pier 67. Call (206) 728-7000.
JOSEPH SIANO",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
A listing last Sunday with an article about Washington misstated the weekend room rate at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. It is $260 a night through June 30, with or without the Picture Picasso museum package. The $199 rate for the package is in effect only from July 1 to 27.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, the ""What's Doing"" column on June 6, about Lugano, referred incorrectly to an excursion to the village of Melide, Switzerland. It was a boat ride of 10 to 15 minutes, not a 10-minute walk.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Deals and Discounts
Summer brings many vacation choices, so operators of cruise ships, river barges and other vessels often try to put together deals to get you onto the water.
CRUISING THE WEB -- Special pricing is offered by eWaterways.com for two seven-day barge cruises in France departing July 13. The 50-passenger Anacolouthe will cruise the Seine and Yonne Rivers with stops at Monet's home and gardens at Giverny, the Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte, the palace at Fontainebleau and the Gothic cathedral at Auxerre in Burgundy. The price of $1,990 a couple is half the normal high-season rate. It includes all meals, wines, sightseeing and transfers between the barge and Paris. Air fare between most United States cities and Paris is included with a trip on the 50-passenger Provence, departing from Lyon on July 13 to cruise along the Rhone with stops at Avignon, the Roman ruins in Arles and St.-Rémy de Provence, and the walled medieval city of Aigues-Mortes. Rates: $2,690 to $3,090 a person, double occupancy. For more information: (800) 676-6613 or www.bargespecials.com.
THIRD PASSENGER FREE -- On all seven-night sailings July 14 to Aug. 18, the 170-passenger tall ship Star Clipper will allow the third passenger in triple-occupancy cabins to travel free. Rates for the first two passengers start at $993 each, including port charges. For those who believe three's a crowd, there are two-for-one air-fare deals out of New York on some departures (the two offers cannot be combined). The Star Clipper departs Barbados on Sundays and stops in Martinique, Antigua, St. Lucia St. Barts and other ports. Availability is limited, and air fare is extra. Call (800) 442-0551 or visit www.starclippers.com.
RUNNING AWAY -- The 320-passenger Paul Gauguin, which sails Tahiti and nearby islands, is including round-trip economy air fare from 82 North American cities, including New York, on seven-night departures June 8 and 22. Ports of call include Raiatea, Tahaa, Bora-Bora and Moorea. Prices per person, based on double occupancy, start at $2,895. For more information: (866) 213-1272 or on the Web at www.rssc.com.
LAND OF THE FJORDS -- Norwegian Coastal Voyage has reduced the prices of various packages that include cruises along the Norwegian coast, hotels in Oslo and Bergen, rail travel between those cities and air fare from New York. For example, a 15-day plan that includes a round-trip cruise aboard the Finnmarken or Trollfjord from Bergen has been discounted $115 to $125 -- to $3,570 to $4,535 a person, double occupancy -- through this year. Each ship carries cargo in addition to about 650 passengers. Both are new for 2002. Information: (800) 323-7436 or www.coastalvoyage.com.
JOSEPH SIANO
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Hotel Groups' Web Vow: We'll Beat Any Price
In an effort to attract travelers to their Web sites and assure them that the rates found there are the best available, Six Continents Hotels, Starwood Hotels and Resorts, and the Cendant Corporation are pledging to beat any online travel site's lowest rate.
Customers must first book a room on the hotel companies' Web sites and then, within 24 hours, find a cheaper rate online for the same hotel and same level of accommodations for the same dates. The companies will then match the lower rate and take another 10 percent off.
The pledge pertains to all Six Continents hotels worldwide booked through www .sixcontinentshotels.com or on any of the hotels' individual Web sites. Six Continents' brands include Crowne Plaza, Inter-Continental, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express and Staybridge Suites by Holiday Inn.
Cendant's and Starwood's guarantee applies only to hotels in the United States and Canada. Hotels under the Starwood umbrella can be booked through www.starwood.com or on the Web sites of Sheraton, Westin, The Luxury Collection, St. Regis, W and Four Points by Sheraton.
The Web sites of Cendant's hotel group, which include Days Inn, Super 8, Ramada, Travelodge, Howard Johnson, Knights Inn, Villager, Wingate Inns and AmeriHost Inn, can be accessed through www.cendant.com.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Indian Art In Virginia
Eighty native American objects from more than 20 museums and private collections are being exhibited in ""Images of Earth and Sky"" at the Jamestown Settlement in Williamsburg, Va., through March 22. A Pawnee ghost dance dress, a Chitimacha cane basket, a pre-Columbian mask found in Virginia, a headdress, a saddle and jewelry are in the display, which opened Aug. 1.
The exhibition examines the relationship of North American Indians to nature as expressed in their decorations, designs and belongings. Examples of modern work demonstrate the evolution of Indian art forms. Admission to the Jamestown Settlement, a museum telling the story of America's first permanent English colony and the native Americans of coastal Virginia, includes the gallery where the exhibit is presented. The cost is $7. The museum, (804) 229-1607, is open daily from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Tourists Tiptoe Into Saudi Arabia
Smithsonian Study Tours, the travel arm of the Smithsonian Institution, is taking advantage of Saudi Arabia's being open to tourism since last fall. Three two-week tours, Inside Saudi Arabia, will combine lectures on culture and archeology with visits to historic sites, museums and national parks.
The tours will begin in Riyadh, the capital, where the group will visit the National Museum to learn about Islamic architecture and traditional Saudi life; the Diplomatic Quarter; Masmak Fortress, a mud citadel in the heart of Old Riyadh that Abdul Aziz captured during his conquest of the Arabian Peninsula in 1902, and the souk, or marketplace. The Riyadh portion also includes a day trip to Diraiyah, the first capital of the al-Saud clan -- a city settled in 1446 that thrived until the beginning of the 19th century.
From Riyadh the group will fly to Dhahran in the Eastern Province, the major Saudi oil-producing region, where commercial quantities of oil were first discovered in 1938.
Medina is closed to non-Muslims, but its outskirts will serve as a bivouac to Madain Salah, an archeological site famous for its 140 sandstone monumental tombs dating from about 100 B.C. to 100 A.D.
Other stops will include Jeddah, a resort on the Red Sea, but any swimming will be done in hotel pools. All visitors will have to cover up so only hands and faces are exposed, and women in the group must wear an abaya, the traditional floor-length black robe, over their clothes, as well as a black head scarf.
The price, $7,220 a person based on double occupancy, includes all meals and round-trip air fare from New York. The first tour, in October, is fully booked. Departures next year are scheduled for Jan. 13 and Oct. 12. Call (202) 357-4700 or visit www.si.edu/tsa/sst.
ALISHA BERGER
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Globe Hopping
It's not clear whether that old saying about some wines not traveling well applies to beer, but brew lovers can find out this year on any of five European  Brewery Adventures tours offered by MIR Corporation, a Seattle tour operator. Participants will tour some of Europe's oldest breweries, speak with brewmasters and (of course) sample the product. The Artisan Breweries of Holland and Belgium tour on Sept. 7 to 16, for example, stops at one of the few surviving Trappist breweries. Rates are $1,295 to $2,395 a person in double occupancy, without air  fare; all breakfasts and some meals included. Call (800) 424-7289.
TRAVEL ADVISORY: TOUR",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Travel Advisory; A Rare Glimpse Of Old Planes
Airplane buffs will be able to take a behind-the-scenes look at more than 150 rarely seen planes and spacecraft in the National Air and Space Museum's collection next Saturday and Sunday, when the museum holds its 10th annual ""Wings and Things"" open house at the Paul E. Garber Facility, just outside Washington in Suitland, Md.
Public access to the artifact storage and restoration center is normally limited to small, advance-reservation tours. On view from 10 A.M. until 3 P.M. each day will be the 1953 Northrop flying wing, ancestor of today's F-117A Stealth fighters, the Curtiss JN-4D Jenny, a World War I trainer made famous by postwar barnstormers, and the Beechcraft ""Waikiki Beech.""
Admission is free. For information: (202) 357-2700.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Edinburgh Puts Planet In Dramatic Light
Earthquakes, erupting volcanos and torrential rains are a few of the simulated catastrophes awaiting visitors to Dynamic Earth, a new attraction in Edinburgh's Old Town. Housed in the William Younger Center, a new building with a translucent roof, Dynamic Earth tells the planet's story through interactive exhibits, videos and state-of-the-art special effects.
After boarding a 'time machine' elevator, visitors may explore 11 environmental zones, ranging from a tropical rain forest with computer-controlled daylight cycles to a Restless Earth zone, replete with sulfurous emissions and a vibrating floor that lights up. An indoor iceberg can be found in the chilly Polar Zone, and the Showdome offers a planetariumlike display of earthquakes, lightning storms and tidal waves. Human evolution, extinction of the dinosaurs and the sustainability of the planet are among the themes explored elsewhere.
Dynamic Earth, at 112 Holyrood Road in Holyrood Park, is open Wednesday to Sunday. Admission is $9.50; $5.60 for children. Information: (44-131) 550 7800.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Travel Advisory; Code-Share Plan Adds South Africa Flights
Delta Airlines is entering into a code-share agreement with South Africa Airways to offer nonstop service to South Africa from New York and Atlanta.
Starting tomorrow, the airlines will fly Boeing 747's from Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta to Johannesburg and Cape Town, and from Kennedy International Airport to Johannesburg. Flights will leave Kennedy daily at 5:55 p.m., arriving in Johannesburg at 3:30 p.m. the following day, except on Tuesdays, when the plane drops cargo off on Sal Island, Cape Verde, and arrives at 5 p.m. Flights depart Johannesburg at 9:20 p.m. and arrive at Kennedy at 7:20 a.m. the next day.
From Atlanta, departures on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday will be at 10:30 a.m., arriving in Johannesburg at 8:35 a.m. the next day, and continuing to Cape Town, arriving at 11:35 a.m. On the other days, flights go to Cape Town first, then to Johannesburg. Flights to Atlanta, on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday, will depart Johannesburg at 5:50 p.m., stop in Cape Town and arrive in Atlanta at 8:20 the next morning. On other days, flights leave Cape Town and stop in Johannesburg.
Round-trip fares start at $747 for travel completed by April 30. For information and reservations, call (800) 221-1212.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"High-Speed Amtrak Begins to Roll, Slowly
WHEN Florida's Governor, Jeb Bush, ended state financing in January for the proposed 320-mile high-speed rail project that would have linked Miami, Orlando and Tampa, the future of high-speed train service in the United States suffered an apparent major setback.
But an unlikely savior -- make that an unlikely possible savior -- rode toward the rescue earlier this month: Amtrak, that much maligned national passenger rail system created by Congress in 1971, which has lost money every year since.
(While the cause of the recent Amtrak crash south of Chicago that killed 11 people and injured more than 100 after colliding with a truck at an intersection has not yet been determined, it did not involve high speed rails or high speed trains. And the train was not exceeding the 79 m.p.h. limit.)
Last month Amtrak unveiled the first of 20 high-speed trains that will go into service later this year along the Northeast Corridor, the 470-mile strip linking Washington, New York and Boston. The new trains, renamed Acela, to suggest a combination of excellence and acceleration, will race along at 150 m.p.h., Amtrak officials said; their top speed today is 90 m.p.h. between Boston and New York and 125 m.p.h. between New York and Washington. The higher speed, a result of track improvements and technology that allows the new trains to tilt into curves with little danger of derailment or of disrupting passengers when the trains bank, would cut 30 minutes from the present four-hour New York to Boston trip and up to 30 minutes between New York and Washington. As an added lure, Amtrak officials said that fares will be 30 percent lower than walk-up fares on US Airways' and Delta's shuttle flights.
That saving presumably would make Acela more attractive to passengers, especially business travelers. In addition, the new cars will offer electrical outlets for laptop computers and audio entertainment, televised news updates, tables to spread out papers or hold meetings, enlarged lounges and bathrooms, and better food, drinks and luggage storage.
If Amtrak's ambitious plans for the Northeast Corridor succeed -- enabling the line to become self-sufficient by 2002, when its Federal subsidy is scheduled to end -- the railroad next plans a $25 million network of high-speed trains linking nine Midwestern states from Ohio to Nebraska, with Chicago as the hub. Then it hopes to add other regions.
Those trains are still some years down the road. Meanwhile, about a dozen other high-speed routes are already on the drawing boards or under construction. They range in length from 85 miles, between Chicago and Milwaukee, to 676 miles, the so-called California corridor that would link San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento. Projected costs for the projects range from $29 billion for the California corridor to $315 million to link the Buffalo-Albany portion of the 430-mile Empire corridor between Buffalo and New York City.
Trains are expected to exceed 100 m.p.h., with the fastest in California. One of the two types of train under consideration there would be capable of 220 m.p.h.; the other  could run at speeds up to 310 m.p.h. Unlike  other projects, which would use existing tracks, California's proposes a new rail line solely for high-speed trains.
The high-speed projections assume that signals are improved, curves straightened and stations rebuilt. So far improvements have progressed only in the Northeast Corridor, which carried more than nine million passengers in fiscal 1997 (seven million on the New York-Washington portion). Electrification of the final link, between New Haven and Boston, is scheduled for completion late this year, with high-speed service to follow soon afterward.
Other potential high-speed corridors include Eugene, Ore., to Vancouver, Canada, and Washington to Charlotte, N.C. There is a proposal to link Philadelphia and Harrisburg, and one for Birmingham, Ala., and New Orleans, eventually hooking up with Houston. The wide-ranging Midwestern project envisioned by Amtrak would encompass three smaller corridors in which Chicago would be the linchpin.
A recent General Accounting Office report to Congress said that most of the proposals for high-speed corridors are unclear about where the money is coming from and some are still developing feasibility studies. The agency cautioned that 'high-speed rail systems are costly, and thus ridership levels may not be high enough in the United States for systems to cover their costs.' Equally discouraging, Amtrak has only 0.3 percent of the nation's total passenger traffic, according to the Amtrak Reform Council, established by Congress in 1997 to monitor the railroad's progress.
But the pessimistic G.A.O. report was issued more than a month before Amtrak officials pulled the high-speed rabbit out of their hats. And since that report, Amtrak officials have pointed to the news from their recently completed fiscal year -- e.g., their largest ridership increase in a decade, their best on-time performance in 13 years and their first $1 billion-plus passenger revenues ever -- as strong evidence that they have turned the corner.
Skeptics, especially those in Congress,  will probably say they have heard that before from Amtrak. About the best that supporters of high-speed rail can do is hope that this time Amtrak is right.
TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
A picture caption on Oct. 17 with the What's Doing column, about San Diego, omitted the first name of an actor in the play 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.' He is Norbert Leo Butz.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Several Red Sea Reefs Open Again to Divers
In response to requests from tour operators and scuba divers, the Egyptian Government has decided to allow diving once again  off about 15 islands in the Red Sea where it had been prohibited because of ecological concerns. It is now permitted at Zabargad, Rocky, Brothers and Abul Kizan islands, with limits on the number of divers.
Two trips are allowed each week: a one-week excursion to the Brothers islands and a 12-day tour of the other islands. Each tour group may have no more than six boats, with a maximum of 15 divers a boat. The diving fee is $5 a person.
These islands are well known for their coral reefs and diverse fish populations. More than 10 islands in the Red Sea are still off limits to divers for conservation reasons.
More information about scuba diving in Egypt is available from the Egyptian Tourist Authority, 630 Fifth Avenue, Suite 1706, New York, N.Y. 10111, (212) 332-2570, or www.touregypt.net.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Luxury Riverboat to Ply Lochs and Highlands
The Scottish Highlands will become more accessible when the refurbished 50-passenger 150-foot riverboat Lord of the Glens goes into service between Inverness on the east  and Oban on the west of Scotland in September. Short enough to negotiate the locks of the 60-mile Caledonian Canal, the vessel will be the first luxury passenger boat to carry overnight passengers the 200 or so miles of what is called the Great Glen, including crossing Loch Ness.
The vessel has been outfitted with mahogany paneling and brass fittings and has a dining room with picture windows, a topside lounge with panoramic view, a library and a gift shop. Cabins feature twin beds, a desk, color TV and bathrobes.
A 10-night package, including seven nights aboard the boat, two nights at the Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh and a night at the Cameron House Hotel on Loch Lomond, is offered by Thomas P. Gohagan & Company of Chicago.
After touring Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood House in Edinburgh, passengers  cross the Highlands by bus to Inverness to board the Lord of the Glens. During the cruise, they will stop at the Culloden Battlefield and Cawdor Castle and at Fort Augustus, from which they will travel by bus and ferry to the Isle of Skye.
Prices range from $4,595, plus $125 tax, to $6,195, plus tax, depending on hotel accommodations and departure date, and include round-trip air fare from New York. Information: (800) 922-3088.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"TRAVEL ADVISORY
LEAD:  Roadwork Slows Airport Traffic In Minneapolis
Roadwork Slows Airport Traffic In Minneapolis
With a $30 million ground improvement project under way, travelers bound for the Minneapolis/ St. Paul International Airport are advised to leave 30 minutes earlier than usual. The airport director, Tim Anderson, said that driving and parking would pose problems until late November 1989 while extensive roadway resurfacing and construction of a new parking facility was being completed.
At present, the renovations are only at the Charles A. Lindbergh Terminal, which handles all scheduled domestic airlines and international flight departures.
Parking has been temporarily reduced there, and cars are being directed to the expanded EconoLot near the Hubert H. Humphrey Terminal, which is used for charter flights. A shuttle bus departs for the Lindbergh terminal every 10 minutes during the day and every 15 minutes at night. Access routes to and from the terminals will soon be reduced to two lanes. More information: 612-726-5577.  Setting Sail In Clean Waters
A new cruise liner, the Seaward, will begin sailing the Caribbean this summer without, according to its owner, polluting its waters. The 42,000-ton Norwegian Cruise Line ship is equipped with a system that processes refuse before dumping it overboard.
The system is designed to treat, burn and crush the waste, rendering it harmless to the environment. There is no smoke, and heat from the incineration is used to power the ship's salt water distillers, which convert sea water to fresh.
Beginning today the Seaward is scheduled to embark from Miami every Sunday on a weeklong cruise, calling at Great Stirrup Cay in the Bahamas; Ocho Rios, Jamaica; Grand Cayman, and Cozumel, Mexico. The ship has accommodations for 1,534 passengers and carries a crew of 624.
Prices for the cruise range from $975 to $2,145 per person, double occupancy. Reservations can be made through travel agents or by contacting the Norwegian Cruise Line, 2 Alhambra Plaza, Coral Gables, Fla. 33134; 800-327-7030.  Zoo Opening In Indianapolis
The New Indianapolis Zoo - with what is being called the country's largest indoor whale and dolphin pavilion - was scheduled to open today.
The zoo's 2,000 animals will roam simulated environments, called biomes, that approximate the world's waters, deserts, plains and forests. There is also Indiana's only aquarium.
The New Indianapolis Zoo, at 1200 West Washington Street in White River State Park, is open from 9 A.M. to 7 P.M, April 1 through Aug. 31; and to 4 P.M. from Sept. 1 to March 31. Admission is $7, $4 for children 3 to 12, and $5 for seniors 62 and older. More information: 317-638-8072.  Gettysburg Stay
All rooms in Gettysburg, Pa., are booked from June 24 to 26 and only a few remain July 1 to 4, the key weekends on which the 125th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg will be marked, according to the Gettysburg Travel Council. However, as of this writing there are still accommodations within an hour of the town - in York and Franklin Counties and the Harrisburg-Hershey-Carlisle area in Pennsylvania; and in Frederick and Washington Counties and Hagerstown and Westminster in Maryland.
For up-to-date information on accommodations, call the Gettysburg Travel Council at 717-334-6274.  Travel Booklets In New Editions
THE NEW EDITION OF 'YOUR TRIP ABROAD,' published by the Bureau of Consular Affairs of the State Department, is now available. The charge for this 40-page pamphlet is $1. It tells how to get a passport, including addresses for Passport Agency offices, gives general advice on taking medicines and money with you, makes safety recommendations and outlines what consulates are able to do if you get into trouble overseas. The booklet, item 162T, may be ordered from R. Woods, Consumer Information Center, Pueblo, Colo. 81009. 'Foreign Visa Requirements' of 226 countries may be ordered at the same time. It is 50 cents additional.
'CALLING ON NORTH AMERICA,' a travel directory published by the National Tour Association and AT&T, is out in a new edition. The book is available at no cost for those who call 800-527-9131 and either order an A.T.&T. card (which is free) or give the number of the card they already have. The directory, which is organized by region, describes points of interest and nearby facilities and gives addresses and phone numbers. The book gives pointers on such things as packing, choosing restaurants and taking photos.  New Barriers Go Up in Cyprus
Visitors to Nicosia, Cyprus, can no longer make day trips across the 'green line,' which divides the city of Nicosia - and the island of Cyprus -between the Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to the north.
Until a few weeks ago, according to a Government spokesman, foreign visitors going from south to north could cross the line at a central checkpoint after signing a form stating that they would return to the same checkpoint from the north at 6 P.M. that day. Now, the Turkish Cypriot Government requires that all passports be stamped when travelers enter, and the Greek Cypriots declare that anyone with a Turkish Cypriot stamp in their passport will be arrested.
Visitors attempting to go north are now being turned away at checkpoints by Greek Cypriot guards. The Turkish Cypriots have encouraged people to tour their country, but the Greek Cypriots refuse to acknowledge that there is an independent country beyond the green line.
Under the new rules, the only foreigners permitted to cross the line are diplomats. Citizens of both the north and south republics have never been allowed across.  Ecuador Reports Dengue Fever
An epidemic of dengue fever, heretofore found mainly in the Caribbean, has been reported for the first time on the Pacific coast of South America, in Guayaquil, Ecuador, according to the State Department. Guayaquil is the stepping-off place for most trips to the Galapagos Islands. Travelers there should use insect repellent to prevent bites from the aedes aegypti mosquito, a carrier of dengue fever, the department said. Health officials in Ecuador say the worst of the epidemic should be over by July, according to the State Department, but precautions should still be taken after then. Dengue fever is characterized by high fever, aching joints and general malaise. In its most serious form, the fever can be fatal.  Airport Buses in New York Area
Salem Transportation of New Jersey is set to resume Sunday-to-Friday bus service between Newark International Airport and La Guardia Airport this Wednesday.
Starting at 7:30 A.M., the service departs every two hours on the half hour, with the last bus leaving Newark at 5:30 P.M. and the last one leaving La Guardia at 7:30 P.M. Salem also links Newark and Kennedy International Airport with an hourly service. The fare between Newark and either airport in New York City is $17. For information in New Jersey, 800-624-4274; in New York, 718-656-4511.  Getting Cash Abroad With Your Credit Card
You can walk up to a bank's automatic teller machine at any hour in Bangkok, insert an American charge card and receive a tidy sum in Thai baht, all the while conducting the transaction in English. American Express, MasterCard and Visa charge cards can be used to withdraw money from certain automatic teller machines, or A.T.M.'s, in Thailand and all over the world as easily as you would use a bank card to withdraw money from a machine at your local bank.
The three charge card companies have agreements with several foreign banks allowing their American cardholders access to foreign A.T.M. networks. The machines can be used 24 hours a day and have instructions in English, as well as in the local language.
The machines are operated by inserting the card, punching in a personal identification number (if your card doesn't have a number encoded, ask American Express or the bank that issues your Visa or MasterCard to provide one) and selecting the proper transaction. American Express also has 140 of its own machines at travel offices, airports, railway stations and hotels. At the American Express machines, United States dollars and traveler's checks are also available.
For Visa and MasterCard users, the cash withdrawal limit is the same as the card holder's credit limit. For American Express cardholders, the cash limits are the the equivalent of from $500 a week for green and gold card holders and $1,000 a week for platinum card holders; the maximum purchase of traveler's checks available to platinum card holders is $10,000 over a 30-day period. However, in all three cases, one-day cash limits set by foreign banks for their machines may be lower than the limits that are set by the charge card companies.
American Express charges $1.50 for each cash transaction and 1 percent for traveler's checks. An additional 1 percent international access fee and a 1 percent charge for foreign currency exchange are also added. MasterCard and Visa card holders should check with their banks to determine what fees, if any, are charged for cash advances, foreign ATM access and currency exchange.
Correction:  July 3, 1988, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
A Travel Advisory chart on June 12 gave an incorrect telephone number for information on automatic teller machines that provide local currency to Visa cardholders overseas. Holders of Visa gold cards may get information by calling 800-336-3386 or, in Alaska and Hawaii, 800-336-3379. A holder of a regular card may ask the issuing bank for a list of overseas cash machines. The machines may be used by holders of any Visa card.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Airline Tax Expiring; Fares May Go Down
Travelers may see a drop in air fares when the 10 percent Federal tax on domestic fares expires at the end of the year.
The tax, which is included in quoted fares, lapsed at the beginning of the year and  provided a boon to both consumers and airlines, since air carriers were able to both lower fares and increase profits. It was reinstated by Congress on Aug. 27, but will  remain in effect only until the end of the year.
The airlines declined to discuss what they will do when the tax expires. They are prohibited by the Justice Department from tipping each other off about whether they plan to raise or lower fares.
The Air Transport Association, the industry's trade group, predicts that the tax will be reinstated sometime around April. After all, the Aviation Trust Fund, which is used to pay for the air traffic control system, loses about $500 million a month when the tax is not collected, and would probably run out of money by early next summer.
ADAM BRYANT
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Tours to Indonesia Postponed for Many
Although the violence has subsided in Indonesia, the political and economic situation remains unsettled, and the State Department, in a June 11 public announcement, advises Americans to avoid crowds and areas where violence has been reported. The announcement replaced a June 3 travel warning urging Americans to defer non-essential travel to the country.
While Jakarta, Indonesia's capital and the site of most demonstrations against former President Suharto -- who resigned May 21  -- is not included on most group-tour itineraries, many tour companies are rescheduling or canceling their tours to other sections of the country. For example, Volcano Tours canceled its Indonesian trips scheduled for June and August, with full refunds. Overseas Adventure Travel also canceled its trips to Indonesia for the rest of the year,  with a full refund plus $200 toward any other trip during 1998.
Bali has not experienced violence, although there have been some demonstrations on the island. Spice Island Cruises, which offers trips that originate in Bali and then travel to remote islands, has not had any cancellations or drop in bookings, according to Jill Potash, a spokeswoman, and sees no reason not to conduct business as usual, far removed from the disturbances.
Journeys Off the Tourist Track in Fairfax, Calif., canceled one trip to Bali for June, but still plans to take two groups there in August. Travelers booked on a trip to Indonesia through Asia Transpacific Journeys in Boulder, Colo., have been given the option to reschedule. One tour set to depart the weekend after the disturbances in Jakarta was canceled, and refunds were offered. Since then, the company reports almost no cancellations, but its bookings to Indonesia have been lower than usual this year, it said.
Updated information on Indonesia is available from the United States Embassy in Jakarta, www.usembassyjakarta.org. Call (202) 647-5225 for recorded travel information on any country. Consular Information Sheets for all countries can be accessed through the State Department's Internet site, travel.state.gov.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Travel Advisory
LEAD:
Talks Stumble On Expanding Soviet Flights
Talks Stumble On Expanding Soviet Flights
WASHINGTON Amid all the talk about nuclear missiles and the realignment of Europe in Soviet-American relations, the United States and Soviet Union have been working on something promising more practical impact on Americans' lives - a new agreement on commercial airline traffic.
Prospects for signing the accord when President Mikhail S. Gorbachev comes to Washington this week seemed to have fallen through last week.
But once the tough issues are resolved, a new agreement should make it easier for American travelers to get a firsthand view of glasnost and perestroika, not to mention Red Square.
Currently, Pan Am is the only American airline that flies directly to the Soviet Union, with four afternoon flights each week to Moscow and Leningrad from Washington and New York.
The proposed agreement would expand the number of United States carriers that can fly to those cities. It also would open four cities in the western part of the Soviet Union - Kiev, Riga, Minsk and Tbilisi - and two cities in the Far Eastern region - Magadan and Khabarovsk, the eastern terminus of the trans-Siberian Railroad - to American carriers.
With five or six United States airlines expressing interest in the routes, flights could become available from virtually every region of the United States.
For those who would like to travel on the Soviet airline, Aeroflot, which now flies only to New York and Washington, the proposals would allow Aeroflot to fly to Chicago and Miami and to San Francisco, with a stop in Anchorage.
Many details have not been worked out, including precise schedules, a final agreement on the new Soviet destinations and the toughest question of all: whether American companies will be allowed to sell tickets to Russians for rubles. All that may delay the moment when a traveler in Chicago, say, or Atlanta will be able to call a travel agent and ask, 'What's the supersaver fare to Moscow and how much frequent flier mileage will I earn?'
-  ANDREW ROSENTHAL
Airlines Offer Terror 'Bounty'
United States airlines are teaming up with the Federal Government to deter terrorist attacks as the summer tourist season nears. The Air Transport Association, a Washington-based organization of major commercial carriers, is offering a bounty of up to $1 million for information that either prevents a terrorist attack or leads to the arrest and conviction of terrorists responsible for attacks against United States airlines.
The $1 million will supplement a $2 million reward offered by the State Department, according to Stephen D. Hayes, vice president of the association.
'We think this might be a deterrent,' he said. 'This reward program is one more element in the way of initiatives government and industry are taking together.'
The reward offer took effect May 1. The association president, Robert Aaronson, said the program would be a 'powerful incentive for people within or close to terrorist organizations to reveal plots before they are hatched.'
The association expects the State Department to take the lead in publicizing the reward in the Middle East and Europe.
Lyons Flights
After a year, American Airlines is discontinuing its daily nonstop flights between Kennedy International Airport and Lyons, France. The service is to be dropped at the end of the month. Lyons was to serve as a gateway to the south of France and to the Alps.
American needed the aircraft for Latin American routes it bought from Eastern, which also included Continental's Miami-London service and the Chicago-London service bought from T.W.A., according to John Hotard, a spokesman for American. Business on the New York-Lyons run was 'marginal,' he said.
Cost Watching At Motels
How much did you pay when you last stayed at a motel? If you were looking for lower rates and paid more than $40 for a double room, you are missing something, according to the latest edition of 'The 1990-1991 National Directory of Budget Motels.' The 80-page booklet says that budget motels offering all the basic amenities - including air-conditioning, television, full bath and swimming pool - generally charge $22 to $33 for a single and $26 to $37 for two. Some major chains, the directory says, charge as little as $23 for a double.
It lists more than 2,000 motels in the United States and a few dozen in Canada and also includes headquarters of 26 of the budget chains, most of which have toll-free 800 numbers.
Rates are not given for individual motels because of 'unpredictable cost factors in the economy,' but the directory does include umbrella rates along with its listing of motel chains.
Rates at Budget Host Inns, for example, are given as from $18.88, double. Among other starting rates, for two, are: Days Inns, $25; Econo Lodges, $21.99; Hampton Inns, $36; Motel 6, $24.95; Super 8 Motels, $22.50; Susse Chalet, $39.70, and TraveLodge, $28.
Write or telephone the motel and ask for mailed confirmation of a guaranteed price, the directory suggests, particularly during holiday periods.
Request a room rate before checking in and inquire about the lowest rates.
Travelers should also ask about the family, senior citizen and other possible special-group discounts.
Certain areas, including the Northeast, and places with major tourist attractions and resorts offer few budget motels, the directory warns. The booklet is available solely from the publisher, Pilot Books, 103 Cooper Street, Babylon, N.Y. 11702 at $3.95 a copy plus $1 for postage.
Spoleto Tickets for Early Risers
It's not too late to attend the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. in Charleston, S.C., which began Friday and runs through June 10. Tickets to the festival's top two draws - Mozart's 'Marriage of Figaro,' directed by the festival founder, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Oscar Wilde's 'Salome,' directed by Steven Berkoff - can be obtained with a little sweat and a lot of patience. And tickets for many of the other 118 events being presented this year remain available through normal channels.
Although both 'The Marriage of Figaro' and 'Salome' are listed as sold out, people willing to get out of bed early can buy tickets on the day of each performance. The Dock Street Theater, the historic, 463-seat theater where both works are being performed, withholds 40 tickets to every show and sells them to the first 40 people in line. Sales begin at 10 A.M. at the festival's main box office at 14 George Street, and lines form before breakfast. ('The Marriage of Figaro' is being performed on May 27 to 30 and June 1, 2, 5 and 7; 'Salome' is being performed May 27 to June 4 and June 7 to 10.) Among other noteworthy performances to which tickets are not as scarce are the world premiere of a Philip Glass opera with text by Allen Ginsberg (May 27 to June 2 at the Sottile Theater), and dance performances by the Martha Graham Dance Company (May 27 and 28, Gaillard Municipal Auditorium), the Joffrey Ballet (June 8 and 9, Gaillard), and the Urban Bush Women (May 30 to June 3, Garden Theater). There is also a variety of chamber music, orchestral and choral concerts, and jazz concerts, among others, by Chick Corea (May 28, Gaillard) and Chet Atkins and Stanley Jordan (June 3, Gaillard).
Ticket prices range from $8 to $150 and can be ordered at 800-868-7228 or from the box office at 14 George Street in Charleston. For a brochure write Spoleto Festival U.S.A., Post Office Box 157, Charleston, S.C. 29402 or call 803-722-2764.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"The Next Step
Alcoholic beverages are part of the cuisine and culture in much of the world, and in some countries, pain medications requiring prescriptions in the United States are available over the counter. For recovering alcoholics and addicts, these are temptations that must be avoided. Sober Holidays Unlimited offers trips designed to support recovering alcoholics and addicts by surrounding them with travelers who share their problems, along with family members. Sober Holidays also provides schedules of various 12-step programs at destinations or sets up nightly meetings at hotels. Call (866) 782-9762 or visit www.soberholidays.com.
JOSEPH SIANO
TRAVEL ADVISORY: TOUR",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Dolphin Encounters At a Bermuda Resort
Bermuda-bound travelers who are looking for something beyond golf, tennis and beachcombing may want to consider a new feature at the Southampton Princess resort: dolphin encounters.
Working with Dolphin Quest, which runs similar programs in Hawaii and French Polynesia, the 600-room resort has created a three-acre, $1.6 million home for seven bottlenose dolphins. It includes a protected nursery cove in anticipation of dolphin births.
The program, scheduled to begin today, offers a chance to spend a half-hour in the water with the dolphins.
The sessions are primarily open to resort guests as as part of vacation packages. One such package, offered through the end of March, costs $369 a person, double occupancy for four days and three nights in a room with a private balcony.
A limited number of dolphin sessions will be open to Southampton Princess guests who have not booked through packages, as well as to others not staying at the resort. The encounters not booked as part of a package are to be filled by lottery, with prices for sessions ranging from $75 a person for hotel guests to $85 for those not staying at the hotel. For more information, contact Princess Hotels International at (800) 223-1818.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"CYBERSCOUT
SEARCHING WITH YAHOO . . .  http://www.yahoo.com
There are many indexes to the World Wide Web and people looking for travel information and services can benefit from getting acquainted with them. Some are guides to all sorts of Web sites, others specialize in tourism.
Of the general search engines, as the cognoscenti call them, Yahoo is a pioneer. Selecting the Travel subsection from the Recreation heading on the opening screen recently, I was led to 10 main headings, from bed-and-breakfasts to time shares, and a list of specific services too long to count. Exchanging homes with someone in a foreign country was an idea I had occasionally toyed with, and so far successfully resisted, so I selected that heading.
From the resulting list, I picked 'World Wide Travel Exchange -- homes in the U.S., Ireland and Canada.' That in turn led to a list of 22 states and countries. On an impulse, I chose Ireland. There was only one home for exchange in all of Ireland, at least according to this source. And it seemed doubtful that the owner of a 4,500-square-foot house with five bedrooms, two cars and a sailboat, in a seaside village near Dublin, would be interested in a 1,600-square-foot house with three bedrooms, one an office, and no sailboat in New Jersey.
Still, there were numerous home exchange offerings for one who was not committed to a particular state or country. The three-bedroom 'villa' in South Carolina sounded good, as did the 1807 Cape in Vermont, and the 'honeymoon cove' in the United States Virgin Islands. Once you find a possibility, you are on your own; phone and often fax numbers and E-mail addresses are given.
An exploration of Yahoo can definitely lead to useful information. My selection was a pretty specialized one. Outside of home exchanges, there are at least hundreds of commercial destinations, like hotels and resorts, available.
. . . AND LYCOS
http://www.lycos.com
Lycos's opening screen doesn't list a travel category, and the one I first looked at, The Road Less Traveled, turned out to be devoted to crystal balls and mysticism. So I backed up and selected The World. There were four additional steps before I got to Ireland, where I was offered the Dublin Pub Review Page; City.Net, 'general country information, maps, travel and tourism links'; Irish and Celtic Thingies (really  its name), and many others. I selected  City.Net.
After several twists and turns, I was looking at a map of Ireland showing towns with bed-and-breakfasts (there was no home exchange category). The first four I clicked on came back with error messages rather than information.
But, finally, I found a B & B in Dublin, and downloaded its page. It took two to three minutes to appear on the screen, probably because there were large, handsome photographs of the modern establishment, which looked as if it had been built as a B & B, not an uncommon practice in Ireland. Helpful information included number of rooms, rates, facilities both in the house and in the neighborhood. If you can pick a bed-and-breakfast from a brochure, you can pick one on the Web. These are digital brochures.
All in all, I found Yahoo better for this purpose than Lycos, partly because it had a clearly marked travel category and partly because it is the search engine I habitually call so I find it easy to use.
MORE THAN 27,000 SITES
http://www.itn.com
Finally, I tried a Web site devoted exclusively to travel, the Internet Travel Network. It describes itself as the 'first authorized World Wide Web interface to a national reservation system' that 'lets you route your booking through a travel agency in your area.'
First, as a new user, I filled in two blanks, with my name and password. I went on to select a connected travel agent -- in the town of some 30,000 people next to where I live there was one -- and filled out my 'traveler's profile' form. Then I selected Travel Resources and, from that, Hotel Any
where. The possibilities were overwhelming, more than 27,000 travel-related sites, according to the company. Here are not just accommodations, but also airlines and auto rentals, skiing and golf sites, cruise lines and yachts.
The Internet Travel Network is linked to Hotel Anywhere, which means that you can get from one to another with a mouse click, not that they are part of the same company. Hotel Anywhere, in turn, is linked to its 27,000-plus sites; it is not responsible for their contents.
Where I.T.N. fits in is that it has a list of your travel preferences and the name of your travel agent. When you find the right flight to Ireland, say, and a hotel room, a few additional clicks will send the information to the agent. You do all the work the travel agent was presumed in the past to do -- just as we now dial 15 digits to telephone London rather than have an operator make the connection -- but the agent still makes the reservations.
If you enjoy that kind of work, the network is a fine resource. If you don't enjoy that kind of work, you'd better get used to it.
L. R. SHANNON
TRAVEL ADVISORY
Correction:  September 1, 1996, Sunday
A report in the Cyberscout column on Aug. 18 about the Internet Travel Network misstated a reservation procedure. The reservations are made by the client through the network, and the client's travel agent issues tickets and processes payments; the travel agent does not make the reservations.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Asia by Wheelchair
More than 100 hotels throughout Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand can accommodate wheelchair-bound guests, and Ed Hansen and Bruce Gordon list them all in their new book, ""Exotic Destinations for Wheelchair Travelers"" (Full Date Limited; $14.95). Mr. Hansen, who began using a wheelchair after an industrial accident, has frequently visited Asia in his wheelchair for 16 years. For each hotel, he offers straightforward information on ramps, steps, shower dimensions, toilet heights, the availability of physicians and other details helpful to wheelchair travelers. To order call (800) 247-6553. TERRY TRUCCO  TRAVEL ADVISORY: BOOK",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"An Ice Palace Rises For St. Paul Festival
A giant palace constructed from 27,000 ice blocks will be the highlight of this year's St. Paul Winter Carnival, which begins Thursday. The 240-foot-long Ice Palace -- the first built for the event in 12 years, and the first one since 1941 that visitors will be able to enter -- will feature five turrets; the tallest is nearly eight stories high.
Inside is a courtyard, which features a fountain constructed of ice that emits water and fire alternately, and an ice rink sponsored by the National Hockey League. A sound and light show, best viewed from the courtyard, will run on the half hour nightly.
The St. Paul Winter Carnival runs through Feb. 8 in downtown St. Paul. Other events include the 3M King Boreas Grande Day Parade Jan. 24, the Vulcan Victory Torchlight Parade the night of Jan. 31, and an American Indian powwow Jan. 25.
The Ice Palace, at Cleveland Circle across West Seventh Street from the Xcel Energy Center, will be open 10 a.m. until midnight. Admission is by a ticket included with purchase of a $5 Winter Carnival Button, which offers free or discounted admission to events. Information: (651) 223-4700 or www.winter-carnival.com.
KATHERINE HOUSE
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Correction
LEAD: An article on March 6 about cultural events in Europe this spring and summer described this year's Venice Biennale incorrectly. This Biennale will be the 43d.
An article on March 6 about cultural events in Europe this spring and summer described this year's Venice Biennale incorrectly. This Biennale will be the 43d.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Coast Guard Report Gives Cruise Ships a B+
ALMOST a year after the Coast Guard commissioned a study of cruise ship safety, prompted by two groundings and two fires last summer, the task force's recently released report awarded the cruise industry the equivalent of a B plus  or possibly an A minus.
""The cruise ship industry is considered a safe industry,"" the report said, and its attempts to explain why resulted in a tome an inch and a half thick. While the investigations into the four incidents have not been completed, according to the report there did not appear to be any clear relationship among  them.
As might be expected, the major cruise lines, which carry well over four million passengers a year, have hailed the report, especially this sentence: ""Over the past 10 years there were no passenger deaths on deep draft passenger vessels resulting from either a vessel casualty or vessel-related operations.""
Peter G. Ratcliffe, president of Princess Cruises, said in a telephone interview, ""The report basically confirmed our view that we have an outstanding  safety record."" By ""we"" he meant the International Council of Cruise Lines, of which he is vice chairman. The council represents most of the cruise industry vessels operating from United States ports.
A reading of the report, with its detailed explanations and appendices, supports Mr. Ratcliffe's assessment. But the report is not without shortcomings. ""A woman passenger was killed when the gangplank collapsed and she hit her head  on the side of the ship, while the Yorktown Clipper was debarking in Juneau, Alaska, in June 1994,"" said Ralph Grizzle, a co-editor of the authoritative Cruise Week newsletter. ""And there was a Legionnaires' disease-related death of  a Celebrity passenger in 1994. Cruising is safe, but there's no disputing that two passengers died in the past three years because they were on a cruise ship.""
The Coast Guard's report focused on the 182 foreign-flag passenger vessels of 1,600 gross tons or more that have taken on or discharged passengers at United States ports between 1985 and 1994. The Yorktown Clipper, owned by Clipper Cruise Line of St. Louis, is only 99 gross tons and one of only a handful of cruise ships that fly the United States flag. (Most are registered in the Bahamas, Panama and Liberia.)
As for diseases, the report notes there were four major outbreaks on cruise ships in 1944, including ""the first documented outbreak of Legionnaires' disease, where approximately 50 people became ill and one person died"" and ""one  of the largest shigella outbreaks on a cruise ship, where 586 passengers and 24  crew became ill."" (The number of gastrointestinal outbreaks, like shigella, on ships has declined from 8.1 per 10 million passenger days from 1975 through 1979 to about 2.1 today.)
But because those incidents were investigated by the Federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, the Coast Guard did not investigate and consequently did not incorporate the information into its findings. Yet in view of the report's overall scrupulousness -- including the fact that its news release led  not with praise for the industry's safety record but with a recommendation that  training and communications be improved, particularly on vessels with multinational crews -- mention in the report and in the release of casualty-free cruises sounds a discordant if not disingenuous note.
That said, the report explains to what lengths the industry, the Coast Guard  and the International Maritime Organization go to assure safety from the time an owner or shipbuilder submits plans for a new vessel to the Coast Guard Marine Safety Center. Vessels still in the shipyard are inspected by a four-person Coast Guard team. After that, annual inspections test fire doors, watertight doors, fire pumps, sprinkler systems and lifeboats. Quarterly exams focus on officers' and crews' training and knowledge of firefighting, evacuation and other emergency procedures.
Despite those precautions, accidents occur -- and always will. From 1985 through 1994, there were 28 collisions, 22 groundings, 15 fires, 24 accidents from some type of material failure (piston failure, for example, or loss of power on a lifeboat) and three steering failures. On Feb. 26 Cunard's Sagafjord  caught fire, stranding the vessel and the 825 people aboard more than 200 miles  from the Philippines, to which it was towed.
But Mr. Ratcliffe of Princess Cruises is undoubtedly right that the industry's overall safety record is outstanding, and should continue to improve  as even tougher regulations for firefighting and safety -- known as Safety of Life At Sea -- are phased in through Oct. 1, 2007.
""Ours is a highly regulated industry,"" he said, ""and that monitoring is very  beneficial to the public. But the industry itself has never been complacent, and we continue to work hard to keep standards as high as they are. We welcomed the  Coast Guard investigation, so anyone who was uneasy would be reassured.""
TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"But Will I Lose My Frequent Flier Miles?
Travelers with stockpiles of frequent flier miles on US Airways and other troubled airlines are spotting an escape hatch in the airlines' alliance partners. But that option may not be as ideal as some passengers would hope.
As with any frequent flier program, partner airlines control how many free tickets are available using another airline's miles, as well as the dates when passengers are able to redeem their miles. And airlines can change their programs with little or no notice.
Further, they are not required by law to honor tickets booked with another airline's frequent flier miles, if that airline goes out of business.
The federal Department of Transportation does not regulate such matters, leaving it up to the discretion of the airlines, said William Mosley, a department spokesman.
Despite the uncertainties, partner tickets still offer an option to customers who want to use up miles. US Airways, which this fall filed for its second bankruptcy in two years, is part of the Star Alliance, a group of 15 airlines with service to 772 airports in 133 countries.
US Airways' Web site, www.usairways.com (click on Dividend Miles), has a chart listing the number of miles needed for free tickets on its partners. Its most visible partner is United, with which it operates a code-sharing agreement.
But United has been in bankruptcy since 2002. Another Star Alliance member, Varig, also has financial problems, while Air Canada just emerged from bankruptcy.
Other alternatives include the Japanese carrier ANA, Lufthansa, Thai Airlines and Singapore Airlines.
MICHELINE MAYNARD
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Travel Advisory; Universal Adds 3 Shows in Florida
Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla., has opened three new shows and plans to open three more this year, plus one ride. Most of the attractions are pegged to Hollywood themes. The ride, scheduled to open May 2, is inspired by the ""Back to the Future"" film trilogy, and visitors will sit in a DeLorean car surrounded by a seven-story hemispherical screen. The car will shoot up 10 feet, in an imitation of Michael J. Fox's character blasting off into space.
The Screen Test Home Video Adventure, the Streetbusters show and the Blues Brothers show opened last month. The Screen Test Adventure allows visitors to act as a movie star for a day and then leave with a videocassette of their performance. The Screen Test, which costs $31.75, including tax, is the only show not included in the general admission price. Streetbusters features the action of two popular films, ""Ghostbusters"" and ""Beetlejuice.""
A musical revue, the American Tail Show, based on Steven Spielberg's fantasy adventure, is scheduled to open this spring. The Wild, Wild, Wild West Stunt Show is due to begin the weekend of July 4 and AT&T's multimedia program on How to Make a Mega-Movie Deal will open early in the summer.
A one-day admission at Universal is $30.74, with tax, or $24.38 for ages 3 to 11. A two-day ticket is $51.94, $41.34 for ages 3 to 11. For information: (407) 363-8000.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
A listing of cruises on Feb. 4 referred incorrectly to a sailing by the Sagafjord on Sept. 22. She is scheduled to go out of service in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on the 22d and will not continue from there to Montreal as originally planned.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"A Castle Weekend
Castle Ashby, the late-16th-century ancestral home of Spencer Compton, the Seventh Marquess of Northampton, is normally not open to the public. But on the weekend of July 1 to 3, the Marquess will be host at a house party there, with a Champagne reception and black-tie buffet supper. Billeted in 26 bedrooms, where Queen Elizabeth I and other royals have stayed, guests will attend the annual Castle Ashby County Fair, featuring entertainments like a sheep shearing competition. The weekend costs $420 a person, subject to exchange-rate fluctuations. Information: (800) 357-3884. TERRY TRUCCO  TRAVEL ADVISORY: STATELY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Harlem Gets A Tourist Center
A new Harlem Visitor Information Kiosk provides information about this vibrant New York neighborhood. The staff can help visitors plan trips to such sites as the Apollo Theater, 253 West 125th Street, where performers like Billie Holiday and Aretha Franklin have appeared; the Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street; and the Dance Theater of Harlem, 466 West 152nd Street. Visitor guides, event listings and walking maps are also available, as well as information about tour companies specializing in Harlem.
The Harlem Visitor Information Kiosk, in the State Office Building plaza, 163 West 125th Street at Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, is open weekdays 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and weekends 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. It can be reached by taking the A, B, C or D train to 125th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue (two blocks west) or the No. 2 or 3 train to 125th Street at Lenox Avenue (a block east). Information: (800) 692-8474 or www.nycvisit .com.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
An article last Sunday about the Wicker Park neighborhood in Chicago and a listing of attractions misstated the address of Eddy Clearwater's Reservation Blues club. It is at 1566 North Milwaukee Avenue, not at 1556.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
An article on Aug. 5 about Slovenia, 'Unheralded Gem of the Adriatic,' referred incorrectly to the lineage of Slovenes. It is not Bavarian. For most of its recent history, from the mid-14th century until 1918, Slovenia was part of Austria and ruled by the Hapsburg dynasty.
In addition, three captions were erroneous. One, on the front page, misspelled the name of a town in Slovenia; it is Piran, not Purin. Another, for a bridge in Ljubljana, mistranslated the Slovenian words Zmajski Most. They mean Dragon's Bridge; they do not refer to the name of a dragon. The third referred incorrectly to the scene on a street called Stari Trg; it showed a cafe, not a market.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Hawaiian Pass For Island Flights
Hawaiian Airlines is offering a new pass that permits unlimited interisland travel -- a sort of Eurailpass in the Pacific. The new pass, called the Hawaiian Airpass, is available to nonresidents, no matter which airline they use to fly into Hawaii. A visitor can have 5 days of unlimited flights between the six major Hawaiian islands (the Big Island, Maui, Oahu, Kauai, Molokai and Lanai) for $129, 7 days for $149, 10 days for $199 and 14 days for $239. The regular fare between any of the main islands for nonresidents is $65.95 each way.
The ticket plan, which has no cutoff date, also includes special rates on car rentals, dining, visitor attractions and hotel and condominium accommodations.
Hawaiian's main interisland competitor, Aloha Airlines, is matching one component of Hawaiian's new fare plan: it is offering a five-day Island Hopper fare of $129, which expires Feb. 29. Both airlines offer a $20 discount to travelers over 60 and under 12 on all the special fare programs. For information: Hawaiian: (808) 537-5100; Aloha: (808) 836-1111.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
An article last Sunday about Heidelberg and Ludwigsburg, Germany, misstated the year in which fewer than 300 soldiers returned to Ludwigsburg after 16,000 had gone to fight with Napoleon in Russia. It was 1813, not 1810.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
An essay on Sept. 24 about growing up in Boston misstated the name of a burlesque queen who performed in Scollay Square. She was Sally Keith, not Sally Rand.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Low-Fare Flights To St. Petersburg, Fla.
Bringing more competition to the snowbird route, USA 3000 Airlines, a low-fare carrier, has begun service to St. Petersburg, Fla., from seven northern cities.
The airline began flying to St. Petersburg from Chicago, Cleveland and Newark on Oct. 9, with one-way fares as low as $79. Service from Detroit is scheduled to begin Nov. 4 and from Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia in December.
Based in Newtown Square, Pa., USA 3000, (610) 325-1872, www.usa3000airlines.com, has been flying to Fort Myers, Fla., from Chicago and Cleveland. It also flies to Cancún from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Columbus and Cincinnati in Ohio, and Baltimore, as well as to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic from those cities except for Pittsburgh, plus Cleveland and Newark.
Trevor Sadler, a spokesman for USA 3000, said it typically flew nonstop two or three times a week to the destinations it serves, 'but we'll go up to four times a week as the height of the winter season starts.' Besides offering low fares -- one-way prices range from $79 to $149 -- the airline hopes to attract customers by selling one-way fares, offering a free fresh meal, allowing name changes on tickets, and promising a flexible change policy for a $30 fee.
USA 3000 also offers charter service to warm-weather destinations on behalf of Apple Vacations.
SUSAN STELLIN
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
An article on March 14 about the Forum Barcelona 2004, a festival for artists, intellectuals and politicians this summer, misstated the origin of the Poble Espanyol, or Spanish Village, a section of Barcelona that represents architectural styles of Spain. It was built for the 1929 Universal Exhibition, not the 1992 Olympics. In addition, the singer Maria del Mar Bonet, who will perform during the festival, was described incorrectly. She is from Majorca, not Catalonia.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Denver-Based Airline Ends Service
Markair, a small airline that offered service from Denver to 11 cities -- including New York, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles -- stopped operating late last month.
Executives at Markair, which had shrunk in recent years to a fleet of only six jets, said the airline ran into financial problems, particularly its inability to make payments on jet leases, after the Federal Aviation Administration shut it down for several days in August because of problems with  the airline's maintenance records. Denver is still served by two smaller carriers offering lower fares than many major airlines, Vanguard and Frontier.
Some airlines accept Markair tickets, with certain conditions. United Airlines, for example, charges $75 extra per segment ($150 round trip). Markair  ticket holders will be put on standby status until 24 hours before their United  flight, and at that point can reserve a seat.
ADAM BRYANT
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Genoa Giving Columbus Party
When the port of Genoa, Italy, where Columbus was born, celebrates Columbus Day, Oct. 12, one group of Americans will have a front-row seat. They will be aboard the Victoria, of Fantasy Cruises of Miami, which arrives at Genoa on Oct. 11 after an around-Italy cruise and will be anchored in the harbor the next day, the 500th anniversary of the landing in the New World.
The trip has been arranged by the United States Power Squadron, a national organization of boating enthusiasts based in Raleigh, N.C. It includes air travel on Sept. 30 from New York to Venice, where the 12-night cruise begins, and back to New York from Genoa on Oct. 13. From Venice the 550-passsenger Victoria sails to Corfu, Messina and Palermo in Sicily and Naples, Rome and Leghorn before reaching Genoa.
Land excursions at each port of call as well as air fare are included in the prices, which range from $2,849 to $3,799 a person, depending on cabin. Fireboats and other craft from along the coast will converge on Genoa for the celebrations, which are expected to include fireworks, dancing and parades. Information: (201) 307-1234.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"CORRECTIONS
LEAD: A map on April 22 with an article headed 'What's Doing in Rome' included several errors, including mislocated or misnamed sites. A corrected map follows.
A map on April 22 with an article headed 'What's Doing in Rome' included several errors, including mislocated or misnamed sites. A corrected map follows.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Two Disney Resorts Apart From the Parks
Travelers can now stay at a Disney-operated resort even if they're not visiting Walt Disney World. Disney's Vero Beach Resort in Florida opened in January, and Disney's Hilton Head Island Resort in South Carolina opened March 1.
The Vero Beach resort, the first Disney resort not associated with a theme park, has a 115-room inn with a four-story atrium lobby, 60 villas and 3 restaurants. On the grounds are live oak trees, and on dunes separating the resort from the beach are sea turtle nesting areas. Miniature golf, croquet and  deep-sea fishing are available, and supervised activities are offered to children between 6 and 14.
At the 102-unit Hilton Head resort, accommodations include studio units, one- and two-bedroom houses and villas for up to 12 people surrounding a central lodge and accessible to an oceanfront beach house with a snack bar, a pool and an arcade with pinball machines and other electronic games. Nearby dunes are the breeding grounds for loggerhead sea turtles.
At both resorts, individuals may participate in a version of a time-share arrangement in which members own real estate interest, but not particular guest  accommodations. Children 17 and younger accompanying an adult may stay free. Rates to May 31 in Vero Beach begin at $79 a person a night in double occupancy  during the week, $89 on weekends, for a minimum of three nights. At Hilton Head, a grand-opening three-night package of $399 for two is offered to May 31.
Reservations: (800) 359-8000 for Vero Beach, (800) 453-4911 for Hilton Head.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"London Fancy: Boutique Victorian
A boutique hotel in the Little Venice area of London provides a pleasant alternative to large chains. The Colonnade Town House, near the elegant mansions that line Regents Canal, is close to the Underground and not far from Paddington Station.
The hotel, which recently reopened after being refurbished, has 43 rooms on four floors, some with four-poster beds and balconies. Its Victorian-style furnishings include antiques and luxurious curtains and wallpapers in dark greens and reds with accents of gold and cream.
Guests register not in a formal lobby but at a traditional writing desk just inside the front door, and 'do not disturb' signs have been replaced by stuffed cats that are placed outside the doors.
The basement breakfast room is distinctly non-Victorian, with bold wood floors and bright red, blue and mustard yellow chairs. A restaurant that will serve lunch and dinner is scheduled to open in late spring, but for now a limited 24-hour room service menu is available.
The two basement bedrooms are small but impeccably furnished. The drawback is that from 6 a.m. till midnight the Underground Bakerloo line runs beneath the hotel, causing regular loud rumbles. Light sleepers should ask for a top-floor room.
The two-level J.F.K. suite is the best bet for families. The main room has a four-poster bed with a green velvet canopy and a fold-out futon in a balcony above.
Rates, not including 17.5 percent V.A.T., range from $178 for a small basement double through $218 for a standard double to $315 for a town house suite and include breakfast, either English or Continental.
The Colonnade Town House is at 2 Warrington Crescent, Little Venice, London W9 1ER. Reservations: (44-171) 286-1052, fax (44-171) 286 1057 or www.etontownhouse .com.
EMILY LAURENCE BAKER
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
A picture caption on Nov. 26 with an article about storm damage to the Caribbean misidentified the beach shown on St. Thomas. It was Magens Bay, not Sapphire Beach.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"DATEBOOK
The Iceland Airwaves festival will present local and international rock artists throughout downtown Reykjavik from Oct. 19 to 23. Icelandic favorites like the quirky electronic group Gus Gus will be joined by an eclectic roster, including the Norwegian pop singer Annie (below), the brother-sister indie-rock duo known as the Fiery Furnaces, and even Juliette Lewis and her band, the Licks. Shows will be presented around town; pubs and bars will be hosts to D.J. parties and other events.
Icelandair offers a package for international travelers at $539 a person (check the festival Web site at www.icelandairwaves.com). The package includes air fare from either New York, Baltimore, Orlando, Minneapolis or Boston; two nights at a hotel, with breakfast; and a festival pass for all five days.
DETROIT
The intimate artistic and personal relationship between the French sculptors Rodin and Camille Claudel will be examined at the Detroit Institute of Arts starting Oct. 9. The institute landed the only American showing of 'Camille Claudel and Rodin: Fateful Encounter,' which features over 130 works by both masters, such as Claudel's 'The Waltz' (left), as well as more than 50 photographs and letters documenting their years together.
The show is scheduled to run until Feb. 5. The show will cost $14 on weekdays and $17 on weekends. Call (313) 833-4005 for tickets, which go on sale Sept. 16.
As of late August, flights from the New York area to Detroit during the first week of the show started at $208 on Delta Air Lines.
GUANAJUATO, MEXICO
Famed for its colonial architecture, its subterranean main traffic street and its hundreds of narrow pedestrian alleyways, Guanajuato also plays host to the annual Festival Internacional Cervantino (Cervantes Festival), which runs from Oct. 5 to 23. The festival, named for Cervantes, presents an array of fine and performing arts, staged throughout the city. The schedule this year includes Mexican folk dancing, flamenco, music, theater (above) and dozens of art exhibitions.
Tickets for individual events are sold separately. They are available through the Mexican Ticketmaster (www.ticketmaster.com.mx; in Spanish.) Guanajuato is about 18 miles from León, which has air service at the Bajio International Airport. As of late August, flights from the New York area to Bajio in time for the festival started at $421 on United Airlines.  J.R. ROMANKO",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Travel Advisory; Bucking the Trend, Concordes Fly Again
Amid the disruptions and cancellations in airline service over the last several weeks, one familiar face (more the nose, actually) is coming back: the Concorde. Beginning Wednesday, Air France is scheduled to offer five round trips a week between Kennedy Airport and Charles de Gaulle in Paris on the supersonic craft, and British Airways will have six weekly round trips between New York and Heathrow in London.
The round-trip fare between New York and London is $12,652; for Paris, it is $10,404. Air France offers a 50-percent discount on a companion fare, meaning that two people can fly to Paris and back for $15,606. Diane Cornman, an Air France spokeswoman in New York, said that sales have been good and are expected to get better because the typical Concorde passenger is a business traveler who usually books within three days of a trip. The Air France flights are scheduled to leave New York at 8 a.m. and arrive in Paris at 5:45 p.m. In the other direction, takeoff is 10:30 a.m. with arrival in New York at 8:25 a.m. Service to London is scheduled to depart at 12:15 p.m. and arrive at 9:10 p.m.; from London, it leaves at 10:30 a.m. and arrives at 9:25 a.m.
John W. Lampl, a British Airways spokesman, said that some flights filled quickly, helped in part by a $4,999 round-trip promotional fare that has since expired. 'It's very brisk,' he said of the pace of ticket sales. 'It's doing well.'
The Concorde fleet was grounded after one of the planes crashed on July 25, 2000, shortly after takeoff from Paris, killing all 109 people on board and 4 on the ground. Investigators concluded that a piece of metal on the runway punctured a tire on the plane, and the force of the blowout cut a hole in a fuel tank, starting a fire. It was the first crash of a Concorde in the 31 years since it had been put into service. Before each of the 12 Concordes returns to service, its fuel tank will be reinforced with a stronger liner and its tires will be replaced with more puncture-resistant versions.
Contact British Airways at (800) 247-9297 or www.british-airways.com; Air France, (800) 237-2747 or www.airfrance.com/us.
JOSEPH SIANO",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Two New Hotels For Caribbean
Vacationers to the Caribbean have two new resorts to choose from: one, a luxury hotel in Curacao; the other, a smaller resort 20 miles south of Cancun, Mexico.
The 248-room Sonesta Beach Hotel and Casino, near Willemstad, Curacao, is the first new hotel on that island in more than two decades. Facilities include three restaurants, a casino, an outdoor pool and a health club. Through Dec. 19, a double room with a balcony or patio starts at $150. There is a 12 percent service charge and a 7 percent government tax. For information call (800) 766-3782.
Across the Caribbean, on the beach in Puerto Morelos, Mexico, the Caribbean Reef Club has 22 suites in three buildings.
The hotel has a restaurant and pool, and offers free wind surfing, sailing and snorkeling. Rooms have satellite television but no telephones (guests may call at the office).
Low-season rates, which are in effect through Dec. 22, start at $90 for a double room. A studio with a full kitchen, is $115; the villa, which accommodates four, is $155. There is a 10 percent accommodations tax. For information call (800) 322-6286 or the resort directly at (52) 987-41147.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"ON THE WEB
THE FRUGAL TRAVELER -- On Wednesday, Matt Gross reports from the latest stop on his 90-day, round-the-world, bargain-seeking journey.
LETTER FROM MOSCOW -- On Thursday, Sophia Kishkovsky reports on Turandot, above, a lavish new restaurant that is leaving even the glitterati speechless. Slide shows Additional images of Tuscany, Botswana and Huatulco, Mexico.
nytimes.com/travel",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Uganda Raises Fees To View Primates
Travelers to Uganda will now pay more to follow and observe endangered mountain gorillas and chimpanzees in their natural habitats. Effective Aug. 1, permits to track endangered mountain gorillas cost $360 a day for foreign visitors to Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and Mgahinga Gorilla National Park. The gorilla-tracking permit had been $275 at Bwindi and $220 at Mgahinga. Foreigners pay the fees in dollars.
In addition, the Uganda Wildlife Authority has increased the fees for tracking chimpanzees in Kibale National Park and Kyambura Gorge in Queen Elizabeth National Park. The cost to track chimpanzees in Kibale National Park has increased to $50 from $20 for foreign visitors and in Kyambura Gorge the cost has risen to $30 from $20. Information: www.uwa.or.ug.
MARJORIE CONNELLY
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Eurostar to Get Faster, But First, Fewer Trains
Eurostar, the high-speed train linking London with Brussels and Paris, will operate less frequently during the next few months because of the construction of a new rail link on the English side of the Channel.
There will be no trains on Nov. 2, or from noon on Saturday, Nov. 23, until noon the next day.
There will be fewer trains between London and Paris and Brussels during the weekends of Oct. 12 and 13, Nov. 9 and 10, and Nov. 16 and 17. The trains that do run on those days will run on different schedules, not yet determined as of late August.
Eurostar will not operate direct service between London or Ashford and Disneyland Resort Paris on the following Saturdays: Oct. 12 and Nov. 9, 16 and 23. On the Sundays of those weekends -- Oct. 13 and Nov. 10, 17 and 24 -- there will be no service from London to Disneyland Paris, but trains running in the opposite direction will operate normally.
Passengers are advised to verify the departure times with Eurostar. From the United States the number is (44-1233) 617575.
The new rail line, which will link Kent with St. Pancras Station in London, will reduce travel time between London and Paris by 20 minutes. It is scheduled to open in the fall of 2003.
KERRY SHAW
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"A New Luxury Hotel In Beverly Hills
The hotel L'Ermitage Beverly Hills opened last month near the boutiques and galleries on Rodeo Drive. Featuring Art Deco decor, a rooftop pool and large rooms with views of the city, the Getty Museum, Beverly Hills, Bel Air and the Hollywood Hills, the hotel -- formerly L'Ermitage Hotel -- is owned by Lahotel Corporation, and has undergone a major redesign.
Rooms have fax machines, computer printers, video and compact disk players, television in the bathrooms and walk-in closets; most also have balconies. Each guest is issued a cellular telephone with a private number. Public spaces include a living room with a fireplace, a fitness center with steam and massage rooms, and a library. The chef, Serge Falesitch, who worked with Wolfgang Puck at Spago, combines flavors of Provence and Tuscany with Asian influences.
L'Ermitage Beverly Hills, at 9291 Burton Way, (800) 800-2113, has 124 rooms and suites, beginning at $385.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"The Prado Adds 5 Hours For Visits on Sunday
The Prado Museum in Madrid has extended its hours on Sunday to 7 p.m. from the previous 2 p.m.; it opens on Sunday at 9 a.m. It is also open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday (closed Monday). The museum has begun charging admission on Saturday; Sunday admission is still free.
Current exhibitions include 'Art at the Court of Felipe V,' until Jan. 26, and 'Spanish Flower Painting in the Golden Age,' with 17th-century still lifes by such artists as Zurbarán and Juan Fernández, until Feb. 2.
General admission is $3, except Sunday; (34-91) 330-2800; www.museoprado.mcu.es.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Airlines Team Up, Raising Some Hackles
THE airline industry has always been a good breeding ground for copycats, so when Northwest Airlines and Continental Airlines, the country's fourth-  and fifth-largest carriers respectively, announced a 'global strategic alliance' in January, the other major airlines immediately began circling one another.
By April United Airlines, the country's largest carrier, and Delta Airlines, the third largest, announced their own alliance as did No. 2 American Airlines and No. 6 US Airways. The airlines say that the three alliances, which together cover about 70 percent of all domestic passengers, will give consumers more choices, lower fares and improved service.
But critics have denounced the proposed linkups, arguing that any benefits they may bring will be far outweighed by the lack of competition that is likely to result.
'We assume that members of an alliance are not going to compete strenuously with one another,' said Alfred Kahn, who presided over the deregulation of the airline industry 20 years ago and is now professor emeritus at Cornell University.
In June the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, released a preliminary assessment of the deals. It found that the alliances would reduce the number of competing airlines on 1,836 of the 5,000 busiest routes, which account for 90 percent of total domestic traffic. Historically, the G.A.O. said, when competition declines, fares rise. It estimated that 100 million of the 396 million passengers who fly each year faced potential disadvantages,  compared with potential benefits for about 30 million passengers on 338 routes.
The airlines have announced the deals at a time when they are reporting record profits and their best customers -- business travelers -- are complaining about high fares and overcrowded planes.
Sensing a potent election-year issue, members of Congress have denounced the high fares, proposing a half dozen bills to promote competition. But it is unclear what the Government can do to stop the alliances.
Each of the proposed linkups is slightly different. Northwest and Continental plan to code-share -- meaning that each carrier will sell its partner's flights as if they were its own -- forming a global network from Asia to South America. The deal requires the approval of the antitrust division of the Justice Department because Northwest proposes to buy a controlling stake in Continental. The department has also asked for information from United and Delta, which plan to code-share but will exclude their European operations and will not invest in each other.
American and US Airways plan only to open up their frequent-flier programs and airport lounges to each other's members,  something planned in the two other alliances also. That does not require Government approval, although the Department of Transportation does have the power to intervene if it believes that passengers are being adversely affected.
At first glance, linking frequent-flier programs appears to be a consumer boon. For example, as of Aug. 1, holders of US Airways' Dividend Miles can use their miles to fly American to Hawaii, a popular destination that US Airways does not now serve.  But adding US Airways' 20 million frequent-fliers makes the competition for the limited number of seats reserved for free tickets that much fiercer. Many passengers already complain that seats are not available when they try to redeem their miles. A recent Consumer Reports study found that domestic airlines last year booked 152,000 fewer free seats on routes most popular with frequent-fliers than they did in 1996. (Several airlines said they actually gave away more seats last year and accused the magazine of using misleading data.)
More troubling is the prospect that the alliances will reduce competition among the major airlines and strengthen their already strong hold on large metropolitan hubs.
United, Delta, Northwest and Continental all say that there is little overlap in their route systems and that by combining them they will be able to offer service to cities they currently do not serve. For example, someone living in Lincoln, Neb., which is now served by United, will be able to book a ticket straight through to Sarasota, Fla., which is served by Delta.
But only a small number of passengers fly such routes each year, compared with the millions who travel between United's hub in Denver and Delta's base in Atlanta. The two carriers now dominate air service between those cities, and critics say that they will have little incentive to compete once they are allied.
The G.A.O. also said that the alliances will strengthen the hold that the major airlines have at the four airports where the number of landings and takeoffs are strictly controlled -- Kennedy and La Guardia in New York, O'Hare in Chicago and National in Washington. That would make it even more difficult for small carriers to expand service at these key airports. Indeed, the G.A.O. and other critics say that the alliances threaten the major achievement of deregulation, which has been the competition introduced by new discount carriers.
TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Will Europe Be Ready for the Euro on Jan. 1?
BUYING an international train ticket at this city's main station is already a nightmarish experience on some days, with travelers often waiting for as long as an hour to talk to an agent.
So it was more than a little ominous when the train station released a study earlier this year of what could go wrong when the Netherlands and most other European countries start replacing national currencies with euro notes and coins on Jan. 1. If the ticket agents are not prepared with enough cash, or are not ready to accept guilders while making change in euros, the study suggested, waiting lines could swell from about 100 people to nearly 1,200.
Worst-case scenarios are usually worse than reality. But the warning did highlight one of the biggest headaches Europeans and people traveling in Europe face in switching to euros as a cash currency: for at least a few days after New Year's, businesses will struggle with countless customers who want to pay in their old currency and receive  change in the new one.
Less than four months remain before euro notes and coins begin to replace the national currencies of 12 European nations.  For travelers who hop back and forth across national borders, the ability to use one currency in most of Europe will come as a  relief. But it could also come as a jolt, and  officials are quietly worried about the potential for mischief amid the confusion.
Will hotels, restaurants and other businesses effectively raise their prices by rounding up to the next euro as they convert prices from lire or francs to euros? Will counterfeiters deploy fake bills before people learn how to recognize the euro's intricate security features?
But perhaps the biggest source of headaches will be the need to deal with two currencies simultaneously for as long as two months. Many of the people lining up to buy tickets at the Amsterdam station will be paying in their old currency, because euros will not become generally available until Jan. 1. But stores will be issuing change in euros, not only because the old currencies will soon cease to be legal tender but because customers will want to unload their old money. Cashiers will need two sets of cash drawers. If cash registers are not programmed to make a currency conversion, they will need calculators by their side.
It will be bad enough for the Dutch ticket agent and for tourists double-checking their change, who will have to divide guilders by  2.20371. But at least Dutch customers have an exchange rate that is not far from two to one, making it easier for them to perform  rough price conversions in their heads. Consider the math facing store clerks in Italy, where one euro will be worth 1,936.27 lire. As of Jan. 1, a 3,000-lire ice-cream bar should cost 1 euro 54 cents. The change from a 10,000-lire bill would be 3.61 euros.
Travelers who arrive on Jan. 1 or later can simply start out with euros. But people who are traveling before the New Year will have to use the old currencies through Dec. 31, then start switching the next day.
This is hardly the first time a new currency has been introduced. Germany introduced West German marks across Eastern Germany after reunification in 1990. But the scale of this one is unprecedented: 12 countries across Europe will drop their old currencies and adopt the new one. Britain, Denmark and Sweden are the only European Union members that have refused to adopt the euro. The logistics entail 15 billion new bank notes and nearly 50 million coins.
Worried that counterfeiters would try to swindle people in the first days of the changeover, the European Central Bank refused to let the public see any real notes and coins until Aug. 30, and it will not let people touch them until the end of the year.
The bills do have elaborate counterfeiting safeguards, including a foil hologram that, when the bill is tilted, reveals the euro symbol and bill's denomination.
Beginning this month, national central banks across Europe will start shipping the new currency to banks, which will make it available to stores in November or December. Consumers will not lay their hands on any notes and coins until the last week of December, when they will be able to buy starter kits with enough money to make a few small purchases.
Across Europe, automated teller machines will be loaded up with euros in the early hours of the morning on Jan. 1. Currency exchange booths, including those in the United States, will be stocked and ready for business as well.
Big retailers, like Metro A.G. of Germany, are assuming that people will unload most of their old currency through stores rather than banks. At Metro, which owns everything from department stores to convenience stores, cash registers are already programmed to calculate change in euros.  Executives say they will post prices in both German marks and euros, phasing out the mark prices over the next two months.
But many smaller shops may be less prepared. A European Commission survey found that, as of March, only a quarter of small-  to medium-size businesses considered themselves ready for the euro. In the long run, the euro should make life easier for visitors to Europe. But those traveling right before or after the switch should acquire as little of the old currencies as possible, use credit cards and carry a calculator.
TRAVEL ADVISORY: CORRESPONDENT'S REPORT",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Two Colorado Dance Festivals
Western Colorado will be the site of an avalanche of dance programs this summer. In Aspen, the 24th season of DanceAspen Festival opens on July 1, featuring Martine Van Hamel's New Amsterdam Ballet with Marianna Tcherkassky, Amanda McKerrow and Gary Chryst. Other companies scheduled to appear during the eight weeks of performances are: Lines Contemporary Ballet (July 8 to 10), Mark Morris Dance Group (July 15 to 17), Pilobolus (July 22 to 24), Ballet West from Salt Lake City (Aug. 5 to 7) and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (Aug. 11 to 14 and 18 to 21). From July 19 to 31, a minifestival of experimental work includes performances by the San Francisco-based dance theater company Contraband; a collaborative project between performance artists Eiko and Koma accompanied by Native American musicians Robert Mirabal and Reynaldo Lujan of Taos, N.M.; and Rachel Rosenthal. All performances will be staged at the  DanceAspen Festival Theater, on Maroon Creek Road. Tickets range from $5 to $30. For ticket information call (800) 933-3820.
An hour away, people can improve their dance skills as well as watch the pros at work at the Glenwood Springs Dance Festival, June 28 to July 18. Dendy Dance, Contraband and Denver Contemporary Dance companies will perform, and dancers from these companies, as well as other guest artists including Milton Myers, will teach courses geared to intermediate and advanced dancers. There are also classes for children and young dancers. Tickets for performances, which will be held at the Glenwood Springs High School, 1340 Pitkin Avenue, range from $5 to $9. The cost of a full week of classes, which will be taught at Colorado Mountain College, 1402 Blake Avenue, ranges from $145 to $160. Call (303) 928-0878.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"CORRECTIONS
An article on Aug. 7 about Web sites that include reader reports on travel referred incorrectly to contributors to Worldhum.com. While the site indeed welcomes opinions from readers, many of its contributors have been previously published; they are not beginners.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"The Antarctic On an Icebreaker
A series of expeditions to the ""far side"" of Antarctica are among trips to remote areas scheduled for next fall and winter. The trips to Antarctica are being arranged by Quark Expeditions, which is using a Russian icebreaker, the 112-passenger Kapitan Khlebnikov. The three journeys, ranging from 28 to 31 days, begin in November and end in February.
The route of the first trip is from Cape Town to Antarctica and then on to Fremantle, Australia. Passengers will visit the Sub-Antarctic islands to see emperor penguins and other wildlife in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Fares range from $11,975 to $16,475 a person in double occupancy. Air fares, ranging from about $1,900 to $2,700, depending on which trip is taken, are extra. The route of the second voyage is Fremantle to Fremantle and the third, Fremantle to Bluff, New Zealand. Information: Quark Expeditions, 980 Post Road, Darien, Conn. 06820; (203) 656-0499 or (800) 356-5699.
Another remote area, the Kurile Islands, will be visited during a 16-day trip organized by R.E.I. Adventures scheduled to leave Anchorage on Sept. 1. After flying to Khabarovsk in the Russian Republic's Far East, participants will go to Sakhalin Island just north of the Sea of Japan to view the volcanic landscape and observe wildlife found only in the region, which lies between the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia and Hokkaido Island in Japan.
The fare of $2,750 includes accommodations, meals and transportation by ferry, sailboat and kayak. Air fare is extra and ranges from $1,100 to $1,830 from Anchorage. Air fare to Anchorage is also extra. Information: R.E.I. Adventures, Post Office Box 1938, Sumner, Wash. 98390; (206) 891-2631 or (800) 622-2236.
The luxury adventure ship Frontier Spirit will visit the Kurile Islands, Vladivostok and other Russian Far East ports on a 19-day voyage leaving Nome, Alaska, on Sept. 9 and crossing the Bering Strait. The itinerary also includes Kanazawa and Matsue in Japan and Pusan in South Korea.
Fares for the cruise alone start at $6,000 a person in double occupancy. As part of a 22-day package, including round-trip air fare and hotel accommodations and sightseeing in Anchorage, Nome, Pusan and Seoul, fares begin at $8,200 a person, but discounts of up to $1,650 a person are available for those who make reservations by July 31. Information: Seaquest Cruises, 600 Corporate Drive, Suite 410, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. 33334; (305) 772-7552 or (800) 223-5688.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Travel Advisory; Virgin Airways Drops Fuel Levy
After the British Government decided to award Virgin Atlantic Airways landing rights at Heathrow Airport in London, the airline announced that it was eliminating the fuel surcharges that were added to all its fares in late 1990. Ticket prices were raised 4 to 20 percent by most airlines in response to the rising and unpredictable cost of jet fuel caused by the Persian Gulf crisis. With the end of the war and the drop in fuel prices, Virgin no longer considers the increase necessary.
Virgin's move will result in a fare decrease of at least 13 percent on all of its routes. The carrier also announced it was extending its $249 round-trip fare to Gatwick Airport, London, until March 31.
Other airlines did not seem eager to follow suit but did say they were planning reductions that would in effect remove the fuel surcharge. United, for example, said that its trans-Atlantic fares would be competitive with American's. The two will be competitors on the New York-London route, having bought the rights from T.W.A. and Pan American. American has announced new 30-day advance purchase tickets to Europe beginning April 9 that cut prices by about 10 percent from the current 14-day advance purchase tickets. Competing airlines have matched American's initiative.
United Airlines will inaugurate service on April 3 to London's Heathrow Airport (April 4 for flights from London) with an initial schedule consisting of daily flights from New York's Kennedy Airport and Washington's Dulles Airport, and flights five days a week from San Francisco International Airport. As part of the agreement whereby United acquired Pan Am's London Heathrow rights, United will honor all previously purchased Pan Am tickets, including discounts and special fares. Travel agents and United spokesmen suggest that Pan Am ticket holders call United, (800) 241-6522, for reconfirmation and further flight information.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
Because of an editing error, a passage last Sunday in an article about climbing Mount Katahdin in Maine was scrambled. It should have read, 'One number off and we'd be out of luck, the Baxter State Park ranger had warned the day before, unable to make the climb we'd planned for almost a year.'",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Sailing Into the Past On Lake Champlain
Beginning this month, the Lois McClure, a replica of an 88-foot 1862-class canal schooner, will circumnavigate Lake Champlain just as the original canal boats did in the 1800's, allowing a rare glimpse into 19th-century maritime transportation and commerce.
During the 1800's, Lake Champlain was the principal route for trade among Vermont, New York and Canada. Sailing canal boats hauled raw and manufactured goods along the lake and the Hudson River, which are linked by the Champlain Canal, part of the New York State barge canal system.
Over a four-year period, naval architects, master boat builders and hundreds of volunteers designed and constructed the 37.5-ton Lois McClure based on archaeological reports and underwater inspections of two canal boats that had sunk in Burlington's harbor in the late 1880's. The Lois McClure, named after a local philanthropist, relies on sail power only. Its mainmast stands over 50 feet, and the boat is built of white oak, pine, cedar, black locust and mahogany, mostly from Vermont, New York and New Hampshire.
A series of placards will explain the history of the canal boats. Interpretive guides will also be on board.
Until this Wednesday, the Lois McClure will be docked at Perkins Pier in Burlington, Vt., and be open to the public. Its 12-stop maiden voyage around Lake Champlain will begin with a call at the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum (which is overseeing the project) at Basin Harbor, Vt., from Aug. 21 to 25.
Other ports of call include Westport, N.Y., Aug. 26 and 27; Vergennes, Vt., Aug. 28 and 29; St. Albans Bay, Vt., Sept. 2 to 5; Grand Isle, Vt., Sept. 6; Plattsburgh, N.Y., Sept. 9 to 13; Essex, N.Y., Sept. 16 to 19; Whitehall, N.Y., Sept. 22 and 23; Port Henry, N.Y., Sept. 25 to 28; and Shoreham, Vt., Sept. 30 to Oct. 4. The ship returns to Westport from Oct. 7 to 10 and to Basin Harbor from Oct. 12 to 17, before wintering in Burlington, open to the public from Oct. 19 to 30.
The Lois McClure will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. during most dockings. Admission is free; www.lcmm.org.
WENDY KNIGHT
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"A Children's Garden Grows in the Bronx
Children have always been welcome at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. But when the Everett Children's Adventure Garden opens on May 2, they will have an array of mazes, galleries, topiaries and trails to call their own.
Built on a wooded wetland once used mainly by bird watchers, the new eight-acre garden, named after Edith and Henry Everett, philanthropists, will offer indoor and outdoor attractions designed to encourage a love of nature and a knowledge of science. The garden takes advantage of its lush natural setting, which includes a meadow, a wooded area and an imposing swale. 'The architecture and landscape architecture will blend closely with the site,' said Amy Cohn, the garden's director of capital projects.
Visitors will enter the garden through a brightly colored arch near the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, then step onto a path that winds past 10 sites and exhibits. Among these are a free-form maze of winding trails, a geometric labyrinth of shrubs, a grass maze and herbarium, greenhouse and laboratory, where children can take part in a hands-on study of plants. Along the way, children can play among giant topiaries shaped like frogs, butterflies and bugs.
The $9 million garden is the showpiece of the Botanical Garden's $15 million Children's Adventure Project, intended to enhance science education and integrate environmental education into the New York City public school curriculum. The garden, which received nearly $1 million from the National Science Foundation, conforms to science education standards set by New York State. The garden's educational facilities are aimed at children aged 5 to 12. 'But the site itself is for children of any age,' Ms. Cohn said.
The New York Botanical Garden is at 200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard (formerly Southern Boulevard) in the Bronx. Open Tuesday through Sunday. General admission to the gardens is $3 (free all day Wednesday and Saturday from 10 A.M. to noon); admission to the  Adventure Garden is $2 for ages 6 and over; $1 for ages 3 to 5; free for 2 and under. Information: (718) 817-8700.
TERRY TRUCCO  TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"How to Beat Prepay Charge For Air Tickets
LEAD: More and more airlines are assessing penalties, known as prepay charges, for travelers who book an advance-purchase seat through a travel agent but get the ticket issued at the airport. There is a way to get around the penalty, which is usually about $25, but it requires a bit of planning.
More and more airlines are assessing penalties, known as prepay charges, for travelers who book an advance-purchase seat through a travel agent but get the ticket issued at the airport. There is a way to get around the penalty, which is usually about $25, but it requires a bit of planning.
Travelers who use out-of-town travel agents may find that because the agent is hundreds of miles away, the agent may not be able to get the ticket to the customer's home or office before the day of departure.
The prepay charge is not imposed by airlines when the customer books a flight directly with the airline by phone, using a credit card, and then picks up the ticket at the airport. But many travelers prefer agents - to save time, perhaps, or in hopes of getting a good deal - and then go to the airport to get the ticket. When this happens the airlines' view is that the transaction has not been completed because while the reservation has been made and payment accepted, the ticket has not been issued. The travel agent sends an electronic message called a prepaid ticket advice (P.T.A.), to the airline. To cover the cost of bookkeeping and writing a ticket, the airlines say, a prepay charge - usually $25 for a domestic flight and $30 on many foreign flights - is imposed.
How to beat the pre-pay charge? Daniel T. Smith, a spokesman for the International Airline Passengers Association, a Dallas-based consumer group, recommends having the travel agent ship the ticket by overnight mail. Many agents have deals with couriers like Federal Express to deliver tickets for under $10. He also recommends trying to negotiate with the travel agent to absorb the cost of prepay charges. 'Particularly if you are a business, if your volume is high enough, anything is negotiable,' Mr. Smith said.  Nonstop Flights To the Caymans
Vacationers bound for the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean will be able to fly nonstop from New York for the first time starting Dec. 15. Cayman Airways, the British colony's national carrier, will fly its new Boeing 737-400's from Kennedy International Airport in New York every Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 9 A.M., arriving at Grand Cayman at 12:45 P.M. Flights to New York from Grand Cayman will be at 8:30 P.M. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, arriving at 12:15 A.M.
In previous winters, travelers from New York had to connect with Cayman Airways, Eastern or Northwest in Miami to get to the islands.
The 14-day economy excursion fare from New York is $399 round trip. The Boeing 737-400 carries 158 passengers.  Informal Sales Of London Art
Visitors to London have a new opportunity to shop for contemporary art. The work of young artists is available at what the organizers describe as reasonable prices on an irregular monthly schedule at St. Peter's Church Hall, 59A Portobello Road, London (three minutes from the Notting Hill Gate Underground station). Two organizations working together stage either cash-and-carry exhibitions of emerging artists' work (about 200 exhibits) at prices from about $80 to $320 (calculating $:1 at $1.60) or art auctions at which both established and emerging artists can put their work on the block for a $16 fee. Ten percent of the proceeds from cash-and-carry sales is donated to the environmental charity ARK.
The cash-and-carry exhibits are organized by Art Events, Post Office Box 1958, Notting Hill, London W11 3PF (937 5897) and the art auctions by Griffin Contemporary Art Auctions, Post Office Box 1966, London W11 2EL (243 0192). It is worth checking on the events in advance since dates are irregular and extra shows are often organized. Starting in 1990, the aim is to have a show on the last Saturday of each month. Meanwhile, the next two are a cash-and-carry sale Dec. 2 and an auction Jan. 27. The organizers do not arrange shipping but will supply the phone number for a transport service.  Lighting Up At Christmas Worldwide
Germany is the home of the Christmas tree, and every city and village in East and West Germany has one up on its central square in time for Advent. This year Advent begins Dec. 3, and the tradition may have a new poignancy because of the opening of the Berlin wall.
In Munich's Marienplatz the tree is to be decorated with electric candles and tinsel in front of the Town Hall on Friday.
In Frankfurt, the tree on the Romerberg, as the town hall is called, was installed a couple of weeks ago, but the lighting ceremony takes place on Friday, opening day of the Christmas Market.
There are four trees in Nuremberg, two on each side of the Frauen Church, the central point of the Christkindlmarkt. Their electric candles will be lighted this week.
The tree in front of Vienna's town hall, the Rathaus, is traditionally donated by one of the provinces. This year's tree is 86 feet high and 25 years old and comes from Salzkammergut. Its decorations were switched on last month. In London, the tree on Trafalgar Square will be illuminated Dec. 7. Closer to home, at Rockefeller Plaza in New York, a 70-foot Norwegian spruce, will shine with 18,000 lights beginning Dec. 4. Ceremonies start at 6 P.M. with caroling, dancing and ice skating.  In Colonial Williamsburg, Va., the tree, another Norwegian spruce, won't be turned on until dusk on Dec. 24.
A lighting ceremony in Minneapolis was staged Thanksgiving Day after a parade with Dorothy Hamill as grand marshal.
In Washington, President Bush will light a 35-foot blue spruce that is permanently planted in the Elipse, the park behind the White House, at 5:50 P.M. on Dec. 14. At the same time, 50 state trees surrounding the national Christmas tree will be turned on by the President from a switch in the White House. Ceremonies begin with Willard Scott as emcee-Santa Claus. The theme: 'Families.' Seating is on a first-come basis.
There are at least two tree lightings in Seattle. One was at Westlake Center on Nov. 24; the other is on Dec. 6 when lights are switched on around the tree at 1001 Fourth Avenue Plaza.
In Denver, the neoclassical City and County Building becomes a giant 'tree' on Friday. About 300,000 watts will be used to illuminate multicolored floodlights lighting up the four-story building, which has a clock tower that is another four stories high.
TRAVEL ADVISORY  Correction:  January 7, 1990, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
A report in the Travel Advisory column on Nov. 26 about airline-ticket prepay charges referred incompletely to their use. The $25 charge, for reserving seats in advance but picking up tickets at the airport, is imposed by some airlines on passengers who reserve directly with them, not just those who reserve travel agents.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"On Cue in Paris
Any good pool hall isn't complete without cigar smoke in the air, even if it's in surroundings that represent turn-of-the-century Paris at its most stylish. At the 323-room Hotel Concorde St.-Lazare in Paris, the snooker takes place in a room designed in 1889 by the Gustav Eiffel School. The hotel, which is in the eighth arrondissement, offers guaranteed dollar rates starting at $200 a night through June. The billiards room, with its high mirrored ceiling, has 10 new tables with a choice of snooker, pool or billiards for $10 to $16 an hour, at 5 francs to the dollar; nonguests are welcome, too. Liqueurs and Cuban cigars cost $10 to $30 each. Call (33 1) 40.08.44.44 or (800) 888-4747.  TRAVEL ADVISORY: SNOOKER",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Seeing Hartford's History on the Victorian Trail
In the latter part of the 19th century, Hartford was a bustling center of commerce, and the arts, and home to such people as Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Now the artifacts of Hartford's Victorian Age can be seen on a new walking and driving tour patterned after Boston's Freedom Trail. The Victorian Trail, which was inaugurated on Oct. 2, is the work of Historic Hartford, a volunteer group that wants to promote historical tourism in the area.
The Victorian Trail has some two dozen stops, including the homes of Twain and Stowe as well as that of Sam Colt, the arms manufacturer.
The trail also includes churches and parks, Cedar Hill Cemetery, where J. P. Morgan is buried, and Connecticut's Capitol. The park-like setting of the 19th-century Institute of Living, a large private mental hospital, is also included.
The attractions are spread over six square miles and are best seen on a self-guided driving tour.
The trail can be picked up at any one of the stops, all of which are identified with large markers. Free brochures can be obtained at several locations, including the Mark Twain Memorial, 351 Farmington Avenue, and the Greater Hartford Tourism District, 1 Civic Center Plaza. For more information call the Greater Hartford Tourism District, (203) 520-4480.  BILL RYAN  TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Corrections
LEAD: A picture caption last Sunday with an article about music festivals in Europe misidentified an orchestra performing in Prague; it was the Cleveland Orchestra. The caption also rendered the name of the conductor incorrectly; it is Christoph von Dohnanyi.
A picture caption last Sunday with an article about music festivals in Europe misidentified an orchestra performing in Prague; it was the Cleveland Orchestra. The caption also rendered the name of the conductor incorrectly; it is Christoph von Dohnanyi.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"American Airlines Simplifies Florida Fares
With JetBlue and other discount airlines muscling into the South Florida market, American Airlines has taken steps to draw traffic back to its flights into Miami and two other cities. On Nov. 18, it simplified its fare structure -- going from 18 different fares between LaGuardia and Miami down to 8, for example -- eliminated some restrictions and cut fares on a limited number of seats.
With a seven-day advance purchase, the one-way fare between LaGuardia and Miami can now be as low as $102; a day in advance, it can be as low as $109. And for those who fly on a whim, the lowest walk-up fare is $209 one way (formerly $836) on that route; the highest full coach fare is now $499 one way. From Newark Liberty, the lowest walk-up fare to Miami is $241 one way. Fares for Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach have also been restructured.
All these fares are for purchase over the Web (www.aa.com); add $5 for buying over the telephone and $10 at the airport. Various taxes and fees must be added in, too.
Mandatory Saturday night stays, among other restrictions, have been eliminated, and the fee to change a ticket out of the three southern Florida airports has been cut in half, to $50.
Under American's previous pricing structure, a one-way ticket from Reagan National Airport in Washington to Miami bought on the day of travel without a minimum stay cost $712 before taxes and fees. It now costs $109. Travelers flying from St. Louis, who would have paid $1,119 for a last-minute, one-way ticket to Miami will now pay $282.
The move is also expected to help Miami International Airport, which has faced stiff competition from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, the base for JetBlue and Spirit.
JEREMY W. PETERS
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Gypsy Life In Hungary
Twentieth-century Gypsy life in Hungary is the subject of an exhibition at Budapest's Ethnographic Museum, housed in a palatial building across from the Parliament.
The show, which includes photographs and re-creations of Gypsy dwellings ranging from tents to starkly furnished workers' hostels, will run through Dec. 31.
The exhibition depicts Gypsies as traditional craftsmen, making bricks, nails and baskets; as artists, dancers and musicians; as wanderers, tradespeople and animal-handlers, and as a minority that today, in the absence of a demand for its trades, has disproportionately high rates of poverty, unemployment, chronic illness and imprisonment.
It also chronicles the Hungarian Government's attempt to incorporate Gypsies into Hungarian society. Many of the Communist-era newspaper and magazine photographs are accompanied by the original captions, translated into English. They document such programs as the construction of segregated Gypsy neighborhoods in the 1970's, complete with open sewers running down the streets as an intended substitute for indoor toilets.
The Ethnographic Museum, telephone 132-6340, is at 12 Kossuth Square in Budapest's Fifth District. It is open Tuesday to Sunday.
Entrance is free on Tuesday and about 90 cents from Wednesday to Sunday.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"TRAVEL ADVISORY
LEAD:
Planes Grounded, Air Service Cut Within India
Planes Grounded, Air Service Cut Within India
NEW DELHI -  Travelers planning to visit India over the next few months should be prepared for delays and cancellations of flights inside the country on the domestic carrier Indian Airlines. All the airline's new Airbus 320's have been temporarily grounded following a crash that killed 97 people in Bangalore on Feb. 14. The airline is now relying mostly on its fleet of Boeing 737's, a much smaller plane.
Some planes from the international carrier Air-India have been brought into domestic service, but there have still been extensive schedule changes during the busy winter tourist season, and flights are being canceled or delayed daily, often without warning. The problem has been most acute on heavily used routes in northern India, especially Rajasthan, where tourists must vie with business travelers and politicians.
Travel agents say that when Indian Airlines changes its schedules, it does not automatically transfer passengers to other flights. Thus, arriving in India with a confirmed domestic reservation does not guarantee that it will be honored on rerouted or rescheduled flights, as several recent American visitors have reported to the Delhi bureau of The New York Times.
Another Indian airline, Vayudoot, which connects small airports to larger centers, has also curtailed its service considerably after two crashes in the last two years. A new helicopter service, Pawan Hans, has been completely grounded because of technical problems with the aircraft.
- BARBARA CROSSETTE
Maui Stargazing
Some resorts talk up their health spas, tennis courts and in-room safes. The Hyatt Regency Maui in Hawaii vaunts its prototype telescope with a computer programmed to locate and identify planets, star clusters, nebulae and galaxies.
The rooftop telescope atop the hotel's nine-story Lahaina Tower has stereo eyepieces that remain stationary no matter where the telescope is trained and a pneumatic chair that can be raised and lowered. Free viewing programs with an astronomer are available each night except Wednesday and Sunday from 8 to 9 P.M.; they have been so popular, the hotel says, that people have been turned away. Viewers also watch a slide show on various constellations and may search the sky with giant binoculars. Private sessions on the telescope are available for $35 an hour a person.
The telescope, which cost more than $30,000 according to the hotel, was developed by Bill Leighty of Juneau, Alaska, an electrical engineer. Viewing began in January and another computer was added to the telescope two weeks ago to assist with star selection.
London Marathon
The London Marathon, which acccepted nearly 30,000 runners for the 1989 event and says it is the world's largest, is reserving 2,000 places in this year's run on April 22 for overseas entrants. The official tour operator for foreign competitors and their families is Keith Prowse, which is offering four- and seven-night package tours that include a running place. Also covered by the packages, which are available at four price levels are round-trip flight from New York, Miami and other cities, hotel accommodations and a train or bus ticket from Charing Cross Station, London, to the start of the race.
The four-night plan costs from $841 to $964 a person ($43 less for nonrunners), in double occupancy, depending on hotel and airline (British Airways or Virgin Atlantic), and the seven-night, $954 to $1,227. (Keith Prowse, 234 West 44th Street, New York, N.Y. 10036; 800-669-8687.) The 26-mile, 385-yard course begins in Greenwich on the south side of the Thames and crosses the river at Tower Bridge near the Tower of London. The final mile is by Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace to Westminster Bridge.
52 Ways to Map Your Travels
Thanks to a psychology professor at Hofstra University, playing cards are no longer just for games. Bridge and gin enthusiasts - or even people who don't play - can find their way about town in London or New York by using a Map Deck, a standard deck of cards that has maps of sections of the cities printed on the face of each card.
The cards were designed by Dr. J. Richard Block, who collects unusual cards and has written and lectured on their art and history. He is now preparing decks for Boston, Amsterdam and Washington.
Each card in a Map Deck details a small area of the city, showing major streets and places of interest. Travelers need look at only one card (covering an area of about three-quarters of a mile by half a mile) when finding their way around a specific section. When placed together like a jigsaw puzzle, the 52 cards form a complete map of the center of the city measuring about 18 by 25 inches. With each pack - which includes three jokers - there is a pamphlet indicating the card on which each destination is found. For example, in the London deck a map of the Tower of London area is shown with the seven of hearts.
Dr. Block, who was chairman of the the psychology department at Hofstra for 11 years and now teaches part-time, says a set of map cards produced in England in 1676 showed a county of England and Wales on each card. The London and New York decks cost $6 plus $1.50 for shipping from Y & B Associates, 33 Primrose Lane, Hempstead, N.Y. 11550.
Copenhagen Porcelain Show
Visitors to Christianborg Palace in Copenhagen this summer will for the first time be able to see two tables of the original Flora Danica service, the largest single 18th-century porcelain service of any royal household in Europe. The collection is being put on display from May 24 to Sept. 30 by Queen Margrethe II in celebration of her 50th birthday. The event also marks the 200th anniversary of the service.
One of the tables, in the dining hall of the palace, will display the dinner setting, the other the dessert setting. Both tables will also feature the royal gold and silver tableware and the coffee and tea service. Originally, the Flora Danica consisted of 1,802 pieces as a service for 100 people. There are now 1,530 pieces, still used at state dinners. The china is decorated with copies of the old copper prints of Nordic plants that appeared in Flora Danica, the Latin title of volumes of botanical drawings that appeared in Copenhagen in the 18th century.
The Queen has asked that guides be present every Tuesday to assist the disabled in viewing the exhibit.
Christianborg Palace is open every day from 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. and on Wednesday until 9 o'clock. Admission to the china exhibit will be about $3.
U.S. HOTELS CATERING TO JAPANESE
Miso soup and pickled cabbage for breakfast - in Boston? Certainly, if you're staying at the Colonnade Hotel on Huntington Avenue. The Colonnade and the Radisson in San Jose, California, are two hotels catering to the growing number of business travelers and vacationers from Japan.
Special services for Japanese guests at the Colonnade include a Japanese concierge, a welcome kit in Japanese including a guide to Boston, and kimonos in addition to the customary robes. For breakfast guests can choose grilled salmon, sweetened egg omelet, seaweed, steamed rice and green tea. Two Japanese newspapers arrive daily by satellite, and the hotel subscribes to Boston's local Japanese newspaper, Beantown News.
In Silicon Valley, California's high technology area, the Radisson Hotel San Jose Airport also provides amenities that give Japanese visitors a taste of home. Kimonos and more utilitarian yukatas, and a teapot with hot water, are put in their rooms, Japanese beer and sake in minibars. Japanese newspapers are supplied and there is a breakfast of vegetables, rice and fried fish.
The Radisson Hotel San Jose Airport offers information about rooms, plus room service and menus in Japanese. An official said the hotel was seeking front-desk staff fluent in Japanese.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Muslim Sites in Israel
An 80-page guide to Muslim tourist sites in Israel is now available from the Israel Ministry of Tourism. The guide, in English and Arabic, is published by Israel Travel News Ltd. For a copy, call (800) 596-1199. JOSEPH SIANO  TRAVEL ADVISORY: GUIDE",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Disabled Travelers
Magellan's, which publishes a catalog of products designed to help travelers, has included a section on products for travelers with disabilities in its newest catalog. They include a folding wheelchair that weighs 23 pounds ($895), a travel pack for diabetics that keeps insulin cool ($36.50) and a vibrating alarm clock ($49.50) for travelers with hearing difficulties. For a catalog, call (800) 962-4943. JOSEPH SIANO  TRAVEL ADVISORY: CATALOG",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Correction
An article on June 6 about artists in Provincetown, Mass., misspelled the name of an art teacher who had a school there. He was Hans Hofmann, not Hoffman. The article also misstated the years in which Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko visited and referred incorrectly to their role in an exhibition organized by Mr. Hofmann's students. Pollock and Rothko visited Provincetown frequently in the 1940's, not in the 1930's. Although they had several works in the first Abstract Expressionists' exhibition in Provincetown in 1949, they did not help organize it and did not study under Mr. Hofmann.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"A Hub for Children Hanging Out in Chicago
O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, as befits the world's busiest site for passenger and air operations, has developed a large space with play equipment for children under 12 designed by the Chicago Children's Museum.
The colorful 2,205-square-foot play area is in Terminal 2, inside the security checkpoint. A chest-high barrier separates it from the concourse on one side, and defining the other are glass walls overlooking airport operations. The complex includes a two-story control tower with a view of the play area and the outdoors. There are a play cargo plane with loading ramps, one of them a slide, and a cockpit and crawl-through tunnels. A 10-foot copy of the Sears Tower made from Lego pieces stands over a place for play with the larger Duplo blocks. There is also a play ticket counter. Infants are provided with a padded crawl-through area with large, soft 'cargo' objects. The area is accessible to people with disabilities and is open at no charge during all regular flight hours. After 10 P.M., it is open to passengers holding tickets.
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"DEALS & DISCOUNTS
A CELEBRITY GETAWAY -- The Dominican Republic has been attracting stars. And here is a chance to visit the Puntacana Resort and Club in Punta Cana, whose owners include Oscar de la Renta and Julio Iglesias. (Mikhail Baryshnikov also has a vacation home in the area.) At $85 a person a night (taxes included), for at least three nights (until Dec. 23), you can have one of 175 deluxe rooms at the club -- ocean or garden view -- with balcony, daily breakfast and dinner as well as a credit for up to $100 a room for beverages (including alcohol). For details, call (888) 442-2262 or see www.puntacana.com.
HALF OFF AT SANDALS -- Sandals is offering couples a choice of a 50 percent discount on the rates at Sandals Halcyon Beach Resort in St. Lucia or at Sandals Negril Beach Resort and Spa in Jamaica, until Dec. 26. Both are all-inclusive resorts with rates that begin at $167.50 a person a night and require stays of at least three nights. Guests in St. Lucia can take a free shuttle to two other Sandals resorts for golf or dinner or spa services. For details, call (800) 726-3257 or see www.sandals.com.
CHRISTMAS IN BERMUDA -- Cambridge Beaches, a cottage resort (there are 94 one- and two-bedroom cottages) in Somerset, Bermuda, has a holiday offer Dec. 23 to Jan. 4 in which guests pay for four nights and receive one night free or pay for seven nights and receive two nights free. Rooms start at $345 a night, double occupancy. Breakfast, afternoon tea and dinner are included, as are holiday-related activities like caroling, a gingerbread house decorating contest and, on Christmas Eve, free transportation to local churches. For more information, call (800) 468-7300 or see www.cambridgebeaches.com.
PAMELA NOEL",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Deals and Discounts
RED SEA RETREAT: The new Ritz-Carlton, Sharm el Sheikh has a rate of $160 a night through June 30 for a single or double room. That price, for a package called the Red Sea Retreat, includes daily breakfast buffet, one of several spa treatments and use of the fitness center. The package is not valid from Wednesday to Jan. 11; March 16 to 20, and April 17 to 28. The 307-room hotel, which opened last month on the southern Sinai Peninsula, overlooks a reef where diving can be arranged. There are several pools and three lighted tennis courts. For reservations: (800) 241-3333.
BURGUNDY BY BARGE: For travelers willing to take a chance on March weather in Burgundy, Continental Waterways has an eight-night package for $1,999 a person, double occupancy, that includes a six-night barge trip on the 24-passenger Mirabelle; round-trip air fare from more than 100 cities in the United States, including New York, and two nights' accommodation in Paris, with Continental breakfast and hotel taxes. On the boat, which cruises between Dijon and Vandenesse-en-Auxois, all meals, bar drinks and wine with lunch and dinner are included, as well as sightseeing. Departures from the United States are March 3, 10, 17 and 24. For information and reservations, call (800) 676-6613. On the Internet: www .continentalwaterways.com.
PACKAGES TO EUROPE: London, Paris, Madrid and Milan are featured in three-night packages from Destination Europe, the tour division of Auto Europe, the car rental company. From New York or Boston, the London packages start at $493 a person, double occupancy; Paris, $570; Madrid, $683 until March 2, then $740, and Milan, $679. The packages include round-trip air fare, lodging, daily Continental breakfast and a three-day standard-shift economy car rental. Sample hotels include the Thistle Kensington Palace in London and the Mercure Lafayette in Paris.
The packages are offered from Jan. 10 to April 12, though it may be difficult to get reservations toward the end of that period. For reservations or more information: (800) 835-1555 or on the Internet: www .skydrive.com.
YANGTZE CRUISE: A six-night trip to China from TBI Tours, including a four-night Yangtze River cruise, starts at $1,534 a person, with round-trip air fare from New York. The package also includes hotel rooms in Beijing and Shanghai; daily breakfast; four lunches, and three dinners. The river trip, on a Regal China Cruises ship, includes a tour of the Three Gorges Dam site. Optional tours and additional hotel nights are available at extra cost. Departures are from late April to mid-November, with the $1,534 price in effect early and late in the season. From mid-July to mid-August, the price is $1,734. Information or reservations: (800) 223-0266.
JANET PIORKO
TRAVEL ADVISORY",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"Historic Lighthouse To Open in Atlantic City
The 170-foot-tall Absecon Lighthouse in Atlantic City, which was first lighted in 1857,  is scheduled to reopen by the end of the month (the exact date has not yet been determined). Visitors will be able to climb the tower's 228 steps and walk out on the balcony (or gallery, in the lighthouse lexicon) to view the city and Brigantine beach.
The lighthouse's original first-order Fresnel lens, the most powerful of the French-manufactured lighthouse lenses, will be on display at the top of the tower. The lens was powerful enough to project the light up to 20 nautical miles.
The Inlet Public-Private Association, a  nonprofit corporation, directed the $2.6-million restoration of the lighthouse, which had been closed for 15 years. The tower's exterior has been repainted yellow and black to reflect its appearance from 1925 to 1933.
Visitors will be able to tour the interior of the newly reconstructed lighthouse keeper's house, rebuilt on the foundations of the original residence. Plans for the keeper's house include a visitor center with exhibits and a museum shop. The lighthouse and keeper's house, on Pacific Avenue between Rhode Island and Vermont Avenues, will be open Thursday through Monday, 11 A.M. to 4 P.M., year round. Admission is $4 for adults (including admission for one child), $1 for children. Information: (609) 449-1360.
TRAVEL ADVISORY  Correction:  July 26, 1998, Sunday  The Travel Advisory page on July 12 included an outdated report about plans to reopen the Absecon Lighthouse in Atlantic City to visitors by the end of this month. Early on July 6, a fire destroyed the keeper's house, which was also scheduled to reopen. The lighthouse, which was not damaged, is now scheduled to reopen early next month.",2
Top/Features/Travel/Sunday Travel,"2 New Guides: Boston And New Orleans
New Orleans's African-American attractions and Boston's Freedom Trail are described for tourists in two new booklets.
""1994-95 Soul of New Orleans,"" 96 pages in a narrow format, is the first guide published by the Greater New Orleans Black Tourism Network, a nonprofit organization that promotes African-American tourism in the New Orleans area. Folded into the center is the official tourist map, with black history sites keyed. The book includes short essays on local topics from the jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton to Homer Plessy, the loser in Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court decision upholding Jim Crow. The booklet is free from the network, 1520 Sugar Bowl Drive, New Orleans, La. 70112; (800) 725-5652 or (504) 523-5652.
""The Complete Guide to Boston's Freedom Trail,"" a second edition by Charles Bahne, follows the red line marked on the sidewalk to historic sites in American history. This edition, like the first, contains descriptions of wheelchair access. All details are covered: hours, phone numbers and admission fees. In bookstores, the price is usually $4.95. By mail order, including postage, it is $5.75 from Newtowne Publishing, Box 1882, Cambridge, Mass. 02238.  TRAVEL ADVISORY",2